Category: music

Social media has become a true extension of our lives. Now that our phones are  always with us, and powerful enough to vividly display photos and videos in near real time, our phones become companions in our hearts and minds. Human nature adapts to technology on a deep level, and it seems we always find a way to keep up at paces that just a year ago seemed impossible. Technology itself pushes human nature into adapting new consumption patterns of media and culture.

Kevin Kelly’s book “What Technology Wants”, provides a realistic and believable explanation of this force. He elegantly describes how technology is evolutionary in nature, with repeatable patterns of new technology leading to more new things, and more new behavior, which creates an inevitable march forward.

I’ve been to many places in the world, the poorest and the richest spots, the oldest and the newest cities, the fastest and the slowest cultures, and it is my observation that when given a chance, people who walk will buy a bicycle, people who ride a bike will get a scooter, people riding a scooter, will upgrade to a car and those with a car dream of a plane. Farmers everywhere trade their ox plows for tractors, their gourd bowls for tin ones, their sandals for shoes. Always.

 

When we integrate new technology into everyday culture,  our behavior changes.

 This one-way pull toward technology is either a magical siren, bewitching the innocent into consuming something they don’t really want, or a tyrant that we are unable to overthrow. Or else technology offers something highly desirable, something that indirectly leads to great satisfaction.

If you are into technology, media, culutre, or just new ideas, I recommend you read this book! His ideas are intense, but you can digest it slow because it works one meme at a time. His thinking will cause you to look at technology and humans as a co-evolutionalry force that shines light on whats to come!

What Technology Wants – Kevin Kelly

 

This is one of the best videos of 2013 and 2012! Only 3000 views? Revolt ! ! !

LA weekly featured and in depth article on the evolution of the YouTube ecosystem and the growing problems facing the big YouTube Networks. The article come down pretty hard on Machinima, and also mentions my former company Maker Studios. It’s simple, this space is going through some growing pains. One thing I can tell you from my experience is most YouTubers could use more help. It’s not easy to do it all on your own and the Youtube community should be more open to advice from both YouTube networks, as well as the “old guard”. There is SOME good stuff that old media brings to the table. While I had my issues with the old school nature of record companies, my time Warner Bros Records showed me the power of pushing back on Artists, challenging them to be better. Most YouTubers think they don’t need this type of advice. It seems that the YouTube Networks are starting to take on some of the worst characteristics of the old guard, without helping the Artist grow. You don’t need to throw everything out from the old way – evolve. My experience at Maker? They cared, and it showed 🙂

 

In September 2012, I took a chance working for a new company – 2013 means the full energy of Revolt TV is coming to life. Check out our linked in page to learn more!

“Revolution is the ultimate social leap – a period when the gradual accumulation of mass bitterness and anger of the exploited and oppressed coalesces and bursts forth into a mass movement to overturn existing social relations and replace them with new ones. A few days of revolutionary upheaval bring more change than decades of “normal” development. Rulers and systems that seemed invincible and immovable are suddenly unceremoniously toppled”

A little about us!

Revolt Media & TV is a new independent music and music news themed cable network under with distribution commitments from Comcast and a launch agreement slated for 2013.

Revolt changes the game by leveraging digital technologies, including social media, to give artists a powerful new platform to connect with viewers, and to create and deliver a category-defining experience. Like all great moments in television history as well as social networks, the channel’s programming will be live, immediate and in sync with today’s digitally connected artists and musicians. The network will recharge and reinvent music TV to reflect today’s digital technology. Anchored by a state of the art broadcast center to constantly lead and feed the dynamic changes in music in real time, Revolt will be a fully integrated digital/TV venue where artists rule the airwaves 24/7, while engaging directly with fans in an unpredictable hub where the magic of live is the link. Led by proven masterminds of music programming and pop culture taste making, Revolt will be the trusted curator that serves empowered artists and fans, offering viewers access to impromptu performances, live daily news feeds, breaking news for tour-on sales, last minute great seats, behind the scenes action, and real-time updates on what’s hot and what’s trending in music, by the minute.

TWITTER DEBUTS NEW FOX SHOW!

Check out the cool integration here

YOU TUBE SHOW GOES TO TV:

YouTube sees a show move to TV. Trium Entertainment’s “Recipe Rehab,” hosted on the Everyday Health channel, will begin broadcasting on hundreds of local ABC affiliates beginning on October 6

CW EMBEDS TWITTER INTO ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY PRINT AD

Check out this amazing campaign, courtesy of Lostremote.com

 

Its not easy to just get a check and make a channel! Brief piece from WSJ

Only two days in, and I can tell that facebook’s integration of music partners has changed music forever. While there are lots of amazing wow features in the new facebook product, the feed of one click streaming links to spotify, mog, and slacker, all made me happy immediately. My first few clicks took me to new music and and forgotten favorites with ease. The ticker is a new starting point for music, triggering new ways of browsing the unlimited library in the cloud. Heres are three shifts in music to watch as adoptions rises:

VOLUME GOES UP
Adding a real time, one click stream of music from people I am connected with, increases the volume of choices with no friction. So far, I think the new integration creates not just more, but more GOOD choices than ever. Using people as my editors seems to be working. Can I forget about any outside promotions or having to comb blogs, or check in whats new on pop radio? I know the people who do that in my feed, so that’s baked into their choices, they are my filter on filters. I can just stick to my feed. If volume and quality goes up, value returns. CD’s increased volume in terms of amount of music per container, but net quality went down.

FLASH GENERE
A link to a Slacker station led me to an old favorite Rod Stewart song from eighties. For some reason I hadn’t heard this song in years. This sent me into a day of genre surfing through 80’s hits, and thats where I lived for the day. Not the album the Rod Stewart song came from, the Slacker station itself, or even Rod Stewart in general. How did my day of 80’s music surfing flow through other feeds and change peoples musical map for the day? We don’t know yet, but I’m betting that music moves in bigger chunks now that were connected to it all. Artist catalog’s and entire genres will wash over you. When I lock into a genre surfing session, if it takes a few days to explore, I’m stuck in there, and everything else from the outside world is on hold. The access model makes it easier to consume bigger chunks in shorter times. In my youth it was 6 years before I’d heard every Pink floyd album! Now its a weekend.

NEED FOR COMPATIBLE LINKS
The only time it all seems broken is when I navigate things coming in from services I don’t use or pay for. Id like a universal connector, something that grows the positive experience Facebook started, and the pool of revenue for everyone. Lets also choose on a universal song rating system on the open graph, that can travel too, so if I do move to new services, my ratings go with me via facebook.

Try my feed on Facebook /jeremywelt

Some of the most interesting music experiences are pivoting off spotify as a music engine, and universal link format. Here’s two of the best new add-on apps that have me hooked, and using spotify more than ever!

1.) TUBUFY

Copy any playlist url from inside the spotify app and Tubufy creates a youtube playlist with all the same music. Neat way to hear and share your favorites and see some interesting, and sometimes unexpected visuals!


 

 

 

All you need to do is right click on the name of the playlist from within spotify and select “Copy Spotify URL”. Paste this into Tubufy. It should look like this:

spotify:user:jblogg:playlist:60JGlPEFDaaNZCB81RRYVn

End result is this:

http://tubufy.com/spotify:user:jblogg:playlist:60JGlPEFDaaNZCB81RRYVn
 
For some reason some of the songs sounded better via youtube?

2.) ECHO FI

Put in a band and get pandora like radio via spotify. Here’s what makes it better than Pandora  for me (at least on a pc, i don’t see a way to make it mobile). The songs play like pandora, seamlessly controlled by a web interface, but the songs appear in their native album format inside spotify. It gives you a context you don’t get via other internet radio products. It’s much easier to stray from the passive radio experience  and go active to explore a few more cuts from that album. Accessing the the song in the context of the album gives me a sense of the other tracks on the album it came from, mixing play listing and albums into one experience.

The layers of culture wrinke, and adbots compete to reach you.

Here it all collides:

Venetian Princess (a popular cover song artist on you tube) creates an original song and video advertorial to promote ice-t brand Brew over Ice K-cup, which gets targeted via keyword with adword overlay from Flavia coffee.

Looks like this: What is she promoting here?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ad on Ad:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like the idea of sneaking your value on top of someone’s creative. Smart, as the ice-t creative wasn’t very good. Thats the key here – original content that is going to promote product, needs to stand out, because you’ll literally have an ad on your ad.

 

 

The new Jay Z and Kanye album “Watch The Throne” was a mega event that launched as an itunes exclusive. How did the exclusive iTunes window on a release this big translate to a world where spotify has real traction? If you were a subscriber of streaming services like Spotify or Rdio, at a minimum, it was an inconvenience, at worst you missed it. Most of that major media, blog and radio promo was wasted on me. Hearing an anticipated release after months of build up, the moment it hits the world, together with other fans – that’s part of the magic!

But when Tuesday came, it was all not enough to pay $9.99. I thought about it seriously. After dealing with the anxiety of unsatisfied demand by complaining on twitter, I received a nice surprise when @rdio tweeted back that Watch the Throne would be available for streaming on Friday! These guys are on it! I’d wait.

But it wasn’t until Sunday that I even remembered to go back and listen. The massive hype died down, and when I finally did listen, it was somewhat of a let down. The air was taken out of the event and I didn’t want it nearly as much as I did on Tuesday. By Friday, I was distracted by new and more urgent listening demands.

It took this decision point, a record I really wanted that was outside of my ecosystem, to take note of how subscription now has me locked in!

First, if your not coming to me, I’m waiting, not buying unless I positively have to, and definitely not if i haven’t heard it first. This is new for me. The cloud ecosystem is no longer an adjunct to my itunes library, it has it grip on me fully. Remember every second I’m listening, your competing against every album ever for my attention!

The second thing I noticed was “Watch the Throne” wasn’t urgently in in my social feeds. Social itunes links aren’t connected as deep to my facebook or twitter, and buy links don’t drive me to click. Thus per facebook SEO, I probably see less from people who use itunes links to share in my feed vs streaming links which generate my participation. So many friends I look to for guidance on what music gets my attention also rely on subscription playlists and streams. If they’re not getting it, I’m not getting it pushed.

I get the reasoning behind the release strategy. I certainly don’t feel that 9 bucks for an album is a ripoff. I also get from my experience that the monetization is just not the same yet. With a once in a life time event, why take a chance and leave recorded music revenue on the table? Id have to listen to Watch The Throne probably hundreds of times from start to finish to generate the same revenue. To date Ive listened to the whole thing twice, and then a few songs 5 or 6 times. Just a year ago, I’d have bought it first day. How many people have learned they can live without? Piracy drove the first wave of music fans creating huge digital music libraries and access to everything instantly. It was easy to downplay the emerging ADD nature of music for because it wasn’t based on a legal model.

Growth of services like Spotify are now pushing fans into a legal musical wonderland. But now it’s harder to pay attention to any one release. Supporting both huge top-line releases and subscription is hard. However ignoring one for the other is something we’re just starting to understand, and I don’t think that tactic can last for long.

— note – i am also hearing that the sound quality of Watch The Throne is BETTER on spotify than on itunes? Please leave a comment if youve heard both!

Latest news in QR codes this week, and i don’t think I need to write much more.

Of the 14 million mobile phone users who scanned QR codes in June 2011, a full 60 percent were male.

Great article giving you more stats:
http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/12/qr-code-stats/

And for a nice info graphic on how the people that use them, use them, from a site that shares my thinking:

Ahh the ever lasting QR code debate… I used to have a poll here that tallied up thousands of votes around QR codes, with the overwhelming response that QR codes are completely over rated, because most people still don’t have a reader. It’s still a hot topic here in the office, so it was great to find this infographic on them, created by the guys at Lab42.

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-how-people-use-qr-codes/

QR codes capture a lot of attention and press. Why? I’ve had a lot of experience with them, and it seems consumer adoptions is still relatively low. The tech behind qr codes is simple, they are not driving significant revenue, and they really just point you somewhere. But perhaps I need to take my business hat off and look at this from an open source innovation perspective! Time and time again, it’s what you do with it that counts. Maybe it’s the fact that QR codes are an easy standard to get your head around and innovate with? Something about them seems to capture peoples imagination, and there seems to be profound curiosity with hacking this interface into our phones to create neat things. Not completely useless though, because its hard to not find some joy in this – art meets mobile tech! Enjoy!

All You Need to Know. Time Saver: this review is for the more experienced streaming music user, familar with the basics of a subscription streaming service. I’m a long time user of Rhapsody (not currently) Rdio (my main service) and MOG.

FREE:
Free service is usable, probably best example yet in a post myspace world. It’s also quick – program is fast, runs smooth.

PREMIUM

THE GOOD:
instant id and integration of your library – i didnt know it even happened.
Facebook – best integration, and truly fun to browse your friends playlists and hear full length music inside spotify. Hands on the best job at social and subscription to date.
Sharing – easy and fun across multiple platforms. Would like email option
Great Mobile integration
Synching seems to work great as well as the simplicity of sending tracks to other users
Fair Price point

THE BAD
The interface is over. Itunes already jumped the shark a few years back as an interface. Better is possible, and available –  play buttons are way too small at the bottom of the inteface. It should minimize like the itunes and rdio app.
Discovery and Navigation are tough. Not an engaging experience, more utilitarian, but not enough to be the front end to all my music.
Editorial. Needs it somewhere.
Vibe – there isnt one. Its virtual guys, add some tower records in. Both MOG and RDIO do this well.

Leave me a comment and question and ill give you an invite while they last!

Alot of action with QR codes this week. I still see a big disconnect between proper use and a short term tech buzz. For beginners, I think this is the definitive post from my experience, on how to use them effectively.

5 tipes for using qr codes effectively

But we seem to be far from the tipping point, or the jump the shark moment, so this was another huge week in the qr code debate.

It started with CNN using qr codes in the first Republican debate. It was curious that they gave so much screen time, and I really cant see the practical use of someone scanning a qr code from the tv during the debate as really adding value. How about just telling viewers to go to cnn.com???

Google “cnn qr code” for more info on this, and strangely enough, you might see first find that CNN’s own site has an article from March that seems to question weather or QR codes are the real deal!

Marketers embracing QR codes, for better or worse

CNN debate With QR CODES

Jon Stewart certainly got the irony of having someone pull out a phone, launch an app, and then scan a code from a tv screen – he spoofed the CNN QR code stunt the next day on his show.

Daily Show Counters CNN on screen qr code

And then there was the webby awards and Webby winner Jessica Stuart wearing a dress with qr codes that took you to her award wining video. This one I like! Your at the webby’s you have your phone, maybe you missed her video…..

“It’s my nerd version of the Lady Gaga meat dress”

A banner week in national qr code action, yet for many the feeling of all this being nothing more than a short term novelty trend continues. Nice article from the people over at lucid agency

QR Codes May Fade Into Retirement

I echo their sentiment….. But to share both sides, along the way this week I found a few new sites that take the postive side of qr codes, and offer some nice coverage if you want to stay up to date and decide for yourself!

http://qranywhere.blogspot.com
http://qrcodegenius.com/

Youtube is always thinking about the health of their community ecosystem. Over the last five years of explosive growth they’ve maintained their focus on community, while also helping the “hits” and established stars thrive. My former company Warner was the first music company do a deal with Youtube, and I learned early on how important maintaing and growing the community dynamic was to Youtube’s evolution.

THE EDITOR
Professional creators and amateurs creating their own content and working together on the same platform is what makes YouTube so exciting! The video editor launched almost a year ago and it was a great community tool that opened up YouTube as a creation platform. The in browser editor allows drag and drop assembly of clips from your youtube library, and basic editing and trimming of each clip.

CREATIVE COMMONS ADDED TO VIDEO EDITOR
This week YouTube took the video editor to the next level by adding thousands of clips under Creative Commons license. The Creative Commons Video Clips are royalty free clips that you can use to make and mix with your own creations legally. You can even commercialize the your new work, as long as you credit the source.

Doesn’t Youtube’s move elevate the CC license to a new status? Wont more youtubers be familiar with how CC works than traditional copyright? Will youtube shine a spotlight and increase the amount of users on youtube who upload there stuff with CC for us all to use?

How long until we see the first youtube superstar that only uses existing CC source material?

“It’s as if all the Creative Commons videos were part of your personal library,” explained Product Manager Jason Toff

why youtube adopting creative commons is a big deal

If your not familiar with cc liscenses, there are several “flavors” but most use the broadest one:

Attribution CC
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

PLAY IT FORWARD AND MAKE YOUR OWN CLIPS CREATIVE COMMONS
You can also publish your own content as Creative commons and have it available via the editor to other youtubers. Cool! I made this clip only with CC videos and music available to use for free in the editor.

At least we’re seeing a bold vision! A two way street of open source video content allowing anyone to use it? The remix culture many on the net have been asking for but with video? I cant wait to see how this evolves.

YouTube Blog post: YouTube and Creative Commons: raising the bar on user creativity

Get the most from you tube editor