Strands Blog

With the new release finally out, time to look up and see what has been going on.

Perhaps most interesting to us is the release of a report Consumer Taste Sharing Is Driving the Online Music Business and Democratizing Culture by
Derek Slater with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and Gartner Research Director Mike McGuire . They provide some very interesting and well-documented insights on the transformative role of music taste sharing on our culture.

And speaking of taste sharing, perhaps the most important part of the new release, at least for PC users, is our next generation MyStrands personal, real-time recommender client. All the old features are much improved. And if you look carefully at the bottom you’ll also see some new buttons. Including the leftmost one which, if you click it, makes everyone look like they have big, round blue heads. Go ahead. Try it. It’s fun.

Actually, that button pops up our brand new community and taste-sharing screen where you can share music suggestions with your friends. Which our marketing team tells us most folks would rather do than make everyone look like they have big, round blue heads. I think they’re wrong, but you’ll have to be the judge. You’ll also have to download the client to discover all of the other new features. Here’s a hint about another of them: If you have a big music collection on your PC, we’ll be your designated driver.

And since my momma taught me to share, this year’s This Is A Weapon release by Philly street punk band Cranked Up! is a fun little thing that should go well with any holiday get together.

Although we are constantly making little enhancements to the website, we have committed ourselves to releasing significant new features across the MusicStrands products quarterly. And this week is that time once again. Just in time for the holidays, we are introducing a bunch of new features and we hope you’ll let us know what you think.

The release is headlined by a new, easier-to-use website design. We’ve listened to your suggestions and added a few of our own including new graphics and new content.

MyStrands, our downloadable real-time recommender client has also been redesigned with several new features. You’ll be able to discover in real-time what others in the MusicStrands community are listening to. Give MyStrands a few songs or tags about music you like, and MyStrands will build a playlist of music in your library. And behind the scenes we’ve completely revamped our recommender technology to give you more and better recommendations.

Perhaps the biggest thing in the new release, though, is the rollout of some new social networking tools we’ve have been developing. New ways to tag, discuss, and discover music including member pages. And a person-to-person recommender to help you find other members who are listening to and dicussing music you might like, but don’t yet know about.

So the changes start rolling out in just a few days, and we get to start sleeping again.

In the meantime, to keep the adrenaline flowing for the sprint to the finish line, I’m off to spin an original release (it’s far from pristine so the crackling analog joy is worth the wear) of Neil Young’s seminal Time Fades Away that I have come across. You Young fans out there will know the rumors why this third album in the Young’s early 70’s “Ditch Trilogy” has never been released on CD, even though some argue it is his best and most important work. All I know is that I haven’t heard anything else matching tracks like “Don’t Be Denied” and “Last Dance”.

Well your chance has come. If you were at the CMJ conference in NYC last month, you got a sneak peak. Now we’ve finally rolled out MusicStrands Indy. We believe the future of music, and indeed civilization itself, is helping every musician find his or her audience. And now we’re putting our money where our mouth is.

So here’s the deal. You sign up for free at Musicstrands Indy, and we give your band, your releases, your songs, the same exposure on the MusicStrands recommender system as the bands the A&R guys have tapped. Once you’ve signed up (did I mention it’s free?), you get:

• Your own profile page on MusicStrands, including free hosting of MP3 tracks.
• A link to your own website and any webpage where your music can be purchased.
• Inclusion in all MusicStrands facilities for being searched, heard, shared, and added to member playlists.
• Your music recommended to the MusicStrands community at MusicStrands.com and on our MyStrands system.
• And coming soon: Your own personalized artist page where you can put your own graphics, design, and content.

Did I tell you it’s free?

Also coming soon, you’ll get an “Artist Traffic Report” page which displays how many people have visited your label and/or artist pages, clicked on an album, listened to a track, and pretty much any other action related to your music. And we’ll be adding features on this page to help you better identify the audience for your music. And before I forget: It’s free. Because we believe your music is the future. Plus we like showing the A&R guys how it’s going to be.

(We do have some opportunities for aggressively promoting your music you can pay for if you really want to. But you’ll have to visit MusicStrands Indy and sign up for all the free stuff first.)

We’re riding the dragon’s Long Tail, and we’re making the place for you to grab hold too. MusicStrands Indy, where What You Play Counts!

P.S. As a favor to me, make sure your friends in the punk and hip-hop scene know about this. We need to kick it up around here.

Have you ever woken up and said to yourself, “I rock! I blog! I should be Rockin’ in Blogistan!”? Well now you can rock your blog (or any HTML page, for that matter) with my favorite new feature from the Site: M-Charts. Yes, friends, Chongo here, pimpin’ for MusicStrands.com where anytime you click on the symbol (just below the search area in the upper right of any page) you can fix yourself up an ultracool chart like the one showing my personal top tracks, below. Best of all, it’s super easy and you can customize your chart to Timbuktu and back. Then when you’ve finished your masterpiece, all you need do is cut-and-paste the blogilicious bit of HTML code onto your own page and off you go. See you there! And, no, I wouldn’t read anything into the fact that my most played track (as of the time of the original post) is called “I’m a Cukoo”.

We apologize for the interruption and now return to our regularly scheduled blog. We’ve been busy here at MusicStrands working on new music discovery stuff that we will be announcing very soon.

What they will let me talk about is what I hear when people talk about “Music Discovery” around here. When I boil it all down, I hear people describing a number of different personal experiences with music:

• The Oracle experience – Go online and search for info, and now the opportunity to buy, music of interest.
• The Record Store experience – Surrounded by a music environment talking about, listening to, and buying CDs you didn’t even know you wanted when you walked in.
• The Radio (live DJ!) experience – Someone who knows a lot more about music and new releases taking me on a musical excursion.
• The Living Room experience – Friends not letting friends listen to bad music.

Enhancing all of these experiences and providing you with a new music discovery experience that you’ll wonder how you ever lived without, that’s the vision.

Eavesdropping on the record store/living room teams as they were “working” on the things I can’t talk about (couches and recliners, killer entertainment center, stocked ‘fridge – guys, how do I get that gig to do the punk music?):

The Gregory Morris Group … Cincinnati, Ohio band … unsigned … playing locally in southern Ohio … unusual Cuban folk derivative … amazing guitar work … never heard anyone like the lead singer on “Baylight Lullaby” … lyrics are troubled but hilarious … CD at CDBaby .

This music free to share under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License.

Wideband Network … two guys in Toledo, Ohio … wrote and recorded their entire debut album through a solely online collaboration!! … been to Toledo … no decent dance clubs … where did these two get their inspiration?! … (Depeche Mode, Savage Garden?) … “The Silence” begs to be remixed and blared across a dancefloor … Apple iTunes .

This music free to share under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License.

St. Somewhere … quartet from Knoxville, Tennessee … heritage is mainstream American Rock and Blues … peculiar international twist … … impressive guitar work of the Stray Cats … akin to Calypso … what would happen if Brian Setzer played steel drums? … describe “Fool”? Groove! … gotta Google these guys to find them on a bunch of websites.

This music free to share under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License.

Kevin Mark … classic-style, toe-tapping blues … Canadian … BB King … Memphis Blues guitar picking … 7-piece band backing band?! …“Big Blue Cadillac” – cars and women, but not serious enough to become cliched … horns give a great dance-hall feel recorded live in Chicago … Apple iTunes .

This music free to share under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License.

One of my pivotal musical memories is from 7th-grade study hall when Michael Jackson’s Rockin’ Robin came on the radio. (Yes, for some reason we were allowed to listen to the radio in study hall.) We were psyched but the teacher, Mr. Bracken, just laughed and said bemusedly, “Oh my, this old song?” I was confused. From where I was sitting it didn’t get much fresher than the Jackson Five wonderkind busting out with a new solo effort. I had no idea and didn’t really care that it was an old Bobby Day hit.

Of course over the years I came to understand that new artists, for better or worse, routinely remake, or cover, previous hits. (My education in this regard came full circle some years later when Bananarama covered Venus, of which I was particularly fond of the 1970 original by Shocking Blue. In a room full of teens singing along with the radio all I could think was, “Oh my, this old song?”)

Nowhere can you better immerse yourself in the art of the cover than Brian Ibbott’s thrice weekly podcast, Coverville. Each 30-45 minute episode features a variety of covers ranging from Seu Jorge’s version of David Bowie’s Rebel Rebel (a revelation) to Paul Anka regaling us with Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel (no comment).

If you like your covers fast, loud, and punked-up, check out the all-cover band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Any of the 30-second clips from their album Blow in the Wind will tell you all you need to know about this band. Their version of San Francisco (uh-huh, as in “be sure to wear some flowers in your hair”), in particular, is impressively bent.

There’s no end to the lists of best covers, worst covers, favorite covers, on the ‘net. But taking it to another level is the Covers Project, a site devoted to creating a searchable database of cover songs. They also propose to use this knowledge to create “cover chains”, which are lists of songs in which each artist covered a song by the previous artist. For example, Counting Crows covered Friend of the Devil by The Grateful Dead; The Grateful Dead covered Hey Jude by the Beatles; The Beatles covered Roll over Beethoven by Chuck Berry. It’s actually quite challenging to come up with a list of more than three or four songs (without cheating) — try it!

And what of today’s 7th graders? If you’re looking for just the right words to explain to an 11-year old why you know all the words to Jessica Simpson’s latest can’t-miss hit, These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, it’s all explained here at KidzWorld.

The Byrds covered Dylan somewhat obsessively throughout their career

A comment we sometimes hear at MusicStrands from the uninitiated, is “but that mega-eRetailer already tells me people who ordered this also ordered…”. Our company anger management consultant has taught us to count 1,2,…,10, and then reply in measured tones that even though it is now common knowledge throughout the industry that we have all but eclipsed those guys as the must visit first site for all things music in the minds of discerning financial advisors and music listeners alike, we strive to provide our devotees far more useful advice: “People who listened to and liked music you like, suggest that you might also like this music”. And although we at the MusicStrands certainly hope you will click through to buy the music from one of the many fine retailer choices we provide to you so that we can fund our carefully designed “growth” plan, we get our strokes from connecting you with something that you’ll like and may have never heard otherwise.

Which gets to the real point of this post: Outlining our plan for dominating the known universe and dictating what music you will like and buy. Well, maybe not all of it, but we are sure you bow down to the majesty of our vision.

Seriously though, before the online world, music discovery pretty much was something done to most of us. In this undated interview, Island Records A&R VP John Carter describes how record companies and broadcast radio introduced us to new artists and the high cost of that music discovery model. Which goes a long way to explaining the opportunity for us in connecting you with the vast number of artists and their music that you probably wouldn’t have found in those bad ol’ days.

If you’re fortunate enough to know someone who makes music and wants to share it with the world, you probably also have learned how record companies used to develop musicians by promoting radio airplay and distributing their music, but pretty much have gotten out of that business. Filling that void and contributing what we can to the development of many more artists than would ever have been possible before is our vision statement. What’s more, while A&R execs apparently are a little stand-offish when it comes to hard-working artists just trying to get heard, we are just average working people who really want to help artists connect with their audience. (In the near future, we’ll be rolling out some new features on this front, but we can’t talk about that yet.)

As we see it, destiny lies in helping fans and artists together play the numbers game. This is the so-called “long tails” view that there is an audience out there for a large and diverse range of artists. We have the technology, we have the capability … a better … stronger … faster… (we don’t get out nearly enough) … way to bring them together than that mega-eRetailer.

Finally, this from the Knitters Exene Cervenka committing about their new The Modern Sounds of The Knitters CD, the first release in 20 years from the ex-X/ex-Blasters side project: “Folk is slow punk”.