PRESIDENT’S DAY OR VALENTINES DAY PLAYLIST

Really depends on where your at 🙂

I Originally made this on last year on Imeem and wanted to post it again. But as you know Imeem’s gone away. However it did make its way into myspace via the import! Nice work guys – and every song was there!
Hear it in full (log in required)
But I cant share it on my blog with myspace music, so I re-created it in Lala. Thats where the problem was. For some reason Lala doesn’t have the two killer songs (but myspace music does? so i can get it for free, but not via a paid streaming service??)
First one missing on Lala was “Dustland Fairytale” (so i choose the karyoke version!) and next was “This is Your life” (so I choose a different switchfoot song with the same name because that came up first in Lala’s search!) So thanks to rights issues, here it is on Lala with a few adjustments!

THE FUTURE OF RECOMMENDATION ENGINES: UBIQUITY AND CONTEXT

My Amazon preferences don’t talk to my itunes ratings or my genius playlist. Neither of them factor in my recommended videos on you tube or vevo. My “ilike’s” don’t tie into my mog preferences…

With all this music and information I still have trouble finding quality stuff I want. And I still miss bands I should know about, or live dates from bands I love!

I’d like a way to set up a highly customizable preference/recommendation engine that followed all my music, video, movies, purchases, streams, and could form “meta recommendations” from them all. Then combine ubiquity of preferences with context (location) and the future connected recommendation experience emerges. Moving seamlessly across sites and services, I could listen to music and media on several different devices and still capture a true picture of my media and commerce behavior. Of course I’d want strong privacy setting that allowed me to benefit from this targeted experience, not just advertisers and merchants!

Anyone working on anything like this? Anyone else want it?

FIND MIX WATCH: YOU TUBE LAUNCHES MUSIC PLAYLIST TOOL

FIND MIX WATCH. That’s the tagline for You Tubes “Music Discovery Project and Playlist Creation Tool”. It’s a new tool coming out of you tubes lab that allows you to create artist based playlists of music videos. While it’s a visual playlist, it alos holds its own as an audio experience.

Just type in the name of an Artist, and an instant video playlist is created. “Mix Tape” and “Similar artist” options give you several ways to epxplore new music and shuffle the experience. You can save also various playlists. but there is no ability to individually move tracks, or share playlists. I just minimized the video and had a pandora like experience.

You tube’s size, combined with this simple tool, and suddenly you tube is a much bigger player in the online music space. This tool also deepens role in music discovery, and connecting artists and fans.
Curious to see usage numbers, and the new features I am sure will come soon.

Check it out here:

ACTIVATE YOUR IMEEM PLAYLISTS ON MYSPACE MUSIC

Emails went out a few days ago letting you know how to import your imeem playlists into myspace (Myspace Music acquired certain Imeem assets a few months ago).

Nice to see that myspace retained all the user and song info, and one of the first mass example of the portability of the playlist as a format:

Access your playlist by clicking here:
www.myspace.com/music/import-playlists.
You will need to be logged into MySpace.
Log in or sign up for MySpace.

2.
Enter your imeem e-mail address.

3.
Click import and we will retrieve your playlists.

4.
Upon completion, your playlists will be stored in
“My Music,” our playlist management tool. All
playlists can be identified by the name
“import_[yourplaylistname]”

If you have questions visit http://faq.myspace.com/app/home.

Pros: It worked for me with no issues and no import lag time. All of my imeem playlists showed up as private in my myspace playlist dashboard.

Cons: A few songs seem to be missing, due to rights issues, and of course I miss the embedability of imeem! I also have not gone back and replaced my imeem embeds with new links to myspace and I doubt I ever will have the time to do that. That’s an important piece of the playlist transfer they missed.

Will LALA go through a similar process when they are fully integrate into apple?

Checkout a few examples of my old imeem playlists imported into myspace:

New Urban Music 2009

2008 new music sampler

LInks to some past playlist related posts:

Imeem vs Lala Update

New Music Playlist 2009

Imeem vs Lala

BEST OF 2009 – STREAMING PLAYLIST FOR LALA, MYSPACE AND MOG!

Here’s a new playlist of songs from some of my favorite Artists and Albums of 2009. I mixed a few different genres together including some of the best new music, and A+ efforts from some established Artists. Indie, quirky, and mainstream tracks, all living happily together!

After picking the tracks, I tailored it for each of the major streaming music services (a challange I will cover in next post..) and threw in an itunes imix for downloaders. Enjoy your way:

LALA: Playlist represented in full:

MYSPACE:
They don’t give a great option for embedding in blogs (the “share to wordpress” button does not work!). Also Tom Petty live “breakdown was” not in there so I replaced with “nightwatchmen” live, and Taylor Swift Breathe was not there so I replaced with the karoke version! (log in required)

http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music.singleplaylist&friendid=417774986&plid=1085432
(log in required)

MOG:
Found every track here as well, but this is a paid service:

http://mog.com/playlists/35440

Itunes Imix:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewIMix?id=348700889

As with any “Best Of” list, there’s alot missing – no urban or hip hop in this mix – thats next. Happy New Year!

MUSE IS ON HULU!

What a way to end the year! I spent my last week in the office bringing the first Warner Bros Artist to HULU. It was a a lot of hard work by the folks at HULU and Warner to get the deal done, and all of the content ingested and ready to launch in synch with MUSE’s SNL appearance! Enjoy their live DVD right here, right now, and check out the rest on the official MUSE HULU channel!

http://www.hulu.com/muse

GROWTH OF VIDEO ON FACEBOOK GIVES ARTISTS MORE CONTROL

New stats have facebook in the top 3 for video sites. As consumers become more comfortable watching videos on facebook (most likely through embeds of other sources like you tube and hulu), Artists can effectively build their own video views in existing communities. While you tube has community features via their channels, I like the idea of facebook communities becoming another visual hub.

Facebook Ranks In Top 3 Video Sites:
The view from Y-pulse, and how this may effect hulu and myspace
New Tee Vee’s take, along with the rest of the top 10 players

So now build your community and get your video directly to them. Building a facebook community around video offers some benefits you cant get with your you tube commuity (who’s channels have limited community functionality), and allows video to become a part of the conversation already taking place.

Shakira’s Stats Don’t Lie: Facebook/Ustream Music Video Debut Is A Hit

More options! Make your own video premier – Shakira, facebook and ustream create something exciting, direct to fans, in an environment that makes it easy to pass along.

Earlier this year I helped set up a live broadcast with Ashley TIsdale on her facebook page that over 100k simultaneous viewers. Clearly facebook, with the help of established video partners like ustream, is starting to unlock the potential for Artsits’s facebook communities to become a destination for music videos, and visual interaction.

MUSIC AT NEW TEE VEE LIVE 09

I love reading the New Tee Vee blog every day and video is an increasingly important aspect of the music business. Think about it – the majority of music is listened to on a device with a screen! I think I was the only music exec at New Tee Vee Live, but it was worth the trip – although the question “is the tv business going the way of the record business?” and the “we wont make the same mistakes as the music biz” quotes were slightly annoying.

So what are the broader trends and how do they apply to music? Here are a few quotes from some of the speakers, and some of the interesting things I heard during the panels.

Erik Flannigan
EVP of Digital Media,
MTVN Entertainment Group  

Hits are Hits. Eric explained that hit tv shows have big video numbers online, and shows with lower ratings have lower views. It’s a one to one relationship, and he said there seems to be no erosion in the ratings of popular shows by having them streaming online.

“Don’t underestimate the mass of passive”

Great point and a classic quote. People don’t want to spend tons of time looking around to watch what they want on you tube, torrents and other on demands sites. It’s more that programming for the mass doesn’t meet their needs anymore. If possible, most consumers would rather lean back and just get great programming that was relevant to them, instead of having to seek it out.

Now think of the long tail, radio, and music. Applying Eric’s comment to the much hyped long tail I agree its probably not the “solution”. It’s really about better music, engaging artists, and better programming.

Laura Goldberg
General Manager of NFL Online,
National Football League  

The internet turned the niche activity of fantasy football into a main stream pastime, and as a result, grew the audience for the NFL. Laura explained how fantasy football drives demand – now you need to watch all the games! Very clever. The advantage is football is a closed network – to watch all the games in real time you have to pay!

Chuck Seiber
VP Marketing,
Roku  

The Roku video player is an on demand video box with over 50,000 titles. Now they are opening their platform to anyone who wants to make a “channel” on their box. Their install base seems low, but is this a chance for someone to make a new type of music service? Seems like the infrastructure and hardware is in place.

Jason Seiken
SVP, Interactive,
PBS  

Nothing music related here, but I had no idea pbs launched the coolest video sites of all the networks!

http://video.pbs.org/

Gary Cohen
SVP of Marketing and Customer Experience,
Redbox  

Redbox offers kiosks in retails stores that rent dvd’s for a dollar. The talk was that some of the studios were upset about the impact of “substitutionally” of redbox rentals on dvd sales.

Substitution for purchase is something we talk about a lot in the music biz, with you tube, piracy, and streaming services such as myspace. Gary denied those claims, and said redbox did research to show there was less that 1% substitution for purchase (of course they did!)

However I loved his quote – “People who buy, buy, people who rent, rent”

Or as we sometimes say “people who buy buy, people who steal steal”

Great day – see you next year!

THREE LINKS: VIDEO, MOBILE, AND MUSIC

VIDEO
Great content, and nice technique for success:
How IKEA’s ‘Easy to Assemble’ Broke 1.9M Views (Without Cheating)

MOBILE
New product idea from the people:
World’s First Multimedia SF Novel on a QR Code T-shirt.
Buy it via ebay!

MUSIC
Devo is Back – I was there!
These guys are still unbeliveable!

“one of the few truly original rock acts of the last 40 years.”

San Jose Mercury news

Devo fans find `Satisfaction’

TOM PETTY SUPERHIGHWAY TOUR: 48 DIGITAL EXPERIENCES

The Superhighway Tour is a brand new online music product developed by the Tom Petty team here at WBR, and Tom Petty himself!. It’s a direct to fan digital configuration of the upcoming The Live Anthology, with the bonus content on demand from the cloud!

48 digital tracks for $24.98, mp3 AND FLAC! The digital tracks are presented within a dedicated web site and delivered with truly compelling additional material. No DRM – just real value in an on-line experience actually worth paying for. The multimedia around each song gives context, depth and understanding to what is already a career-defining live music anthology. nd them.

The site includes streaming audio commentary from Tom and the band on the songs that are included in the Anthology, historic photos and videos, show reviews, recreated vintage merch, and areas for fans to share their experiences and photos from Tom Petty shows.

http://www.youtube.com/tompetty

And you get 24 tracks before “traditional street date”! The first 24 tracks, which make up the body of the Superhighway Tour are delivered over an 8 week period that leads to street date (11/23/09). The remaining 24 tracks will be delivered collectively on street date.

You can get a free live track without even signing up!

Head there now! http://www.tompettysuperhighway.com

GOOGLE MUSIC LAUNCH – IS SERVICE THE NEW FORMAT?

Rumor hit earlier this week on the google music service:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/google-music-service-the-screenshots/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/22/google.music/index.html

Google already has some experience with music in CHINA

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123841495337969485.html

Google and LALA? Readers of my blog already know I am a fan of lala (like this guy!)
http://changingway.org/2009/10/21/singing-lala-about-google-music/, and i’ve done a lot of great work with ilike and lala…so this looks interesting!

But this all got me thinking about the CD as a music format. There were benefits of this old technology, benefits of a clear standard from the player, to the audio format to the physical medium. You showed up at your friends house and it worked.

With Google entering the scene, we’re moving beyond the physical/file, to online experiences and services. It made me think – what role does compatibility and standards have with services? Is Google the mechanism for compatibility?

Is there a “service” standard where music can be monetized more effectively? You can move from different subscription vendors with ease and keep all of your preferences? If services and experiences had some way to know your preferences, and transfer them seamlessly, google could become a “front end” to an exciting music experience

I’d bet this is not something Google is going to build, but Google’s involvement (whatever it may be), starts making online music services and experiences Interesting. Looking forward, you see google becoming a frictioness traffic driver to all sorts of music products and you dont start over every time you try a new one.

Let me know your thoughts as this story unfolds throughout the week, and Ill post updates as I learn more.