MIDEM: MusicAlly To Present 'Hottest Music Biz Start-Up' Award

At the MIDEM conference (Marché International De L'édition Musicale) held annually in Cannes, London-based MusicAlly, "the world’s leading digital music research and strategy company," will present six finalists in the first ever Music Ally/MidemNet New Business Showcase.

Here are the nominees along with MusicAlly's descriptions:

The Music Drop (Germany)

Conceived from a university design project on luxury, the Music Drop is a drop-shaped earpiece which plays a single song just the once (!). It’s inventor, student Noa Lerner, has already won an award in her native Germany for the Music Drop, and is in discussions with potential investors.

ReacTable (Spain)

An innovative electronic instrument which allows multiple users to create music by moving shapes on top of a flat table-like surface. Voted by Rolling Stone magazine as Hot Instrument of the Year for 2007, Bjork was reportedly so excited upon seeing a YouTube demonstration that she immediately requested one be custom built for her new tour.

Recombinant (US)

This US technology company use complex algorithms to generate a potentially limitless number of musical compositions from the existing works of any composer. The new works mimic the original composer’s particular style, with usages ranging from ringtones to interactive environments, wherein the user could direct the virtual talents of any legendary composer.

Voxonic (US)

Proprietary technology from the US which generates foreign language versions of songs in the original singer’s voice. The technology merges together samples of the original artist’s voice with a new version sung in the translated language by another voice – with the results sounding remarkably authentic.

Musiclink (Sweden)

Musiclink collect detailed data on the web-based popularity of music for labels and interested parties. The company achieves this by collecting all available web-related stats (including social networks, blogs and file sharing and web radio), through APIs and webscraping techniques.

Twones (Netherlands)

This one hits all the current touch points. Combining an online music locker service with social networking, Twones offers music discovery based on peer recommendations and personalized blog feeds.

We'll be keeping an eye on some of these companies – when possible. For instance, I'd like to talk to the folks at Recombinant to find out how their simulations work, but they're hard to google (why do companies choose names from the English language?).