Who's the hottest music startup in the land? At the IMEA startup face-off in Popkomm, Kyte emerged as the most promising entrant. The Kyte platform captures video footage from mobile devices, and distributes the resulting content across the web. In a typical scenario, an artist shoots footage from the road using a mobile phone, and populates a video channel that appears across destinations like MySpace, iLike, and their personal webpages.
The concept is tailored towards artists and labels, both of whom create the content and select the ultimate distribution points. "This is really a technology platform," explained chief executive and founder Daniel Graf during a presentation on Wednesday. Video can also be captured from non-mobile sources, including webcams.
Kyte, based in San Francisco, is backed by a serious contingent of VCs and mobile companies. The list includes Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Telefonica, Nokia Growth Partners, Steamboat Ventures, TeliaSonera, DoCoMo Capital, Holtzbrinck and Swisscom. But is the concept making money?
The word among executives is that the technology is drawing strong revenues from labels, though the company is private. One knowledgeable mobile music executive noted that the concept "is making money and seems profitable," while another pointed to an interested label clientele. "Majors are now saying yes to things like this, instead of just no, no, no," another top executive shared.
Indeed, the list of major-backed artists is quite large. The biggest taker is 50 Cent, a monster on mobile and internet platforms, though others include the Jonas Brothers, Pussycat Dolls, Lenny Kravitz, and a long list of others. Kyte edged out a competitor pool that included digital distribution concept Independent IP, intelligent karaoke analyzer BMAT, recommendation startup The Filter, and music content plays Rawrip and Roccatune. Kyte was voted the winner by an assembled group of executive attendees, as well as panel VCs.
Story by publisher Paul Resnikoff in Berlin.
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