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    SXSW Guest Blog: Music Startups Are Still Hard At Work

    Joe Conyers is head of product at Songtrust, a music publishing startup that helps music makers collect their royalties. Songtrust was recently named one of Billboard’s top music startups.

    As SXSW Interactive winds down and the shwag and much of the good free food dry up, those of us who cross over between music and tech have dug in. Consumer brands and musician-facing products are still visible around the city, at panels, and in the tradeshow. Many of us got to catch up at a Music Tech mixer hosted by Topspin on Tuesday, which was a great chance to chat with an international crowd of forward-thinking label owners, music startups, artists, and event promoters.

    There have been plenty of growth announcements and lots of promising licensing news in and out of SXSW this last quarter — a welcome story in the wake of Beyond Oblivion’s highly public bankruptcy. This latest class of music startups has been growing up quickly. Turntable.fm announced they have approval from the majors, and while their negotiations took some time, it’s still one of the best and quickest licensing stories in recent years.  Bandpage and Topspin are both coming out of the conference with amazing partnerships and huge growth stories. Fundraising is up, with Soundcloud, Songkick, and Next Big Sound all doing sizable rounds. There’s also been massive consolidation in music distribution services, with the acquisition of Fontana by INgrooves and the merger of The Orchard and IODA.

    Music tech has been overlooked by VCs for the last few years, but interest seems to be picking up beyond music streaming and an ecosystem is growing. As another year of SXSW winds down, we’re all ready to keep up the momentum.

    Friday, March 16, 2012

    Yes, You Need A Mentor

    Who’s the first person a founder should add to his team? MIT’s Technology Review makes the case it might well be someone who doesn’t even go on the payroll: The savvy mentor. The piece offers as an example Lookout Mobile Security CEO and cofounder John Hering, who says he’s “tremendously fortunate” to have a mentor in 73-year-old investor Philip Paul. Paul directed Hering to the mobile security market and convinced him to move the business from L.A. to San Francisco — important turning points for the company. Check it out, and consider whether your startup might benefit from a similar relationship. 

    Tuesday, February 28, 2012

    Why buy when you can share? As Erica Swallow says over at Forbes, peer-to-peer marketplaces are the hottest thing in startup business models at the moment. She also points to the video above (from Uniiverse, a new player in the space) as a pretty good explanation. Those are some, indeed, impressive numbers! 

    Monday, February 27, 2012

    When starting a company, it’s crucial to do an honest assessment of the expectations of everyone involved, even if it’s just a one-man operation. GigaOm has a great list of questions founders should ask themselves at the outset, then periodically revisit. Questions like, “What are your personal constraints?” can be tough, but they’re vital.

    Wednesday, February 1, 2012

    For the would-be founder: go to school, or incubate?

    For the aspiring entrepreneur, Forbes makes a compelling case: Forget business school and get into a startup incubator. They give 8 reasons, from the abstract (it’s actually quite difficult to teach entrepreneurship) to the practical (the last thing a bootstrapper should do is start $100K in the hole). 

    Of course,  getting into a prestigious program like Y Combinator is no easy task, either. And if founding a company is a distant rather than immediate goal, that changes the decision calculus. But the piece certainly provides food for thought.

    Friday, January 13, 2012