Stereomood: Internet Radio for your Mood

Stereomood is a free emotional internet radio that suggests music which may best suit your mood or activities based on the tag you select, allowing you to create playlists for your life that can be shared. Looks like most of their music is streamed from blogs. Here's an example of the mood "groovy."

While they've been around for about a year, there are several sites doing something similar, and the streaming space is crowded with clear leaders, but they are pulling in some great indie music like The Fiery Furnaces, The XX and Vitalic.

Benefits of Twitter Lists for Artists

Most everyone now has Lists enabled for their Twitter account, but what does this mean for you, the artist? Well, there are numerous ways to gain value from them. Below are 4 simple ways you could use Twitter Lists as a tool to help you maximize your tour and net the most income while on the road:

1. Keep track of other bands and musicians by region (e.g. Southeast, Northwest, Central, etc.), so while you're on the road you could see what they're doing and possibly headline swap, invite them to share the stage with you, meetup, etc.
2. Keep track of venues by region. Similar to above, the difference is that you're looking to see if there are any last minute openings or opportunities you may have not been aware of before hitting the road.
3. Keep track of your top fans by city (fan segmentation). Building relationships with your fans and superfans is vitally important, especially if you're trying to pack the house each night, and this is a great way to segment them via Twitter (tip: you may want to keep these lists private).
4. Discover. By doing the above, or creating another type of list for your band, you're going to discover some interesting people, artists, fans and more - nothing but a good thing, and it works equally for people discovering your band as you get added to Lists, which could open up more opportunities for you, so be creative and build some Lists.

There are lots of other ways Twitter Lists can help your band, these are just some examples to get you started. How do you plan to use Lists?

Online Radio Trends

Two graphs relative to the number of unique visitors for some of the music industry's leading streaming providers during the past year (not a comprehensive list).

Tier 1:

Spotify is not included as they're not officially in the US market yet.

Tier 2:

Indie Music Map for the iPhone by nuTsie

A few days ago, nuTsie released its Indie Music Map iPhone App. It's quite cool - you can select a region of the country and listen to popular songs from indie artists in the North Atlantic, North Central, Pacific Northwest, Mountain, Southwest and Southeast regions:



You can then view more information about the artist, purchase their song directly from iTunes, watch video from the artist on YouTube (if applicable), or learn more about the region an artist is from.

Interestingly, nuTsie selected all of the songs presently available from websites, blogs, festivals and radio stations where the artists were becoming popular like Pitchfork, SXSW, Hype Machine, Coachella, Bonaroo, Idolator, Lollapalooza, Stereogum, and many others. Artists available include Animal Collective, TV On The Radio, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, Passion Pit, MGMT, Santigold, No Age, Silversun Pickups, and about 500 more, but I would imagine they'll be adding more songs and artists soon.

The app is only $1.99 and plays tracks in shuffle mode, with unlimited skips, and no advertising - could be a great way to discover new bands while traveling. This app looks promising, but it might be more reflective of what a region is listening to if the app had a user-generated element to it, or allowed artists to upload their music directly - who knows, maybe they're already building-in that functionality.

Blinkx Releases Music Video Search Jukebox

Earlier this morning, Blinkx, a video search engine released a music video jukebox that allows users to visually find and watch music videos through a single gateway (read their press release here). While I like their video wall, Google's video search seems more comprehensive with just as relevant results. Anyone using Blinkx, what are your thoughts?

Band Metrics on NPR

If you were listening to NPR this weekend, you may have caught a fantastic segment of On the Media called "Charting the Charts" by Mark Phillips, airing on over 100 U.S. radio stations yesterday and Saturday. It's a must listen for anyone interested in music charts like Billboard's Hot 100, as Mark eloquently explores how the art of ranking artists has evolved, and where the evolution is headed from industry leaders like Robert Levine of Billboard, Chicago Tribune music critic and author Greg Kot, Chris Molanphy of Idolator, Eric Garland and myself. If you missed the show, you can listen to it here or below if you have Flash enabled, and many thanks to Mark for his excellent research and production - it was an honor to be a part of it.

Tweet My Song

Is TweetMySong the future of music promotion on Twitter, or a tool for music spam?

MobBase by MixMatchMusic to Launch in November

MixMatchMusic is preparing to release a new product called, MobBase, a tool for musicians to easily and inexpensively build and manage their own, custom iPhone apps with features like gig info, merch and special offers. Sounds promising and as soon as I have more info, I'll write a follow-up post.

ReverbNation Partners with Label 2.0

ReverbNation has teamed up with the Internet music marketing community, Label 2.0 to offer advanced music promotion training for their 450,000+ members called, “Advanced Tips." This free step-by-step training module located in ReverbNation's Control Room helps "users to learn how to fully utilize their ReverbNation memberships." Presently, there are 8 chapters, from the "basics of getting started" to more advance customization and features, but Label 2.0 will continually update and add to this module as new tools and enhancements from ReverbNation are added, as well as "how to build the ultimate website using Wordpress and ReverbNation." See what this module is all about below - looks really informative! Hats off to Greg and Eric for a job well done!

We7 Response to News about Google Music

By now, I'm sure you've read the leaked news covered extensively today by TechCrunch regarding Google's forthcoming music service. You may have even about the press event for the official announcement, or screenshots of how the service might work, so I was intrigued by the email I received from We7 earlier today with an official response from their CEO, Steve Purdham below... what are your thoughts about their response?

“Online music access seems to be the media darling of the moment, and columns abound with rumors like today’s story about a Google music service. While the concept is much discussed, most people are still avoiding the big question and that is can it be made to add up. MySpace Music, Imeem and Spotify are all facing the simple economic reality that scale is not the main issue, economic sustainability is.

YouTube, for example, is still yet to turn a profit since its acquisition in 2006. However, the site continues to rapidly expand, announcing recently that it was servicing 1 billion views per day. This ability to grow the video platform on such a scale without concern, for the time being at least, without developing a sustainable revenue model, shifts focus away from the innovation needed to make the internet a strong business environment for media.

Google Music (should it be real) will be great for the consumer I am sure, but the biggest thing the music industry needs is the demonstration that the economics can be made to work. Focus has to be on payment to the artists, transparency of the model and sustainability. Once this happens then scale and opportunity can be allowed to fly in a really positive way.

We7, with good support from the labels, has built an outstanding music service and have achieved the #1 most accessed UK music site with 2.5m monthly users and our focus is on making ad funded model work.”

Jelli Interview

Below is an email interview with Jelli, a new social music service that provides listeners with real-time control over what gets played online and on terrestrial radio via real-time voting, and they just released their public beta last night. I've also embedded a short video about Jelli below as well.

How does it work (technically and practically)?
Jelli users control what plays via Jelli’s website, where they can choose from a list of stations, view all the songs available for that station, and collaborate with the rest of the listening community to decide what is played. Listeners can tune in to Jelli online, or on whatever radio station is currently broadcasting Jelli programming.

On the Jelli website, each station’s playlist is 100% community-controlled and dynamically generated based on real-time voting. The station’s catalog is exposed to users, so they can search for songs they want to hear. Each song has a score, determined by votes, and the highest-scoring songs will make it on the air. What plays next is always up for grabs and determined completely by the community’s votes - the next song isn’t selected until seconds before it goes on the air.

Additional gaming elements allow users to earn even more power over the playlist, with items such as Rockets (which boost a song to the top of the list) and Bombs (which destroy a song’s score), and features such as group chat and messaging enable listeners to band together to decide what plays, create a themed playlist, or even lobby for help to get a particular song on the air. The community can also vote on whether they like what’s currently playing, and if enough of the online audience doesn’t like a song, they can pull it off the air.

The Jelli service is powered by Jelli’s automated platform, which handles the Jelli gaming system, content and catalog management, audio playstream system, real-time audio mixing, dynamic audio content, and announcement of game activity via text-to-speech technology. Jelli’s Station Server integrates with stations’ existing broadcast infrastructure to deliver a DMCA and FCC-compliant playlist – generated by the online community for that station – directly to the station for broadcast. Stations that broadcast Jelli programming have their own co-branded destination sites on the Jelli website.

Who are Jelli's competitors and how is Jelli different from them?
As an online radio service, Jelli competes with services such as Pandora. As syndicated programming, Jelli’s competition includes other shows that stations could select to broadcast over the air. What makes Jelli different from others in these categories is the social nature of the service and the control it gives to listeners over what plays. Rather than a personalized music service, such as Pandora, or even an iPod, Jelli is a social stream where the music is selected by the entire listening community for a particular station – leading to new music discovery and always impromptu, community-driven playlists. As programming, Jelli brings a fresh approach to traditional radio, using the web to give the listening community control over what broadcasts on the air.

What are some reasons why someone would want to use Jelli?
Jelli is a fun social jukebox and great way to interact with other members of a station’s listening community. On Jelli, users do more than just listen – they participate, play, and discover new music.

When/why did Jelli form, and who is behind Jelli?
Jelli was founded in 2008 by internet veterans Michael Dougherty (Microsoft) and Jateen Parekh (Amazon), with the belief that a huge opportunity exists to bring something fresh to the radio industry. Jelli’s experienced team consists of ten members from Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Aggregate Knowledge, etc., with proven experience launching award winning consumer services such as the Amazon Kindle, Tellme and ReplayTV. Jelli is seeking to completely transform traditional broadcasting, which still has massive reach and usage but is becoming less relevant to a new generation of web users. Jelli is reinventing what is possible with traditional broadcasting empowering listeners to interact in a dynamic web experience.

How does Jelli make money?
Jelli’s business model reflects the standard economics for radio syndication: advertising barter and/or licensing fees. Cost structure and copyright frameworks in traditional broadcasting are very attractive/established. Jelli’s partners license Jelli’s innovative programming and pay copyright royalties (onair / online) and delivery expenses (FM / streaming).

Inference is the Difference: Gaining Insight from Music Data Analytics

One of the goals of Band Metrics is to help artists and music industry professionals gain insight from the quantitative and qualitative data we collect, as identifying correlations can be the difference between increasing revenue for your band, or spinning your wheels guessing as to how your fans interact, share and listen to your music. Below are two recent screencasts that help demonstrate a couple of the areas we're working on to make meaning out of your music data (view more of our screencasts here).

The first screencast demonstrates how radio play data (soon social data) could help you build relationships with broadcast stations that are, or are not playing your music. The second one provides a suggested tour map based on the data we're collecting about your band. These are both experimental mapping features at this point, one of the reasons why we're still in private beta, but we thought you might like to see them if you don't have an account:

Open Suggestions for MySpace

There have been a number of posts recently like this one, suggesting that MySpace is irrelevant. Is it too late for MySpace, or can they reinvent themselves and become relevant again? If the latter, below are some suggestions I've complied from Hypebot. What else would you recommend that they do to improve their service? Please add your comments to this post and I'll email them to Owen Van Natta in about a week:

• remove all unnecessary clutter like emoticons
• remove all non-artist related apps and tools
• significantly reduce the number of ads per page
• improve customer support/service
• create limitations and filters on how your friends may contact you
• pay all artists for plays on MySpace, not just signed artists
• limit the number of videos a user can have on his/her page
• limit the image size that can be displayed on a page
• update the design of the site
• improve the artist rankings or get rid of them
• limit the number of comments that can be displayed
• limit the banner size an artist may have on their page
• become a site only for bands to connect with other bands

Music Power Network

Dave Kusek, a music industry veteran, technologist, entrepreneur, author, consultant and Vice President of the Berklee College of Music, has released a web service called the Music Power Network (MPN) which helps developing artists, songwriters, managers, producers and other music industry professionals advance their careers by providing resources, interviews, advice, expertise and more. Essentially, MPN is an online structured system that provides step-by-step guidance, instruction and resources to help you plan and grow your career in the music industry.

The service is not free, but if you register now, you'll save 50% off, and you can try it risk free for 7 days. Given all that MPN provides, it's a great price. Here's just some of what an MPN membership includes:

• Online Music Business Course: Dave Kusek gives you a crash course on the New Music Business. Learn the importance of direct-to-fan marketing and independent promotion and how to build a team to help you succeed.
• Exclusive Music Video Interviews and Expert Advice: Gain insight from experts in the music industry responsible for the careers of hundreds of well known, Grammy winning artists, producers, managers, entrepreneurs and songwriters. Watch interviews with these industry professionals and search insights and advice across categories & keywords using our searchable video database.
• Resources and Connections: Tap into an up-to-date database of hand-picked resources and industry contacts including managers, attorneys, publicists, agents, booking agents, publishers, producers, merchandisers, digital distributors, labels, marketing services, music supervisors, promoters and more.
• Custom Interactive Business Plans: Use our Custom Interactive Planners to take you step-by-step through the process of setting your goals and planning your music career or business. Guide your success with proven methods & strategies.
• MPN Network: Gain exclusive access to MPN Member Forums and Music Industry News feeds. Get the information you need from people you trust. As an MPN member you will also receive discounts on products and services from our partners.

MOG Announces Premium Digital Music Service

If you haven't heard yet, MOG announced yesterday that it will launch MOG All Access, a new digital music service for North America, by Thanksgiving 2009.

According to MOG Founder and CEO David Hyman, “Our goal with MOG All Access was to build the best service for listening to and discovering music, period. To accomplish this, we're providing access to millions of songs (just about everything), with a drop dead easy way to hear any song or album you like in an instant, from the convenience of your web browser. You'll get access to MOG radio, a revolutionary listening experience that will forever change how you discover music and truly redefines what radio is, and killer tools for discovery through other users of the service.  And you get it all monthly for the price of a beer ($5 USD per month)." Hyman explained, “For $5 a month, you can download five songs from iTunes or have access to millions of songs on demand, better radio, a world of relevant articles, reviews, news and lyrics, and a community of fellow fans and expert music sources with whom you can discover new artists, share playlists and explore music.”

According to their press release, they've partnered with all of the major labels including Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group and EMI Music, plus thousands of independents via IODA, Beggars Group and more, with unrestricted access to over 5 million tracks.

Sounds great; I can't wait to try it! Curious though as to when they'll offer this service globally.

Find Musicians with Musefy

Musefy is a new web app in public alpha that's developing a social community for musicians to connect with other musicians looking to form bands. Here's a screenshot of how their musician matching works:

 
Do you think this is needed? It seems a bit late, as several sites have been doing this for a long time like: BandMix, Musicians Wanted, MySpace and Craigslist to name a few, but no one seems to be doing it well. Thoughts?

Recap Links and Photo Tour of the Future of Music Policy Summit

If you missed this year's Future of Music Policy Summit, you can read posts from their live blog, and they've added a few videos and articles here as well. Weathervane also wrote three great summaries about the conference. The FMC Summit was a fantastic event, one of the best music conferences I've been to all year - from the panels to the community, and I'd definitely add it to your list of events to attend in 2010. Below are a few pics I snapped during the conference:

Free All Music Set to Release

Just learned from Urvaksh Karkaria at the Atlanta Business Chronicle that there's a new ad-supported music download service about to launch called, Free All Music, which just raised $1 million in seed capital. According to Urvaksh's article, before a user downloads a song, he/she views/listens to a 15 to 20 second ad, and then additional advertising during the download process. Sounds similar to the now defunct SpiralFrog which I wrote about 2 years ago. Hopefully they'll have far better success, as I'm excited to see the growth of music tech startups in Atlanta, including: Amplified, Band Metrics, BeatTweet, Khu.sh (laDiDa), Maestro, Neurotic Media, and Zooz Mobile.

Imoosi: A Search Engine for Artists

Not sure where Imoosi is headed with their music artists search engine, as it looks like it was just released, but I like their focus and how it returns clean, minimalist results:

Presently, it looks like Imoosi is pulling information from Twitter, YouTube, Gruvr and Last.FM, but they'll need to move towards real-time search, as well as add many more feeds to become viable and relevant, but the concepts interesting nonetheless.