Category: Startups
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iTunes is Dead: Introducing Audio for Mac on Kickstarter
A few weeks ago at the WWDC conference, Apple announced they are killing iTunes in the next release of MacOS Catalina. If you’re a serious music collector or industry professional like me you’ve long seen the demise of iTunes coming. At the same time, the independent software community around the Mac and iOS devices has…
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Back in the Music Tech Game w/ SendMusic
TL;DR Kemal, Pal and I launched SendMusic – Check it out… and subscribe to our newsletter. I was sitting alone in a shed in the back of my mums garden in our small village in rural Norfolk. Salvaged iBook in front of me on the desk. Surrounded by computer parts, bits of old bike…
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Investor Updates, Hyperpersonal Communication and Telegraphy
TL;DR Vote up my latest project on Betalist, ta! Technology today is isolating right? Everyone is sitting on their phones swiping and scrolling. Headphones on. Avoiding eye contact. Wrong. Technology gives us more ways to communicate, more people to speak with, from more cities, cultures and countries than has ever been possible in history. Not personal.…
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NY:LON Connect and Music Startup Positivity. – The New Wave of Inventive Music Startups
A couple of weeks ago I was on a panel discussing investment in music startups as part of MusicAlly’s NY:LON Connect event as Reed Smith in London. A few months before at the BBC Future of Music conference Rorri Keflan-Jones painted a picture of a startups disappearing left right and venture. This panel took a…
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Speaking at NY:LON Thanks to MusicAlly and the Music Business Association
Early next week I’ve been invited to speak at NY:LON. An event connection the US and UK music industry. My panel is around investment and digital innovation in music. My outlook on the UK early stage startup scene has been a little pessimistic of late. But with the upcoming announcement of Techstars Music in the…
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The Japanese Music Market and Tokyo Dance Music Event
This month I’ve been exploring Tokyo. The neon city is more different from London, New York or LA than I ever could have imagined. The language, the customs, the music industry. Wandering the streets of Shibuya in the west of the city I came across a glowing monument to CDs. Long since the preserve of…
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Moving On From Chew
It started back in 2011. I was sitting in the Google office, just off Tottenham Court Road, getting a briefing on the upcoming changes to YouTube. Searching through a bunch of names and URLs, I registered chew.fm — a broader name for eatbass.com – the site I started earlier that year to feed its users a “tasty…
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Livelist Interview: Ben Bowler of Chew.TV
LiveList are an application that lets you subscribe to your favourite artists and see them perform live regardless of where that stream is hosted. Key shows on Chew have been showing up in the LiveList app and on the website for a month or two now so I spoke to Sam Jourdan about the origins…
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Lighthouse London Podcast: Building a 20,000-strong community in 1 year: The creation and rise of Chew.tv with Ben Bowler
A couple of weeks ago I spent a morning sitting down with Tom from Lighthouse London. The agency works with startups to bring their ideas into reality. Sitting down in the meeting room come studio I leaned quickly that Tom was also an established drum and bass DJ. I just had to invite him down…
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Guest Post on 3Beards: What I Learned Couch Surfing With My Users
This post is a slightly extended version of the post published by 3Beards this June. Please do read the 3Beards post and more about the Chewhiker trip. “Speak to you users!” – Every investor, mentor or startup blogger you’ve ever met. As inhabitants of the startup world we hear this time and time again. Investors…