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Mufin Opens Automated Music Recommendation Engine To The PublicToday

Mufin, a powerful music recommendation engine that actually works, has launched to the public. We last covered the site in early October, when it opened in a restricted private beta.

The site, which was created by the same organization that created the now-ubiquitous MP3 file format, uses an advanced algorithm to ‘listen to’ songs and identify similar sounding tracks based on over 40 characteristics. Such automated systems are very hard to pull off (which is why Pandora, another music recommendation engine, uses human experts), but in my testing Mufin had fared surprisingly well.

Since we last wrote about it, Mufin has introduced a Facebook widget that allows users to get song recommendations from within their friends’ Facebook profiles. The site has also relased a plugin for iTunes, which generates playlists based on tracks in a user’s library (iTunes Genius does exactly the same thing, but it relies on metadata rather than an

eMusic: 250 Million Songs Downloaded. iTunes: 5 Billion+Today

Will the music subscription business ever grow beyond its current niche? It looks increasingly doubtful. Today, eMusic announced that since it launched its current music subscription service in 2003, customers have downloaded 250 million songs. Apple’s iTunes, by comparison, has sold more than 5 billion songs since it opened the iTunes Store in April, 2003. That makes eMusic one twentieth the size of iTunes.

The way eMusic works is you pay a subscription of between $12 and $20 a month and then you can download 30 to 75 songs a month and keep them. You can also purchase songs above those limits, starting at $0.25 a track. eMusic has a catalog of 4.5 million songs, and is particularly strong in independent music. It currently has 400,000 subscribers, and the company expects to make $70 million in revenues this year.

That implies the vast majority of subscribers opt in for the basic $12 a month plan, which would net $57.6 million a year if that is what everyone paid. The difference can be accounted for by those people who opt for the more expensive land and additional downloads. And the best part of the business is that eMusic only pays the labels for the songs its customers download. So if someone doesn’t use up th

It’s Time For The Crunchies!Yesterday

It’s hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by since we gave out those crazy gorilla awards to the best startup and product successes in Silicon Valley and around the world. Some of the photos from last year are here.

The Crunchies are back. We are once again partnering with some of our favorite blogs - thank you to co-hosts GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat (click the links for their announcements). Thanks as well to 1938 Media, our video production partner (see their first video below in the comments).

The Awards Ceremony will be held on Jan. 9, 2009, 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater across the street from City Hall in San Francisco. The reception will follow and tickets will be released in December.

What we need from you right now: please

Lonely Wrestlers Create Their Own Social NetworkYesterday

It’s not easy being a wrestler. Inside the ring your pounding an opponent’s head against the corner post, but outside the ring it’s hard to meet people. Nobody really wants to be your friend. Not even on MySpace. They say their your friends, but they are not really your friends.

Wrestlers aren’t stupid. They know everybody thinks they are just a bunch of clowns. That’s why the company that employs all the wrestlers you see on TV, World Wrestling Entertainment, created WWE Universe, a social network just for them and their fans. Okay, it’s not really a social network. It’s just a craptastic promotional vehicle. And some of those wrestlers aren’t so bright. But they are lonely.

Just because Mark Henry is the “world’s strongest man” doesn’t mean he doesn’t cry at night when all he has to keep him company is his pit bull, Theodore, and a can of beans. Or Zack Ryder. The poor guy might be a tag team champion, but when he goes home all he has to look forward to are watering his plants and watching reruns of Smackdown with his cat, Fluffy. Be friends with them. Don�

Google Kills LivelyYesterday

Even Google is getting into the downsizing spirit. It just announced that it is killing Lively, its browser-based virtual worlds that could be embedded into other Websites. Lively launched just last July. The death notice on the site says it will shut down on December 31, so we are adding Lively to the deadpool.

Lively just never took off, and was extremely far afield for Google. A post on the Google Blog explains the decision:

. . . we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.

We should have known something was up when we noticed that it didn’t work with Google’s own browser, Chrome. It’s Google Website Trends chart says it all. After an initial spike, it flat-lined. Hype can only go so far.

Maybe Google didn’t kill Lively so much as mercifully pull the plug. This is