development

Sound Around: 2 Bros, 1 Mission.

By Ryan Van Etten on 06/22/2010

The story of the new mobile music startup, Sound Around, starts in 2009, in a little place called Raleigh, North Carolina, where brothers Scott and Steve Klein had been brainstorming tech startup ideas. Both were students at NC State, but with opposite majors—nearly yin and yang. Add entrepreneurial DNA, and they’re Pinky and The Brain.

Posted in Apps, Editorial, iPhone Apps, Music, Music Flux, Narrative, News, Popular | Tagged app services, business, development, entrepreneurs, indie, interaction, iPhone, Lauchbox Digital, MobBase, mobile, mobile dev, mobile music, music apps, music startup, musicians, NC State, Pinky and The Brain, platform, resources, service, smartphones, social music, Sound Around, startup story, startups, story-driven, TechStars | 2 Responses

Musician Apps—What Do Fans Want? 5 Key Components.

By Ryan Van Etten on 05/12/2010

Last year I covered four platforms that musicians can use to build iPhone apps—Mobile Roadie, MobBase, iLike, and Kyte. Sound Around is another one, and is currently in private beta. Discussion from yesterday’s autoplay poll got me asking myself, “what do fans really want in an artist app?” I thought about it for a while and came up with 5 key components.

Posted in Apps, Design, Discussion, iPhone Apps, Music, Music Flux, Popular | Tagged app design, app services, artist channels, communication, community, development, direct-to-fan, fans, geotagging, ideas, iPhone, key components, Kyte, location, MobBase, mobile, mobile music, Mobile Roadie, music apps, musicians, networks, services, social media, Sound Around | 4 Responses

Bay Area Beatmaker Freematik Makes Album with iPhone

By Ryan Van Etten on 03/17/2010

Freematik (Tom Freeman) is a San Francisco-based hip hop music producer. But outside of his fully-equipped studio, he is armed only with his iPhone and imagination. For months he’s been experimenting with apps that let him make beats and riffs on the go. The iPhone’s limitations forced him to improvise and he found himself feeling “more creative than he had in while.”

Posted in Apps, Interviews, iPhone Apps, Music, News, Popular, Reviews | Tagged album review, app review, Bay Area, beatmaker, beatmaking, creativity, development, DJing, flare, freematik, hip hop, idrum, imatik, interface, interview, iPad, iPhone, jasuto, mobile, mobility, music review, phat beats, production, psychedelic, scratching, technology, touchscreens | Leave a response

Lala, Apple, Mobile Music, and Cloud-Based Streaming

By Ryan Van Etten on 12/07/2009

Tweets about Apple acquiring Lala have been flooding Twitter for 3+ days now. A number of sources have provided news and analysis on the acquisition. Personally I think Apple aims to move iTunes to the web in an effort to control mobile cloud-based music streaming via iPhones and iPods. Mobility is paramount, and I think that buying Lala was a sound move for Apple.

Posted in Editorial, Music, Music Flux, Popular | Tagged access vs. ownership, acquisition, Amie Street, analysis, Apple, cloud, cloud computing, compete, development, digital, Grooveshark, ideas, iPhone, iTunes, Lala, last.fm, libraries, mobile, mobile music, mobility, MOG, music discovery, music industry, music sites, networks, payments, platform, process, reactions, sharing, simplification, social music, spotify, startups, stats, streaming, tweets, Twitter, UX | Leave a response

Dhani Harrison on Conan O’Brien, Rock Band, and thenewno2

By Ryan Van Etten on 11/17/2009

I saw this interview of Dhani Harrison on Conan O’Brien the night before The Beatles Rock Band’s debut in September, and until then I had not realized that George’s son, Dhani Harrison, had played such a major role in the development of the game. In the interview Dhani describes how he ended up working on creation of The Beatles Rock Band, which started with his 5-year-long Guitar Hero obsession.

Posted in Design, Editorial, Gaming, Interviews, Music | Tagged alternative, band, band websites, Conan O'Brien, development, Dhani Harrison, facebook, game design, interaction, interview, music gaming, musicians, MySpace, Rock Band, rock/pop, social media, social music, stickam, The Beatles, The Beatles Rock Band, thenewno2, video, videogame | Leave a response

3 iPhone App Creation Platforms For Musicians

By Ryan Van Etten on 11/03/2009

Enter the mobile music frontier—the age of the app is here—and you don’t need to be a developer to create your own iPhone app anymore. Here are ~~three~~ four platforms that enable artists to build their own custom mobile applications.

Posted in Apps, Editorial, iPhone Apps, Music, Music Flux, Popular, Reviews | Tagged Android, app review, app services, Apple, Apps, bands, Blackberry, development, facebook, framework, geotagging, iLike, integration, IODA, iPhone, iTunes, Kyte, localized, location, m-commerce, media, MixMatchMusic, MobBase, mobile, mobile music, Mobile Roadie, mobility, musicians, MySpace, Nokia, platform, promo code, revenue, services, social media, social music, streaming, Twitter, YouTube | 7 Responses