globallistic

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Album of the Week: "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy" by Wild Sweet Orange

Just discovered this today. I'm actually only a couple of songs into it, but it resonated with me right away. Take a listen....

Friday, January 09, 2009

Album of the Day: "Not Animal" by Margot and the Nuclear So & So's

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....

Thursday, January 08, 2009

What the Hell Have I Been Up To?!

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.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Favorite Albums of 2008

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.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Macrovision's IPTV Discovery Guide

Macrovision's IPTV Discovery Guide
Originally uploaded by jherskowitz

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....

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Times Are-A Changin'

This was my first email of the day...

"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.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I Don't Blog Much Anymore... I Taste Stream

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.

Share on Strands:

Monday, September 15, 2008

Deja Vu - Physical Retailer (Best Buy) buys Digital Music Provider (Napster)

Image via Wikipedia What'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...

Thursday, August 28, 2008

iTunes.fm?

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

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.

Thoughts?

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

iTunes Unlimited Coming Next Month?

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase

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". :-)

Also check out some of my speculation on Apple's continued subscription world domination plan from January of this year.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Radio Royalties on Repeat Mode

Image via Wikipedia The latest (yet not new) story on Pandora claiming they will pull the plug if there isn't relief on the proposed new streaming radio royalty rates has people talking again. The discussions and debates on these potentially crippling rates (see previous posts and savenetradio.com) are heating up again thanks to the Pandora story (and the recent RIAA-backed shutdown of Muxtape).

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

Thursday, July 17, 2008

RealPlayer 11 + Mac = No WiFi

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.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Apple's SDK Restrictions Limit Innovation in Social Media Applications

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.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

iPhone Music Apps

iPhone Music Apps - Page 1
Originally uploaded by jherskowitz

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.

Share on Strands:

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Wordle - My Delicious Tags as Art

Wordle - My Delicious Tags as Art
Originally uploaded by jherskowitz

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.

Here is mine...

Monday, June 23, 2008

NPR's Poll for Album of the (half) Year

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Friday, May 09, 2008

tweetiaor

So, I built me*dia*or a while ago so I could drink from the music 2.0 firehose from a single place. As it was selfishly built to just make my life easier, I'm glad that a handful of others have seem to found it useful too. Although, I haven't done much to improve it lately, although that's the beauty of it I suppose... you don't have to since the content keeps you coming back.

But, yesterday I decided to get me*dia*or on to Twitter. Using twitterfeed I now @mediaor shooting me news updates to my phone every 30 minutes. A bit overwhelming at times, but many times I find that if things don't jump out at me every once in a while and say "look at me!" then I will often miss them as they float on by.

If you're like me... then I hope you get some use out of it. If you are like most of my friends and didn't understand more than 3 words above, then keep on moving... :-)

Monday, April 28, 2008

Strands - Tying it All Together

I've been really quiet lately, and that is always the first sign that things at work are really humming along and keeping me busy. Lots of things are going on, and we are quickly approaching the time when we will unveil some of the new big pieces. But, leading up to that point are a number of new Strands releases that are quickly becoming available. To begin with, last week we announced that we were changing our brand from MyStrands to just "Strands".

We have also unveiled a new business solutions initiative that "delivers advanced social recommendation and personalization technology as an easy-to-use Strands hosted service that enables high quality individualized discovery and community features in your site."

Perhaps you've also seen us starting to bang the drum about the importance of data portability. We strongly believe that a user's taste data should be their own - and given that, they should be able to control who they share it with (or not).

What else? Well, since you asked...

Since we partnered with MTV to run partyStrands at their New Year's Event (on the big screen on Times Square), the website just got a shiny new facelift and has been rockin' large and small nightclubs and events across the country.

Also, a few weeks ago our Social Player won the MobileRules 08 "best multimedia application" award. And today we are announcing the last version of that application that adds the ability for users to send playcount data (aka "scrobble") from your mobile phone to Last.fm in addition to MyStrands.com.

Strands Blog: "We have just released version 3.1 of Nokia’s Mobile Rules! 2008 winning application, MyStrands Social Player, which allows you to scrobble tracks to Last.fm as you play music on your Symbian S60 3rd Edition and J2ME (optimized for Nokia S40) devices (download for S60 devices here and for S40 devices here). Recently listened tracks on your mobile device will now be available on your Last.fm profile.

The MyStrands Social Player is a music player for mobile devices that lets you discover new music, connect with people, and share your tastes with friends. Version 3.1 works with Nokia S60 3rd edition or S40 devices (optimized for most recent Nokia S40 devices), which brings the MyStrands Social Player not only to 10s of millions of smart phones but to the true mass market of 100s of millions of Java devices.

Powered by Strands’ Recommender, MyStrands Social Player provides artist and song recommendations from over 6 million songs, automatically shows cover art and fully integrates with a social network of music enthusiasts.

The “Who’s Listening” feature lets you discover like-minded people who are listening to the same songs you are playing. You can send messages, see the listening histories of your friends, and keep an ear on what’s hot."

The next event in this year's award season for the Social Player is our nomination for a Mobile User Experience award. If you like what you see, vote for us!

Vote for us in the MEX Design Competition

This stuff is just the tip of the iceberg, with much more to come. I promise.

In the meantime, don't forget to enjoy your personalized music video channel on MyStrands.TV, or a personalized radio station of indie/unsigned artists (and upload your own band's stuff for inclusion), and of course - track your listening behavior, get personalized music recommendations, and much more at www.mystrands.com.

UPDATE:

Today we announced our acquisition of Expensr and the beta release of moneyStrands.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Reply Channels

Every once in a while, when I'm in a music rut and being lazy, I will just ask people for recommendations on what I should be listening to. Yeah, everybody does that, I know. But want I find interesting is the different modes in which the recommendations come in.

Take today for example... I tweeted (or is "twittered"?) the following:

Need some new music... what do you guys suggest?

Because of the multiple status broadcast and aggregation tools I use, that message found it's way to my Twitter account, Pownce account, Facebook status, FriendFeed (and other lifestreaming sites), and a number of other channels.

What I found interesting where the multiple modes of response I received.

public @replies via Twitter
direct Twitter replies
posts to my Facebook wall
private (inbox) messages via Facebook
messages from friends with links sent from their music site of choice
comments on a number of lifestream aggregators (to where my tweets get published)
instant messages
emails
and I'm guessing that I get some more recommendations from people via comments on this post

I find it to be a very interesting (and growing) phenomenon. What do you guys think? What's your preferred channel?

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Sony Buys Gracenote

Wow... hello left-field. I didn't see that one coming....

SunHerald.com : Sony Corporation of America to Acquire Gracenote: "NEW YORK, April 22 --
Sony Corporation of America (SCA) announced today that it has signed a merger agreement with Gracenote, Inc. Sony will pay approximately $260 million plus other contingent consideration."