Music Tech Startup News: Covify, TastemakerX, WiMP, SocialFolders, AtticTV, BeeFM, Musikki
In recent news related to music tech startups, promising newcomer Covify bubbled to the service via the TNW Kings of Code Hack Battle while TastemakerX is finally available for download. WiMP continues its promising spread through Europe while SocialFolders announced an integration with SoundCloud. In addition, AtticTV has another take on presenting YouTube videos while BeeFM and Musikki present their approach to friend-based playlists in Facebook.
TastemakerX, a free music discovery and personal clout building iPhone app, launched in time for Coachella. It's in beta but is available for download. The parent company received $1.8 million in funding earlier this year.
Introducing Covify: Scan Albums Covers Into Spotify
The TNW Kings of Code Hack Battle took place April 25 and 26 in Amsterdam. as part of the TNW2012 Conference. The winner was a hack called Covify that allows you to scan your CD covers so you can then add and listen to your albums on Spotify. It's new and under development but you can try scanning via webcam or sign up for the Covify iPhone Beta now.
Aspiro's WiMP music service recently added investors to continue its expansion. Currently available in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Portugal with over 350,000 paying customers, WiMP is launching in The Netherlands and Germany. Though not available in the States, WiMP has attracted attention for its emphasis on regional music rather than attempting a Spotify-style hit-based world takeover.
SocialFolders, a "cloud-based repository of all of your social network information and media", recently announced an integration with SoundCloud. The service will allow for offline access to SoundCloud files via one's computer as well as additional sharing options.
AtticTV is a recently launched startup that describes itself as "MTV for the Internet generation." Like a variety of startups it seeks to leverage YouTube videos to provide an alternative experience to viewing them on YouTube. It has a nice interface and is organized by genres with the ability to create mixtapes or playlists of videos. You can check out their pitch deck on SlideShare.
NEXT Berlin 2012 is coming up May 8th and 9th. A number of startups will be featured including BeeFM which is described in their pitch as turning Facebook into a "social music service" by creating personal playlists based on the music shared by your and your friends.
Musikki is a music search engine that gathers results from such services as YouTube, Twitter and Last.fm to present an aggregated page in response to searches on artist names. They recently introduced a Facebook app called Musikki Social Player that, instead of bringing that functionality into the closed garden, allows you to create playlists based on your and your friends music posts and likes.
Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith blogs about business at Flux Research: Business & Revenue Models and maintains an audio blog at snd1.mobi. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
