Bits & Bytes 4/13

INFLUENCING EMERGING MUSIC TECH CULTURE

APRIL 6, 2015

Festival season is officially underway and Spring has sprung all over the nation! While so many people made the pilgrimage  to the desert for weekend 1 of Coachella,  nearly 1 million units of the Apple Watch were sold out in less than 6 hours across the country and the new Macbook Pro Gold dropped. Happy Monday to you. In partnerships news, I got the word from our Day 1 homey, Tim Weber, that Good Music All Day is indeed partnering with Verge Campus Media.They are creating the largest multi-media and marketing services company within the college demographic. Congrats to GMAD on the partnership and for growing from a website to a business! Read more from the CEO, as he explains what the detail entails, plus GMAD's future. 

-Jesse K (@JesseKay)

A NY rapper, Cam'ron, is leading New Yorkers on a scavenger hunt across Manhattan! The hip hop artist has planted 4 boxes of his new "Killa Crunch" cereal across the island with a $100 bill inside - part of a new marketing campaign. 

"Every Killa Crunch box panel is jam-packed with goonie goodness inspired by the Dipset don," Virgin Mega claims, who are responsible for promoting the event. 

Spotify deal to raise $400M in a round valuing the streaming service at $8.4 billion, which would place them in the upper ranks of the world's most highly valued private tech companies. 

SF startup with free radio service for making & playing playlists, is announcing a new library full of over 6.5M songs from indie artists -

thanks to direct deals they are now signing with record labels. 

Apple is in talks with Florence and the Machine, Taylor Swift, and others for exclusive deals for a new Beats Music service. How will they convince users to pay for a service Spotify offers for free?

As each streaming app tries to differentiate itself, they're signing exclusivity and windowing deals so you can only hear certain songs on their service, not their competitors'. 

The music biz is starting to think the next big thing is just a computer algorithm away. Identifying & developing talent is a science and the tool that is being used to define a hit or a miss is “big data”.

This year, festival grounds are dotted with whimsical art pieces in iridescent colors like a giant, swaying caterpillar that by Sunday transformed into a butterfly. Here are the best performances!