eMusic for Sale?

PaidContent is reporting that they are hearing rumbles that eMusic may be for sale.

That would be big. I don't know particularly who would be the best/most likely suitor for them. It could be any of the current players that wanted to hedge against their DRM-strategies. Maybe a carrier? Maybe even Apple looking to absorb their closet competitor and simultaneously test a (pseudo) subscription model? Microsoft looking to jump start Zune? Techcrunch posted a story about Bill Gates' thoughts on DRM that maybe gives insight into why eMusic may be an interesting target. I have no idea, but it will be interesting to watch.

Here we go... this is the beginning of the great music service provider shakeout.

(my) Best Albums of 2006 (or close)

As everyone is starting to compile their "Best Albums of 2006" lists, I got motivated to do the same. I remembered that I had started using Wists earlier in the year to track these (think Delicious with thumbnails). So I just went back and added few more for consideration. Below are my finalists (others may be to come). Granted, they were not all techincally released in 2006 - but that is when I first came across them - and after all, I am the center of my own universe. :-)

Feel free to recommend others or let me know what I may have missed. In no particular order:

More on Music 2.0

Paul Lamere over at Sun picked up on my post yesterday on "music 2.0". I'm glad I'm not the only one that has trouble with that label, but he takes a good shot at getting more granular with it:

http://blogs.sun.com/plamere/entry/music_2_0

As a starting point he suggests:

Music 2.0 sites fall into a number of camps:

• music services - places like iTunes and Rhapsody where you can purchase or subscribe to music
• Music discovery - places that help you find music - these fall generally into 3 subcategories:
• Social - wisdom of the crowds sites like last.fm, iLike. Goombah and Qloud
• Content-based - recommendations based on the music content - Pandora, SoundFlavor, MusicIP
• Expert based - Music recommendations from people - music blogs, irateradio.com
• Music experience augmentation - sites to make your music listening experience more enjoyable - this includes playlisting sites like MusicMobs, fiql and Webjay - music dashboards like sleevenotez or Snapp Radio
• Music meta data - add to the data surrounding the music - MusicBrainz, All Music Guide, Gracenote

He also is suggesting a wiki-approach to creating the "ultimate music 2.0 directory". If you are interested in contributing, check out his post and volunteer.

Music 2.0 Companies

Yeah, I don't really know what "Music 2.0" is supposed to mean either, but I've compiled a list of companies that I've come across the are doing something interesting with music online. Some are subscription services with APIs that make syndication easy, others are informational sites, a handful are social networks (some arguably not really music-centric), a few are search engines, and some are recommendation engines.... and at least a couple, I'm guessing, are probably not legal.

Feel free to comment an add to the list. I've highlighted some of my personal favorites, and ones that I use with some regularity. In no particular order....


Mystrands: http://www.mystrands.com

Last.fm: http://www.last.fm

Pandora: http://www.pandora.com

SHOUTcast: http://www.shoutcast.com

Soundflavor (formerly Siren Systems): http://www.soundflavor.com

Musicip (formerly Predixis): http://www.musicip.com

Mog: http://www.mog.com

uPlayMe: http://www.uplayme.com

Genielab: http://www.genielab.com

Upto11: http://www.upto11.net

Fiql: http://www.fiql.com

Qloud: http://www.qloud.com

Audiobaba: http://www.audiobaba.com

Musicmobs: http://www.musicmobs.com

Doublev3: http://www.doublev3.com

Echonest: http://www.echnonest.com

iLike: http://www.ilike.com

The Hype Machine: http://www.hype.non-standard.net

Elbo.ws: http://www.elbo.ws

Sleevenotez: http://www.sleevenotez.com

Rhapsody.com: http://www.rhapsody.com

Napster.com: http://www.napster.com

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com

Musichawk: http://www.musichawk.com

Plurn: http://www.plurn.com

Purevolume: http://www.purevolume.com

Streampad: http://www.streampad.com

Haystack: http://www.haystack.com

Mixmatcher: http://www.mixmatcher.com

Finetune: http://www.finetune.com

Muiso: http://www.muiso.com

Sonic Breakdown: http://www.sonicbreakdown.com

Audiri: http://www.audiri.com

I Rate Radio: http://www.irateradio.com

Clinko: http://www.clinko.com

Indiscover.net: http://www.indiscover.net

Webjay (Yahoo): http://www.webjay.com

Podbop: http://www.podbop.org

Mercora: http://www.mercora.com

Bebop: http://www.bebopular.com

Jamendo: http://www.jamendo.com

Art of the Mix: http://www.artofthemix.com

Foxytunes: http://www.foxytunes.com

Reverbnation: http://www.reverbnation.com

Project Opus: http://www.projectopus.com

MusicNation: http://www.musicnation.com

Crackspace: http://www.crackspace.com

Spot DJ: http://www.spotdj.com

Sonific: http://www.sonific.com

Lala.com: http://www.lala.com

Songbird: http://www.songbirdnest.com/

Blogmusik: http://www.blogmusik.net

Spiralfrog: http://www.spiralfrog.com

Google Music Trends: http://www.google.com/trends/music

Yes.com: http://www.yes.com

Moodlogic (AMG): http://www.moodlogic.com

Burnlounge: http://www.burnlounge.com

Mp3tunes: http://www.mp3tunes.com

The Tripwire: http://www.thetripwire.com

Orb: http://www.orb.com

Jambase: http://www.jambase.com

Tagworld: http://www.tagworld.com

Bandnews.org: http://www.bandnews.org

Musicovery (with LivePlasma): http://www.musicovery.com

The Filter: http://www.thefilter.com

Soundloud: http://www.soundloud.com

AOL Music Now: http://www.musicnow.com

Playlist Radish (aka Scope Creep): http://www.playlistradish.com

Splashcast: http://www.splashcast.net

Qtrax: http://www.qtrax.com

Project Playlist: http://www.projectplaylist.com

Yoogli: http://yoogli.com/products-services/index.php

Splicemusic: http://www.splicemusic.com

Snapp Radio: http://www.snappradio.com

Rate Your Music: http://www.rateyourmusic.com

Foosic.org: http://www.foosic.org

Owl Multimedia: http://www.owlmm.com

Goombah: http://www.goombah.com

UPDATE: I've now got a running list on delicious (with the tag "music2.0"). Not sure why I didn't do this in the first place. I've also displayed as a linkroll in the sidebar towards the bottom of the page. Either way, here's the link:

http://del.icio.us/rss/jherskowitz/music2.0

Musicane

I just started to dig into Musicane, which is basically a platform for independent artists to embed and sell their content directly from their sites (or others via a viral embeddable player widget).

For those of you that know me for a long time, you may remember my brief foray into the label side of the business with Prodigal Sun Records - which I started in 1994 and ran while I was in grad. school. Well, my one an only artist - Biohio - is long gone (although you can still find the guys kicking around in bands like Emmet Swimming, Quitter UK and The Device.), but I used their debut album as my guinea pig. Check it out below...

Buying Guide: Online Music Services (PC Magazine)

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=2693675

Nice coverage of Music Now, with it being heralded as a "standout service". The conclusion being:

"Unlike its rivals, Music Now requires no client software. All you need is a browser, and you can play any song or playlist in the entire catalog. You can listen at the office, a friend's house, or a Web café as easily as at home. The music videos are a great addition, and the new XM Radio section really rounds out the service. Unfortunately, you don't get remote access to your locally stored music library, and support for the Firefox browser is weak."

Rick's points are valid, but in the meantime if you are looking for remote access to files - I'd suggest checking out the latest build of Winamp, which integrates Orb's great remote access services.

iPhone

Cnet is reporting that Taiwanese ODM, HonHai, has received an order for 12 million iPhones from Apple. They further speculate that the phone will be an unlocked GSM phone that would work out-of-the-box with a T-Mobile or Cingular GSM card. Only downside to that approach.... no contract means no hardware subsidy. So be prepared to pay full price for the iPhone (expected in Q107).

Real should buy MusicGremlin

Someone asked me the other day what I thought of MusicGremlin. Fact is, I think they've got a pretty killer little wifi media player grafted on to a fairly standard MusicNet-powered service. The devices does everything that Zune wants to do - but doesn't yet. A little company like MusicGremlin is never going to be able to compete on the same marketing scale as Apple, Microsoft or even Napster. Which is sad because I hate to see good products and services wither on the vine.

So, Real should take the cash from $700million dollar settlement from Microsoft and acquire the little company with the Zune-killer. Wouldn't that be sweet revenge for Real? Use Microsoft's money and MSN's ad placements (part of the settlement) to buy the device that does well the one thing Zune gets most hammered for.... direct-to-device dowloads and device-to-device sharing. They could also totally abandon Windows Media DRM (Plays For Sure) in favor of their own (like they have done with SanDisk).

Real could then subsidize the hardware when users commits to a year or more of Rhapsody-to-Go. I'm sure I'm not saying anything that others haven't said (or may be considering for all I know). But as a consumer, I'd buy it.

Tags: real+musicgremlin+rhapsody

A VC: Yottamusic - Rhapsody The Way I've Always Wanted It

A VC: Yottamusic - Rhapsody The Way I've Always Wanted It: "A service called Yottamusic launched. Yottamusic is basically a new front end on top of Rhapsody which has opened its web service."

I'm guessing that this can't be monetized beyond the affiliate dollars? Once/if advertising starts getting added, then the wrath of the labels will be felt as they demand their pound of flesh. I would actually think this would make Rhapsody nervous and potentially curb their openness in the future.

Project Playlist

This comes from a Webjay competitor called Project Playlist. Looks to essentially search for hosted MP3s, then lets the user create a playlist out of them, and then embed the player into your site of choice.

Here's a random one:

The site is an absolute mess - there are ads everywhere and you search is less than useful. But...


UPDATE: I got rid of it, it didn't seem to have a way to turn Autoplay off and it was really starting to get annoying.

MyStrands : M-Chart Generator

Everyone is doing scrobbling and embeddable widgets now, and MyStrands is no exception.

M-Chart by MyStrands

Firefox 2.0 & Performancing Extension

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about writetomyblog.com. Performancing is another tool that looks pretty useful in this regard. It runs as a Firefox extenstion and makes it really easy to post and comment about a page in an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor that essentially pops open as a drawer from the bottom of your Firefox window.

You can drag and drop images right from the page into your post (see below), which is really nice.

They've got some other analysis tools, but if/once I ever move to Firefox full-time, I'll look more into it. Right now, I'm also running IE7 (which I like) because some of my favorite destinations don't yet work in FFX (due to ActiveX implementations), but hopefully soon I will be able to settle on one browser and stick with it.

powered by performancing firefox

powered by performancing firefox

Borat Deleted Scenes

Entertainment Weekly asked the question whether the Borat movie is the "funniest movie of all time, or just the most offensive?". I say... "can't it be both?".

Finetune

This process of building a playlist/station is a bit tedious (search/add, search/add, search/add), but the result is pretty cool. I manually entered about 30 of the tracks - of the 45 required - to build a "playlist", and then let the "I'm Lazy" button fill out the rest. I can only assume that the 45 track minimum is so that they can adhere to DMCA business rules (and hence a lower royalty rate). I'm no lawyer, but I'm not sure if this actually complies to the letter of DMCA anyway since I can skip an unlimited number of times.

GigaOM » Price Hikes For Yahoo Music

GigaOM » Price Hikes For Yahoo Music: "On November 14, 2006, the cost of a new Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription will increase from $6.99 to $8.99 per month. Despite this price increase, Yahoo! Music Unlimited will still offer the lowest price of any major subscription music service — now with a catalog of more than 2 million songs!"

Hmmm... Yahoo Music is struggling and Napster is rumored to be up for sale. The winds of change....

Howard Stern reaches out to new Internet audience - Yahoo! News

Howard Stern reaches out to new Internet audience - Yahoo! News: "The new service offers more than 75 channels of CD-quality programming over the Internet -- without the need to buy a Sirius satellite receiver -- for a monthly subscription fee of $12.95, the company said in a press release."

You've got to really love talk radio to pay $13/month for 75 channels of one-to-many programming. For less than that I can get true, personalized, one-to-one music programming of more than 2.5 million tracks....

WriteToMyBlog

I found a couple cool new web apps this week. The first, Competitio.us, is a collaborative competitve analysis tool. It seems like it could be valuable for multiple team members to update news, feature matrices adn messages. I'm starting to play with it now, and it seems promising.

The next, is WriteToMyBlog (which I'm using to write this post). It is basically an advanced WYSIWYG editor that can be used for multiple blogging platforms (including sending a single post to multiple blogs simultaneously). It appears to be a much more robust editor than Blogger has (not sure about the others). Easy inclusion of tables, flash files, custom javascript pop-up controls, code cleaner, spell-checker, and more.

?

Tags: cool+tools

New Winamp Player Emerges - Computing News - Digital Trends

New Winamp Player Emerges - Computing News - Digital Trends: "AOL has debuted their new Winamp media player, this time with support for pictures, video and other AOL services."

Naplinks

Pop-Up Test

Click here to listen to a good Stereophonics tune.