Pocket Hipster Brings 'Word of Mouth' Music Discovery to the iPhone

SOMERVILLE, Mass., Feb. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Echo Nest, a music intelligence platform that powers smarter music applications, has partnered with the development team behind the popular We Are Hunted music service for a series of innovative music apps.

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The first of these, Pocket Hipster for Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, is a snarky, animated virtual hipster who listens to your personal music collection, promptly insults your taste, then plays the hottest, most buzzed-about new tracks that match your musical preferences. It's like carrying around that hyper-connected friend who always seems to recommend the artists that become your favorites -- thus "Pocket Hipster."

This relationship between The Echo Nest and We Are Hunted, which will spawn many more music apps for playing games, managing social connections and discovering new artists in the coming months, marks a new business model for music apps. Modeled on the business framework of other creative industries such as music, film and gaming, the partnership has The Echo Nest functioning like a production company by providing We Are Hunted with app-creation tools, deep musical data and technical resources, along with content and distribution partnerships. We Are Hunted then handles all creative development and builds the user experience.

"Application developers like the amazing team at We Are Hunted are the future of the music industry," said Jim Lucchese, CEO of The Echo Nest. "This co-development deal capitalizes on the two companies' complementary strengths -- The Echo Nest's one-of-a-kind data platform, developer tools and industry partnerships, along with We Are Hunted's uncanny ability to create digital music experiences that fans love."  

Their first co-creation, the Pocket Hipster app ($2.99), presents a whimsical interface with male and female avatars who pepper listening recommendations with comedic nuggets of hipster wisdom. Underneath its slick, user-friendly design sits a powerful music engine that cuts through the clutter of new releases by presenting each user with only those hipster-approved tracks likely of be of interest.

About The Echo Nest

The Echo Nest is a music intelligence company that connects the greatest application developers to the best data and music to enable the next generation of music experiences. Powered by the world's only machine learning system that actively reads about and listens to music everywhere on the web, The Echo Nest opens up a massive repository of dynamic music data to application developers ranging from one-person operations to multinational corporations. Over 100 music applications have been built on its platform to date.

The Echo Nest was co-founded by two MIT Media Lab PhDs. Winner of three National Science Foundation SBIR grants, The Echo Nest's investors include Matrix Partners and Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Argos Management and three co-founders of MIT Media Lab. For more information, visit echonest.com.

About We Are Hunted

The Australia-based We Are Hunted (http://wearehunted.com) is one of the world's leading music discovery sites. Launched in 2008, the site has attracted millions of users worldwide and been featured in industry blogs like Mashable, Wired and TechCrunch. The site has won numerous awards including Next Web Awards for Best New Startup and Best Web Startup; the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association Award for Best Entertainment Site; and the People's Vote for the Best of Innovation Island Award at Tech23 2009.

SOURCE The Echo Nest Corporation

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