Springwise: 3VOOR12, a multimedia platform for music that’s run by Dutch broadcaster VPRO, is piloting a new heat-mapping system at this year’s Lowlands music festival, which takes place next weekend.
Using familiar web terminology—Hot or Not—the festival’s visitors will be able to let others know which of twelve venues is hosting the hottest show at any particular moment. The voting system will run on a mobile app that users can download to their internet-enabled phones. (Those with wifi-enabled phones will be able to use 3VOOR12′s free festival-wide wifi.)
Using their phones, crowds create heat maps of hot gigs at music festival [Springwise]

Every artist has the same problem of obtaining capital for their next recording. Tune Your World provides the solution of applying micro-financing to the music industry.
Tune Your World is an Open Source music project that enables artists and fans to co-produce new works of art and share in the creative process. Its groundbreaking approach is the creation of peer-to-peer micro-financing of new music projects – enabling fans to deliver start-up capital to aspiring musicians from developing countries. Tune Your World operates on a people-to-people model. Musicians obtain funding for new recordings directly from their fans without giving up ownership or control. The aim is to revitalize the music industry in places where the music industry has never worked very well.
http://www.tuneyourworld.com

Tune Your World is a finalist for May at the Ideablob.com competition where entrepreneurs and small business owners can share and grow their business ideas – and have a chance to win $10,000 towards fulfilling them. CoolBusinessIdeas.com will be highlighting some of the winning ideas weekly.

Guardian.co.uk: In a barn on Oxfordshire Park Farm, Finnish musician Kimmo Pohjonen is holding up a microphone to a six-tonne tractor. “Turn the engine over again, please,” he asks the farmer. The barn fills with sound. “Beautiful,” he says. “Fabulous.”
Pohjonen is Finland’s most internationally celebrated contemporary musician and, arguably, the world’s only avant-garde accordionist.
Pohjonen’s current project, Earth Machine Music, involves him sampling sounds from four English farms, before returning to Finland where he will compose music from these samples. He is returning to perform at these same farms later this month and, at each concert, will blast the samples of that specific farm from his accordion while the farmers pitch in with occasional live tractor accompaniment.
“An environmental art piece” is how he describes it. “I grew up in a small village in northern Finland, so I’m used to being on farms, familiar with their sounds. I like the idea of making music with everyday farm machinery.”
Farming today [Guardian.co.uk]

Iconoculture: For anyone who has ever said, “If I had a dollar for every time I turned a friend on to a new band … ” — well, now you can cash in, thanks to Surrge.
Publicly launched at this year’s South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, Surrge is an iTunes for populists, empowering its listeners, dubbed “scouts,” to act as amateur A&R teams for the online music store. Beyond the usual rewards for exposing undiscovered bands to the masses, Surrge ups the ante by throwing in cold hard cash.
Fans referring bands listed on Surrge to other fans get a percentage of sales on any referrals, and “scouts” who sign up new artists to Surrge get 1% of all future sales from the artist on the site.
In a rapidly evolving music industry where individually powered blogs can wield more consumer tastemaking power than major record labels, old-school concepts like A&R are competing with more egalitarian models. How long before a rash of other user-driven content sites start cashing in on this model?
Show me the money: Surrge incentivizes music fandom [Iconoculture]

Cool Hunting: Imagine an online social network that provides free, on-demand online music but without the legal anxiety of peer-to-peer networks. More interactive than conventional internet radio, though not as gratifying as Napster was in its glory days, Jango is a New York City-based music site with a large database of songs and artists and is instantly addictive.
Now in its beta launch, there’s a waiting list for new members though the first 100 readers to click this link can join. If you don’t make the cut, not to worry. The site maintains a waiting list and it should only take a couple of days for an account to get activated. Once you’re in, you can invite three of your friends.
The interface couldn’t be more simple. Simply type in a musical artist you like and the site will play their songs. You can also specify how broad your tastes are by setting it to play only the artists you have identified or you can opt to hear artists it considers to be in the same genre. This isn’t risk free. After adding a few classic rock bands the site began playing The Eagle’s “Hotel California.” Luckily by clicking on the frowning face icon, I was able to banish that song from ever playing again. Conversely, you can tag songs you like and the site will make sure to keep them in the mix.
Jango: Social Internet Radio [Cool Hunting]

DeVillain Guitar Company: The world’s first folding electric guitar will be introduced at the Musikmesse in Frankfurt on March 28 2007. The Centerfold guitar solves a transport problem that every guitarist has experienced.
”The ’magical’ thing is that the guitar can be played directly after it’s been unfolded and it’s just as tuned as when it was folded away”, says Leif Rehnström, Managing Director of the newly started DeVillain Guitar Company in Skellefteå, Sweden.
Behind the development of the folding guitar, patent applied for in Europe, Japan and USA, is SAS airline pilot Fredrik Johansson. He is a devoted guitarist but couldn’t take his instrument with him on flights around the world. During the last ten years, Fredrik has been working on the development of a folding guitar that could easily be taken on a plane.
”The resulting product not only solves the problem he was experiencing but also that of all the other guitarists who are fed up carrying their cumbersome guitar cases on buses, subways, bikes…”, says Leif Rehnström, who has sworn over these transport difficulties many times after several years as a professional musician, with power pop group The Drowners among others.
You don’t even have to take the strings off when you fold the neck of the Centerfold, as they are rolled up by the guitar.
Press Release [DeVillain Guitar Company]

TrendCentral: While the terms “free” and “legal” aren’t usually used together to describe the business of music downloading, a new platform called We7 has developed a system that does just that. Currently in beta, We7 gives brands the chance to communicate with users by “grafting” a short (around 10 seconds) audio or video ad to the front end of the file. Custom tailored to each user through demographics and preferences supplied by the user, these ads in turn provide revenue to the artists. And after about four weeks, users are given the option to have the track ad-free. Users can play their DRM-free files on any device, and can share these files via We7 with whomever they’d like.
Ad-supported free music downloads [TrendCentral]

JoshSpear.com: In today’s fast-paced world, young Catholics are finding it hard to slow down enough to say the rosary. The Catholic staple, wherein “we say fifteen decades or tens of Hail Mary’s with an Our Father between each ten, while at each of these fifteen decades we recall successively in pious meditation one of the mysteries of our Redemption” is apparently thought to be monotonous (no way!) by the young faithful. In order to address this pressing issue, a “critical concept design” has emerged in the shape of the iRosary, which attempts to make the rosary more attractive and flexible for younger believers.
The iRosary converts the iPod’s white headphones into a hybrid prayer bead that can be shifted and then heard as an “audio bead” during prayers, which are themselves monitored via the iPod’s integrated calendar. As an added bonus, the iRosary accommodates for various degrees of piousness by allowing users to choose between three settings: “Infidel,” which recites the entire prayer for the listener to follow along to; “Believer,” which only displays the right prayer in the mode; and “Shepherd,” which allows the user to listen to music and hear the sound of the beads.
Now Praying: The iRosary [JoshSpear.com]

TrendCentral: A social networking site with a musical slant, Indaba Music gives users a place to not only share their own music, but also facilitates public and private sessions through which multiple artists can collaborate on recording projects. For example, someone who has a guitar part but needs a bassline may use the service to complete their vision. The objective is to link members with other musicians worldwide who they wouldn’t typically have the capability to work with otherwise, thus allow them to collaborate, mix and create a completely new sound.
New sites allow musicians to collaborate online [TrendCentral]

TrendBlog: BurnLounge is a community-powered digital music service. BurnLounge provides music fans with the necessary software and an expansive catalog of music, to create and sell music (and fan merchandise) to peers from their own digital music stores. This consumer-driven retailing model draws on the power of peer relationships and shared interests of its seller’s communities. After purchasing the software, participating sellers can sign up as “fans” for free and redeem their BurnReward points for products, services or music downloads on BurnLounge. Affiliates pay an additional $6.95 per month but can redeem BurnRewards points for cash. Music Mogul have to pay a one-time set-up fee off $215 and $14.95 per month to gain access to Business Management features, which allows them to build teams.
Peer-Selling Sites – Peer2Business [TrendBlog]

Bradenton Herald: Are you concerned that your wanna-be-cool-too preteen might be following their older siblings onto social-networking Web sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com?
Thankfully, there are several sites that a 9-year-old can explore without alarming their parents, including Whyville.net, ClubPenguin.com and even National Geographic, which has a My Page for kids.
Now the world’s biggest kid brand, Disney, is jumping into the social-networking trend with a splashy, fun and character-laden Web site that Disney pledges will be safe for children. The launch date has not been released but expect it before January ends.
While I’m a little uncomfortable with the obvious emphasis on Disney-branded characters, from Hannah Montana to Captain Jack Sparrow and the engaging new world of Pixie Hollow for Tinkerbell and her fairy friends, I bet that your kid will have a blast playing here.
Taking the lead from other social-networking sites, Disney will let your little girl create her own fairy, give it a personality and share that character with her friends. If you have a son, let him play a game with Lightning McQueen and then brag to his buddies via chat about his high score.
“We wanted to break new ground,” said Paul Yanover, executive vice president for Disney Online, during a private screening last week at the International Consumer Electronics Show here. “We want to immerse people in the characters, stories and experiences that are Disney.”
Disney to offer kids’ social site [Bradenton Herald]