"Trustpilot is a tool that can tell you how a company will treat you as a customer. We scan the entire web for ratings and reviews of companies, and aggregate the entire customer feedback into a simple 5 star rating. Users can participate by submitting their own reviews, or upload media articles about companies. You can either check the companies using our website, or download our browser plugin."

This is how Peter Holten Muehlmann explains his start-up. Letting me in on where the inspiration for the tool came from, he says a camera he bought online for his sister never appeared, only for him to read an article denouncing the same company for that very reason a few weeks later: “I needed that article when I entered the website, not afterwards”, he explains. Now, with the help of Trustpilot, consumers can see an instant visual guide on the trustworthiness of an online retailer – presuming, of course, that there’s enough information gathered on that particular store.

Muehlmann has experience in starting and running his own online store, as well as an ‘unfinished’ MA in Business Administration (“When people have their own companies people tend to care less about education and more about results”, he says).

Trustpilot received initial funding from a business angel, then a larger investment from Danish fund SEED Capital. Muehlmann explains the revenue model thus: “Reviews from real customers increase the conversion rate measurably and result in more and larger orders... most companies have thousands of happy customers, but these customers don’t spread the word. We all know the story that a happy customer tells two people and a dissatisfied customer 27 people. We give the companies ways to change this and make the happy customer tell 27 people. This part has a cost-per-action based affiliate part, as we charge for every new documented customer.” To boost this, revenue-generating tailor-made solutions are in the pipeline, while there’s also some small income from advertising.

In recent years, numerous ‘what’s on guides’ have appeared on the internet, but none have managed to take a leading role, providing visitors to the site with what they want – quick and easy use which tells them definitively what is on, when they want it, where it is, and how much it costs. Spoonfed hopes to be that guide and is different, say its creators, because it is event-driven, not venue-driven.

When signing up for a profile the user keys in which areas in London (it’s just focused on the capital right now) they like to go out in, what sorts of music, galleries, theatre and ‘beery fun’ they go in for, and whetherthe event is free.

“It’s a web entertainment guide for London”, says co-founder Alexander Will. “We want to be the best, characterized by the best content: I mean local content, easily and quickly – with terrific editorial to go with it, and the technology to match” That technology ranges from a highly effective search-engine happy to go to work with ‘theatre’, ‘Brixton’, ‘drum n bass’ or simply the word ‘free’, Google Mapping, plus soon-to-be-released mobile phone apps, with both GPS and non-GPS enabled versions.

Launched by LSE economics graduates Alexander Will and Henry Erskine Crum, “We started out with just Camden and Islington and found that the basic approach worked”, says Will, who spent weekends cycling to and from promoters with questionnaires in hand. They put together £8,000 in savings, which mostly went on site-build, and in October 2007 the duo raised £77,000 from ‘friends and family’. In June 2008, faith was shown in the idea when it underwent a ‘proper’ angel round which saw them raise £400,000 from seven investors. On top of that, they’ve picked up a strong board of advisors and have LinkedIn’s European MD Kevin Eyres as a mentor.

Currently it’s a ‘pull’ model, where the editorial team of five actively seek out content, instead of relying on promoters to ‘push’ content their way, says Will. “We’re building a big database and contacting them, so a pull model comes to push.” And revenue-wise, the promoters are key: “They’re crying out for more efficient ways to promote events: they all have a budget, and we provide tools to disseminate their events around the web”. Although Spoonfed won’t be missing out on affiliate-based ticketing revenue, Will says they’ll be “focusing on promoters as that’s more scalable.” And seeing as Will has ‘no trust’ in an advertising-based model, that seems like the best bet.

Former head of Virgin Wines Rowan Gormley is not impressed at the situation the wine industry finds itself in. The domination of the supermarkets, he says, is detrimental to the consumer, the grower, and of course the wine.

According to Gormley, the wine that makes it to the shelf is overpriced, over-marketed, and over-packaged. Taste is secondary. “A third of the cost is going on marketing”, he says. ”What winemakers would rather be doing is making good wine. And for customers, why pay to be sold to?” As the blurb on the site says: “Naked Wines is an online farmer's market for the kind of winemakers who want to spend their lives making great wine, rather than selling it.”

The company aims to strip off a number of layers, and allow the consumer to connect with the growers, those small-scale lovers of the art from around the world. Back on the site, there’s a distinct social-networking feel. Buyers and sellers alike have a profile, and the surprisingly affordable wine can be recommended to the user in the way products with similar identities are promoted on Amazon or Last.fm

Gormley, who formerly headed up Virgin Wines, led Naked Wines to its pre-launch in November. But all he’ll say about the acrimonious departure, apart from the fact he managed to bring 19 staff along with him, was that there were a lot of ‘limitations’ at Virgin. “People always thought Virgin first and wines second”, he muses.

This time round, creative ideas are flowing. After putting some of his own money into the venture, along with an undisclosed amount from Wein International, he recruited ‘Archangels’ to source the wines: regular people who would have their opinions listened to. As Gormley says, most wine drinkers describe their interest in wine along the lines of “I don’t know much about wine but I know what I like.” And so far, they appear to like Naked Wines and its unique ‘Angels’ concept. Says Gormley of the Christmas period just gone: “We recruited a number of customers, but what we’re really happy about is getting customers to sponsor wine-makers: Over half the people that signed up became angels, so we’re very happy with that.” The angel system is as follows. The winemaker gives away free wine to show you the quality (you pay for delivery), and you try it out. If you like it, you pre-pay a monthly five pounds to your account and the next batch, helping ensure that the maker has a good cash flow.

Where the money for the company comes in, is taking a cut on the sales. And unlike many other businesses, it might not even be a bad time to launch, with sales of wine historically faring well during economic downturns. And with the added bonus of a real connection to the people actually producing the wine, instead of a whole host of middle-men, Naked Wines might be on to something.

This summer, The Times reported that each teenager in the UK had an average of 800 illegally downloaded music tracks on their MP3 player. This says two things. The first is that the young love their music, and the second is that if we (and by 'we', read first 'humans', and then specifically, the 'UK') want to continue to create professionally produced music - in terms of nice sounding production values - then the artists who make it need to continue to get paid. While government and the major labels favour punishmenttehniques, others call for a rethink.

"Kerchoonz is built for musicians by musicians, to serve the public. It's free, and the artists and the licensers of the music get paid." These are the words of Indianna Gregg, co-founder of Kerchoonz.com While sites such as last.fm have become hugely successful promoting the work of musicians (some who post their own work for exposure, others who have it posted by others against their own will), the income they generate is minor - only when the listener decides to pay to download the MP3 after streaming the track do they make any money. With illegal downloads elsewhere on the web, the income is obviously zilch.

Artists on Kerchoonz set up a profile, and pay an admin fee of £12.50. Every time a song of theirs is streamed, they get 0.5p. Each time a song is downloaded, they receive 10p. As an incentive to listeners, they too are paid for referring the band in question to friends onKerchoonz who decide to buy the music. "As soon as a band gets £12.50 in revenue, £2.50 is transferred to your referral account", says Gregg, who feels strongly that artists need to make a livable income, after suffering herself after releasing her own album: "We (Gregg and husband-produce/Kerchoonz co-founder Ian Morrow) had VC funding and major sales, but when we went to work out why we weren't doing so well we a found there'd been 1/4m downloads from torrent sites. The thing is that they don't hurt the major labels, they hurt the 400 indy labels in the UK."

The site went into beta phase at the end of October, after receiving start-up funding from the Discovery Investment Fund in Dundee and the Scottish Co-Investment Fund. At the moment, the revenue comes from advertising, but major labels will soon be on board, according to Gregg, and to download the tracks of those artists, users will have to pay. Whether users will come to the site to listen to free music of new acts and then pay for musicians who are freely (really very 'freely') available elsewhere, is the big question. But the fact that the site is so unique in providing a space for listeners who want artists to get paid as much as they want to get music for free, might mean it becomes incredibly popular due to the goodwill of the public (Kerchoonz currently claims users stay for a massive 29 page views each)- which should be a plus for advertisers.

It's clear that if artists hope to make a living from their work-(work which, at least where the UK is concerned, means a lot in terms of exports), something will have to be done. Without it, the whole prospect of a life in music will be less appealing, and we'll all suffer. The idea of punishing ISPs for their customers' behaviour is gaining pace, but, surprise surprise, policymakers are looking out of touch. With such a huge issue, perhaps sites like Kerchoonz.com where a majority of content remains largely 'free', while still managing to make some cash for the artists, provide the answer. Let's just hope they manage to make enough for themselves to remain operable.

Launched in beta version with the founding trios savings, “Mixcloud is a platform for user-generated radio, whereas users of other radio sites don’t have the potential to upload their own content”, says co-founder Nico Perez. The Alpha version launches this month, and the hunt for VC funding gears up.

The founders have backgrounds in engineering, graphics/web design and maths, but are unsurprisingly united by a love for music. As Perez says “We’re all big music fans, and had a radio show of our own at university. So the needs we’re solving are frustrations we know ourselves.”

Whereas traditional radio, including ‘traditional’ web radio, lets a small number of DJs play their music to an audience, new concepts such as Last.fm let ‘the wisdom of crowds’ theory suggest new music to users, using tags to throw new tunes in the direction of listeners. But Mixcloud replaces it with the more traditional ‘wisdom of the expert.’ “There are already enthusiasts out there but they’re not being found. It’s a platform for those content creators.” In other words, you just tune into the person or DJ who’s right for you, and let them inform your tastes. And the key-ingredient of always providing a track listing means it's catching on fast, according to Perez: “There are 500 DJs already signed up to our mailing lists!’

“It’s based on that tried and tested radio method, advertising. But we have less expenditure”, Perez pointed out to me. On top of the 15-30 second adverts before each half hour show, revenue is expected via affiliate sales, possible brand sponsorship, and the freemium option. If the wisdom of crowds succumbs to the wisdom of experts, the older industry buzzphrase of ‘user-generated-content’ could be around for a lot longer – and Mixcloud might well be there.

In the world of digital media where new tools and applications are popping up left, right and centre, someone has to be making these new agenda-changing products. One young firm describing itself as a ‘cultural construction company’ is Harmonypark. Or as co-founder Andrew McPhee says “We were started to create socially useful applications and experiences.” As well as creating products for the likes ofeBay, Harmonypark is currently busy working on 3 new i-Phone applications, following the market to where demand is. In addition, they're enjoying the buzz around recent expense sharing tool Expensure.

But while designing ‘apps’ is a key, product and service incubation for others is also a huge part of what the company’s about, and the balance fluctuates “ It changes month to month: We try do something like 50/50, but it switches to 80/20 and to 20/80.”

Kiwis McPhee and Ebony Charlton, as well as Canadian Mike Evans, began to boot-strap with the company in 2005. They all had experience in starting their own companies beforehand, taking in digital agencies and E-Commerce ‘in Australasia’. “We’ve all worked in advertising, but this is creating useful applications in digital culture: we solve problems”, says McPhee. “Between us we all had the complementary skills: When you start you find out there are things you aren’t good at: we threw them all together.”

The company has developed well, being responsible for incubating successes such as video-player Vzaar. This whole process has taught the team the importance of taking equity in the fruit of their labour: “More often now we’re taking a stake as well as payment. It’s been an eye opener. Some products have gone on to be worth millions... and we didn’t take equity”, says McPhee matter-of-factly. But with a string of useful apps under Harmonypark’s belt, it looks like the opportunity to do so will continue to present itself.

London is awash with ‘creative’ agencies working across the board from music to film. What’s different about this West London start-up is that they’re representing artists in film making and TV production, publishing books, and having an attached illustration agency to boot.

Studio Rarekwai, or The SRK, was founded by the creative duo of Suridh Hassan and Ryo Sanada in November 2006, starting out in film production but rapidly expanding to include the illustration and publishing sides of the business. Hassan says things began with the duo wanting to push their own work, but soon grew to take in the work of others. “It’s been projects that have morphed and evolved: We started off making documentaries, then started making books, then started to represent artists, and now we’re working on making that one 'package' that we can offer out to clients and brands, and deal with tailor-made briefs.”

In the two years since launch, they’ve already expanded internationally. “We have a TV programme in Japan and our books are international, so we get a lot of interest from abroad - in fact at times more so than the UK.” Making a name for themselves via documentary on the Japanese hip hop scene, a recent street-art sticker-book has also been doing well, with a full page feature in The Metro newspaper . More recently, the world’s first documentary on the musical phenomenon that is dubstep (directed by Hassan) made its debut this October. All of this on an absolute bootstrapping budget – but as Hassan says “If you can work yourself into a position to do just what you like doing - why not?” Full marks for entrepreneurial spirit.