Written on 28th June 2009
4 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Technologic Overkill is reportedly the first music video shot on an iPhone 3GS. The song by XFYA records the activities of a little blue robot and his efforts to become significant in an increasingly technological world.
Created by Steve Ellington of The Automatic Filmmaker, its rather good actually (considering its shot on a phone):
Written on 22nd June 2009
2 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Spotify, the innovative and widely respected music streaming app has increased the quality of its sound to CD level, aiming to increase interest in its premium subscription option.
Initially, not every song will be available in ‘CD Quality’, but the Swedish/UK based startup aims to have their entire catalogue covered over the next few weeks.
Daniel Ek, the companies chief executive told the Telegraph:
“Providing great sound quality has always been an important goal for us. Now, we’re taking the next step in offering an unparalleled listening experience.”
Spotify premium users can enable higher quality (more…)
Written on 15th June 2009
5 COMMENTS Martin Bryant, Co-founder, Social Media Café Manchester
UK ISP Virgin Media has today announced a partnership with Universal Music Group which will give its customers the ability to download unlimited amounts of music for a set fee.
The music will be in DRM-free MP3 format, meaning it can be used with any digital audio player and copied to CD without restrictions. Customers will be able to subscribe to an entry-level plan with a limited number of downloads, or a more expensive unlimited plan.
Subscription packages, demanded by many music fans due to their ‘all you can eat’ nature, have been slow to take off. Long running subscription service eMusic has a limited catalogue while Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ offering has been hampered by DRM restrictions. Analysts have long expected Apple to move iTunes Music Store to a subscription model but this has yet to materialise.
Written on 28th May 2009
6 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
This is a neat idea which really should have been done a long time ago. Although there are plenty of ways to search for tracks online and share them, there are few ways to simply upload and share.
Whilst not the most beautifully designed site, SongTwit does in fact do the trick. From the Songtwit homepage, you can either:
search the library of songs (likely to be derived from YouTube or imeem I believe)
Enter a web address of an mp3, or,
Upload a file to share from your harddrive
Once you’re done, login with your Twitter details – they really should have OAuth implemented by now – and finally send a message along with the track to your Twitter followers.
Unfortunately, when I tried to upload a track and share it with my followers, all seemingly went smoothly until I tried to play it. The player is imeem’s and I was told the audio was processing and I should check back soon. That’s bound to frustrate my followers.
Update: Developer Danny Hakim tells me that he’s using imeems API which basically means all uploads will take a few minutes to process – not much he can do about it unfortunately.
Update 2: Playback of uploads seem to be shortened so you’re not in fact sharing the entire song which is frustrating to say the least.
The idea is wonderful, but the app itself has much room for improvement. More than anything it’s imeem’s API is what’s letting the app down
Written on 25th April 2009
7 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Created by passionate Twitterer and American comedian Andy Milonakis, “Let Me Twitter Dat” is an anthem that’s bound to spread through Twitter like no track before. Enjoy.
Written on 20th April 2009
3 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
This song, a cover of the great Stand by Me by Bill Withers Ben E. King, is a collaborative effort by musicians from across the world.
It was put together by Playing for Change, a musical movement supporting (RED)Wire in the fight against AIDS in Africa. Click here to see how you can get involved.
Written on 15th April 2009
0 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Swedish/German startup SoundCloud is a service dedicated to helping music professionals share music online.
We covered the company whilst in private beta in June of last year, the site has since generated a fair bit of buzz and with almost 100,000 registered users it looks like they’ve got something going for them. Today comes news of a €2.3 million round of investment courtesy of Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and according to TechCrunch, the deal also involves Stefan Tirtey of Doughty Hanson joining the company’s board of directors.
At it’s core, the site is a social network of Music professionals, from musicians to producers right through to label executives. The backbone of the service however is it’s music sharing capabilities, providing a slick and simple way to share audio amongst members and keep track of who has listened to what.
Amongst many useful features, users with access rights can leave comments attached to specific parts of a song. Songs and playlists can also be made public and embedded in websites as you can see below.
Yes, that is correct! Free gadgets!!! This weekend we are giving away a whole bunch of iPod shuffle’s, delivered to your home address, if you buy a ticket for The Next Web conference via this link:
https://thenextweb.paydro.net/event/the-next-web-conference/ipodshuffle Specify the number of tickets you want to have (equals the number of iPods). We will contact you via email after you have booked (and paid) a ticket to find out where you want to have the iPod shipped to. This could be a different address then where the invoice would be send to. Like your mothers, boy- or girlfriend or boss home address…
The iPod shuffle:
The new iPod shuffle is amazingly small and even easier to use. The controls are now conveniently located on the earbud cord. It’s so easy, you can use it with your eyes closed. With the press of a button, VoiceOver tells you what song is playing and who’s performing it. It tells you the names of your playlists, too.
With 4GB of storage, iPod shuffle can now hold up to 1,000 songs. So your music library can go with you. And you can now sync multiple playlists for the perfect mix for any mood.
The Next Web Conference 2009:
This will be the 4th edition of The Next Web Conference. We’re looking forward to welcome 900 web professionals for 3 days of interesting talks, business and fun at The Next Web in the city we love so much; Amsterdam.
The Next Web conference is known as one of the best networking events in Europe. We’ll welcome a blend of decision makers from the European & American Internet scene, technology entrepreneurs, start-ups, innovators, along with venture capitalists, industry journalist, bloggers, and senior level executives.
Written on 24th March 2009
16 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Last.fm, the popular internet music social network, have announced they will be requesting users from outside the US, UK and Germany to begin paying for the service.
Users outside of those three countries will be required to pay a €3/month subscription fee, nothing that will be break the bank, but a price all the same.
The good news however is that the subscription is only for users who want to stream music from the site via their ‘radio’ service. Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free for everyone.
The reasons aren’t clear, however international licensing fees appear to be the most obvious motive, already leading other startups such as Pandora abandoning the outside-of-US market. Although pleased, I am definitely intrigued as to how/why the UK and Germany have been excluded from the subscription model, especially considering YouTube’s recent move to block all music videos from YouTube UK.
Written on 28th June 2009
4 COMMENTS 
Written on 15th June 2009
UK ISP Virgin Media has today announced a partnership with Universal Music Group which will give its customers the ability to download unlimited amounts of music for a set fee.
Swedish/German startup 
Written on 26th March 2009
With the press of a button, VoiceOver tells you what song is playing and who’s performing it. It tells you the names of your playlists, too.
Last.fm, the popular internet music social network, have 
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
