We recently had the pleasure to attend Sónar+D in Barcelona taking particular attention at the Startup Garden, powered by MIGRATION, and at the 30 startups selected for their competition.
The Startup Garden of Sónar+D, is the space dedicated to the entrepreneurial ecosystem related to creative technologies, part of the Sónar, one of Europe’s most well-known music, creativity and technology festivals, about which we largely talked with its Executive Director Ventura Barba in a recent interview.
1. MIMI HEARING: Mimi is an app which has the very clear aim to let you have the best possible listening experience, now and in the future. Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, their sound processing has been developed by hearing scientists and sound engineers. A technology that is medically certified (CE) and currently available in two apps and an SDK kit for partners. They have been so appreciated at Sónar+D to get the first prize in the Startup Garden competition.
2. PLAYMOSS: A Barcelona-based startup that allows everyone to organise the music listened online in YouTube, Soundcloud, Vimeo, Bandcamp and Spotify. With this tool, it’s possible to arrange and share all the tracks in playlists in a super easy way. It’s also particularly interesting to discover new music, as it’s possible to search and follow influencers and people with a similar music taste and listen to the playlists that they create. The community growth well since the launch in 2014, and can now count few hundreds of thousands visits every month. With the growing popularity came also a good number of collaborations with well known music festivals such as Cruïlla, Brunch Electronik, DGTL, Vida and the Sonar itself.
3. LYNQ: A smart compass that gives family and friends the freedom to know exactly where everyone is, at the touch of a button. And what it’s more interesting is that no cell phone service, app, networks, wifi nor Bluetooth are required to make it works. Lynq compass has a range of 5 miles and up to 4 days of battery life with one charge. Designed for explorers and outdoor enthusiasts, it’s anyway possible to use in many different situations – eg. Vogue indicated it as a must have tech gadget for the Coachella Festival to not lose your friends. The young company is based in New York City.
4. MELODICS: An app, in the middle, between a beat making software and a game, developed in Auckland, New Zealand, that adapts to a person ability and music taste to help improving, in a faster way, with pad drumming, which is something that is becoming more and more important for DJs, producers and musicians. Really appreciated at the event, they got awarded with the third prize in the Startup Garden competition.
5. PROTOPIXEL: The first “Lighting as a Service” (LaaS) platform for retail, hospitality and entertainment markets. ProtoPixel was founded in 2015 and is based in Barcelona. At Sónar they got the 2nd prize in the Startup Garden competition. With Protopixel businesses and creators can design, create and manage lighting infrastructures, with powerful and easy to use lighting control technologies.
All the startups awarded and much more information are available on the Sónar+D site.