Social Music News, Music Technology and Start-Ups | SoSoActive

The HTC Rezound delivers the high-end, full range Beats by Dr. Dre audio software to a United States handset for the first time. The HTC Rezound was released in November of last year, and was the first HTC phone to offer the Beats Audio platform that the company spent over $30 million acquiring a controlling interest in. The handset comes out-of-the-box with a set of Beats ear buds specifically designed to integrate with the Beats Audio application, and those ear buds come with an in-line wireless mic and remote control. This allows easy music access for rewind, fast-forward and stop… Read More »

This week was another exciting week in music, but it ended with the passing of legendary disco Queen Donna Summer. Donna Summer leaves behind a legacy that spanned several decades and slew of Grammy Awards. Facebook’s IPO, yesterday was the most talked about story of week by all accounts and many people were talking about how it’s impact will affect the music business. Oh yeah, Spotify wants to be valued at $4 Billion Dollars too! Without further ado, here are the top ten music stories of the past seven days. Enjoy! Can Spotify Really Be Worth $4 Billion? – The… Read More »

Compared with passive music classes, participatory music classes make babies more tuned to music appropriate for their culture and more responsive to musical pitch and tone, according to the findings of a small study from Canada. Active music classes also appear to lead babies toward greater social success. To demonstrate the effects of musical training on sound processing in the brain during the first year of life, the researchers randomly assigned 38 infants aged 6 months to either active music classes, in which parents and babies participated in movement, singing, playing percussion instruments, and learning lullabies and action songs, or… Read More »

Dealbook’s Evelyn M. Rusli reports that the music-sharing company Spotify is raising money as part of a deal that values it at $4 billion, and fresh off this morning’s enormous $1.5 billion valuation for Pinterest, we can’t help but fear this is more evidence of a social media bubble. Of course, we’re less than 24 hours away from the biggest social media valuation of all time: Facebook’s IPO. This report confirms rumors that Spotify was positioning itself to investors with that eye-popping valuation, so today’s news isn’t entirely unexpected. But Dealbook’s Rusli notes that the number marks an amazing rise… Read More »

Dating someone in the arts is no cake walk: in general, artists don’t really tend to be “salt of the earth people.” They can be moody and insecure, their work life can be volatile, they stay out late, they often don’t make money, they can be a little eccentric, etc., etc., etc. So why would anyone in their right minds want to date one? Here are ten reasons. 1. They will always have a friend who’s in a show, or having a reading, or playing a gig, or showing in an art gallery. Which means you constantly get to go… Read More »

Even though LinkedIn provides great networking opportunities for traditional professionals, its usage for musicians are still a bit unclear. I can see why managers, executives and others working on the business side of music should be actively using the popular social network, but what about artists? As LinkedIn continues to grow and expand, I am starting to get more requests from musicians and a lot of them are opting to use their stage name instead of their government name. This wouldn’t be an issue if their stage name was Jennifer Lopez or Beyonce Knowles, but when it contains graphic and… Read More »

Legendary disco singer Donna Summer, known as the “Queen of the Disco”, died today from lung cancer. Countless celebrities like Roseanne Barr, Latoya Jackson and Mary J.Blidge have been sending their condolences via Twitter. The Grammy winning disco singer leaves behind a legacy that spanned four decades and five Grammy Awards. While Donna Summer will be greatly missed, I wanted to celebrate her legacy and list a few interesting facts about her that you may not be aware of. 1. At the ripe age of 61, Donna Summer had a #1 record on Billboard’s US Dance Chart for her single… Read More »

ReverbNation is another social music service that provides a means for music recording artists of various sorts to upload and promote their music to new listeners and acquire new fans. Similar to Myspace it provides a detailed artist profile for musicians to showcase music, videos, and statistics that display how many plays and fans you have received on a daily/weekly basis. While the entire construct of Reverbnation is based around the same controls as MySpace, the look and feel of the entire service is catered specifically to musicians/artists with no fan interaction aside from e-mail sharing. It does allow you… Read More »

Radar Music Videos is an an online network that helps artists and labels commission high quality music videos from some of the most talented directors in the world. The London based start-up has worked with major brands like Sony Music and Mercury Records, yet it still provides an affordable platform that allows indie labels to compete with the majors. Here is an interview I recently had with Radar’s Founder Caroline Bottomley, about how she is using the power of the crowd to disrupt the music video industry. Where did the idea for Radar come from? I knew from when I… Read More »

A few days ago, I received an email introducing me to Vassy Karaglorgos, AKA Vassy, an Australian bred singer/songwriter who is poised to take the pop world by storm. With the soulfulness of Amy Winehouse mixed with boundary-pushing artists like Santigold, her new album ‘Beautiful Day’ has all the elements of a classic. Vassy has had her music featured on popular television shows like ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Ugly Betty,’ and now has her eyes set on topping the Billboard charts. Here is an interview I had with her yesterday, about growing up in Australia and how a “one-chance” trip to… Read More »