I was in Las Vegas yesterday when I heard the good news about our iPhone music application maker! Here's an article about it, by Timothy Hay, which appears in today's Venture Wire newsletter:

SonicMule Inc., creator of several wildly popular "social music" applications for the iPhone, said it has raised $8 million from a new investor and previous backers as it prepares to release at least five new apps next year.

"We were not looking to raise money, because we already exceeded our targets for our business plan in 2009," said Jeffrey Smith, co-founder and chief executive of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company. Mark Thompson is an investor & board member.

For 2009, the company's target was 1.5 million paid downloads of its seven available phone apps. Smule got three million downloads, Smith said.

Smule is behind Ocarina, Leaf Trombone and I Am T-Pain, apps that enable users to not only play the iPhone like an actual instrument, but to record themselves and share the recordings with other users worldwide.

The company refers to its millions of users as a "sonic network," and will use some of its new funding to refine and upgrade this network, Smith said.

In addition to improving its network - which involves developing high-performance servers for a cloud-based system - Smule plans to release five or six new apps next year, Smith said.

While he declined to give details on the apps, Smith strongly hinted that another partnership with a top recording artist - like the collaboration the company did with R&B performer T-Pain - is in the works.

"All I can say is, we are enabling the users to create more expressive content and share it with others," Smith said.

Smith said the latest funding brings no new board members, but Smule is working closely with Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures.

"He was the brand manager for Tylenol during the whole poisoning thing," Smith said, referring to an incident in the 1980s when several people died after taking poisoned Tylenol pills. "Tylenol pulled through that. Not that Ocarina can be poisoned or anything, but it's good to be nimble. It's good to be able to handle curveballs."