Ditto Music cap raise?

Ditto Music is no "me-too" digital entertainment venture, with offices in Nashville, Liverpool and soon in Oz. The Parsons brothers who own it 100% have no debt and 30,000-plus customers as they sail past the $1MM revenue mark. Next, they'll revisit the issue of accepting investment capital they're previously declined. The story's here.

Social Chutes buys local ventures

Social Chutes, a new holding company, has bought Bandbox and RedRovor from two young Nashville entrepreneurs who may look beyond Music for their next gigs, reported right here.

Speaker Harwell eyes campus science

Tennessee House Speaker Beth Harwell and Memphis-area State Rep. Mark White will study what might be impeding the commercialization of intellectual property spawned on campuses within Tennessee. This NewsBits installation has numerous other stories about economic development, new tech products, venture capital, that Chattanooga venture forum and more, right here.

Southtree Digital

Young Chattanooga entrepreneurs in Southtreat Digital Media are making a business of translating families' home movies and VT's to digital storage, the TFP reports.

Country fans' digital-media behavior

This oughta be interesting: Coleman Insights is releasing results of a study March 3 here in town regarding the digital-media habits of Country fans. The release is here.

Qriocity music-streaming in US in 2011

Sony's Qriocity entertainment division launched music streaming in Europe a month ago, and the service will debut in the US in 2011. The AP reports via the CA.

Songness not songless: e-music startup

Songness, the artist-rating and song-recommending online platform created by Tennessee entrepreneur Bill Geissler, has been in the works a while, but has fresh capital and, apparently, perseverance. Several years after Geissler co-owned United Press International, I worked in UPI's headquarters in corporate affairs. Our paths didn't cross, however, until recently. Here's the rundown.

Universal in download pact

Universal Music announced yesterday it's entered an agreement with FreeAllMusic.com to provide consumers free, ad-supported music downloads from its catalogs.

StartMySong allied with Bandbox

StartMySong has allied with Bandbox to integrate the Bandbox music e-commerce widget to enable singer-songwriters with StartMySong pages to sell their demos and fully produced songs. Today's release here. Earlier VNC coverage on Bandbox here.

Brainwave opens Game category

Brainwave Studios may be launching wih FranktownRocks.com, but it could be the first of a series of products that will breathe new life into the smattering of gamer-driven cyberproducts in Middle Tennessee -- if they succeed in raising $3MM. The story's here.

Pandora 'Song Decoders'

In yesterday's New York Times Magazine essay on the work of musicologists at Pandora, there are many interesting bits -- the 350 pitches to VCs who turned it down, the fact that Pandora (maybe) cannot account for taste, the breadth of the Music Genome Project, the power of cool, and the growing ranks of potential competitors, including Slacker.com and Spotify, the latter a forthcoming Euro import. Worth a read for anyone pitching a Music-oriented bizplan. Pandora was created by Tim Westergren (left).

TN technology movers

Nashville-based Landmark Digital, a sub of BMI, was named Innovator of the Year for its audio-recognition technology (purchased from Shazam in 2005) during the Nashville Music Awards, Oct. 7... HealthIT Insight, a media outlet and conference organizer, named Nashville-based Informatics Corporation of America's (ICA) IT for integrating hospital and clinical systems "Best New Technology," placing it among Intel and VMWare, which won in market-potential and ROI categories, respectively... Healthcare Management Systems (HMS) said in a release Wednesday it'll launch a proprietary ambulatory electronic medical record and practice management solution called HMS Ambulatory EMR, later this month. HMS says it will apply for federal certifications that would help customers qualify for ARRA Hightech funds for puchasing the systems.

SEC attacks VR offering

Here's a fresh example of desperation and how not to do business, courtesy of the SEC, which is attacking most of those involved in 3001 AD LLC, a virtual non-entity that made wild promises about relations with Disney execs and more, en route to raising a reported $20MM, fraudulently. While the 3001AD site is apparently gone, here's how they once described themselves.

Knox ivi videocaster launches

[Updated] Knox ivi, an Internet video channel, has set up shop in Market Square in Knoxville, in the space previously held by another short-lived videocaster. The KNS reports the story here.

Music up online

NBJ's Jeannie Naujeck reports on resurgence of Music Videos, driven by online and video on demand.

Rockhouse launch

Nashville Entrepreneur Center (NEC) Project Manager Joe Kustelski and former colleagues at Echomedia (now part of Ticketmaster, and mostly in LA) have a new venture, Rockhouse Partners, that's focused on data-driven brand and marketing supporting for sports, music, entertainment venues, sponsors, et al. The VNC story's here.

StudioNow touts platform

StudioNow, as VNC reported a month ago, has created a seamless video- and audio-production and syndication platform and a network of production and talent specialists. Now, StudioNow has announced that Simon & Schuster, which has been a client for a year or so, is using the entire integrated platform.

e-Music biz-model upgrade

Owen GSM Clinical Prof. Tim Dubois (left) -- who remains a Music Row artist manager, and is a former label executive -- argues that the Music industry needs interoperable databases and other technology to enable the industry to shift to a music-on-demand model that relies on subscriptions, rather than on individual CD sales or iPod downloads. The VU release is here.

Cisco on-stage

The Mercury News reports on Cisco's increasing penetration of the music and entertainment fields, and its plans to sell back-end technology to major players. The report's here.

MyOutdoorTV CEO is Del Favero

Albie Del Favero (at left), formerly an executive with Southcomm Communications, with primary responsibility for BusinessTN and The City Paper, has been named CEO of MyOutdoorTV.com Corp., based in Franklin. Earlier, DelFavero was publisher of the Nashville Scene weekly newspaper. Related earlier story, here.