My experiments involving the social graph, aggregation, data portability and MP3 search continue. I've now got my Imeem just played feed automatically producing MP3 search results as well. Unfortunately, I don't yet see a way to easily get your Imeem UserID from your username/login info... so it's not really user friendly for anyone else at all at this point since I had to manually dig mine out and hard code it. Regardless, I've added it to my lifestream and it seems to be working as well as the others.
Unfortunately, Soup.io (my current publishing platform) nor Tumblr seem to be able/want to keep up with the feeds. That being said, I'm also pushing my aggregated MP3 stream to some other lifestreaming services that seem better equipped to keep up. FriendFeed feed seems to deal with it pretty well (http://www.friendfeed.com/jherskowitz). And while Lifestream.fm (http://lifestream.fm/jherskowitz) won't embed a flash player in the stream automatically like FriendFeed and others, it does have a cool feature (powered by Beam-It-Up-Scotty) that lets you send links via SMS to anything in your or others' lifestream(s). So if you see a song you like, you just "beam it" to your phone, click on the link, and listen to the track stream over the air. Pretty cool.
So, I'm still hacking around with some of my science projects and I now have an MP3 resolver for XSPF playlists working. You give it an URL to for an iLike or MyStrands playlist and it will go and try to rebuild it using free-range MP3s.
Why? Well, I started with those two services because their client software (iTunes/Winamp/etc.) plug-ins can automatically publish your playlists from your media player to the web. Since most people make their playlists on their desktop, this cuts out the step of having to manually recreate it on the web so you can share it with others. Also, it lets you leverage any other "playlist builders" (e.g. Apple Genius) on your local machine and then publish those machine generated playlists too.
For example, the URL for this (actually the URL of the XSPF file, not the page):
I still need to add support for Last.fm playlist and I'm digging around to see if I can get at the data for the playlists at iMeem and Playlist.
Yesterday, I also added the javascript Yahoo Media Player to this page, so now all of the MP3 links being spit out from my friendP3 stream are now playable as a playlist directly from the player.
Apparently I don't have any fans at The Register. I'm not sure why the personal attacks, but perhaps I ran over the writer's dog in another life. That aside, I just wanted to briefly comment on this...
TotalMusic goes totally titsup • The Register: "Uh, now - let's see, Jason. Why didn't TotalMusic crack it? Well, you don't make it easy to find and share music. You don't allow people to keep music. You fail to make all the music in the world available - but you don't allow people to share what content they have, either? And you want to keep the billing relationship?"
I'm not sure what product or offering is being referred to here, because there is nothing in this statement that is representative of what I was working on. Although, I do agree that I would find a model built on those principals to more than a bit distasteful. That, and we also seem to have a similar view of my skillset.
And so it goes. And, so do I. I know what you are thinking... "Hey Herskowitz, you were only there 3 months, how did you manage to screw it up so quickly?!". Heh... all I can say is that in that short time I had the privilege of working with some great people on something that I *know* was going to be extremely compelling. I regret that we didn't get to show you guys more about what we built - but in these extremely hard economic times (particularly for those in the music industry) it's hard to blame them from pulling the plug on a still-highly-speculative offering .
I only hope that someone else figures out how to crack this music-on-the-web nut in a way that is a win for everyone in the value chain. The problem is that to make a music service a win for everyone, then they all of the famished participants have to sit at the table - and be content to let all the others have a little bit to eat, even though they are still hungry themselves.
I, first and foremost, am a music consumer - so I'm always compelled by the innovation happening down at the consumer-level and then try to follow it back up the chain to the content creators. This gives me a decidedly different perspective than the artists and labels that are trying to solve this from the other direction. But, from where I sit at least, I see all of the innovation in digital music services coming out of bootstrapped companies and passionate tinkerers. Hell, there are very few private investors or venture capitalists that want to get anywhere near this space right now... and rightfully so considering no one has really figured out how to make any money out of this industry (and its products) that so many people love.
It should therefore come as no surprise that these small sites and services don't have the resources, or desire, to deal with licensing content directly. And for that matter, nor do the content owners - imagine the legal and contractual management overhead. So, where is the middleman? The platform? The catalog? The APIs? The no/low-involvement licenses? These are all required to not only stoke innovation, but to ensure people get paid. Without this we find ourselves in the same place repeatedly. Virtually all of the small "music 2.0" services go one of 4 routes for their content. 1) MP3 search engines like Seeqpod and Skreemr, 2) YouTube music videos (either with or without actually rendering the video frames), 3) Remote access offerings like Simplify and Orb, 4) User-generated uploads.
What I truly believe is that the market needs an alternative to #1/#2 that lets innovation be built quickly and painlessly upon open APIs - where people are paid, costs are covered, streaming is free and drm-free commerce is to be had. Simple, right? Well, maybe not so much...
In the meantime, yesterday I started to experiment with a couple of things that simply leverage what is available to me... MP3 search APIs, playlists, community charts and play data. I was able to quickly mash together some of this freely available and flowing data and stood up "friendP3" . It's simple really, it aggregates your (and your friends' if you desire) play data/favorites from the APIs and feeds of Last.fm, iLike, Pandora, Rhapsody, Hype Machine and others. For every track/artist name it sees, it hits some search APIs to see if it can find a MP3 version of the track out in the wild. If it finds one, it then automatically embeds a flash player with the track loaded (along with the link to the MP3). This is all done from afar... the mashup was all done in Yahoo Pipes, the MP3s sit on other sites from around the web, the front end is just a hosted microblogging platform, and the recirculation and sharing back across multiple social networks and services is a simple "AddThis" implementation.
Currently, what is on www.friendmp3.com is stuff that is being automatically generated from *my* friends on Last.fm. But when one of them listen to a song in iTunes, or on Last.fm radio, or bookmark a song they hear on Pandora (web or iPhone version) and the MP3 just shows up the front door of friendP3 for others to enjoy. Conversley, I've also generated a feed that is made up of solely my history across these services and dumped that into my lifestream at www.ambientsignal.com (as well as my FriendFeed and Strands streams). For that matter, you could just take the "podcast" feed and to subscribe to it in iTunes or Winamp. I listen to stuff, and your local library would just get filled up in the background. Now mind you, I'm not endorsing that people use this in lieu of buying music. But, I do think that all of the above are fabulous discovery tools - and I know that I have already bought a couple of albums that I have a heard a track from friendP3 since yesterday.
The first question my friends ask me when they see it is... "is it legal?". The answer I give... "no one really knows", because there is no blanket statement that can be applied. Some of the content was made freely available by their rights holders, all reside on other people's servers, search and "content discovery tools" are generally deemed to be protected under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (although the Seeqpod/Warner Music case will test that), downloading (I've been told by some lawyers) is not a crime (it's the "making available" to others that is gray), and the endless number of other nuanced legal questions open to interpretation. The answers to all of which are/will have massive implications to the future of the web.
But wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to do this on a platform that plays nice with everyone? And compensates those that deserve compensation? And somehow can magically cover the costs associated with all of the above (hint: this is the kicker)? I sure think it would be. If anyone wants to build/fund that, drop me a line (jherskowitz at globallistic dot com)... I'm currently looking for something to do.
I have heard of Margot and the Nuclear So & So's but never really listened to them before. I discovered this album last night, and am really digging it (even though the story is the band was not happy with this version of the album). Take a listen and see what you think....
So, one of my last posts a month or so ago was... "I'm going to start blogging again". Well, it turns out I lied. After my time at Strands (formerly MyStrands), I thought I was going to take a few weeks off and catch my breath. But as supreme luck (and perhaps good karma) would have it, my dream gig landed landed in my lap about 24 hours into my psuedo-retirement. There has been a fair amount of speculation about what this new company is up to... some right, some wrong, but all compelling enough that I jumped at the chance to be part of it.
So, I quickly cranked through the extensive "honey do" list I had been assigned (involved lots of painting and fixing of stuff) and got back to work. And what a busy 6 weeks it has been so far. Those that follow me on Twitter (@jherskowitz) have probably seen me talking about numerous all-nighters as we've been hurtling towards unveiling ourselves to the public.
Drumroll please..... because here is. MY NEW PLAYLIST IS FINALLY DONE! :-P
Yes, that is what I believe those in the marketing world call a "tease". More info to come on what (and who) is behind all that made my new playlist possible soon. In the meantime, just enjoy some free and legal music above. There are some new albums that I've been really digging lately too, and I'll be posting more in the coming days/weeks. Enjoy.
It seems like every year I'm trying to figure out the best way to bookmark and display my favorite albums of the year. This year was no exception. To determine my favorites, I looked at a number of sources... first I created a smartlist in iTunes that just included music that was released in 2008 (and then another for 2007 to see what was "new to me" in '08 even if it was technically released last year). That information combined with some of my chart data from Last.fm and MyStrands.com helped me figure out what I listened to most. I then went and searched for each at AmazonMP3 (and eMusic for one import) and then bookmarked them using Delicious. Take the rss feed for those "bestof2008" tags and then feed them into an embeddable widget from YourMinis.
Yes, it shouldn't be this hard and I'm sure (or at least I hope) there is a much simplier way that I just happened to overlook. There were were things that *should* have worked much more easily but all seemed buggy and weren't producing the desired output. If there isn't then my resolution for 2009 will be to make sure something gets built. Anyway... enough soapboxing, here's the list. Enjoy them... I know I did.
UPDATE (1/08/2009): Here are a few of them for your listening pleasure... in their entirety.
Want to know what Macrovision is working on with their acquisitions of AMG and TV Guide? Check out their promotional video, specifically the "Everything Guide" chapter.
Personally, sign me up... or more accurately, sign Comcast up. Their programming guide is one of the biggest frustration-generators in my life. Something like this on my Set-Top Box would be a very welcome addition. Although judging by the speed at which the cable and satellite companies move, I'm not going to hold my breath....
"Today is my last day at Strands. I feel fortunate to have worked with many of you, and I think together we have built something really special - and something that was, and will continue to be, the foundation of something even bigger and better.
Whenever so much of one's spirit and soul are invested into the creation of something from nothing to a full, living and breathing product, it is saddening to not be able to take it further with you all. I hope to see everyone succeed on the path that we began down, regardless of what direction it ultimately takes.
I wish you all well.
- J"
What's next for me? I'm not quite sure yet other than a deep-breath and spending a little time evaluating a few options. I'll probably get back to blogging in depth on a few topics that I've been spending some time thinking about lately. I've got a couple of loose product ideas that I may further work through. And I've got www.mediaor.com (and now www.ambientsignal.com) that need some TLC. After that, I'm not sure yet... but I'll let you guys know once I figure it out.
I was going to write a long blog post talking about why I don't write long blog posts much anymore. But instead, I figured I'd just create a video...
You will also notice that I added a bunch of Strands Tips & Tricks videos in the sidebar that you may be interested in. Meanwhile, if you want to come follow my on Strands, feel free to come join. Just go to www.strands.com, click on "request an invite" and then enter your email address and promo code "jtwit".
I look forward to seeing you over there. And don't worry... when I do have something to ramble on about I will still do so here, but you will get it there (www.strands.com/jherskowitz). Along with my photos, bookmarks, favorite videos, songs, etc.
Image via WikipediaWhat's old is new again, eh? News just broke that Best Buy purchased Napster for $121 Million. Congrats to Napster for finding an exit, but I'm not all that bullish on the prospects for Best Buy to be successful with this. This has been tried numerous times in the past by physical retailers, without one highlight coming to mind. The one I am most familiar with was Circuit City's purchase of MusicNow several years ago, only to see Circuit City (re)sell it to AOL (for cheap) after being unable to capitalize on it.
I've spent all of 10 minutes thinking about the implications of this, but I'll start with these knee-jerk reactions:
Yet another subscription model disappears... do you want a subscription relationship with a retailer? I don't. I'm not sure why I find this so unappealing when I have subscription relationships with many (less trusted) companies than big box retailers, but it just doesn't *seem* right to me.
Would Best Buy consider selling off the subscribers to Rhapsody and just focus on selling DRM-free MP3s? Perhaps... that's an easier sell to their current customers. Buy and iPod at Best Buy and get 10 free MP3s? That could actually be a pretty interesting conversion strategy.
Most consumers have relationships with a digital goods provider right now (e.g. Apple) and I don't see an incentive for them to switch. Granted, Amazon has been successful in selling both physical and digital goods, but I think they are the exception not the rule. Although, I'm thinking that Best Buy sees the digital platform giving them the ability to more proactively push digital commerce affiliate relationships with "click to buy" MP3 links that are meant to compete with Amazon's and iTunes.
I'm sure my thoughts will continue to evolve on this over the next day or so, but what is for certain is that the digital music space continues to have more rehashed storylines and drama than your average daytime soap opera...
Image via CrunchBase, source unknown I just read a really good post from Read/WriteWeb with more speculation on what is coming with iTunes 8.0 software next month (click the link below to see the whole story):
The Case for an Apple iNetwork: Welcome to the Social - ReadWriteWeb: "While most of that is common knowledge, what most people overlook is the glaring lack of any community aspect to iTunes. There are millions of people, many of them with similar tastes, flocking to the same destination every day, yet they never interact with each other... because they can't. If Kevin Rose is to be believed, however, (as discussed on TWiT 157) that all is about to change with iTunes 8.0.
He says, '... the one thing I hear about iTunes 8.0 is that it's gonna do something along the lines of, um, looking at your music, and, uh, kind of recommendations based on certain things.' In other words, the next version of iTunes will monitor your media purchasing and consuming habits and correlate them with everyone else using the system to figure out which songs you will probably like but haven't bought/listened to. If you're a fan of collaborative filtering systems or internet radio (Pandora, Last.fm, etc), you're probably familiar with the idea already and that iTunes may be considering implementing this doesn't come as a surprise (I found myself wondering why this wasn't introduced 2-3 years ago)."
To make a real play at being a music network I think Apple needs to give iTunes a web presence (outside of the client application), but nonetheless the potential notion of Subscription + Cloud + iPhone + Taste Networking = pretty compelling proposition. Last.fm, iLike and iMeem have established the market for such experiences now. This is about the time when Jobs likes to walk in with an offering (while claiming they *invented* it).
I still think that they will come in with subscription at some point (if not now), but I'd put pretty good money that September announcements include MobileMe + enhanced taste networking/discovery features (with still an outside shot of full-blown subscription being announced too). Apple wouldn't be going through the headaches with MobileMe transition (aka "upgrade") if it wasn't key to their strategy moving forward - the next logical step for it is cloud storage (and playback) of your iTunes library with the additional kick of wireless (push) sync management of that media down to your iPhone/WiFiPod. Once your content is in the cloud and universally accessible, then limited sharing (streaming) to a small social network of your friends enhances discovery of new content, with easy "buy" links back to iTunes which can then push the newly purchased content to your device, computer and cloud all simultaneously.
Image via CrunchBase, source unknown We'll see if this actually plays out... but news is (re)surfacing that Apple's iTunes subscription plans are for real.
Rumors of iTunes music subscriptions fly again | The Industry Standard: "MacDailyNews says the service will be called 'iTunes Unlimited' and offer 50% of the songs currently on the traditional U.S. iTunes store through the program at launch. The subscription will be for one year and be available through iTunes or a retail box, similar to how MobileMe/DotMac is sold. iTunes Unlimited would launch, initially, on the U.S. store only. The subscription would cost $129.99 on its own, $179.99 with MobileMe or $99.99 for existing MobileMe subscribers. The site claims a late September announcement with late October rollout, just in time for the holiday season. TUAW received (almost certainly from the same source) a similar report."
But if it does, I won't hesitate to be the first to say "I told you so". :-)
I agree that it is a very complex issue - with many parties to be considered. Webcasters, songwriters, artists, record labels, technologists, legislators, consumers. There are some that think that the music "establishment" (aka major labels, RIAA, SoundExchange) are doing everything in their power to reverse the clock so they can go back into history and undo some of their previous actions. The hope is, that in doing so, they create a better future for recorded music sales - one in which they own and control every piece of the pie. Others go so far to say that the labels actually have a vested interest in *killing* streaming radio as they see it as actually a replacement to sales. By killing the existing ecosystem, they can start over (an idea I don't totally disagree with). It's like those movies where some madman wants to nuke the planet so we can "start anew" and cleanse the sins of humanity's past.
I don't really know where I am going with this... other than, this is how I see the most recent actions of the "establishment". I may be somewhat naive, this is how this whole thing seems to be playing out:
Act 1
labels give terrestrial radio the rights to broadcast royalty-free (to generate awareness and sales of physical product)
Act 2
labels want more promotion so they start *paying* to get the content played (payola)
Act 3
labels told that "pay for play" is illegal and start looking for additional (free to them) promotional outlets
Act 4
labels want more promotion so they give MTV rights to royalty-free broadcast of music videos
Act 5
labels see other parts of the music ecosystem starting to make money (or *not* make money, but attracting users) and think "hey, that should be ours too"
Act 6
labels start demanding/increasing payment on plays (where they used to gladly pay for such a thing and would still be doing so if the federal government deemed it illegal)
Act 7
streaming/radio ecosystem can't afford to be in the radio business and all exit - or move to royalty free programming (talk, news, etc.) - this is in addition to MTV/VH1's continued shift to reality TV and away from music
Act 8
labels don't have any promotional outlets to get their content heard
Act 9
labels continue to explore new media distribution outlets for their content (commercials, soundtracks, etc)
Act 10
due to limited inventory and increased competition to get song "placement" labels offer royalty-free content
Act 11
go to Act 1
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” - Albert Einstein
Image via WikipediaI have been having major connectivity issues on my MacBook for the past week. Dropping the connection, pages not loading, streaming media stuttering. I spent days searching Google to find out what the issue could be and tried everything - deleting preference files, clearing my PRAM, rebooting, reconfiging my Airport, reboot, reboot, reboot.... all with no luck. There are tons of forums that have lots of theories as to what is causing it (and lots of people yelling at Apple to fix the problem).
In my case, it was something simple. RealPlayer 11 was the cause. Presumably something to do with the "stream catching" feature. Granted, it is a cool feature that will let you rip YouTube videos, songs from Pandora, and more... but the damn thing my computer virtually unusable for 3 days. I dragged the app to my trashcan and all my issues were resolved instantly (didn't even need to reboot).
I'm not sure if there was a setting or config in RealPlayer 11 that could have been switched to remedy the problem, but if you are having similar problems you may want to see if this is the culprit.
The lack of multitasking support is a bigger limiting factor than what appears on the surface for the iPhone (e.g. "it sucks that I can't view my calendar and listen to Pandora at the same time"). Particularly hamstrung are the social music and discovery applications, and the consumers that love them.
You can't run apps in the background therefore you can't build a "scrobbler" for things you listen to locally on your device - see the (shameless plug) Strands Social Player that runs on Symbian, Windows Mobile and other mobile OSes but can't be implemented on the iPhone due to their restrictions
The SDK doesn't allow you to touch any of the local music, only streaming content (or so I've been told), so you can't build an alternative local music application that has social features built-in (who else is listening, top fans, etc.)
No support for flash - so you can't port/expose existing flash players in the Browser
Therefore, if you are a social media company/developer that wants to do something with music you are really pretty limited to building streaming applications (much to the chagrin of AT&T I'm guessing). Unfortunately, that hinders many discovery companies and applications from doing really compelling stuff around helping people discover new content based on what they are currently listening to (locally).
As for the streaming apps, it is interesting to note the impact of their format decisions on performance (at least on EDGE).
Last.fm is basically unlistenable on EDGE - each song buffers for an extended period of time (a minute +) so once the song starts playing back it is good but the in-between song silence is almost longer and more unlistenable than a commercial break. This is presumably a byproduct of their 128k MP3 streams (or so I think).
Pandora *almost* will sustain a stream in my car at high speeds - I believe they are streaming 64k AAC(plus?)
AOL *was* in a prime position to offer a great EDGE streaming use case, for many years they were supporting 16k AACplus streams for their dial-up users - I don't know if this infrastructure was abandoned or whether it was a business decision by CBS, but they disable all but terrestrial simulcasts when you are on EDGE.
Dear Apple, let the reins loose a little bit and let the ecosystem thrive. The first batch of music apps is a great start, but there is so much more that can be done if allowed.
The iTunes Apps store has started to surface this morning (installiTunes 7.7 update and then click here.
Here is a screenshot of them, with the ones I find most interesting circled. (Not pictured: TapTheBeat, Tuner and TyroTuner.)
I assume that both Pandora and AOL Radio are only streaming over WiFi but at 64kbps AAC/MP4 it is certainly possible that streaming over 3G is possible too. The "Remote" app lets you use your iPhone and/or iPod Touch to control your iTunes - think about your laptop (or AppleTV?) hooked up to your stereo while you site on the couch or sit in the backyard controlling the tunes.
The rest don't look all that interesting to me, but I'm sure there are thousands more in the works as we speak.
Cool site (www.woordle.net) will take your delicious tags and let you turn them into a customizable collage that lets you edit your fonts, colors, etc.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=37b17beb-294a-429c-a895-a0e9195b38e3)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5e56d44d-131e-4e09-885f-941eb84ff104)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=da0df740-380c-49b4-a5cc-a7b765aab59c)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=17a875be-7ef3-4920-bcf0-74a12aecb4d1)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=be7f5751-fe18-4a4a-a179-b4c820f5e9de)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=72e2725f-52a9-4eac-ad46-b3c2a5aacc90)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=13a2ee4d-7eee-4bef-a236-8b5f5fa245f9)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0fcffdde-3340-46f1-a717-e85796607d00)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=cf01bd37-aa90-4349-aec4-c590ad99d728)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d35b8cc9-6040-4390-bc6e-4e12ed0c817a)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=bc5f3a3a-673c-4917-987d-1f7ccd7fe646)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d99ac796-0de7-4c1d-aa0c-5159c89c053d)
