MIDEMLAB MUSIC STARTUP COMPETITION LAUNCHES NEW LIVE MUSIC CATEGORY & REVEALS 2020 JURY

Paris, January 16 2020 – Midem, the home of the global music community, today unveils the jury for Midemlab 2020, the leading music startup competition, that will now include a Live Music category. 

 

Fresh for this year’s Midemlab is the brand new “Live Music Experiences” category. An addition introduced to reflect today’s music market and to spotlight the most innovative solutions for bands, fans, venues, producers and promoters. Midem Director, Alexandre Deniot, explains, “Live Music is a major part of the global music industry. Each year, nearly 50 artists perform live at Midem and, since 2018, we’ve run an annual Live Summit to better highlight this area of our market. We’re very excited to include a Live Music category in Midemlab to support and reward the most innovative startups in this sphere.” 
 

The Live Music sector has been constantly growing throughout the past decade and is expected to be worth $31bn worldwide by 2022, according to PwC. In the streaming age, live is one of the most innovative areas of the industry, thanks to startups offering new solutions for ticket sales, brand sponsorships and merchandising, bringing the global live experience to a higher level. Eyal Malinger, Investment Director, Beringea and Midemlab jury member, says: “75% of millennials would prefer to spend their money on an experience or event rather than an item... As investors, we look for companies capitalising on this rise of the Experience Economy, and have recently backed Festicket, Europe’s leading festival experience platform.” 
 

Midem and the Midemlab jury welcome and encourage entries from the most vibrant and creative music startups, especially those within the new Live Music category, to take advantage of the full program of opportunities on offer to participants. In the words of Guillaume de la Serre, Chief Product Officer & GM Europe, Bandsintown and Midemlab jury member, “I am...convinced this new award will foster digital innovation in the live music industry, the number one source of revenues for most artists... I can't wait to see the new generation of startups that emerge to capture this massive opportunity in the decade to come."
 

About Midemlab

Who Can Apply for Midemlab?

Entries for the 13th edition of the Midemlab competition are now open. Every startup offering an innovative solution for the music/entertainment industry can apply for free in one of the 4 categories until 18 February 2020: 
 

● Music Creation & Education 

● Music Distribution & Discovery 

● Music Marketing & Data/Analytics 

● Live Music Experiences (NEW)

 

The Midemlab Experience

The competition provides finalists with valuable exposure to industry decision-makers and potential investors. Previous participants have raised millions of dollars in funding and many are now well-established in the music ecosystem. 
 

All finalists receive personalised coaching from Abbey Road Red to prepare for their pitches. Winners of each category receive free PR advice from PR firm Rock Paper Scissors, free digital content strategy advice from Kuack Media and free legal advice from Jeff Liebenson of Liebenson Law. Winners will also receive a free mentoring session from innovation specialist, Yvan Boudillet, of The Lynk, a private meeting with investment firm Plus 8 Equity, a one year subscription to Music Ally’s professional music bulletin, international media coverage, one free Midem 2020 registration, and more.
 

Previous Midemlab Success Stories include: 

Soundcloud, The Echo Nest (acquired by Spotify), Next Big Sound (acquired by Pandora), BandPage (acquired by YouTube) and Asaii (acquired by Apple). 2019 winner Endlesss closed a major funding round from high-profile execs immediately after attending Midem. The German-based startup Jambl also raised crucial funds a few months after winning Midemlab last June.
 

The Midemlab 2020 Selection Partners are:

Music Ally: the leading digital strategy and music industry intelligence company

Plus 8 Equity: a music tech venture firm

The Lynk: an agency connecting creative industries & startups
 

The Midemlab Pitching Process

The selection partners will choose the 20 most promising international music-related startups, whose ground-breaking solutions offer fresh opportunities to the music sector.
 

Pitches and judging will take place during Midem 2020 in Cannes, 02-05 June.
 

Midemlab 2020 Jury

The 2020 Jury brings together international influencers and decision makers from the most pioneering and prestigious entertainment, tech and investment companies, as follows:

 

• Vanessa Bakewell, Client Partner Film & Music, Facebook/Instagram (UK)
• Yvan Boudillet, Founder & President, The Lynk (France)
• Nicolas Brien, CEO, France Digitale (France)
• Paul Brindley, CEO, Music Ally (UK)
• Tiago Correia, Global Digital Business Development Senior Manager, Innovation, Warner Music International (UK)
• Victoria Cruz, Manager, Global Business Development and Digital Strategy, Sony Music Entertainment (UK)
• James Dick, Senior Vice President Marketing Partnerships Asia and CEO, Live Nation Connects (Hong Kong)
• Olivia Hervy, Manager WeWork Labs Paris, WeWork (France)
• Jay Katsuyama, Vice President, Technology, Universal Music Group (USA)
• Jenny Lindblad, Business Coach & Startup Mentor, Eliza Communication (Sweden)
• Jean-Philippe Louis, Journalist, Les Echos (France)
• Eyal Malinger, Investment Director, Beringea (UK) 
• Rishi Patel, Managing Partner, Plus Eight Equity (USA)
• Vanja Primorac, Music Innovation, United talent Agency (USA)
• Arabian Prince, Founding Member, NWA, Founder & CEO, iNov8 Next Open Labs (USA)
• Juan Francisco Saavedra Plata, Co-Founder & CEO, Kuack Media Group (Colombia)
• Claudia Schwarz, Co-Founder & VP, MusicTech Germany, Co-Founder WickedWork (Germany)
• Marisol Segal, Head of Digital Partnerships, AEG Presents (USA)
• Guillaume de la Serre, Chief Product Officer & GM Europe, Bandsintown (France)
• Pariwat Wongsamran, Director of Startup Thailand, NIA (Thailand)

 

Apply for MIDEMLAB HERE

Billfold Brings Fast Cashless Payments to The BPM Festival’s Inaugural Costa Rican Event

Billfold POS partnered with The BPM Festival to provide cashless payments at the festival organizer’s inaugural event in Tamarindo, Costa Rica (January 15-19, 2020) featuring some of the world’s top DJ talent including, CHUS + CEBALLOS, DUBFIRE, DEEP DISH, LOCO DICE, LUCIANO, MASTERS AT WORK, NICOLE MOUDABER, PACO OSUNA, SASHA. The festival’s idyllic locale is perfect for a party, but a challenging place to ensure high-caliber patron experiences. Billfold’s streamlined, RFID wristband-based technology will ensure festival goers enjoy easier payment, better hospitality, and more time to focus on the event, not settling up at the bar.

“Frequent travelers in Costa Rica and Latin America will be familiar with slow, inconvenient payment systems, particularly at major events,” notes Stas Chijik, CEO and co-founder of Billfold. “The more remote the location, the bigger the challenges. Billfold makes it possible to overcome these challenges simply, in a way that enhances festival experiences.”

Billfold's partnership with The BPM Festival for its first Costa Rican event in beautiful Tamarindo will ensure guests are immersed in the experience while making fast, tap-of-wrist payments on beverages and merchandise. The BPM Festival brings a world-class lineup of artists to Costa Rica’s stunning Gold Coast for a five-day celebration across several venues. Payments at all of them will be powered by Billfold, which can help make festivals financially sustainable in a competitive live-event space. A recent event at Art Basel increased its already notable revenue from beverage sales by 60%.
Like Billfold, the BPM founders are longtime industry veterans. BPM started as a 2008 post-New Year's gathering of industry professionals and has grown to a 100,000+ global gathering at 30+ global events.

“Billfold is an industry leader and we wanted to go with a company that has a proven track record. We always want to provide better solutions for our fans and this was a chance to enhance their experience with clear benefits: streamline entry into venues, going cashless, and provide added security against fraud,” says Philip Pulitano, Founder and Director of The BPM Festival. “We will be able to expedite on-site purchases because Billfold's system makes it ideal for physically challenging settings like ours in the jungle.”

“We love working with festivals like The BPM Festival, supporting the kind of events we are passionate about as music lovers,” adds Chijik. “We’re looking forward to enabling a memorable event for all.”

About Billfold

Billfold is the premier customer engagement and payments system for large venues, events and festivals. By combining RFID based cashless systems with self service customer activation and engagement kiosks we drive customer engagement and reduce inefficiencies on premise to increase customer spending by up to 67%.

Billfold is a self funded company founded in 2016 by Stas Chijik, Benjamin Roshia and Albert Akbashev. Billfold's clients include The Brooklyn Mirage/Avant Gardner, Anheuser-Busch, Made Event, MoMA PS1, iHeart Radio, Adidas, Knockdown Center, Get Lost, Crosstown Rebels, Summit, Art With Me: GNP, Cityfox, Elements Festival, Rakastella and Matte Projects. For more information, follow: @billfold on Instagram or Billfold on Facebook.

About The BPM Festival

The BPM Festival, which stands for “Bartenders, Promoters, Musicians” was created in 2008 and held in Playa del Carmen, Mexico until 2017 as a post-New Year’s gathering of industry professionals. During that time it grew to a ten-day festival with a 70,000+ global gathering of DJs, producers, revelers and industry professionals. Over the last 13 years, The BPM Festival has expanded its footprint on the global dance scene and hosted several one-off events in leading dance music hotspots including Bali, Barcelona, Beirut, Brazil, Dubai, Ibiza, Mykonos, New York City, Toronto, and the Zurich Streetparade.

In 2017, The BPM Festival announced its first expansion event with The BPM Festival: Portugal, and has now held three successful editions in Portimão, Portugal. In 2019, The BPM Festival held its first event in Israel for The BPM Festival: Tel Aviv and beginning a new chapter in 2020, The BPM Festival revealed its new winter home on the Gold Coast in Tamarindo, Costa Rica from January 15-19, 2020.

Facebook.com/thebpmfestival
Twitter.com/thebpmfestival #BPMCostaRica
Instagram.com/thebpmfestival #BPMCostaRica

A Natural Search to Democratize Sync: SyncFloor Unites a Fractured Music-for-Picture World by Finessing Discovery

Video is everywhere, and the corresponding demand for music is exploding. Yet finding and licensing the right music at the right price is tough, due to a fragmented market, complex layers of communication between music seeker and music maker, and opaque and challenging license negotiations.

SyncFloor has set out to transform this space, connecting indie music from a diverse group of artists, labels, and distributors to the wide range of people looking for music on a daily basis. By creating a way to search for music with the references and terms people use in everyday life, and by streamlining negotiation and clearance, SyncFloor opens up new opportunities for both sides of the sync deal. The platform is now in pilot and will launch commercially in April.

“We realized, as we were looking at how sync deals happen,” says Cestjon McFarland, veteran IP lawyer and SyncFloor co-founder, “that there is no good way for parties to connect, no real marketplace and no way to look for music that mirrors how music supervisors talk about it.”

SyncFloor built a way, offering a new level of transparency to both buyers--from music supervisors to producers--and sellers, independent musicians and labels with quality tracks. Led by two founders passionate about music with strong backgrounds in law and consumer tech, SyncFloor promises to ease discovery and dealmaking in one of music’s fastest growing segments.

SyncFloor provides a centralized place to discover sync-ready music, powered by natural-language search. Users simply describe what they’re looking for, or they can enter the name of a favorite film, show or podcast; reference a popular track or artist; or identify a mood from “sad” to “funky.” “We analyzed thousands of briefs from music supervisors looking for music,” recounts co-founder Kirt Debique, a longtime programmer and project lead at Microsoft who went on to launch his own record label. “We looked carefully at how people described the music they were looking for and built our own taxonomy from there. Putting it all together, you can say something like ‘thoughtful indie folk like Sufjan Stevens with strings’ and get immediate results.”

SyncFloor relies on both algorithmic data analysis and human input to better ensure search results map directly to the ways people search: by finding something similar to a beloved show’s sound, say, or that has the same vibe as a chart-topping but hard to license hit. It’s not just about data models, but also about feels.

SyncFloor’s search results feature another key element designed to make sync simple: a license price range estimate for each track, according to use and market. This allows artists and rights holders to set their fee structure, and allows music seekers to see right away if a song is in budget. “It’s something like a Zillow estimate,” explains Debique. Further, rights clearance can be performed through the marketplace.  “Discovery is the front door, but we realized that buyers cared a lot about the workflow after you have a set of candidates and you need to move to a license,” explains Debique. “We worked to make the next steps as seamless as possible and achieve a retail-grade experience. Buyers are wary about falling in love with a track if they don’t know the price range and they aren’t sure who to contact for clearance. Now they can find out immediately, whenever they are searching.”

Once the perfect track is found, SyncFloor enables the two parties to identify, negotiate and finalize their license terms. “The transaction is between the seller and buyer,” McFarland says. “But we make the process as easy as possible for everyone.”

SyncFloor also seeks to make it easy to onboard its music partners’ catalogs.  “We focused a lot on how to make the experience for our rights holder and administrator partners really streamlined,” notes Debique. “All you have to do is give us a simple spreadsheet and files, and that’s it, no tagging or anything else. We take it from there.” The site has already welcomed a diverse range of music partners, including Create Music Group, 411 Music Group, Communion Music, Motor Music, and TuneCore.

“We came to this project from a distinct desire to help indie artists and people in the advertising, film, TV, and video world who are passionate about music,” Debique reflects. “That informs how we treat our partners and build our model. It’s reflected in the tools we give to supes, producers, editors, labels, publishers and artists, because we truly believe their success is our success.”

New Music Entrepreneur HQ Video: Stop Speculating

Money can be spent in a million different ways.

The only problem is that you can't play with money you don't have.

 Would it be better to focus on making the most of the resources already available to you?

That's what this new video, via Music Entrepreneur HQ, explains:

Battle for Christmas: Mariah Carey vs. Wham!

Pex’s Free Attribution Engine Empowers Rights Clarity for Online Video and Audio

Pex, the service that fingerprints, tracks, and attributes online audio and video content, has launched a powerful new product for content creators, rights-holders and platforms --completely free of charge.

The Attribution Engine (AE) allows content creators and rights-holders to register their video and audio library with AE and establish custom distribution and licensing rules for their content. This ownership information will be transmitted in appropriate form so that platforms understand who the original creators are. Any ownership conflicts will be settled through an efficient and transparent process to reduce friction and copyright trolling. All user accounts must be verified, and no anonymous activity is permitted. Users can register now for free by contacting ae@pex.com.

“We know the health and vitality of online content systems, spread across dozens of platforms, depends on a clear framework for claiming and protecting creator rights,” explains Amadea Choplin, COO of Pex. “Without this clarity, rights-holders are often bogged down in takedown and other types of claims, and creators of new content that may draw on older works can’t get a clear answer about how to license content and on what terms.”

Attribution Engine draws on Pex’s fingerprinting and matching technologies, processing queries at a pace that puts other content identification systems to shame. It can find snippets as short as a second long. It can identify content that has been significantly modified or distorted, extracting melodies that may be subject to copyright.

“Until platforms know who made what, who content belongs to, they can’t properly execute a system for licensing and compensating creators.” says Choplin. “Attribution Engine is designed to offer a neutral third-party cost-free solution to rights-holders big and small, and to introduce the necessary layer into the system that will level the playing field for creators of all sizes and types.”

Read more about Attribution Engine in a blogpost here.

About Pex
Pex delivers independent video and music analytics and rights management services to enable creators, rights holders and marketers to find, measure and leverage the value of content across the Web. It can find snippets as short as 1 second across dozens of platforms worldwide. Clients include major music companies, video rights holders, and other key content producers and administrators. For more information, please visit pex.com/.

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