Entrepreneurial Ramblings

We unleashed our 4 new sites at The LAUNCH Conference on Thursday. Venturebeat wrote a frankly awesome editorial on it. Above is the video of our presentation unveiling marketplaces for tattoos, celebrity pictures, cartoons, and infographics. If you fast forward about 4:15 into the video, our presentation begins around that time.

We had a amazing time at the conference. The quality of the judges and attendees was truly amazing and there was ample time to get face time with them.  People like Chris Sacca and Living Social Co-Founder/CTO Aaron Batalion were really accessible and downright helpful.

I have an opinion on conferences, concerts, festivals, and the like. The early years of these things are always the best years.  I try and always make it to new, more underground conferences and festivals before things get too crazy and over-conference-ized if you will.

LAUNCH is still in it’s early years and if you are a startup / investor, you should try and make it next year. You won’t be disappointed – it’s a tight knit, quality crowd.  I hope it stays this way forever.

Today is a good day.  We’ve just released 4 brand new marketplaces live on stage at the Launch Conference in San Francisco.  The new sites venture outside the audio space and into cartoons, celebrity pictures, infographics, and tattoos yet operating the same micro stock business model as we do at AudioMicro (i.e. crowd sourced content for as little as $1).

I’ll be posting video of the Launch presentation shortly.  In the meantime, full details on the new sites can be found in the press release below and on our new corporate site.  Check it out here.

Important to note is that our newly developed Content Management System (CMS) is available under white label.  What this means is that not only we can quickly and easily clone and deploy new content marketplaces at will, but our technology is available for you to do so as well think Wordpress for Content Licensing.  If you’ve got content of your own that you wish to distribute simply drop us a line to get the process started.

Back in May of last year, we wondered what would come next after the launch of Audioo, well now we know.  It’s amazing to look back on the past 10 months at what we’ve been able to do.  We’re very much looking forward to the future.

_____________________________________________

AudioMicro Unveils Four New Content Licensing Marketplaces

New Sites Include Cartoons, Celebrity Pictures, InfoGraphics, and Tattoos

SAN FRANCISCO, LAUNCH CONFERENCE, February 24, 2011 – AudioMicro, which offers the world’s largest collection of micro stock music and sound effects, announced today it has developed a white label CMS for content licensing, allowing the startup to quickly clone and deploy content marketplaces.  In conjunction with the announcement, the Company unveiled four new licensing marketplaces, each targeting a specific content vertical:

Cartoonsy.com – a marketplace for licensing cartoons and cartoon animations

ChooseTattoos.com – tattoo designs and tattoo flash from tattoo artists worldwide

ImageCollect.com – micro stock celebrity pictures with over 750,000 images

InfoGraphicStock.com – an experimental market for infographics and data visualization

The four new products were revealed onstage as part of the “2.0 Competition” at the Launch conference, being held February 23-24 in San Francisco.

“We’re already getting some great material from cartoonists, tattoo artists, red carpet photographers, and infographic designers.” said Ryan Born, founder and chief executive officer, AudioMicro.  “If you’re an artist with wholly owned content, upload your work and grab a piece of our growing monthly royalty stream.”

AudioMicro recently closed a round of financing led by Fotolia, Europe’s leading stock photo distributor, which spans the globe with websites in 12 languages, offices in 14 countries, and over 12 million images.

The new Content Management System (CMS) is available on a white label basis.   Content owners, publishers, and entrepreneurs that wish to operate their own marketplaces can contact the Company for details.

About AudioMicro, Inc.

An industry pioneer in licensing music and sound effects through credit-based and subscription packages, AudioMicro acts as a discovery and distribution platform for stock audio content.  Its collection of royalty free music, stock music, sound effects, and free sound effects includes over 225,000 tracks of both crowd-sourced and premium, record label-owned content.  In addition to AudioMicro.com, the company operates content licensing marketplaces for cartoons, tattoos, celebrity pictures, and infographics, as well as the voicemail sharing service Audioo.  The company is venture-backed by DFJ Frontier and Fotolia LLC.  For more information, visit AudioMicroInc.com.

About the Launch Conference

The Launch Conference (http://launch.is), February 23-24 2010, at San Francisco Design Center’s Concourse Exhibition Center, is serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis’ latest venture, attracting over 1,000 leading technology innovators and investors and over 140 startups.  40 new companies and products will launch for the first time on stage, selected to present from more than 500 applications received from around the world. Another 100 early-stage startups will exhibit in the Demo Pit.  Conference profits will be awarded equally to the 40 selected participants along with other award recognitions at the conclusion of the conference.

###

MG Siegler over at TechCrunch just penned a great post about the ongoing war between Twitter and Bill Gross’s UberMedia and Twitter. He summed up the situation perfectly in my mind.  I could not have said it better myself:

“WHAT’S SURPRISING ABOUT ANY OF THIS IS THAT PEOPLE ARE ACTING SURPRISED” – MG Siegler

I’ve been saying this for a long time now…why would anyone in their right mind think that Twitter would allow another company to build a multi-million (or billion) dollar business on the back of their own ecosystem?

It would be like a Facebook / Zynga repeat all over again only in that Facebook needed Zynga to monetize early.

Twitter does NOT need local Twitter publishing clients anymore now that they have their own, decent client.  Not only do they not need them but they certainly don’t need to let them get rich by posting affiliate links and finding other monetization streams that they don’t share heavily with Twitter itself.

Yes, it would have been nice if Twitter had given fair notice to Ubermedia, but oh well.  When you’re in a real life fight, punching below the belt and eye gouging are totally fair game.

[Stock Photo Credit:  Fotolia.com]

AudioMicro and Fotolia To Partner in Content Licensing Ventures

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 1, 2011 – AudioMicro, which offers the world’s largest collection of user-generated royalty free music and sound effects, announced today that it has received an equity investment from Fotolia, Europe’s leading micro stock photo site.  Existing investor DFJ Frontier, a West Coast seed and early-stage investor, also participated in the financing.  In connection with the financing, Oleg Tscheltzoff, co-founder and chief executive officer of Fotolia, has joined AudioMicro’s board of directors.

Fotolia and AudioMicro will collaborate on new projects, each targeting a different content vertical.  They intend to launch four of these projects by the end of next month.  Fotolia, which is backed by TA Associates, also owns Flixtime.com, a site that turns photos into videos, and Photoxpress.com, a subscription photo service.

“AudioMicro is a leader in crowd-sourced stock music and sound effects,” said Tscheltzoff.  “We’re pleased to partner with them to accelerate their business.”

“Fotolia’s investment and partnership is a great endorsement of our vision, and recognition of the traction we’ve gained,” said Ryan Born, founder and chief executive officer, AudioMicro.  “We’re delighted to work with the Fotolia team.”

About AudioMicro

An industry pioneer in licensing music and sound effects through credit-based and subscription packages, AudioMicro acts as a discovery and distribution platform for stock audio content.  Its collection of royalty free music, stock music, sound effects, and free sound effects includes over 225,000 tracks of both crowd-sourced and premium, record label-owned content.  AudioMicro also operates the Audioo voicemail sharing service.  The company is venture-backed by DFJ Frontier.  For more information, visit AudioMicro.com.

About Fotolia

Over 2 million people prefer Fotolia for affordable, royalty-free images, graphics and HD videos. With the introduction of the Infinite Collection, Fotolia became the first worldwide microstock organization to offer both crowd-sourced and professional images on one site. Founded in New York City in 2004, Fotolia spans the globe with websites in 12 languages and offices in 14 countries. With over 12,000,000 files to choose from, find it on Fotolia. www.fotolia.com

##

Media Contact:

Brian Danella

Prequent, Inc. (for AudioMicro, Inc.)

+1 (408) 275-6455 office

+1 (650) 743-6606 mobile

brian[at]prequent.com