Former Beats Music CEO Launches a Talent Competition App

Last time I covered David Hyman it was over a lawsuit he filed against Beats for $20 million.

Hyman is the former CEO of Gracenote and founder of MOG, the streaming music service that was purchased by Beats. He became CEO of Beats Music, signing a deal that would give him 2.5 percent of the company’s outstanding equity interests after one year. If Beats Music reached a market value of $500 million or more this number would go up to 25 percent.

Hyman was fired before one year hit. Beats was later sold to Apple for over $3 billion.

Now Hyman has a new venture. He has launched a mobile app called Chosen, a free talent competition that is similar to American Idol and The Voice.

Chosen has raised over $6.5 million from DCM, Rhodium Capital, Fosun, CrunchFund, and others. Chosen’s board of advisors include Vevo founder Rio Caraeff and Dr. Luke.<!–/*
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// ]]>Chosen isn’t just a straightforward karaoke app.  The app offers a variety of options: users can karaoke, lip sync, and use in-app tools to edit their audio and video.

Users that aren’t eager to perform aren’t left out, they can judge the performances of others.  Judges are then judged by other judges.  Hyman plans to regularly add new features and games to the app.

Hyman wants users to share their performances on other social platforms.  He’s made it easy to share in-app links on social media, and performance videos can be uploaded to YouTube.

American Idol and The Voice offer winners a major record deal.  Hyman says he wants his competition to have useful prizes, since a major label deal isn’t necessarily a good thing anymore.

Chosen’s first ever prize is a performance slot at Bonnaroo.  One performer will win an all-expenses-paid trip to the festival for themselves and a guest.

Chosen is invitation only until later this spring. DMN readers that want to access the app now can enter this code after downloading: 4134

Nina Ulloa covers breaking news, tech, and more: @nine_u

The post Former Beats Music CEO Launches a Talent Competition App appeared first on Digital Music News.

Source: Industry News