mediaor mobile

By the way, the mediaor feed works great with a mobile feed reader (e.g. http://wap.aol.com/feeds). Check it out.

mediaor - a music/tech feed aggregator

About a month ago I threw out the idea of establishing a single destination with multiple bloggers that cover this "music 2.0" space... a sort of laser-focused Techcrunch. I had a few people ping me and say they were interested in contributing, but then I got busy and never got around to doing anything about it.

So, in response to my laziness on the topic, I took an easier approach.... a "river of news" style feed aggregator of music/technology focused sites that I regularly read (inclusive of this one).

www.mediaor.com

In my daily routine, I use Pakeflakes as my start page and have all of these feeds (and many more) laid out as modules on the page. The problem is, some people post a lot, and others very little. This "river" allows me to quickly scan the latest and greatest without having to filter through them all individually.

I quickly pulled this together in about an hour with Tumblr (free) and a domain name I scooped up tonight through GoDaddy ($9/year).

Based on the rules of each blogger/publishers feeds, you will notice that some stories will post in full while others only provide a snippet. In either case, attribution and backlinks are always provided. Also, if you want to comment on any post you need to do that at the origin blog.

I'd be interested in what people think. Is this useful? Are there others blogs you want to see "thrown in the river"? Just let me know....

Who are you calling a Slacker?!

There's been speculation around what Broadband Instruments is (doing), and now we know. Tomorrow Slacker will be officially unveiled, but Billboard has got the details a few hours early.

Top Execs To Launch Slacker Inc.: "Dennis Mudd, former CEO of digital jukebox software company MusicMatch, is chief executive of the new venture, which up to now has been quietly operating under the name Broadband Instruments. Jim Cady, the onetime head of MP3 player manufacturer Rio Digital Audio, is president, and Jonathan Sasse, the ex-CEO of MP3 maker iRiver America, is VP of marketing.

In conjunction with the launch, the company tomorrow is bowing an Internet radio service at slacker.com that allows for the creation of personalized stations.

Later this year, the company will introduce a line of WiFi-enabled handheld portable players that can wirelessly access and sync Slacker radio programming via home networks, PCs, and public hot spots."

There's more information when you follow the link above. I'm not sure, but it sounds like they have cut direct deals with the labels for "interactive radio" (as opposed to being covered by the standard DMCA compulsory license). If that's the case, then it seems that all of they swirl around the new Copyright Royalty Board's new royalty rates probably don't affect them.

This is essentially "radio to go", and is a ad-supported model (with a premium ad-free service). Later in the year they plan on rolling a true on-demand subscription service, as well as dedicated wi-fi enabled hardware.
I'll definitely check it out, although I'm worried they are trying to do too much. On a related note, I saw the Zing-powered Sansa Connect (WiFi portable player) at the Digital Music Forum a couple of weeks ago and it is very slick. It is suppossed to be hitting the market later this month with a "yet-to-be-named" subscription service (safe money is on Rhapsody).

Now I just need to move somewhere with city-wide WiFi.....

Yottamusic - The Best Search Box I've Ever Seen

There are a bunch of Yottamusic fans out there as of late. To over-generalize, Yottamusic is basically an alternative front-end to Rhapsody.com. They are on their way to building out some more interesting community features than Real seems to be interested in pursuing, including a very nice Last.fm integration (everything you listen to from your Rhapsody account is tracked/reported to your Last.fm profile). That alone makes it worth checking out, but the real "wow" (hopefully Microsoft hasn't trademarked that term) comes when you start typing in the search box. Considering they are build on top of Rhapsody's service, they are providing lighting fast as-you-type matching results of over 3 million songs and tens of thousands of artists.



You can also launch their pop-up player and start listening without ever leaving that search box. I think they would greatly benefit from some personalized programming/recommendation - as I often stare blankly at the search box trying to think of what I want to listen to. But, if you know what you are looking for, this is the place to get it.

You can't listen without having a Rhapsody account (in fact Yottamusic's only apparent revenue stream is from affiliate revenue from subscribers they generate) - but anyone can go and type in that search box on their front page and see what I'm talking about.

Major Labels' Digital unStrategy

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Digital Music Forum East conference in New York. There were some very amusing and enjoyable debates (albeit few surprises), with many conversations - if not most - focused on "To DRM or to not DRM" and licensing ("we want more, even if it is of less").

Reuters was obviously covering the same conference as well, and have basically summed it up in this story:

Record labels' digital strategy -- do nothing - Yahoo! News: "So what are labels doing other than licensing their music to digital services that they hope will become successful? According to many service providers and industry analysts, the answer is -- nothing."

One thing that I found very useful in the conference was the use of Mozes. Basically, there was a large screen on stage during all of the keynotes that had an SMS number and code displayed. Attendees could send questions and comments to that number and within a few moments would be displayed on screen.

In some ways it's reminiscent of the PartyStrands service from MyStrands. Although they are focused on bars/nightclubs and giving the crowd a way to interact with each other, influence the DJ and basically create a temporal music micro-community.

Mindmap to the Stars

I am a big fan of Mindmapping software. For those people who do their best thinking standing in front of a whiteboard with marker in one hand, and eraser in the other, these applications make me more productive.

I started with Freemind (freeware), then upgraded to Mindjet (~$600), and not think I have found the next successor.

MindMeister is still in beta but it looks to be very promising. I could write more, but it's probably easier to map:

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show_public/210681

Note: they are also embeddable via an iframe directly into blog posts, but it was breaking my layout, so I just did the direct link instead.

Noisebox Internet Radio - Internet Radio of the Future?

Delicious satire, or chilling reality? While I think the former is that intent, I wouldn't be surprised to see it become the latter.

NOISEBOX INTERNET RADIO: "Whoever pays the most, gets played the most.

We will charge, for each track streamed to a listener, whatever is the CRB-established royalty rate (with all those extra bonus payments for “ephemeral” copies), plus calculated royalties owed to those other performance rights organization, plus the technical cost-per-stream, plus a nifty markup for our time and energy. The VCs love the business model. What scale. As costs go up, revenues automatically go up. Pure capitalist happy and joy."

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Courtesy of Imeem....

IMEEM

I've got to be honest, IMEEM kind of slipped by me. I knew I had heard of them, but didn't think of them as a music-centric service. That is, until I saw this announcement today, which made me go back for another look:

Digital Music Pioneer Ted Cohen Joins IMEEM'S Board of Directors: "IMEEM, an innovative media-centric social network, today announced the addition of Ted Cohen, former Senior Vice President from EMI Music and current Managing Partner of digital media advisory TAG Strategic, to their Board of Directors. Cohen will play a key strategic role in helping IMEEM to further develop an innovative social networking service which enables creative expression, recommendation, and discovery."

I haven't gone really deep with IMEEM yet, but at first glance there is some really nice UI, design, page/profile builder and snaggable player/module. However, it's biggest usability drawback from a music perspective is also it's biggest legal liability.... the fact that the primary way to build playlists is by uploading (one track at a time). Of course, you an also add songs from across the site into your own playlist, but it appears that you have to go to a song-level page to add those (as opposed to being able to add songs from a list view).




There is a lot more there that I'll have to get to at another time.

Radio No! (Part 2)

As you can imagine, the web is buzzing with news and opinion on the future of Internet Radio after last weeks announcement on the new royalty rates. In fact, Om Malik has a quote from Tim Westergren (founder of Pandora) in which he says, "left unchanged, it’s over for us and every other internet radio service, period. Makes it un-viable. We’re staying online because we’re hopeful that sanity will eventually win out. This is a ludicrous ruling.”

If you agree (as I do), then you should check out:

http://www.save-internet-radio.com/2007/03/02/save-internet-radio/

Whether you don’t want to see your favorite internet radio station go off the air, whether you just hate the RIAA, whatever the reason: please, help us get this senseless, greedy policy designed to do nothing but line the pockets of the record industry overturned. Write to, or better yet call, your representative, your senators, and the Copyright Royalty Board. Tell your friends and family, write on your blog, digg this - help get the word out and help to Save Internet Radio!

They also have a nice walkthrough calculation where a small webcaster with 1000 listeners on average could easily rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalty obligations.

Also, David Porter (formerly of Live365) has his own calculation on what that means to the amount of advertising a station would need to have to just break even.

So if we assume an average CPM of $5 for audio ads - probably a bit aggressive, at least at this stage - the webcaster would need to run at least 6 ads per hour in 2010 to cover the required SoundExchange payment. Again, to say nothing of composition royalties, bandwidth, contribution to overhead and profit.

And Rags Gupta (also formerly from Live365) has some thoughts on the implications to the industry.

• There's greater certainty for Webcasters as they've been waiting to know these rates for a while, which may have had a chilling effect with respect to their getting funded (I've counseled at least a couple of VCs looking at webcasting companies to wait until the rates have been set).
• It may also impact any M&A activity that may have been swirling (like the Last.fm/Viacom).
• Some services that allow a greater form of interactivity, like Last.fm or Pandora, may well be subject to higher rates keyed off the statutory ones based on any deals they've negotiated directly with the labels.
• Webcasters will need to respond by either upping the ad frequency, finding other revenue streams (as some have already done by inserting video ads). Some may have to use webcasting as a loss-leader to acquire users that they monetize via other means.
• Finally, if these rates do stick and streaming volume stays the same or goes up (ie companies don't fold their webcasting operations), this will mean greater revenue for labels and recording artists, who are looking for additional revenue sources under every stone these days.

There is still some hope in that these rates can be appealed. Let your voices be heard.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2007 Induction - AOL Music

Mark you calendars and watch Spinner's (part of AOL's music network) live/commercial-free webcast of the Rock an Roll Hall of Fame ceremony.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2007 Induction - AOL Music

I'd say it's worth it just to watch Van Halen impolde, but Yahoo is reporting that they may not even attend, and defintely won't be performing (with Velvet Relvover playing/speaking in their stead). When I was a kid back in the early 80's, Van Halen was *it* for me. I bought an electric guitar (a starburst Fender Bullet), plastered my wall with posters of Eddie, only to realize that I didn't have the talent (or drive) to actually fulfill my dream of being the world's greatest rock and roll guitarist. My guitar teacher commenting on the challenges that lay before me and my "unusually small hands" probably didn't help motivate me much either.

Now, 25 years later, my rock idol just comes across as a crotchedly old man that would be about as fun to hang out with as a dentist who is giving you a root canal.

If nothing else, at least R.E.M. will be cool to see....

RIAA Cartoon

Radio No!

In a potentially crushing blow to innovative new music services (many of which I cover on this blog), "the US Copyright Royalty Board has announced new Internet radio royalty rates rejecting the arguments made by webcasters and adopting the per-play rate requested by digital royalty collection agency SoundExchange. Retroactively through the beginning of 2006 the rates are:"

• 2006 - $.0008 per play
• 2007 - $.0011 per play
• 2008 - $.0014 per play
• 2009 - $.0018 per play
• 2010 - $.0019 per play

What does this do to all of the innovative radio services that are already losing money? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing the folks at Pandora, Finetune and others aren't too happy right now.

UPDATE:

Kurt Hanson's Radio and Internet Newsletter also does some quick math to illustrate just what royalty payments that high does to Large broadcasters (AOL and Pandora), Medium Size (Radio Paradise) and Small (Live365's community).

Their rough calculation is that, based on the 2006 rates, AOL would be paying upwards of $20 million in royalties for last year. And if listenership metrics stayed flat through 2010, that means the bill would be close to $50 million/year by the end of the decade.

So, you want to create the next killer online radio service and grow it virally to be the "next big thing"? You better raise about $30 million dollars just so you can pay your bill when they come collecting. Oh, that's right.... no one will do that, instead we will see further innovation around how to skirt around royalty liabilites via various legal loopholes and safe harbor.

Congrats to the Copyright Royalty Board, it appears that by 2010 they will have effectively priced many of the legitimate online broadcasters out of business... paving the way for many other technologies and approaches where they most likely won't see a dime.

Where Am I???

I know, I know.... I was doing a really good job at blogging every day, and now it appears I've disappeared (only a couple posts over the last couple weeks). Well, I've got some stuff that I want to talk about. Now I just have to find the time to do so. Look for some fresh thoughts this weekend on the Digital Music Forum East, and probably some notes on Yottamusic as well.

Digital Music Forum East

I'm going to be in NY for a couple of days at the Digital Music Forum East conference. If any of you guys are going to be there, let me know.

Otherwise, I hope to have some interesting posts following the conference.

Hands On: Critical Metrics

I stumbled across Critical Metrics a couple of weeks ago, quickly tagged it as a a music review aggegrator (similar to MetaCritic, Elbo.ws or Parsefork). I came back to it this week, and realized it had a lot more going on that I had originally given it credit for.

Music review aggregation is a, if not *the* major component of the service - but from major publications like NME, Rolling Stone, Blender & Spin - in addition to major music blogs like Stereogum). But, it is also part MP3 aggegator (like The Hype Machine), part YouTube mashup and part playlisting site (like Fiql).

Here's how it works:

• they filter all recommendations and all reviews ranked four stars or greater during the user selected time period, displaying the "most highly rated, diversely recommended, broadly circulated and recent results first"
• users can filter by review source or category (e.g. "hip hop publications")
• next to every song is a list of the relevant review snippets and their sources - with links back to the source publication (click the expand button to open the listing to see more)

• as a nice bonus, they will pull in music videos for the song from YouTube if available
• coming soon is the ability to deep-link to any number of music stores/service providers to buy/download the song
• you can play the song (in-page) via a simple and slick little flash interface
• quickly add songs to one or more playlists
• also in development is the ability to export these playlists into other services (like Rhapsody and eMusic)
• share you playlists via custom URLs that bring others pack to their site - I assume they will soon have embeddable players too, but don't appear to have them yet

http://criticalmetrics.com/playlist/81784

One of my issues with in-page playback is that you essentially get "trapped" on a page, if you follow any of the links the song you are listening to stops playing. It looks like they are remedying that by including an pop-up player (based on the open source XSPF Web Player) although it seems buggy right now and wouldn't load the playlists.

There is also no notion of community, users are annonymous (which is nice in some ways since there is no registration required - but this cookie-based way of identifying me means that the playlists I create on this machine aren't available to me on my work machine (unless I email or post the share link somewhere I can get to it). It also means that comments I leave on songs have no attribution, but I'm guessing that is in the works.

But, all-in-all, Critical Metrics is a very slick site and service with a lot of potential. I'll see if it sticks as part of my daily routine.

Viacom to acquire Last.fm?

Viacom executives are in London negotiating the purchase of LastFM, the London based "online social music network" (read: internet radio station), according to a music business source familiar with the negotiations. The purchase price is said to be $450 million dollars.

http://www.dealbreaker.com/2007/02/the_rumor_mill_lastfm_being_pi.php

I don't know how real this story is, but certainly interesting. I've made no secret that I think Last.fm is an acquisition target for someone... but I didn't figure Viacom (I would assume with MTV being the main benefactor of such an acquistion). I guess they are looking to fill the void left by a missed YouTube opportunity?

Last.fm Update

The beta I talked about a couple weeks ago is now public to all. It's got a couple of new embeddable widgets.

A "album cover quilt" of top albums:

And a player that plays back in page and can be "popped" out of the page so that you can continue to listen even when you navigate to another page.

Suppossedly, your radio stations are easier to find now... but they moved it out of the sidebar and I actually had a hard time finding them. But, they now also generate "user radio" for everyone (not just subscribers). The catch is that you aren't allowed to listen to your own station unless you pay. I'm sure this is due to the DMCA compulsory license stipulation that you can't have too much interactivity in the creation of your own station. Of course, I have had no interaction with YOUR station... hence the ability for you to create one, even though you can't listen to it.

Other features include:

• Playlists (of full-length tracks and 30-second samples)
• Contact/address book import (supports AOL, Yahoo, Gmail and MSN mail accounts)
  
• Inline playback from the charts
  

RhapsodyScrobbler

What: This program will look for tracks played from Real's Rhapsody service and submit them to the Audioscrobbler database.

Why: Tracks you listen to from Rhapsody will appear in your Last.FM profile.

I found this RhapsodyScrobbler mashup on ProgrammableWeb at the end of last year and was very excited by it. Unfortunately, something wacky with my PC and/or network kept this from working for me, but hopefully you guys won't have the same problems.

I think it is pretty clever in its approach... basically it just pulls in your Rhapsody Just Played feed, parses it and then submits it to Last.fm using their plug-in protocol. It would be great to see more work done on this that it supported other web-based players/services via standard RSS too.

Macknowledge

I realize I've been quiet for a couple of days. Things have been hectic, and today I just got a shiny new Macbook Pro delivered to my desk. So, I'm probably going to be consumed with it through the weekend and my posts may be light until next week.

I used to be a Mac guy... but made the switch to Windows back in the early 90's and didn't think I'd ever come back to Apple. I'm not sure if this is going to be my primary machine yet, but I've got Parallels running on it so I'll see how much I can get away with on a single machine.

I'm loading up with "essential OS X downloads" right now. So, if you guys have things that you think are must haves, I'd appreciate any leads.