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.

Airplay Direct boosts Doyal

Cliff Doyal, who wears a lot of hats at Airplay Direct, is now executive vice president for the startup. Our earlier Airplay story.

SaaS: Songs as a Service?

Release out today from Lifeway says, "On Monday, February 9, LifeWay Worship will unveil the latest innovation in digital music: SongMap™, a web-based application that allows users to create custom arrangements of songs and produce corresponding audio files and sheet music. SongMap™ was developed through the largest known recording project in Nashville history. Nearly 1,000 songs and 8,000 mixes were recorded in just 10 months by over 150 professional musicians, vocalists and engineers." Read more here. [Update: Feb. 6, AP in KNS.]

Music producers embrace CLASP

At Nashville-based Endless Analog, founder Chris Estes (at left) has found a way to give record producers the warmth of analog and the speed of digital with his CLASP technology. His website tells the story and BusTN provides the color. The technology debuted in October at an engineering conference.