The Filter, an upstart music recommendation play, has just attracted a fresh financing round led by Peter Gabriel. The 2.5 million pound ($4.96 million) infusion also involves Eden Ventures, according to information recently reported by the Independent. The Filter is a free application that serves recommendations based on existing collections, and part of a broader competition class that includes Last.fm, MusicStrands, and Pandora. The latest round will allow the company to broaden its recommendation technology beyond music, and into related media arenas like television and film.
The move closely follows the release of an upgraded version of the application, one that includes a variant designed for Facebook. The embedded release allows Facebook members to share their musical preferences with friends, and offer recommendations based on those collections. It also enables users to sample a clip of any recommended track. Currently, the broader application can identify five million songs, according to information supplied by the company. The concept was developed by British software company Exabre and physicist Martin Hopkins.
Downloads of the latest applications can be found at http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/081907filter
And this from Paul Resnikoff, Editor for Digital Music News:
Famed musician and digital entrepreneur Peter Gabriel continues to drive music technology experiments, most recently with his recommendation-based startup, the Filter. The concept, fueled by Gabriel and developer Exabre, is chasing a potentially massive market for music recommendation and choice management. Just recently, London-based Last.fm landed a $280 million buyout deal involving CBS, and others could be primed for lucrative acquisition plays.
That nosebleed price tag undoubtedly influenced the recent $5 million injection into the Filter, a round led by Gabriel himself. But Last.fm contains a considerable social networking aspect, one targeted towards music-obsessed fans. That audience attracted CBS to the flame, and the Filter is now chasing social connectivity through a Facebook-friendly application upgrade.
Meanwhile, Gabriel painted a picture of a new digital music environment, one built not on choice, but choice management. “The first wave of the digital revolution was about the freedom of choice, trying to make everything accessible to anyone, anyplace, anytime,” Gabriel said. “I think the second wave will be about freedom from choice. It will be able to filter and focus so that you get more of what you want.”
Most digital music fans - and almost all younger users - are simply accustomed to endless choice. More media options proliferate than ever before, though fans can also burrow deeply into Long Tail treasures to satisfy niche passions. Obscure works are more difficult to find, and may have even avoided digitization, but unlimited choice - not restricted availability - is rapidly becoming the new music landscape.
Of course, this digital renaissance is mostly happening outside of the law, and corroding traditional recorded commerce channels in the process. Just recently, Warner Music Group chairman Edgar Bronfman, Jr. pointed to a strategy that would limit content availability online, perhaps a desperate stab at control. “Music is ubiquitous to a degree that also I think is probably not helpful for the industry,” Bronfman told investors earlier this month. “I think one thing you’re going to see going forward - at least as far as Warner Music is concerned - is a more careful strategy about who we are going to partner with in our online efforts.”
The very idea of digital scarcity may sound like folly. But Bronfman and other major label chiefs are also pushing to expand controllable channels, and squash illegal ones. Perhaps impossible, though arenas like mobile music are being given heavy attention based on their more controlled customer relationships. Stay tuned, as that chapter is just being written.
And perhaps the bigger book revolves around digital choice, discovery, and paths towards broader audience adoption. Recommendation technologies are betting that music fans are craving a musical Google in their lives, one that actively searches for related choices and interesting artists. Meanwhile, more traditional outlets like MTV, BET, terrestrial radio, and club rotation still yield a significant and important amount of promotional sway.
In between, a broad number of influencers - including MySpace, iTunes, Starbucks, and an army of music bloggers - are clamoring for a tastemaker pole position.
But who truly gains credibility as the music influencer of tomorrow? A more Utopian model suggests that users will organically select the most alluring artists, and popularize them through digital word-of-mouth. Another model transposes decades-long behaviors online, and features small ratios of early-moving tastemakers and a mass of lemming-like adopters.
Perhaps the more realistic outcome lies somewhere in the middle. Upstarts like Last.fm could become a key engine in a next-generation, digital promotional process, though few can accurately predict tomorrow’s cast of promotional powerhouses and influential voices.
For now, the best promotional methods feature a large number of outlets, both online and off. Movers-and-shakers will undoubtedly emerge and recede over time, but for now, the field keeps widening. And in a landscape that now favors infinite choice, becoming one of those choices in now critically important for broader audience adoption.