A "Perfect" Album Arrives From Britain?

A Perfect Album Arrives From Britain - You haven't heard of the Arctic Monkeys? You will.: "It's enough to make a Yank suspicious of Arctic Monkeys, whose "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" arrives with more buzz than any British debut since Oasis' Definitely Maybe a dozen years ago. But lo and behold, the record isn't just great - it's perfect. "

The albums not hitting the US until Feb. 21st, but you can catch a couple of videos from the link above. Gotta admit it... sounds like it's got some good potential.

muSick in the Head on SuprGlu

muSick in the Head on SuprGlu

This could be interesting... a personal (outbound) feed aggregator. This combined with Immedi.at may be a cool mash-up. I'll play with it and let you know what I think.

USATODAY.com - Get your music to go: Online subscriptions get a test drive

USATODAY.com - Get your music to go: Online subscriptions get a test drive: "A friend argues that he would never use the to-go services because if he pays for music, he wants to own it. But for anyone who wants to check out lots of new music on the run - frequent travelers, bike riders or joggers - the prices of the to-go services can't be beat. "

Forget the other services they talk about and go to the "preview" of AOL Music Now (www.aolmusicnow.com).

USATODAY.com - 2006 could be year that Apple CEO Jobs falls off pedestal

"Sometime in 2006, Steve Jobs will probably get hosed. That's not so much a prediction as it is playing the odds. Nobody in America gets such a long ride on the oh-we-sooooo-adore-you bandwagon."

The tide is beginning to turn....

New Playlist Alerts via AIM!

Now that I've got Immedi.at working, let the fun begin. Want to get an IM whenever I create a new playlist? Click here!

Perhaps more interesting is the mash-up I created between Music Now, Wists and Immedi.at, where you can subscribe to my album recommendations (see the sidebar to see what they are). Conceptually, every time I add an album recommendation, you would get an AIM with a link to the album within the Music Now catalog. To subscribe to this one, click here.

So far, the IMs seem to take there time getting to you, but I'm guessing the folks at Immedi.at are getting slammed right now with traffic.

immedi.at: It's like RSS crack!

I haven't gotten this to work yet, but once I do you can bet I will talk more about it. The concept is... subscribe to be notified via AIM whenever a feed is updated and/or a post is made to someones blog. This tied into some of the music service feeds that I use could be REALLY powerful. Stay tuned, I'll keep trying.

UPDATE: I've now got it working... click here to try it out.

Digital Music News

"AOL will use its recently-acquired MusicNow property to deliver a web-based solution, while Napster and RealNetworks will broaden their existing application-based approaches. Meanwhile, Apple has little intention of moving away from the application, indicating that competitors are taking fewer cues from the market leader.


The key advantage of a web-based solution is accessibility - not only from multiple computers and browsers, but increasingly from mobile devices. At first blush, the proposition is compelling: buy or listen to music from wherever you are, by simply entering a username and password. And for a player like AOL, a web-based approach is designed to integrate more smoothly into a larger music destination."

E-Commerce News: Entertainment : AOL Aims High With MusicNow Buy

E-Commerce News: Entertainment : AOL Aims High With MusicNow Buy: "MusicNow has a long history in Internet time, having been founded in 1999 as FullAudio. Circuit City owned it for about a year, in a move that many analysts viewed as a bold experiment at the time but has proven to be a poor fit.
But that time has given MusicNow ample opportunity to develop a strong user interface and the type of features menu that analysts say will be increasingly important to set music download sites apart, especially as the predicted shift from pay-per-download -- the current model offered by the dominant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes -- to subscription services."

AOL Adds Further Tune To The Sounds Through Its Music Subscription Service

AOL Adds Further Tune To The Sounds Through Its Music Subscription Service: "On Thursday, America Online Inc., announced the spectacular news that it has acquired online music subscription company MusicNow LLC, and has launched a preview of the AOL-branded service."

AOL Adds Further Tune To The Sounds Through Its Music Subscription Service

AOL Adds Further Tune To The Sounds Through Its Music Subscription Service: "On Thursday, America Online Inc., announced the spectacular news that it has acquired online music subscription company MusicNow LLC, and has launched a preview of the AOL-branded service."

The Modern Journalist: It's Back To The Web For Digital Music

The Modern Journalist: It's Back To The Web For Digital Music: "Breaking with the Apple iTunes / Napster model, many biggest digital music providers are moving portions or all of their services onto the Web. This trend toward the Web by music services may be a part of a broader move by technology companies--most notably in Microsoft's new Window Live campaign--to offer increasingly powerful computing features on the Web that were once limited to computer desktops and hard drives."

Jon Wright UK - Music To Our Ears

Jon Wright UK - Music To Our Ears: "Nice to see other music providers starting to think a little differently about how they deliver music online. According to CNET news, America online are going to do things a little differently by providing music that consumers can access anywhere."

GarageRockers

GarageRockers: "As long as WMA DRM is Windows only, they leave out the statistically better educated, wealthier users. Of course, the fact remains that even if Microsoft were to make WMA DRM Mac compatible (and in their current state of desperation, it's pretty much just a matter of time), the better educated user is still most likely to make the smarter choice, and buy an iPod and buy from iTMS because their DRM restrictions are more open than those of WMA DRM."


Ah, now here's a logical arguement... I would contest the point, but I'm obviously not appopriately educated to the point where I could engage in a battle of wits with him (since my OS has a "Microsoft" emblazoned on it). What I love most about his "logic" is that the reason iTunes/iPod will win is due to it's unsurmountable market share position (80% marketshare). Bascially, if you're not the market leader then you shouldn't even try, yet he seems to be composing this arguement from his Mac.....

Dygital's Blog - AOL Announces Acquisition of MusicNow

Dygital�s Blog � AOL Announces Acquisition of MusicNow: "This is good, and competitive to iTunes. Though, realistically, iTunes has more marketshare and more opt-in users with iPods; this does offer people with that Microsoft �PlaysForSure� crap an option to use this service. This is a pretty cool service, for the same price as iTunes and integrates with your AOL/AIM login. I wish they had a PayPal option, but heh, I guess its okay as it is. This service is better than MusicNet that AOL has been offering for a while now. Glad to see some more progress."

Variety.com - AOL retunes to MusicNow

Variety.com - AOL retunes to MusicNow: "While similar in content and pricing to musicstores run by Napster, Rhapsody and Yahoo!, AOL's will be the only one that's fully Web-based and doesn't require that users download an application. That could give it an edge in drawing in casual users surfing around the AOL.com site."

AOL Ramps Up Tunes, Buying MusicNow - Yahoo! News

AOL Ramps Up Tunes, Buying MusicNow - Yahoo! News: "MusicNow holds its own against the competing services currently, but AOL must build on what's there in order to make it compelling and unique, Schadler says.
'It allows me to pick songs and express preferences and see playlists of people like me. It's pretty good,' he says. 'If it's about other people finding me based on my profile and contacting me over this Web site saying, 'Dude, you've got to check this out,' that's not happening.'"

Hey, I'll take it. It's not a rave review, but I'm not even sure if they checked out the new features that launched this week. But, I'll keep my eyes open and post more reviews here when I find them.

Web-based tunes--music to bloggers' ears | News.blog | CNET News.com

Web-based tunes--music to bloggers' ears | News.blog | CNET News.com: "Many are welcoming MusicNow and the overall movement, which runs counter to Apple's iTunes model of delivering downloads through a separate software application."

Digital music's move back to the Web | CNET News.com

Digital music's move back to the Web | CNET News.com: "The biggest to take this step so far is America Online, which announced Thursday that it had purchased the Circuit City-owned MusicNow and would adopt its Web-based music service as AOL's main store. "

Awwwww.....yeah!

Daily Playlists

Now featuring My Daily Playlist! See the sidebar -->

How to: Top 10 Email Signatures

Below is a step-by-step instruction on how to create an email signature that includes your personal Top 10 songs (based on playcounts). When another user clicks on the animated image, then Windows Media Player will launch and begin to play your Top 10 "hotlist". If that user is a MusicNow subscriber, then they will enjoy the full playlist. If they are not, then they will experience 30 second snippets of each song in the list.

Sincerely,


NAME
TITLE
AOL
Phone: (xxx) xxx-xxxx
AIM: aolscreenname
Music Profile: [PROFILE NAME]

1. Find your MusicNow profile ID # by going to "view my profile" and looking at the URL (following "id=")




2. Your personal "Top 10" feed is available by typing:

http://www.musicnow.com/rss/a/?ac=user_top&id=58868597 (but replace my id # with the one you got from above) By entering this URL into a browser, you will be taken to a simple text page of your Top 10.

3. Go to http://www.feedburner.com/ and create a free account.

4. "Burn a feed" by copying your new feed URL (as created above in Step 2).

5. "Activate" your feed by clicking the button at the bottom of the confirmation page

6. Click on the "Publicize" tab, then click on "Headline Animator" in the left-hand column of the page. Make sure your newly created feed has been used to create the animated graphic.

7. Click on "Activate".

8. Copy the HTML that is generated. It should look something like this:






9. Create a new HTML email signature.
The easiest way to do this is to open Notepad* and paste in the following HTML , making sure to replace the ID number in the "Music Profile" line so that it matches your ID. Also enter your own personal information for the rest of the signature field or simply edit them to what ever you want;

















And then paste the HTML from Step 8 below the Music Profile line so it looks like this;

9a. For AOL you need to add some HTML tags before you paste in the HTML code snippet you created above.

• Then select all of the text you have just created, right click and select Copy to copy the HTML to your clipboard.
• Go to AOL Mail and click Write Mail (or just click Write).
• At the bottom right of the letter template it says Signatures.
• Click Signatures and then highlight and click Set Up Signatures.
• A window will open, click Create.
• In the upper field of the new window, type "Top 10" .
• In the lower field, paste in the signature HTML you created that is now in your clipboard.
• Then click OK.
• Click Default on/off to turn your signature on or off.
  

9b. For Outlook, the process is very similar:

• Open Outlook > Tools > Options > Mail Format > Signatures
• Create a New Signature by selecting "Start with a blank signature":

10 . Choose your signature preferences, alter the font, formatting, etc.

Done, and done!

* Notepad comes standard with all installations of Windows, you will find it in your Start menu under Accessories or just click on Run in your Start menu and type in notepad. Then click on OK and it will start up.