flux. » imeem

I want to Spotify

admin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 04:24:03 +0000

Spotify, a music service currently only available outside of the US, is a social streaming site that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums.

Users can easily share their library with friends and collaborate on playlists.

Although ownership of music is important to users in general a more pressing issue is accessibility. Sites like Hype Machine and Imeem allow us to share songs with friends, but we can only share the content that those sites have available to us.

By employing the peer-to-peer model like Spotify does, I can upload those special gems and curated playlists I spend weeks agonizing over. My friends can then stream the music and click-through to purchase for legitimate ownership of the song.

Spotify takes advantage of the “cloud“- data living over the internet as opposed to locally on your computer. We can peruse music quickly this way without downloading it first. Then, if a user wants ownership of the song, it can be purchased – supporting the artist rather than jacking it from a blog.

Makes sense to me.

What is Spotify?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify

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New Music: Nosaj Thing

admin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:51:07 +0000

For this year’s Coachella Music Festival – a holiday of sorts for Los-Angelenos in the music industry – I chose to forgo the long lines, blistering heat and nutty ravers to spend a weekend of leisure in the desert area. And of course hit some pool parties along the way.

I think the decision to sit this years’ fest out was a blessing in disguise. I encountered many up-and-comers at these little parties – too small to hit the festival circuit, but absolutely rockin’ nonetheless.

When I returned to LA a couple of DJ friends at KCRW asked if I had managed to see any good acts. Nosaj Thing immediately came to mind. His glitchy, dub-step, sampled electro groove had the Imeem/Indieoasis party rockin’ and I was transfixed.

It was truly amazing to watch someone so young and forward thinking totally kill it. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

The album dropped Tuesday on Alpha Pup Records.

Musings: Crafting Mixtapes in a Digital Age

admin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:04:25 +0000

At the end of each month I make a mixtape and send it to a small group of friends. It’s a mix of new, old, and remixed music, with some fun rarities like unreleased b-sides or cover songs thrown in for good measure.

15 years ago I made mixtapes using a different methodology – cassettes. I taped songs from the radio or dubbed songs from other tapes or CDs. To my friends’ dismay I would cut in and out of songs, looping bits, chopping about to create my own customized mix. I decorated the CD case with felt-tip markers and distributed the batch from a tattered, blue plastic Gap bag that weekend or whenever I saw someone next (In other words they didn’t receive the mix right away. You can see where I’m headed with this).

Technology has made it innumerably easier to create and distribute a digital mixtape. However, these mixtapes are frowned upon by the powers-that-be because rights for each song need to be cleared prior to streaming them.

In a digital age of advanced marketing and cross-promotional tactics – why can’t a mixtape become a promotional vehicle, a flipped funnel so to speak – rather than totally shut out as a viable way of sharing music?

Hyperdistribution can work for an artist, not necessarily against.

15 years ago an optimal distribution method would be me sharing a song that I’m crazy about with, let’s say, 10 friends. Great case scenario, 5 of those 10 friends go out and buy the CD and even tell another friend or two about the band. Fast forward to now and this translates to quick dedications, sharing, tagging, and embedding with hopefully the eventual intent to buy the single or album.

I understand the popularity of widgets to share and track music. But I think there’s a need for something even more nimble; a universal technology that can allow a song to travel further by becoming directly associated with the content.

Perhaps something along the lines of an embed code could travel with each song, containing an accompanying click-thru link for users to purchase the content. The code could incorporate tracking so promos intentionally leaked to blogs could be followed and music could become legitimately spread by fans on a viral level. The code could be user or label assigned and registered in a database somewhere, like a Gracenote vox populi.

By tracking content but allowing it to travel freely everyone wins. The artist gets marketing feedback, promotion, potential sales and recognition, and I can safely put together a mixtape that rocks, all the while knowing that I’m not only telling my friends about this cool artist but also making it super-easy for them to buy the work or tell someone else about it.

This kind of technology could potentially legitimize sites like Muxtape, a playlist-building site that allows users to upload their playlists and share them with friends on a streaming-only basis.

Playlist building sites like Imeem are great because they clear rights from the labels up front – allowing users to stream, share, and embed content hassle-free. But what about us die-hard music fans who want to share the remixes, rarities, and b-sides – stuff that”s just not out yet?

DJ’s and music fans have been clamoring for decades to be the first to drop that unreleased promo or song that is bound to make everyone go nuts. The digital age hasn’t changed that. if I get my hands on a hot new song, I want to tell everyone I know about it. That’s the job of the DJ. It’s the job of a music fan. And that won’t change now or 15 years from now.