BeatSlacker

SF Music Tech was a great event, but the session that seemed to excite me the most was the “1 minute pitches”. Most of them were for web sites/services for musicians (of course). Here’s a list of the ones I wrote down that I found interesting:

• LiveCut: ”LiveCut makes getting one-of-a-kind live recordings easy. During a performance and for a limited time after, LiveCut allows you to use cell phone text messaging to order recordings of the songs that you heard and that you want to add to your music collection.”
• GigZee: “gigzee shows you all the upcoming gigs – small and big, free and pricey! Plus you can do a lot more cool stuff on gigzee like follow your favorite artists and venues, review artists you have heard, read reviews by real people and generally maintain your coolness by being in the know. ” (Apparently with an iPhone App as well as the web)
  
• MixMatchMusic – a set of web site tools for helping musicians connect with their fans:
  • MobBase – “reach out and touch your fans with your own iPhone app” (The band Pepper’s official iPhone app built with this)
  • Remix Wizard – “the fast, free way to host your own remix contest anywhere on the web” (this looks fun)
  • Tra.kz – connect fans with your music via Twitter
  • MixMatchMusic Community – collaborate with other musicians and create music online
• PledgeMusic – a new kind of music company:
  “Pledge Music is a music company offering you a new way to take control of your career. We’re not interested in being a rights owner – Pledge does not want ANY rights to your music, live income, merch etc. We just help you fund whatever type or format of record you want to release next.

  To do this we simply help and encourage you to participate with your fans in an exciting and unique way. Pledge allows you to easily create an irresistible customised menu of exclusive content and experiences that integrates your database, MySpace friends, Facebook fans, Twitter followers and various other social networking sites. You decide how much money you’d like to raise and your fans pledge money for whichever item or experience they want. They will only be charged once the full target amount has been raised and there’s even the option to build a charitable donation into your campaign. We charge a flat 15% fee, which reduces to 10% if you use Pledge for more than one campaign. We have no hidden fees or transaction costs whatsoever.

  You are your own A&R and Marketing Manager – you choose the studio, the producer, the artwork, the promotion – it’s all down to you! Let the fans be your label, while you keep the rights to your music.

• MusicShake: “Musicshake is the super easy and user friendly application to create your own music without having to go through the hurdle of learning an instrument, taking music classes, or owning professional audio gear. All you need is a PC and an internet connection to start creating your own tracks.” (This looks like a lot of fun too! Making music “for dummies”)
• Swift.fm: social discovery and promotion of music using Twitter. Lots of interesting features, including building channels around hashtags, pushing songs to friends, etc.
• LocalMusicVibe: a community/directory site for local music scenes.  ”Anyone who registers can instantly create free, custom pages for any aspect of the music industry they represent: band, musician, performer, venue or resource, such as studio, teacher, rentals, etc. Local merchants and corporations also benefit through targeted, interactive sponsorships, and advertising opportunities. User-generated content and a local focus enable complete coverage for ex-urban markets that are currently ignored.”
• VocalDownloads: lots of samples of vocals, both free and for charge, for your own work. Fun place to poke around.
• GetPlayLists: “Join to share playlists with friends and to get new playlists that work with your songs, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and your iPod or MP3 playlist … Automatically. Get unlimited access to our playlist library, share playlists with friends, the playlists automatically work with your digital music player.”
• Playdar: A very interesting open source project to solve the “shared playlists, but unshared content” problem (as with GetPlayLists). I don’t think I actually saw the one-minute pitch, but it really deserves to be in this list:

  “Playdar is a music content resolver service – run it on every computer you use, and you’ll be able to listen to all the songs you would otherwise be able to find manually by searching though all your computers, hard disks, online services, and more.

  Playdar provides a consistent API for accessing any song ever recorded.

• MyCypher: winner of the best 1-minute pitch (started with Portuguese, French and English I believe), not clear what this site is offering, but something about a “global open mic” focusing on hip-hop, spoken word, etc… Hope it comes to fruition, based solely on the 1-minute pitch.