Every year during the Midem music business conference in Cannes, thirty startups and app developers have the chance to pitch during the Midemlab international competition.
The awards presented by Pepsi and Vivendi, are judged per category, by an international jury made up of leading entertainment executives, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, incubator specialists and innovators in the digital media world.
THE WINNERS
Category 1: Music Discovery, Recommendation and Creation
Nagual sounds is a tool that enables you to create music in real time while dancing and having fun.
All this is possible thanks to a software and a technology able to capture body movement with a 3D camera and convert this data into music full of rhythms, harmonies and melodies.
Category 2: Marketing and Social Engagement
Starlize by Mobile Motion (Germany)
Starlize is an app created to easily generate music videos while having fun.
You choose and play a music, you record yourself performing it and the app combines it adding various filters and effects creating a high-quality music video in less than a minute.
Category 3: Direct-to-consumer Sales and Content Monetisation
Weezic (France) Weezic is an Augmented sheet music® designed for musicians and music teachers.
The sheet adapts itself to the user needs, who can choose the number of instruments played and the tempo, listen to synchronised audio tracks, watch youtube videos and play or sing along with it.
Weezic has a particular value for music learning as it enables you to see “mistakes” in real time, which is absolutely essential when you practice alone.
Category Vivendi “Coup de Coeur”
Judged by Vivendi and Universal Music Group senior management
cubic.fm (Turkey)cubic.fm was created to connect different streaming services (Deezer and Spotify) within a single global platform with all the music catalogues in one.
Music discovery can be achieved actively by “cubing” (contributing) songs or passively, listening to radio stations recommended by an algorithm analysing user preferences and listening habits.
They call themselves the social glue of the streaming era.
It was a very challenging competition, the participants were well prepared and entertaining and some of them really captivated the audience.
Streaming and artist rights – the on-going debate
This year’s Midem revolved around two main topics that were ominpresent during the competition as well as the conference overall: streaming and artists rights.
It’s interesting to look at this debate in the light of the relationship between technology and music as an art.
The first is advancing at a high speed rate and soon we’ll (truly) be able to access our music databases from wherever we are, whatever device we use. However, as was debated during Midem, my question is what about music? Isn’t there a risk of considering it just files and sounds? How do we ensure we don’t loose sight of the music itself, its artistic and cultural value and the one of people who create it?
These are difficult questions obviously, but it’s is encouraging that Midem offers a platform for those from all facets of the tech and music ecosystem to come together and discuss how to address them.