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Startups in the music industry are nowadays flourishing, trying to answer some of the questions that the same technology that allows their existence is posing. Data security, secondary ticketing, royalties, hit music: every topic has someone covering it in more or less successful ways.

The social media help ask these questions but also spread the word about these startups, while many of them get a kickstart from incubators. Marketplus is running a special regarding these startups.

Daniela Grecnerova is co-founder of TootToot, one of the startups that were singled out as Top 10 Music Start-ups to Watch at Eurosonic 2017. TootToot is, as she explains, both a social network putting fans in contact with artists and a ticketing company: «We started as a platform for fans and artists to get closer to each other – we created a platform that is designed for concert requests – to be simple but effective and powerful. Then we added our own ticketing solution – it was the natural following step. Also, we cooperate with other ticketing companies as affiliate partners to provide our users with a complete calendar of events tailor-made for everyone according to his/her music taste and requests».

Startups in the music industry are nowadays flourishing, trying to answer some of the questions that the same technology that allows their existence is posing. Data security, secondary ticketing, royalties, hit music: every topic has someone covering it in more or less successful ways.

The social media help ask these questions but also spread the word about these startups, while many of them get a kickstart from incubators. Marketplus will run a special in the following weeks regarding these startups.

This week Marketplus will look into Popgun, a company creating artificially intelligent software that will be able to play and create music.

Swiss researchers have created a flexible quadcopter that recoils during a crash, influenced by Mother Nature. Wasps in particular have special joints that allow their wings to reversibly crumple during an accident. This transition into a flexible state during times of stress drastically minimizes any sustained damage.

Roboticists from EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have developed a new drone to mimic the elasticity and durability of insects. Researchers achieved this by using a "squishy" material that’s able to be rigged while flying but become malleable when it comes in contact with something. This flexibility absorbs potentially damaging impacts and eliminates them.

Uber Technologies’ self-driving cars could be returning to California soon after state authorities permitted the company to test the vehicles. The ride-hailing company is now listed by the California Department of Motor Vehicles as one of over 20 companies, including Waymo, Tesla and Baidu, that have been issued autonomous vehicle testing permits as of Wednesday.

Uber received a permit to test two Volvo SUVs on public roads, the California Department of Motor Vehicles said. Regulators also approved 48 people as backup drivers who must sit behind the wheel in case the prototype cars malfunction, according to agency spokeswoman Jessica Gonzalez.

The European Patent Office (EPO) granted a record number of European patents in 2016, while the US led the charge for applications. According to a report released on Tuesday, the EPO granted 96,000 European patents in 2016, an increase of 40% year-on-year, which is due to “effective measures” to improve the EPO’s productivity.

“The figure is an indicator of the growing demand for patent protection from businesses worldwide,” said the EPO. It also recorded an “unprecedented” level of patent filings in 2016, reaching more than 296,000, an increase of 6.2% compared with 2015.

Jeff Bezos, co-founder of Amazon and owner of Blue Origin, a private space firm looking to rival SpaceX, is hoping to help humanity establish a colony on the moon by delivering supplies there. An internal report from Blue Origin was obtained by the Washington Post, which Mr Bezos also owns, and outlines the space travel firm’s plans for future missions.

Mr Bezos says he now want to create a delivery service to our nearest satellite. He explained that NASA need to create “incentives to the private sector to demonstrate a commercial lunar cargo delivery service”.

Swatch Group R&D and the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) have created the smallest Bluetooth chip on the market, which consists of more than 5 million transistors on a surface measuring just 5 square milimetres, has been certified as meeting the latest Bluetooth standard, version 5.0.

The chip is not just smaller than any other on the market, Swatch claims, it also has lower energy consumption compared to competitors on the market today.

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk announced on Monday a mission to send a pair of regular people around the moon by the end of 2018. Two private citizens, not astronauts, will fly in the Dragon 2 spacecraft, which will be launched by a Falcon Heavy rocket. Both the Dragon 2 capsule and the Falcon Heavy are still under development, and the first Falcon Heavy launch is expected sometime this summer.

The two private citizens, who have not yet been named, approached SpaceX about taking a trip around the moon, and have "already paid a significant deposit" for the cost of the mission, according to a statement from the company. The names of the two individuals will be announced later, pending the result of initial health tests to ensure their fitness for the mission, the statement said.