It turns out that Pied Piper, the company from television’s Silicon Valley, HBO’s satirical take on the tech industry, may actually exists in real life.
General Harmonics is a small startup from Vancouver that’s looking to revolutionize the way we stream media.
In the show Silicon Valley, Pied Piper is a fictional company that makes compression software that makes files incredibly small, allowing for faster downloads and taking up less storage.
Canada’s General Harmonics doesn’t do that – instead of compressing files down to ever smaller sizes, the company’s technology looks at media as “systems of information,” or very detailed descriptions of the parts they’re composed of.
Using their technology, a song is seen in terms of its vocals and the instruments played. The description of each of those elements takes up less space than the actual digital audio file would.
General Harmonics says it can deliver CD-quality music in one-twentieth the original file size.
The implication is companies like Spotify, Pandora, or Apple could significantly cut down on server costs — or, more likely, serve customers better for the same level of spending.
Watch out for this company!! Gonna be big!!
THanks Paul!