A meetup that I hope to meet again

As excited I am about moving to California, I can't help but feel a bit heart-heavy about leaving New York. I feel like I have not even scratched the surface of compelling people, insanely delicious food and new things to do.  Events like the NYC Music Technology Meetup which I attended Wednesday night, don't make leaving any easier, either.

The Meetup was created by Seth Hillinger as a platform for people focused on the intersection between music and technology to share ideas and projects with one another.  The turnout was excellent, even larger than the last one I attended during the CMJ Music Marathon.

Here are brief descriptions of the four companies that presented last night:

ClubCreate: Provides free, Web-based music creation tools with built in tools for sharing across different social sites. The site looks comprehensive, yet easy enough for even a non- musician like me to create something cool.  One of the things that particularly stood out to me about this product is that it seamlessly integrates creation into the consumption of music, turning the listener into a co-creator, rather than a passive consumer.  With the proliferation of remixes, you can see how a site like this fits into the future of music.

CuriousBrain: A music instruction company that leverages technology and new physical interfaces with the goal of actually teaching people to play music.  Their iPhone app, TouchChords has been downloaded over 3 million times, and features a guitar neck with strings and finger boards literally built to scale on the app.

9mmedia: Creators of the RebelX iphone app framework, which essentially allows artists to customize iPhone apps that their fans can download.  Different building blocks artists can use include music, discography and the ability to create playlists, visual media management, real time social media integration and of course, my favorite, tour tracking.  The thing that I love about this is that it really enables artists to connect directly with their fans in a comprehensive, and real time way.
 
Thumbplay: A media player that allows subscription based access to a catalog of millions of songs across multiple devices without having to physically connect them. The player is really beautiful and lightweight and it sounds like their catalog will be pretty comprehensive.

My friend and fellow music/ technology enthusiast Holly jokingly offered her couch if I want to fly back to New York for future music-tech meetups.  After last night, I seriously might take her up on that offer!

By

Alexis Rodich

 |  January 28, 2010; 2:33 PM ET Save & Share:                 
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