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”.