Last September, we announced the Kompoz Published Songs feature, allowing Kompoz members to easily publish completed collaborations. Musicians can now use Kompoz to launch a collaboration project, work with other musicians around the world to complete the song, publish that song, and offer customized licensing options for use in films, TV, and other commercial projects. Published songs appear on the Kompoz Finished Songs section, on the Kompoz iPhone streaming audio app, and on Boxee.
Today we are thrilled to announce a new channel -- a distribution deal with BIGSTAR.tv, the global headquarters for independent films. BIGSTAR is now streaming published Kompoz songs directly to its community, allowing film producers to quickly and easily license the music for use in their feature films, TV projects, and webisodes. Film producers can browse and listen to published Kompoz songs directly within the BIGSTAR.tv site, and purchase commercial use licenses in one step.
BIGSTAR has created an entire user experience within their site, pulling in Kompoz songs using the public Kompoz Application Programming Interface (API). The user interface they created is stunning.
If your song is licensed, sales revenue will automatically be added to your Kompoz account, and an e-mail will be sent to notify you of the sale. You’ll be able to withdraw funds to your PayPal account from within your Kompoz My Account page. Revenue will be split 50/25/25, with 50% going to the musicians (split equally by the collaborators), 25% going to Kompoz, and 25% going to BIGSTAR.
To have your song included in the BIGSTAR community, publish your completed song (finished collaborations only), and be sure to select the checkbox that says "I want to offer visitors the option of licensing this song." All of the collaborators must agree to the licensing option before it will be made available on BIGSTAR.
It's February. You know what that means? it means it's time for the RMP Challenge! What's the RPM Challenge, you ask? The Challenge is: Record an album in 28 days, just because you can. That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February.
Last year, the Kompoz community produced an excellent album titled "Kompozite". This year, you can participate too. Just head on over to the RPM 2010 Group. Go!
With music and big hearts, Casia, Bjorn, Pascal, Jessica, Tracy, Alberto, Cory, Rab, and Enrico offer up a tribute to Haiti with their latest kompozition, completed start-to-finish in only 8 days. Check out Bleeding Hearts, and of course, feel free to jump in.
Billed as the "world's first polyphonic tuner," the PolyTune supposedly lets you tune all your strings at once -- you simply strum away and the display tells you which strings need a tweak.
There's also a standard needle mode, two chromatic modes, a real-time stream mode that shows you pitch changes as they happen, and built-in memory so you can lock in your favorite settings.
If you're looking for the latest-generation Android handset with the sweetest case around, your wait is almost up. Tomorrow (January 20th), T-Mobile -- in partnership with Fender guitars -- will release the new myTouch 3G, sporting a faux woodgrain finish, 16GB microSD card, and preloaded with a few Eric Clapton tunes.
At launch, the device will come with Android 1.6, but T-Mobile stated in a press release that it would be updated to Android 2.1 this spring so you will get Google Maps Navigation and all the other great goodies in 2.1.
Reports indicate that the "Limited Edition" label is real and that there will only be a limited supply of this device available for people to purchase. The device will cost $179.99 USD (plus taxes and fees) with a new two-year service agreement and qualifying voice and data plan.
There have been many interesting posts in recent days regarding music deals. Here's a quick summary from some of my favorite blogs.
Jamendo Out of Cash
TechCruch reports the the music site Jamendo is out of cash, and is seeking buyer. After failing to raise a follow-up round of venture capital, the site -- a community of free, legal music published with Creative Commons licenses -- is actively looking to sell to or merge with another company, TechCrunch Europe reports.
Pioneer and Ford to Bring Pandora to Your Car Radio
There are two reports this week with regard to Pandora in your car. The first comes from Ford, who has announced that their SYNC API will now support apps, including Pandora (sorry international brothers and sisters, this is US only). Pioneer has also announced (at CES) a device that will allow you to stream Internet music in your car. Personally, I think it's all cool, but I've already got that feature since Pandora runs on my iPhone, and I can connect my iPhone directly to my car stereo.
Get Pearl Jam for a Tweet
Pearl Jam continues to experiment with and embrace social netwroking tools to reach new fans. The band is giving away its new single "Just Breathe" to anyone that tweets (that's Interwebs lingo for "post a message on Twitter"). Follow the instructions in this blog and you'll get a iTunes gift code for the song. Innovative.
iTunes Browser Gets Streaming Music
Back in November, Apple rolled out a browser-based preview application, so that you can see the entire iTunes songs catalog (including album art, song durations, etc.) without having to use the iTunes desktop client. However, the browser-based site did not allow you to actually listen to that music. Mashable reports that Apple has now added that feature.
Shazam Smacked with a Lawsuit
Shazam is a very cool application (one of my favorites) which will "listen" to any 10 second snippet of any song, then twll you the name of the song, the artist, and where to buy it. I was in the grocery store one day and heard a cool song playing through the ceiling speakers. I held up my iPhone and ran the Shazam app. It correctly identified the song and I purchased the song it right then and there. Shazam, along with 10 other defendants, where sued by Tune Hunter for patent infringement.
And just for grins...
And of course, there's the Google Nexus One making big headlines this week. Here's a funny video to start your day. Warning: NSFW
Billed as the "world's first polyphonic tuner," the PolyTune supposedly lets you tune all your strings at once -- you simply strum away and the display tells you which strings need a tweak. 
If you're looking for the latest-generation Android handset with the sweetest case around, your wait is almost up. Tomorrow (January 20th), T-Mobile -- in partnership with Fender guitars -- will release the new myTouch 3G, sporting a faux woodgrain finish, 16GB microSD card, and preloaded with a few Eric Clapton tunes.
