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Spotify Seeking Funding and Revenues

Steven Finch — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Previously we have written about Spotify’s upcoming Android application as well as their iPhone app, but currently Spotify is fast approaching its “payment due” day.

Spotify has been able to attract a huge amount of users but their free section is being used a little too much and they are now finding difficult to generate enough income to pay their major label partners by the date due.

Currently Spotify seem to be trying to increase incomes in three key areas:

A premium service is getting much more attention from Spotify as it adds additional features beyond just “ad free” to attaract paid users.
Spotify is rolling out by far its largest advertising format to date. It will feature wall to wall billboard ads on its music player that appear after just 5 minutes of inactivity as part of a major 3 Mobile ad campaign. (However, if I’m inactive on Spotify I tend not have the application open on my screen its just in a tab at the bottom, thus the ads showing will obviously have no affect whatsoever.
To buy more time, the startup is on the hunt for another $40-$50 million in venture capital funding. (paidContent)

I personally use Spotify and find it pointless to upgrade to their premium service because I receive unlimited listening time, tracks, search and playlists. I know they are finding it tough to gain additional revenues and maybe moving their product into iPhone and Android markets is a better bet to increase revenues fast enough.

15 Cool, New and Useful Web Apps You’ve Never Heard Of

Steven Finch — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:19:19 +0000

I have spent a long time lately trying to find unique tools that will help me simplify certain tasks in my day to day activity. I have put together a list of 15 web apps that have really help me to save time online. All these applications are different markets but they all have one thing in common, they are cool, new and very useful!

Waze

Driver-Generated Live Maps and Real-Time Road Information. Driving with waze mobile client lets users passively and actively share real time data and receive the optimal route to their destination.

Spacky

Spacky is a free keyword research tool. Spacky lets the user type in any keywords and then lets them know search volumes in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Curculator

Curculator is a very simple currency converter and calculator that has been design to save users time. The currency converter uses daily mid-market rates from various trusted sources. All rates are refreshed daily. However, I would really like to see them announce their source for the financial information

Itumz

Itumz is a powerful web application that lets you make lists, access them from any web browser, and share them with your friends and the world. The rich user interface is simple to use and makes it easy to create to-do or task lists.

Superminder

To-do’s are too simple, calendars are overly complex, sometimes you just need to be reminded. Superminder is a micro-application that will make sure you don’t forget.

Springo

Springo is a visual search engine like no other. Currently Springo lists some of the main search results but is still yet to get very detailed.

Tatango

Tatango, the ad-supported group SMS service. The service is dead simple to use, as it should be. I made the jump from accountless bum to en masse messaging mogul in all of about 2 minutes.

Amplify

Amplify is a service for sharing clips from articles, blog posts or anything else you read on the web with your friends on Twitter.

Topsy

Topsy is a search engine powered by tweets. Topsy sees the Internet as a stream of conversations. Topsy treats people differently from the webpages they create and the things they say.

Moogo

Create your own website with ease. It’s fast and it’s free! You can have your own website in less than ten minutes and begin using it right away!

Snipi

Snipi uses drag and drop technology that will change the way you browse, organize, shop, share, and discover the Internet.

Charts.fm

Charts.fm is the ultimate tool to create your personal music charts by (re)mixing the charts of more than 2650 radiostations.

FeedMingle

FeedMingle makes lives simpler for web designers/developers, feed readers, bloggers, or just anyone who wants to merge two or more RSS / Atom feeds into one. It mixes all the feeds provided and creates one RSS feed, Atom feed, JSON feed, and a html widget to simply paste into your website or blog.

Fotopedia

Fotopedia is breathing new life into photos by building a photo encyclopedia that lets photographers and photo enthusiasts collaborate and enrich images to be useful for the whole world wide web.

Twitcaps

Twitcaps is a directory of images inside twitter messages by arranging into list that refreshes as new images are tweeted. Twitcaps is a great stream of twitter images and you can even see which are the newest and most popular.

Tatango: Free Ad-supported Group SMS Service

Steven Finch — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:11:32 +0000

Tatango is a new ad-supported group SMS service which has been making huge steps forward since gaining funding and a new design six months or so ago.

Sign up, invite some friends (they have to opt-in, else this thing would be a spam machine), and you (or anybody you dub as a group admin) are able to SMS the entire group at once, either from the browser or right off your mobile handset.

The basic service is free, supported by 30 character advertisements strapped to the bottom of each message. Ad-free messaging is available along with a few other pay-per-option premium features but, at just under $35 bucks a month.

We7 Launches Out of Beta with a Bang and a lot of New Features

Steven Finch — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:17:27 +0000

After spending months in public beta and lots of changes to the ad supports music service, We7 is about to launch out of beta with a bang.

We7 have launched with a “Big Listen” campaign. This new service has some great new features including Free on-demand, unlimited access to full tracks and albums, “Search, Click & Play”, A ‘Celestial Jukebox’ with several million track, ‘Play Anywhere’ – a link and play system for blogs and websites, Users can create playlists, share with friends and buy mp3’s, Payments to rights owners and artists.

The first thing you will notice with the new site is that they have a completely new design. Other new additions include a Magazine, Blog and a much improved list of advertisers. Im sure we will be hearing a lot more from We7 in 2009!

We7: The New Ad-Supported Music Destination On The Rise

Steven Finch — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:41:50 +0000

We7 is one of the new kids on the block in the music industry. On We7 you can find artists from all over the world, signed and unsigned. With the majority of artists you are able to listen to the tracks on their albums, as well as add them to a play list. Additionally, tracks can be purchased via iTunes.

We7 is mainly an ad supported streaming platform, in which artists receive their royalties from a percentage of the advertising revenues and then hopefully more from purchases via iTunes. We7 keeps the other cut of the advertising revenues for providing the platform, as well as getting a percentage from iTunes affiliate sales.

We7 has a catalog that is growing rapidly and they seem to have a few majors already on board. I would like to see a better design that takes up the majority of the page on a fluid layout, instead of just the current fixed layout. This will also allow them to strategically place their advertising banners, which is their key business model. We7 however is definitely worth checking out if you are look to stream some of the best albums from the biggest artists, from anyone in the world.

Napster Is Looking For a Buyer. They Should Never Have Turned Into a Download Store!

Steven Finch — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:41:32 +0000

Napster has hinted that the company is up for sale again, saying in its response to a dissident shareholder group that the company is once again exploring possible strategic alternatives, and has retained UBS Investment Bank to assist in the process. The company hired UBS two years ago to explore a possible sale, but no deal emerged. Napster informed shareholders of the move in a letter that also said the company believes that three proposed dissident board candidates are “unqualified.”

The company said the dissident candidates “have offered no specific business plan, other than suggesting a vague review of Napster’s business,” and also “have no significant ownership in Napster and, in fact, have been frequent sellers of Napster stock.”

Napster instead urged shareholders to re-elect its current slate of independent directors.

I predicted something like this happening to Napster back in December of last year. Napster has a business model that was rapidly decreasing and they didn’t even look like changing it. The company has a great brand, but they are still just moving in the wrong direction. A download store was never going to be right for this brand, they should have done something ad supported and in the same market as Imeem, build a community around this great brand. I so wish I had control of this brand!

Qtrax Signs Their First Major Label, Universal

Steven Finch — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:21:50 +0000

Qtrax, the P2P music service that about four months ago claimed to have signed deals with all four major record labels, has finally signed their first major label. Universal Music Group are the first major label to sign up to Qtrax. This is the company’s first major label licensing deal, although it does have several publishing agreements with the likes of EMI Music Publishing and Sony/ATV, among others.

The service itself allows users to share DRM protected music. The DRM is obviously there to keep the music off other networks, but at the same time is helps Qtrax to establish the play counts in which they will use to pay royalties to artists and labels. Qtrax also has display ads in certain sections of the process, and users have the option to purchase music and merchandise through the service. Hang on one sec, they are a startup with an actual business model that might work, thats crazy!

Spiral Frog Claim To Be Third Largest Legal Music Download Store

Steven Finch — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:24:33 +0000

Minic over at 901am has reported that Spiral Frog is now the third largest legal music download site. Spiral Frog reports that they have 850,000 registered users, thus putting them in third largest behind iTunes and Rhapsody. The company also reports that their traffic is also increasing at a constant rate, already surpassing two million unique visitors for March.

Im not really too sure if Spiral Frog should claim the fact that they are the third largest legal download store, mainly because they dont actually sell anything compared to iTunes and Rhapsody. Therefore, they should really be in first place, because people are willing to sign up to something in which they have the opportunity to get something for free rather than paying.

The Ad Supported Music Space: Where Is It Going?

Steven Finch — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 23:36:56 +0000

The music industry is currently very close to my heart, especially on the internet. This is mostly due to the new project our company will be launching very soon, RouteNote.

With all the recent talk about the music industry and how it is suffering, there has been a few companies trying to push the envelope and develop a new model by which the industry will adopt. These models are ad supported and they come in different sizes and shapes. Within this post I will discuss these companies and there endeavors to change the industry their own way.

Imeem: Imeem is a social network that focuses on providing services and platforms that are fully supported by the advertising generate throughout the site. They are currently based in San Francisco right across the road from Snocap. Imeem is primarily focused around the music industry and they have been signing a lot of distribution deals with companies such as EMI. Imeem has also joined the new Open Social platform from Google, which is a big step forward for developers. Imeem doesnt allow users to download all the songs on the site, but it does pay artists for the amount of streams they receive compared to the overall streams on the site.

Qtrax: Qtrax is still yet to launch and is based on a innovative p2p file sharing platform. Qtrax has already signed deals with Universal, Sony/ATV, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, EMI Music Publishing and EMI Music, TVT Records, Go Digital, ASCAP and BMI. The Company is based in New York, New York and Melbourne, Australia. This platform pays artists royalties based on advertising, but they dont disclose much information at present.

Ruckus: Ruckus, the premier digital entertainment service for colleges and universities offers a myriad of ways for college students to connect with one another. Currently Ruckus has over 3.2 million tracks licensed in its catalog, from a mixture of indies and major labels. Ruckus dont really talk to much on their website about how they pay artists but im guessing it must be from streams on their player. Im not even too sure if you can download any of the songs from their catalog and be able to place them on your iPod!

These are just some of the major players in the ad supported music space at present, but there are several other notables, such as Spiral Frog, Slacker, RCRD LBL and We7.