AOL Music - When Ads Attack

I just went to go see what's been going on at AOL Music lately and was virtually accosted and groped inappropriately by Kohl's department store.

Now, I have no inherent dislikes of advertising... it is often a business necessity, and on rare occasion the ads are even enjoyable or personally relevant. Unfortunately, that was not the case today - and I sincerely hope that the site is broken and this is not working as intended. I went to the site with the intention of watching some music videos, so I landed on their home page and clicked the "videos" tab.

(Aside: I fully expect as a consumer that I will see ads on each of these pages, and expect at a site like AOL that I will most likely see some video pre- or post-roll every other video I watch.)

But, when it went to load the video "hub" page I was presented with a full-page interstitial. OK, not *that* horrific... many sites do that (a number of news sites comes to mind). The issue I have is that the interstitial was a video commercial for Kohl's department store! Considering I'm currently online using my AT&T wireless card the whole process freaked out my machine while the video buffered... there was no escape. Later, I finally got the "skip this ad" (about 30 seconds too late). My other issue? I have no interest in Kohl's. There is one down the street from me and I've never been in it. No interest, not relevant to me.

The question I have is... given all of the options for music videos out there would you (as a consumer) ever come back after experiencing this? It's one thing if you're the only game in town, it's quite another when you have new competitors every day.

The Greatest Coldplay Video Ever?

What on earth is going on here?! Coldplay playing live on a morning show as a musical backdrop to octogenarian Dancing with the Stars?!


See the video at The Frames Channel on MyStrandsTV

MyStrands.com: Now with Quick Launch Video Channels

We just made it supremely easy for MyStrands users to launch music video channels from every Artist and User page. You will notice a new link on each that says “Watch the Channel on MyStrands.TV”.




Just click the link to open a new tab/window and enjoy the show. For artists, we will launch you into a virtually endless stream of their music videos, interviews and coverage from their live shows. For users, we create the channel based on content they listen to, like, and have not yet discovered yet but we think they will be into. Listen to your's, or listen to someone else's! Want to know what I’m into, just check it out:

http://www.mystrands.com/musick_in_the_head

Now so simple even my mother could do it!

Shameless Plug: Introducing MyStrands.TV

Remember when MTV used to actually play music videos? I had friends that were completely addicted to it... a TV replaced their radio and they would just leave MTV on all day to serve the roll as their personal soundtrack. Well, we all know that you couldn't find a music video on MTV anymore if your life depended on it. Sure, you can find lots of great music videos on the web, put it's a painful experience of fits and starts. Think of a song or artist, click play, watch. Think of another... rinse, lather, repeat. It's actually quite paralyzing... quick tell me the next 5 songs you want to listen to. I'm guessing most of you can't, because you don't actually *know* - you need a programmed experience to get you kick-started and then give the freedom to explore once you are one you way.

Well, I'm happy to announce the arrival of MyStrands.TV. It's simple... if you already have a MyStrands account then you just log into MyStrands.TV and start enjoying and endless playlist of music videos that are personalized specifically for you.... based on your music listening history and recommendations. Want to veer of course a little? Great, under the video player there is a selection that will help guide you... either select the next song in the playlist to be either: 1) From a Similar Artist, 2) From the Same Artist, or 3) From a Different (non-similar) Artist that we think you may also like. Away you go.


While you're listening, bookmark your favorite videos check out other people that have recently listened to the artist. Want to hear what that user's personalized channel sounds like? Just click on their avatar. Or, jump over to another featured artist for the current channel or and entirely new recommended channel. Hear or see something you just *have* to share? We've made it really easy to email a link to the video to anyone you want, or just as easily embed the video directly into your MyStrands Journal. It's up to you... use it as an interactive video channel or just let it run in the background like radio.

Don't have a MyStrands account? No worries, just sign-up (it's free), download the client software (available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Windows Mobile and Symbian operating systems) and start capturing your playback history from you favorite media player. We'll do the heavy lifting of publishing your history and favorites to all your friends as well as offering you up recommendations of other stuff you may like and other listeners that share the same tastes. There's a ton of other features to the client too that I think you'll enjoy... instant track recommendations, community tracker, automatic playlist builder, playlist publisher and more.

Want to just try it out before deciding whether to sign up? That's cool, just type in the name of an artist and we will build a custom music video channel from that. Feel free to explore.

Have any ideas on improvements or new features? We'd love to hear them. We've got some ourselves - including better integration with the rest of MyStrands. Stay tuned.

Music Video Widget

This is pretty cool. Using Truveo (now part of AOL), you can create a video search query (at www.searchvideo.com) then plug the query string into the widget on http://video.aol.com/snag/scrolling_thumbnail_strip to create a dynamically updated video widget on your page. It will pull content from all over the web, although in the example below I limited it to music videos from AOL Music, with a sort of "most popular today" and tagged "indie".

Last.tv - the YouTube/Last.fm Mashup

I love this concept (although I'm not much of a music video watcher) - it is a mashup of YouTube and Last.fm. Basically, it builds your own personal music video channel based on artists you like (pulled from your Last.fm profile). Others have done similar things by bouncing your Now Playing information up against the YouTube library to find videos from that artist - but this is more of a continuous experience. It will string together a continuous playlist of music videos from artists you have listened to before (or your musical "neighbors" have listened to).


last.tv