jblogg.com

They blog, they twitter, and its not lame.

www.mychemicalromance.com

Very cool to see the band use tools to talk to fans and each other! Strangely, their transparency leads to increasing the persona and mysteriousness of the band in a cool way, especially when they are having conversations with each other on their own site!

It’s also a great example of how bands work with WBR. There’s an amazing guy named Jeff who works in new media, and has been working with the band from day one. He believed in this band before many others did, and has stuck with them all the way, building trust, and keeping everyone at Warner Bros honest to the bands vision. He recently worked with the band to build them this new site, and the result is something special, artistic and fun!

Take a read, and tell me your thoughts.
Follow the band here:
www.twitter.com/gerardway
www.twitter.com/raytoro
www.twitter.com/bobbryar
www.twitter.com/michaeljamesway

New playlist heading into the Thanksgiving holiday. Its upbeat and moody, with nice ups and downs all mixed into a nice flow. Make the most of it, listen twice, and try the new widgets from Imeem and LALA.

I like LALA’s site, and their interface has some nice improvements over Imeem. The first thing you have is their web credits business model. You can stream anything once for free, then you have to use credts to add to your streaming library. The site gives you 50 credits when you sign up, so I made this playlist for free. Their library had everything I was looking for, good interface, easy search and playlisting tools. The LALA music player is at the top of the page, and keeps your music going on the top of the site so you can navigate, and not lose the music while your surfing around making your playlist. On Imeem If you don’t “pop up” the player you lose the song your listening if when leave the page, which is annoying and tends to happen a lot. As for the widget, my users will only be able to listen to this playlist once, and then you’ll get :30 clips. Thats a real drawback!

The new Imeem player has a slightly updated look and feel, and they seem to be runnnig text adds now on some playlists. guess I’d rather have that then only one listen (although I fear to make these models work, well need both plus audio adds!). The widget has somewhat better player controls (loop and shuffle).

The Imeem playlist tool, once my favorite, seems to be falling behind. No images in the playlist search, and no ability to filter our some of the junk. For example the version of Cracker’s “LOW” on this playlist is different that the album version I love but I couldnt tell that when I was putting it together. Imeem and myspace use images, and better descriptions to help you when your adding content.
But the fact that this version was in there is cool. Imeem does retain the user and community elements much more than LALA. There is much more content on Imeem, and you get some rare gems from user uploads. The Imeem playlist has an extra Copeland song I found only on Imeem. I also like the download and ringtone links on the player – make it easy for me to continue to explore the music in other channels.

How does the music sound so far? The quality seems better in LALA. Agree?

Will i continue to use LALA if I have to pay 10 cents a song to hear it over and over? My users will only be able to listen to this playlist once, and then you’ll get :30 clips. Thats a real drawback, and while I support trying to monetize this and get everyone paid, it feels too restrictive and its a surprise when it happens the first time.
I am sticking with IMEEM for now, but I am seeing the LALA widget appear on more and more blogs, so my unofficial surfing tells me that the LALA player is gaining traction.

Happy Thanksgiving. Share your thoughts on these widgets, and new playlist

I set up a Ustream video feed in an old conference room at the Warner Bros offices in Burbank. With a simple sony hd camera, through a PC, into our network, I can broadcast Aritist ‘s live when they come into the office (which is a lot!).
First was Eric Hutchinson The second was a live video chat with Wayne from Flaming Lips (ustream lost the archive on this one!)

But the best so far was Tyler Hilton. I need to edit this clip down, but for now jump to :50 seconds in and see Tyler light up when he finally sees all the fans on the site.

Free video chat by Ustream
You can see he connects to them and rolls into his first song as if his online community was physically in the front row with him! He played for almost an hour, and seemed to really connect with the experience.

These live shows are a great grassroots tools that connects with the fans with artists. We had over 10,000 people watch the first three shows.

Another goal of the live studio was to capture the spontaneous moments. The community of Artists coming through the building on a regular basis was one of the reason I went live. When neil young and lil scrappy are here at the same time, or Lyndsey Buckingham and The Used. The variety of WBR artist’a is impressive, and I knew id get some some random parings.

Sure enough – during Tyler’s performance i came close! I found out Talib Kweli an Eric Benet were in the building at the same time Tylere was playing! I didn’t end up getting them all together, but as everyone gets familiar with with the studio they will come ready!

Stay tuned!

Its great to hear new urban/hip-hop music that is inspiring and innovative. I gave up on looking for new Urban music because everything sounded the same for the last few years. I made this playlist from the new issue of xxl magazine, covering their “freshman 10″ list of new Artists. As I was reading the article, I headed over to Imeem and made a playlist with each Artist in the article. Almost every Artist from the article was in there and xxl’s picks were right on! Traditional media can still be a better filter, even if their medium is becoming old.

With Imeem and Myspace having robust legal libraries of streaming on demand music, why would any article or review about new music not be turned into an instant playlist using these services and linked to from article? Tap into the pre-approved streaming music where in theory everyone gets paid.

On my Imeem page, I have weekly playlists I pull from sources like billboard, big champagne, and more.

Im at the Webby Connect conference in Dana Point today, and once again The Webby team brought together some great minds in new media and got real discussions going. I wouldn’t normally Blog about a web conference but the panels today touched on some interesting trends in emerging creativity and new media culture.

The discussion was not the “buzz” of the moment typical of web conferences. Top notch panelist explored some deeper concepts and added creativity and honesty to their presentations

here is a quick recap of stuff that excited me:

Internet Dark Arts: The Underbelly
An incredible discussion on the underbelly of viral tricks, wikiedia, spam, and those affiliate programs pushing Viagra!
Virgil Griffith Showed off wikiscanner2. If your new to wikiscanner, check it out here. It shows you who’s editing wikipedia pages with a focus on exposing how things really work behind the scenes of Wikipidea. Companies battle eachother to change info on profiles.

Virigil also showed what he loosely called an “online lie detector”. Essentially taking the transcripts from politcal speeches or testimonies and doing some slick data visualization with common words and terms that would indicate a person is “lying” or more loosely, have something to hide!
Check it out in action here with the Gonzales testimony run through the filter.

Steve Kirsh gave some insight into Spam! Everyone should here this guy speak and I finally learned how it all works.
According to Steve 93% of all emails sent is “spam”!

Check out his site – http://www.skirsch.com/

Sweeps Week: Every Week Online
I think it was panelist Mark D’Arcy - SVP / Chief Creative Officer, Time Warner Global Media Group.  who made great point after great point

“Television and Online are in Parallel – not separate”
“More people are watching TV than ever before”

A second panelist commented that Face time with “Screens” is increasing overall not necessarily TV viewership. This is a subtle but interesting concept – that more and more of our time is spent in front of some sort of screen. I like starting from that simple assumption as I build out ideas…

“Talent Is Not Increasing”
this is debatable but I think Mark’s point is true. The type of A level talent is not increasing as fast as consumption, and I agree with what I think was his intent – true talent is still a precious commodity.

Designers and Their Elastic Minds

Peter Frankfurt had a lot very creative and interesting things to say about some of the multimedia art/tech projects he’s worked on. I never head of him or his company, but I’d like to learn more! He was very involved in the pre-cog sequences and the visual interfaces for the movie “Minority Report”.

His concept for “New City” is a fresh look at virtual worlds, and he described it as “the world’s first architecturally considered virtual environment”. New City was a featured exhibit at the critically acclaimed show Design and the Elastic Mind at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Watch the video for it here!

Cya Soon!

If we could just get people to LISTEN to the new Oasis album, they would love it! Great albums, and not enough outlets to get the the word out. The idea was simple – incentive fans to hear the new music, and reward them in an authentic way, that would also spread the word and re-brand the band.

So check out the Oasis Widget, listen to six songs, and you can get a free classic Oasis t-shirt! Strength of idea is really the music, not the free shirt – I believe in this as a very strong body of work.

We also have their merchandise rights (online and tour!), so it creates buzz for merch, and builds databse of new customers.

Ultimatley, it was supposed to be a random givaway so the promotion would last longer. Due to tech issues, the widget was incorrectly set up to go to the first 3000 fans, which we of course went viral instantly, and crashed our store! So we’re fine tuning the idea. Would love any thoughts on this idea, and how to make it better. Send me your thoughts and I will send you an Oasis shirt – but you should still listen to the tracks – its worth it!
jbloggmusic@gmail.com

OASIS “DIG OUT YOUR SOUL”

Went to Baltimore last Weekend to see LIGHTS, on the Verizon Wireless College Tour 2008.
Headliners were Boys Like Girls, and Cute is What We Aim For. My first time seeing LIGHTS live, and I was impressed. The songs show how good they are live, she looks amazing, and she has a live energy that enhances the music. LIGHTS connected with the crowd right away.

Here is some footge I filmed with my phone and posted to my You Tube Channel.

Here is what She filmed with a Nokia N95, and then edited on her laptop. The music is also by LIGHTS!

The Myspace site is still buggy, and from the commerce side, buy links still dont show up for most artists. Slow on the big fixes!

From a promotional standpoint, they do seem to be getting lots of traffic – many of the bands I work on are having higher than normal play counts (if its workign and tracking them properly!)

Jason Reeves (Warner Bros) got hundreds of thousands of new plays in a few days, during a feature on Tom’s Playlist. The Featured playlists area is a good way to discover new music.

In response to Myspace music, Imeem changed their site and focused on the basics. Home page is now blog style, and I like the cleaner design. Their Browse, and Chart’s of top songs and playlists is also improved. Their basic playlist tools, and music service is unchanged.

Here are recent articles on the Myspace Music Launch, and Imeem’s site.

Indies upset with Myspace Music Launch:

Hypebot

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2008/09/the-competition.html

Rollingstone.com – MySpace Music Takes on iTunes

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23356455/myspace_music_takes_on_itunes

The only thing they used from my interviews was “not groundbreaking” but I guess thats echoing what i’ve said here….

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/oct/02/myspace.music.unfair.on.indies

MYSPACE vs IMEEM – nice analaysis on this blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/aniyer/archive/2008/10/03/myspace-music-v-imeem.aspx?

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3775361/Doubts+Loom+Over+MySpace+Music+Strategy.htm

Data – What You Need to Know about Myspace Music Strategy

E-marketer

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006599

MySpace Music Points Way To Free Music Economy

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/10/myspace-music-p.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/01/bmoasis101.xml

Forbes.com video

Throwing Sheep

http://www.throwingsheep.com/blog/?p=12

The new Myspace music launched last week, and now that some of the dust settled, I put my OCT playlist in both Imeem and Myspace Music’s new playlist tool. Most of the debate has been about the indie labels not being in the Myspace launch, but I haven’t seen many evaluations of the myspace music service itself.

PLAYLISTING

First off the Myspace launch was and still is Buggy. I know from many fans and artists, there are many complaints about the “closed” ecosystem. You cant just upload whatever you want anymore – fingerprinting technology is in place now!

But the ability to make playlists from a ton of full length tracks is impressive. I find the Myspace tool easier to use than Imeem’s tool, but I cant seem to find any way to embed the Myspace player (although the pop up player is a nice addition!)

Ill post more in pt 2 on the nuances between the two services, and more about how the fingerprinting works.

For now – enjoy my new playlist and let me know which service works for you! - jbloggmusic@gmail.com

SAME PLAYLIST ON MYSPACE MUSIC

Jack White created something incredible with his band The Racounteurs. Their live shows have the fire of Led Zepplin and the Who. They change up their set, improvise, and are touring behind Consolers of the Lonely, one of the best albums in the last ten years. 

This band is hardly transparent the way new media blogs, and “indie” artists talk about today – no twittering from Jack White.

I was sitting with some fine folks from Zappos, the kings of transparency and customer service, and as we discussed Twitter and the ecommerce biz, I was making the point that some bands should not be “transparent”. A bold instance on Mystery and perfecting ones musical craft should be allowed. (I DO think they convinced my boss to start twittering!)

Awhile back at the Henry Fonda Theatre (and again, last week at the Greek), I watched The Raconteurs improvise an extended intro to one of my favorite songs from their new album and I was blown away by the direction they took the song live. The fact they dared to explore new (old?) textures to a song I loved was mysterious, and at the same time transparent, revealing the hidden melodies within the song and perhaps how the song was created in the first place. Old school transparency  – were just going to Rock! 

Twenty years from now I hope the Raconteurs Mystery, and approach to music, will make them a legend as fans hunt down, search, and try and interpret the bands motive to the musical scraps and clips left behind.