Fellody And Tastebuds A...

This post is written by our regular contributor Natasha Starkell , the CEO of GoalEurope , the outsourcing advisory firm and a publication about outsourcing, innovation and startups in Central and Eastern Europe. Twitter @NatashaStarkell . Gplus.to/natashastarkell .† There are some of us who believe that having matching tastes in music is an essential for a relationship. Now two Spotify apps are setting out to prove it. The German founders of Fellody , Robin Simon and Thomas Vatter created an online flirting website where top matches are identified based on users’ music preferences. And they weren’t the only ones. Today Fellody and Spotify are launching Fellody music flirting app, available in English and German languages. At the same time Tastebuds.fm is launching it’s own Spotify app. Tastebuds.fm helps you ‘meet people who share your love for music’. The startup has been making waves with users, especially in the UK (lots of dates and at least one wedding so far). The site was founded by two musicians from London: Alex Parish and Julian Keenaghan. Both founders are members of the band Years Of Rice And Salt. The app integrates with Spotify, scanning a user’s most played music and instantly showing people near to them who have similar tastes. Users can browse prospective dates, listen to their matches’ favourite music and send them a quick message if they catch their eye. The app also allows users to share mixtapes with each other using Spotify’s in-built playlists. Some 48% of Tastebuds.fm’s users have never used a dating site before so it’s reaching a new audience. With the Fellody app users drag and drop their Spotify playlists into the Fellody app. Then Fellody compares the songs on the playlists and offers top matches, which users can engage with by sending flirts and messages directly via the app. Users can also sign up via the Fellody website and add your music history from Last.fm or iTunes. Windows Media Player can also be used to establish music preferences. Fellody is essentially a social network based on musical tastes, where flirtatious behavior is acceptable and encouraged. Its community shares music in a public feed and cheers with a “this rocks!” button for good finds. Fellody “friends” are called “Groupies” and the whole look and feel of the website is rather fun and cool. Unlike its competitor, Tastebuds , Fellody might be considered quite purist. You can only upload those music titles you have actually played on your computer, listened to on Last.fm or added to the Spotify playlist. It goes as far as taking into account music genres and play count. This, according to founder Robin Simon, is to prevent someone pretending they like a band only to get attention. Both founders spend most of their free time with music, and the idea of Fellody was born at one of the music concerts they attended. Simon is a serial entrepreneur, whose previous businesses include Sodatech and Sodapix . He is a lead singer in his band Grant Lassie . His co-founder Thomas Vatter worked for several years as a product manager at German ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG .

Samsung Acquires Mobile...

Samsung Electronics has acquired mobile entertainment startup mSpot , according to a release issued today. Financial terms were not disclosed, but previous reports point to an acquisition price of $8.8 million. mSpot let users stream and watch full-length movies on their mobile phones and on the web . The company had struck deals with Sony, Disney, Paramount, NBC/Universal, Lionsgate, Warner, Image Entertainment, and Screen Media Ventures to stream full-length movie rentals to users’ PCs and cell phones, allowing you to switch between both devices as you pick up and leave off throughout a movie. mSPot also offered a cloud-based music service, which let you upload your music to the cloud, and stream this content from a multitude of devices, ranging from PCs, Macs, to the iPhone, iPad and Android. Last year the company launched a Pandora-like radio-service for personal music collections. It was tough for mSpot to compete with the likes of Apple, Amazon and others in the music, movie and film streaming world so the exit is probably best for the startup. mSpot raised $2.3 million in funding from Trinity Ventures. Samsung says mSpot’s technology will be used to provide an “entertainment experience of music, video and radio services for users of Samsung devices, while extending mSpot’s cloud and streaming solutions to a broader base of global entertainment fans…mSpot’s entertainment services will be a key integrated offering on newly announced Samsung mobile devices.” The acquisition includes technology, assets and human resources under mSpot.

‘May The VCs Be Ever In...

Dave McClure’s 500 Startups crew is at it again, with another group of companies joining its Accelerator program. The fourth group of startups in the 500 Startups Accelerator follows a lot of the same trends from previous participants, as McClure & Co. continue to bet big on female entrepreneurs and international startups. There’s also the continued focus on revenue-first startups, rather than those which need to hit “critical mass” before monetizing. But before I get into all that, check out this video . Seriously. Watch it. This story will still be here when you’re done: Ok, so now that you’ve gotten your fill of 500 Startups’ hilarious take on the Hunger Games , let’s talk about the companies themselves. Of the 27 startups in the program, seven have at least one woman founder, and more than half of the startups are from outside Silicon Valley. Of those, 12 are from outside the U.S., hailing from locations such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, Slovenia, and the U.K. Others come from U.S. cities that include Austin, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Putting investment in non-Valley startups isn’t the only somewhat contrarian move from this Silicon Valley-based incubator. The current class also has a bunch of startups focused on unpopular market segments like parenting and education, small- and medium-sized businesses, and subscription e-commerce. That’s because big wins on companies like Instagram are rare, and McClure’s not trying to hit a home run every time he comes up to the plate. Instead, he’s focused on singles and doubles. That means helping along startups that might not be sexy, but bring in revenue. So what do the participating startups get? As with previous classes, all 500 Startups Accelerator participants get investment of $25,000 to $250,000 in exchange for five percent of equity. They also get some swank office space, access to hundreds of mentors, help in marketing, business development, administrative stuff… And, of course, help with future fundraising. The Accelerator actually kicked off on April 2, so the program is already well underway, with demo days scheduled for July 17-18 in Mountain View, and July 23 in New York City. In the meantime, check out the next 27 companies to participate in this class: ActivityHero – Yelp for kids activities Bluefields – Intelligently organizing recreational sports Bombfell – A monthly subscription service for men’s clothing CardFlick – Create and share beautiful digital cards Chalkable – An app store for school and a platform to make those apps work Fontacto – Virtual phone system for entrepreneurs and SMBs in Mexico & Latin America Groupiter – Adds group conversations to the files you share on Dropbox Happy Inspector – An app to revolutionize inspections Ingresse – Brazil’s first social ticketing company Monogram – Flipboard for fashion PocketOffice – An app to help grow your small business from your smartphone PublikDemand – Helps consumers launch viral complaints against big companies ReClipIt – Social catalog for coupon and deal lovers Sqoot – Provides a daily deal API, like Twilio for local deals Storypanda – Next-gen interactive iPad kids books Teamly – Helps teams by stay focused, collaborate better, and celebrate their achievements TeliportMe – Lets users create high-res panoramas anywhere TenderTree – Helps families find a caregiver for the elderly or disabled TieSociety – A try-before-you-buy subscription service for men’s neckwear Timbuktu Labs – An iPad magazine for you and your children TokyoOtakuMode – A place to share Japanese otaku culture, like manga and anime Toshl – Super easy personal finance manager and bank data aggregator TwitMusic – Helps musicians effectively share & promote their music on Twitter UmbaBox – A monthly subscription service for discovering handmade women’s goods Uscoop – A social commerce platform for young style influencers Wanderable – Honeymoon registries for couples who want experiences Yogome – Fun & educational games for kids aged 6-12 on the iPhone & iPad

Apps Take up 4 Out of E...

Do you remember when phones couldn’t do anything but make phone calls? With every passing month, we’re adding more and more functionality to our mobile phones and it’s good for everybody’s business. Games, shopping, directions, news — we can even have our phones nag us when we forget to do something. About the only thing our phones can’t do is transport us to another location. . . someday. .  . someday. In the meantime, it’s apps that are occupying our mobile minutes. 82% of our media time is spent with these mini-programs and there’s no end in sight. comScore put together a list of the top apps and I have to say, I was surprised by a few of them. Take a look. First off, check out Android with the most unique visitors. You wouldn’t know it with the way Apple’s always shouting. After that, search is more important to Android users, but both have a stake in not getting lost. Percentage wise, more iPhone users are checking out Facebook and a lot more are using YouTube. What’s that all about? Stocks and Music are hot with iPhone users while Android users go for Cooliris (an app that combines media with email and sharing) and they’re bigger fans of Angry Birds. Finally, it’s nice to see that a quarter of the users on both sides are enriching their vocabulary with Words. Taken as a whole there’s an interesting trend — in that there is no trend. The apps on this list represent everything from practical tools to entertainment, video, photos, games and social media. The only thing missing is shopping. For that you need to look at the combined mobile app and mobile browsing numbers. Then Amazon comes in fourth with 44,028 unique visitors for March. They were beaten only by Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Ebay also made the combined list as did game company Zynga. Apps are busting out all over. If you can create a tool that helps mobile phone users do anything faster, better or simply make it more fun, then you’ll be in the money, too.

Spotify Plays Can Incre...

Despite fears that streaming access cannibalizes sales, classical music record label X5  tells me when it launched an app within Spotify and saw streams of one album increase 412% in a month, that album’s iTunes sales shot up 50%. The Swedish label’s “The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music” soon reached #1 on the iTunes Classical charts, and broke into the iTunes Top 200 album charts for the first time, hitting #152. The stats back up claims by some record labels and Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek that there’s no evidence of Spotify or other streaming services negatively impacting music sales. More data like this could encourage artists and labels to promote their streaming music presences, and push acts like The Black Keys and Paul McCartney who’ve pulled their catalogues from Spotify to come back. X5′s CEO Johan Lagerlof explains to me what’s happening: “People use the Spotify free service as a discovery tool and then go to iTunes for buying their music. The recent sales spike for ‘ 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music’ follows the same trend we have seen in Sweden, where there is a positive correlation between Spotify streaming and digital sales.” Streaming musics critics have said the tiny per song stream royalties aren’t enough to support artists or  recoup the sales they cannibalize . However Lagerlof’s statements align with Ek’s, who told the Telegraph in February that “the vast majority of the artists are getting between 50 and 60 percent of all their income from Spotify”. Those more optimistic about the influence of streaming access believe services like Spotify make it easier for listeners to discover artists and fall in love with them. Though recorded music sales dropped significantly from the CD era to today’s digital age, that lost revenue could be replaced with concert ticket and merchandise sales. So how did X5, which was founded in 2005 as a digital-only label, improve the discoverability of its catalogue and boost sales? Not through paid marketing, which X5 wasn’t doing.  Spotify opened an app platform in November to let developers build new ways for listeners to find and play music. X5 released its Classify app that lets you browse an intelligently organized library of classical music by composer, era, mood, or genre as part of the second batch of Spotify apps launched in March. Rather than having to search across Spotify’s immense library for history’s top symphonists, Classify curates them for quick browsing. Lagerlof believes Spotify users who were streaming the album, especially ad-supported free users, then went to iTunes and bought it. (Yes, the stats are a correlation, but there aren’t any other known factors beyond Spotify that could lead to a sudden spike in sales of the album, which was originally released in 2009). X5′s collection and “The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music” may be especially well poised to benefit from Spotify. That’s because they contain well-known songs that may be hard for younger, digital music-loving  demographics to discover through search due to their long, obscure titles. Oh, and most of their artists are dead so they aren’t actively promoting themselves. Still, Spotify now has over 18 million users, there’s ears out there for any label or artists to grab. They may be misunderstanding how streaming and digital sales revenue cycles are different, though, Lagerlof tells me. “With a streaming service, artists get paid every time you listen to something, not just once upon download. The revenue is spread out much longer.” So, an artist may earn less from streaming than sales in the first few weeks after an album release, but over their lifetime, fans playing those songs over and over could rack up more revenue than a one-time purchase. “For some marketers it’s probably better, for some it’s probably worse”. So while Spotify and other streaming services like MOG and Rdio may be a boon for labels like X5, they’ll need to produce stats showing they can have the same benefit for current mainstream artists. You know, ones that are alive. [ Image Credit ]