Music Tech Startup News: Audiosocket, Mixgar, WeGlow, Musikki, muzrang
Recent music tech startup news includes Audiosocket‘s partnership with the Associated Press, Mixgar‘s funding and deal with Pepsi for Hungarian summer festivals and MOG CEO’s David Hyman’s activities with WeGlow. In addition, Musikki launched a redesign and blog and muzrang relaunched as a social playlist service. This edition of Music Tech Startup News includes companies from the U.S., Hungary, Portugal and South Korea.
Audiosocket & AP: Let Music Inspire
Music licensing service Audiosocket announced a partnership with the Associated Press to make music available for their news customers. This marks yet another deal in an ongoing expansion that has included multiple partnerships with such companies as Vimeo and new services such as MaaS: Storefront.
Mixgar Receives Funding, Powers Pepsi’s Video Disco
Mixgar, a “social jukebox” from Hungary, recently announced their move out of incubation status to an independent company with funding. Mixgar provides streaming music via YouTube for parties and venues. Playlists can be based on the interests of guests as determined by their Facebook and Last.fm accounts. Mixgar will provide music for Pepsi’s video disco at “four big Hungarian summer festivals this year, namely EFOTT, Hegyalja, Campus and SZIN” according to a recent press release.
Back in November I described Mixgar as the “most competitive concept” of four Hungarian music tech startups I briefly covered. Glad to see them proving me right!
MOG CEO David Hyman to Advise WeGlow
Earlier this week I wrote about the Kickstarter campaign for WeGlow, a music concert app that combines concert info, band to fan communication and a smartphone light show. In addition, WeGlow’s Mike Wilson informed me that MOG CEO David Hyman “signed on as an advisor to WeGlow last week focused on market development, funding and PR.”
Musikki Redesigns Music Search Engine
Music search engine Musikki recently redesigned the site and it’s a nice look. The content still features a mix of videos, bio, discography, Twitter mentions and so forth. New features are expected in coming months from this startup based in Portugal.
You can keep up with Musikki’s development via their brand new blog.
muzalive Relaunches muzrang as a Social Playlist Service
South Korea’s muzalive recently relaunched muzrang as a “social playlist service.” Like a number of startups that are avoiding paying exorbitant licensing fees, muzrang allows users to create personal playlists powered by YouTube and SoundCloud.
Users can search for music from those platforms via muzrang and select tracks from friends’ playlists for use in their own playlists. Basic social network features such as following and liking are included as are comments. A mobile version is expected later this month.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) maintains a business writing hub at Flux Research and blogs at Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
