Last night I went out to The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn to check out the NYC Music Demo night. Great event, here are the companies that demoed:

• Cantora Labs: Music+Tech incubator that allows technologists to focus on the tech by providing the business strategy and music industry contacts. They’re investing in about 8 startups over the next 2 years ($25-100k each) and will be providing space for all of the companies to work in. The founders signed and launched MGMT’s first album, and are now working with their first startup implementing a new tech solution for Lady Gaga’s upcoming tour.
• PlayMySong: Recently featured on TechCrunch, PlayMySong is a free app for iPhone and Android that allows users to cue songs in participating bars and venues. Users can view all the songs in the venue’s library and choose which they want to play. Venues can limit repeats and requests per person.
• TuneSat: TuneSat’s unique audio fingerprint technology monitors hundreds of TV channels and millions of websites around the world, helping rights holders collect millions of dollars that would otherwise have been lost. They can detect the audio even when its shrouded by announcers, crowdnoise, and more. It also captures the entire audio recording for proof of when the song was used.
• Tomahawk: Tomahawk is an open-source music player that connects all of your accounts into one player - including your hard drive music, streaming accounts, and more. If someone shared a link from a service you don’t use, Tomahawk matches the metadata from the link and find the song on another service that you do use eliminating the barrier to listen and discover new music. It does this in addition to all the standard features of other music players like iTunes.
• Blank On Blank: Not a music startup, but a cool guest demo. Blank on Blank gathers old American interviews that have never been heard before from famous figures like Martin Scorsese. It works with journalists and other media outlets to convert and edit tape and digital recordings that were never used into timeless content - ultimately reviving content that would have previously never been used.
• Grooveshark: A free music streaming and playlist service, Grooveshark has over 40 million active users that use their service to discover and share music with their share. Unlike other services, Grooveshark allows anyone to upload their tunes to share making it a great distribution outlet for unsigned and other artists.

My crush on Turntable.fm is no secret. DJ Wooooo’s House/Dance/Electro is where I reside just about every workday. Although it offers no advertising opportunities for brands to date, here’s something they should consider soon…and I’d like to pioneer.

Brands should launch custom branded rooms that offer specials periodically throughout the day for listeners.

For example, Roc Nation could launch their own branded room on Turntable that looks like Jay-Z’s 40/40 club. Within it could be resident DJ’s from the club spinning GOOD Music and Roc Nation artists all day long, which other exclusive mixes as well.

Throughout the day, various specials could pop up on the screen for listeners. Imagine a bottle of champagne appears, and when a user clicks on it, out comes the bubbly along with a link to a special on bottle service for that night only.

This would be a killer integration for hotels, casinos, record labels, independent artists, and just about any nightlife group - allowing them to promote, music, product, and more while increasing engagement and loyalty.

Billion Dollar Idea (#BDI)? I don’t know about that, but it could be something the Turntable.fm biz dev team may want to look into if they aren’t already.

thenextweb:

The Hype Machine is an essential site for music enthusiasts looking to discover new sounds. The site aggregates songs shared on a wide variety of music blogs, making them available in one place. While it’s had a slick, official iPhone app for some time, there hasn’t been anything anywhere near as good for Android – until now.

UberHype is an unofficial app that is essentially what The Hype