AudioSearch

Track of the Day - Skullcrush by Salem

2012-01-25T09:30:00.001-08:00

This track came out a couple of years ago but kind of went under the radar.

It's got a dark feel to it - I guess that's why they call it this genre "Witch House".

Anyway - have a listen!

Salem - Skullcrush

Track of the Day - Faith Unfolds by S.C.U.M

2012-01-24T09:55:00.001-08:00

Good song by London post-punk band, S.C.U.M.

Check it out!

S.C.U.M - Faith Unfolds

Track of the Day - We All Buy Stars by The Cairos

2012-01-23T09:44:00.001-08:00

The Cairos are a band from Australia. I don't know a lot about them, but I really like this track.

The Cairos - We All Buy Stars

Track of the Day - Great Unknown by Various Cruelties

2012-01-21T10:21:00.001-08:00

Nice track from this UK band. Reminds me a bit of Manic Street Preachers. They're on the hideout recordings label - I think they have a bright future ahead of them.

Check it out here:

Various Cruelties - Great Unknown

Can we kill the music business too?

2012-01-20T23:19:00.000-08:00

There's a pretty good discussion going on over at Hacker News around YCombinator's request for startups to "Kill Hollywood". Lots of ideas there about how to essentially replace the old guard in Hollywood with new forms of entertainment. Somehow though, it seems that the other big player in the room for your entertainment dollars, the recording industry, has been left out of the discussion. I think the music industry, particularly as it is run by the major recording labels, is a regime in need of change as much as Hollywood. Here's my take on what needs to happen.

In a nutshell, to kill the major label run music industry, startups will need to:

find great music from people who aren't assholes
let people do cool things with that music
let users share what they create
profit!

That might sound easy but there's a lot work of in there, and it's an uphill battle.

Find great music from people who aren't assholes
By assholes, I mean people who will sue you for using their music in your startup, which probably makes this first step the hardest. You can't have a great music startup without the music and more than that you need good music.

We've seen sites before where anyone can upload their music and let people play it for free. It's a nice idea and sites like that are a great outlet for musicians. But there's one huge problem - most of the music sucks, and listeners can tell that right away. There are no filters or gatekeepers and that's one thing major labels are very good at. They act as a filter that stops you from having to hear all the out of tune, talent-less wanna be stars who have no idea how bad they really are.

So the startup that wants to disrupt this industry will need to find a source of good music they can use without worry until they are big enough to have the music come to them. Right now, it looks like Soundcloud, with their excellent API, might be that source. There's a lot of high quality, well produced music that mostly independent artists and labels have put there with the purpose of being shared.

Ideally, once big enough, the startup could become the equivalent of a label, in the sense that it would be the first place up and coming artists would submit their music to in the hope of being "discovered". The startup would in turn fulfill the filtering, distribution and publicity needs that labels currently provide.

That would be one big nail in the coffin of the major labels, when artists are bypassing them to submit their music to startups.

Let people do cool things with that music
This is what startups are good at. I'm always astounded by the cool things hackers can do with music. The major label run music industry is bad at this, and has been very slow to adapt to technological change.

Here's an example of their backwards thinking, even when trying to move forward:

I was at first pretty excited to hear that major label EMI was partnering with the cool music API startup, EchoNest. I couldn't believe a major label was making some of their catalog available to developers to put to use building music apps. And then I read the details. If you use their music, EMI will have the power to approve your app, publish it themselves, and take a huge cut of any profit your app makes. Sound familiar? The labels want developers to become their slaves just like artists have always been. It's the only way they know how to operate. No thanks.

So it's up to startups and developers to build cool things with non major label music that lets end users do cool things with non major label music. Let users remix, chop up, speed up, slow down the music. Let them make videos, make radio stations, make ringtones. Let them wear music, let them see music, let them feel music. I am confident we haven't even begun to see the cool things hackers will let us do with music.

And maybe if it's cool enough the majors will come begging to let you include their music too.

Let users share what they create
Letting users share what they create may seem obvious in this day and age, but if there is one thing the music industry hates it's sharing. To them, sharing is the root of all evil and a lot of their money, time and effort has gone into putting an end to it.

Unfortunately, because of the RIAA and their campaigns of suing people, your users will need to be confident that your service is legal and they won't be sued for using it. Parents will want assurances that the site their teenager is using to remix music won't somehow cost them their home.

So make sure it's legal, and then make sure users know its legal.

Let people share what they create without fear of reprisals and they will come running to use your service.

Profit!
Well, this is always the hard part, but it seems to me that if you can get the first three parts to work, then this should follow. Build a compelling product that puts power in the hands of users, not in the hands of the major labels and they will thank you for it. Get them all on your side and some money should follow.

If you've read this far, thanks for your time. I have a lot more to say on this topic but wanted to get some thoughts out there. We're starting to put some of these ideas to work over at songspin.fm. We have a long way to go, but it will be worth it.

contact me: james at songspin dot fm

Track of the Day - Damn Your Eyes by Alex Clare

2012-01-20T10:26:00.001-08:00

Loving this track by newcomer Alex Clare.
It's a nice little snippet of modern soul from England. There seems to be a real soul revival going on, no doubt largely thanks to Amy Winehouse, who Alex Clare once dated. There are a lots more soul gems you can find on Songspin.FM and we'll feature some of them in the next few weeks.
Check it out here:
Alex Clare - Damn Your Eyes

They want you to be a couch potato

2012-01-20T10:07:00.000-08:00

I think this video is really worth watching - it not only explains why SOPA is so bad, but it gets to the underlying motives of big media. Ultimately the goal (which Shirky outlines so well) is to stop the amateur from creating content. Big media companies want you to be a passive consumer of the content they create, not an active creator of new content for which they earn no revenue. I urge everyone to watch this!

Getting traffic for your site - a couple of tips.

2012-01-19T20:56:00.000-08:00

One of the things that can be hard when first starting out with a new website is getting visitors to your site. Here's a couple of suggestions for getting a a bit of traffic.

First is Yahoo! Answers. I know - it's widely regarded with derision and not a place any sane person would go looking for real solutions to life's problems. However, it is a place where you can answer questions with links to your site, and I guarantee you'll get some traffic.

For example, my site songspin.fm is a music site. There are tons of music related questions on Yahoo Answers. So every now and then I go browse the music category for some questions where people are looking for new music and I answer their question with a link to my site.

I seem to average about 30-40 visits from http://answers.yahoo.com/ per day. It's not a ton of traffic but it's steady and free. With a little imagination I think you could find the right categories and questions for almost any website. Give it a try.

Next is Reddit. Reddit has "sub-reddits" (think of them as specialized forums) for almost everything you can think of. Cars, music, electronics, sports - everything. If you can find a sub-reddit that relates to your site and become a member you can drive some good quality traffic to your website.

For example, one of my favorite sub-reddits is "listentothis" - a place where people share their music discoveries with other people who love newer, lesser known bands. This is a perfect fit with my site, so every now and then I post a link to a great song I think people will love to hear. Today alone my site got 100 visits from posting one link on listentothis. And the traffic is good quality with an average time on site of about 6 minutes.

One caveat though about reddit - they don't take kindly to spammers and you must participate in the community. However I see this as a win - win because it means you have to provide the kind of quality content that will make the site a success in the long term anyway.

I know a lot of people might think answering questions on Yahoo Answers and slowly fostering a relationship with a community on reddit are a waste of time. But these are strategies that will build a steady stream of traffic over time. Yes it would be great to be on the front page of reddit, but it's not a realistic expectation and even a big burst of traffic doesn't always lead to repeat visits. But if you can consistently get 50 or 100 visits every day from a site and you can get that from a bunch of sites, eventually it all adds up!

I'll post again soon with some more tips about places I get traffic from.

Revival

2012-01-19T13:03:00.000-08:00

It's been a couple of years since anything happened here, but I'm bringing this blog back to life to document some of the challenges we're facing with our new music startup, songspin.fm. I've let the blog stagnate for a couple of years as I had planned to leave the music startup life behind - but there's something about music that pulls you back in! I have another blog over on posterous that is the "offical" songspin.fm blog, but that's more for consumer friendly information and press release type stuff. This blog will be geared more toward people interested in startups, digital music and the places where those 2 worlds meet. I hope to talk about what is going on with online music today and also maybe be able to share some helpful tips to other startup founders, particularly those doing music startups. It can be a hard road to follow at times! Of course the test with any blog is how well the blogger can consistently keep it updated but my plan is to do a new original post at least once a week and occasionally post things I find interesting and useful from around the web.

The Cloud Owns You

2010-02-26T16:46:00.000-08:00

This item about Spotify going down raises a big issue with keeping your music collection "in the cloud". If the cloud goes down, you don't have your music anymore. It seems obvious, but I think it is a point often overlooked in the move towards cloud based music services. What if you're having a party and you lose your internet connection...or your cloud based music service goes down? Now you have a party with no tunes.
Even worse, what if you have spent many hours finding and adding songs to your favorite music service and one day it is gone? Bankrupt maybe, or forced to close for some reason or another - it happens all the time. Now you have to rebuild your entire music collection. Will that rare, hard to find track be available on another service?

And there's another more ominous issue with having your music in the cloud - it's not YOUR music. When my music is on my hard drive it is mine to do what I want with. Copy it to my iPod, put it on another computer, burn it to a CD - whatever. I know it isn't going anywhere unless my drive gets erased or breaks. But if your music is in a cloud based service, someone else controls it and controls what you can do with it. Maybe one day they decide that songs from a certain artist can no longer be played and they yank them from your collection. Don't like it? Tough luck. Maybe revenues are slipping and the powers that be decide you will now hear a 30 second ad in between every song. Got a problem with that? Too bad - we control your audio collection.

I'll stick with keeping my music collection on a frequently backed up hard drive. No internet? No problem - I still have my music and it's mine. Granted, cloud based services offer a lot in terms of convenience, but I'll gladly put up with the minor hassle of syncing my music to my iPod every now and then in exchange for the comfort of knowing my music is always there when I need it.

IFPI Loses “Deep-Linking” Case Against Baidu

2010-01-26T09:29:00.001-08:00

Sent to you by James via Google Reader:

IFPI Loses “Deep-Linking” Case Against Baidu

via TorrentFreak by enigmax on 1/26/10

Search engine Baidu.com is not only China's biggest, but also a major player globally. It recently grabbed headlines when it was hacked by the 'Iranian cyber army', the same outfit that took Twitter offline in December.

Baidu has become increasingly popular with the Chinese population for its MP3 indexing abilities. While its "MP3 Search" provides algorithm-generated links to millions of undoubtedly illicit copyright tracks hosted by others (so-called "deep-linking"), Baidu has always insisted that the provision of such links alone is entirely legal. Needless to say, IFPI, the global music group, disagrees strongly with this assertion.

"The music industry in China wants partnership with the technology companies – but you cannot build partnership on the basis of systemic theft of copyrighted music and that is why we have been forced to take further actions," said John Kennedy, Chairman and Chief Executive of IFPI, in a February 2008 statement.

Bolstered by an earlier ruling against Yahoo China, by further actions Kennedy unsurprisingly meant "legal actions." In early 2008, IFPI (Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music) sued Baidu.com for $9m. Today the result of that case has been made public.

Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court has cleared Baidu on accusations of copyright infringement, with a court statement showing that simply providing search results does not breach Chinese copyright law. According to lawyer Sun Yan, the case against the search giant fell because IFPI failed to identify the actual sites hosting the illegal music downloads.

IFPI has challenged Baidu – and lost – in the Beijing No.1 Intermediate Court before. In September 2005, IFPI filed claims regarding nearly 200 music tracks it claimed were made available via Baidu. In 2006, the Court ruled Baidu was not infringing copyright. IFPI appealed to the Beijing Higher People's Court which upheld the earlier ruling.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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Digital music prices: are they illegally fixed?

2010-01-14T02:36:00.000-08:00

Digital music prices: are they illegally fixed?

Canadian Recording Industry Faces $6 Billion Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

2009-12-31T10:22:00.001-08:00

Sent to you by James via Google Reader:

Canadian Recording Industry Faces $6 Billion Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

via Michael Geist Blog by Michael Geist on 12/6/09

Chet Baker was a leading jazz musician in the 1950s, playing trumpet and providing vocals. Baker died in 1988, yet he is about to add a new claim to fame as the lead plaintiff in possibly the largest copyright infringement case in Canadian history. His estate, which still owns the copyright in more than 50 of his works, is part of a massive class-action lawsuit that has been underway for the past year.

As my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes, the infringer has effectively already admitted owing at least $50 million and the full claim could exceed $6 billion. If the dollars don't shock, the target of the lawsuit undoubtedly will: The defendants in the case are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada, the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

The CRIA members were hit with the lawsuit [PDF] in October 2008, after artists decided to turn to the courts following decades of frustration with the rampant infringement (I am adviser to the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, which is co-counsel, but have had no involvement in the case). The claims arise from a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as "exploit now, pay later if at all." It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute, and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences.

Instead, the names of the songs on the CDs are placed on a "pending list", which signifies that approval and payment is pending. The pending list dates back to the late 1980s, when Canada changed its copyright law by replacing a compulsory licence with the need for specific authorization for each use. It is perhaps better characterized as a copyright infringement admission list, however, since for each use of the work, the record label openly admits that it has not obtained copyright permission and not paid any royalty or fee.

Over the years, the size of the pending list has grown dramatically, now containing over 300,000 songs. From Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen, the artists waiting for payment are far from obscure, as thousands of Canadian and foreign artists have seen their copyrights used without permission and payment.

It is difficult to understand why the industry has been so reluctant to pay its bills. Some works may be in the public domain or belong to a copyright owner difficult to ascertain or locate, yet the likes of Sarah McLachlan, Bruce Cockburn, Sloan, or the Watchmen are not hidden from view.

The more likely reason is that the record labels have had little motivation to pay up. As the balance has grown to over $50 million (Universal alone owes more than $30 million), David Basskin, the President and CEO of the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd., notes in his affidavit that "the record labels have devoted insufficient resources to identifying and paying the owners of musical works on the Pending Lists." Basskin adds that some labels believe addressing the issue would be "an unproductive use of their time."

Having engaged in widespread copyright infringement for over 20 years, the CRIA members now face the prospect of far greater liability. The class action seeks the option of statutory damages for each infringement. At $20,000 per infringement (the amount owed on some songs exceed this amount), potential liability exceeds $6 billion. These numbers may sound outrageous, yet they are based on the same rules that has led the recording industry to claim a single file sharer is liable for millions in damages.

After years of claiming Canadian consumers disrespect copyright, the irony of having the recording industry face a massive lawsuit will not be lost on anyone, least of all the artists still waiting to be paid. Indeed, they are also seeking punitive damages, arguing "the conduct of the defendant record companies is aggravated by their strict and unremitting approach to the enforcement of their copyright interests against consumers."

Update: An earlier version of this post noted that record label liability could exceed $60 billion in this case. A reader helpfully noted the math gremlin - the correct number is $6 billion ($20,000 per infringement X 300,000 songs). Toronto Star correction is here.

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Public Enemy Lacks SellaBand Believer$

2009-12-31T10:20:00.001-08:00

Sent to you by James via Google Reader:

Public Enemy Lacks SellaBand Believer$

via hypebot by Bruce Houghton on 12/14/09

The press releases were flying on October 6th when Public Enemy announced that they were going to their fans via SellaBand for $250,000 to record and promote a new album.

"Through its partnership with SellaBand, PE is offering a total 10,000 parts for Believers at a value of $25.00 each to raise a total of $250,000. The $250,000 will be used to: a) fund the complete recording costs and expenses for its next album and b) fund a strategic marketing plan for the worldwide release of the SellaBand album in 2010.
Public Enemy has created an exciting incentive plan for Believers and looks forward to successfully completing fund raising by the end of 2009."

Now, more than two months later, and less than 20 days before the end of 2009, the band has only raised $71,620 or just 28% of its goal. This is despite offering "exciting incentives":

"Believer" Level = 1 Part ($25) Incentive: Exclusive, numbered CD in Digipak 1
"Hype" Level - 4 Parts ($100) Incentive: Exclusive, numbered CD Digipak, opportunity to buy 2nd CD at 50% off, & Name in booklet 4
"Rebel" Level - 10 Parts ($250) Incentive: All of Above plus Exclusive Limited Edition Public Enemy T Shirt 10
"Posse" Level - 20 Parts ($500) Incentive: All of Above plus Autographed Copy of CD signed by Chuck D 20
"Terrordome" Level [Limited to 50 investors] - 40 Parts ($1,000) Incentive: All of Above plus Unlimited use backstage pass for 3 years 40
"Bring The Noise" Level [Limited to 15 Investors] - 200 Parts ($5,000) Incentive: All of Above plus Executive Producer Credit on Album 200
"PE Number One" Level [Limited to 5 Investors] - 400 Parts ($10,000) Incentive: All of Above plus Studio Visit during recording session 400

No word yet on whether or not Public Enemy will extend the deadline for fan contributions.

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MP3 links are volatile.

2009-12-14T10:52:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest challenges in maintaining an mp3 search engine is the short life span of most mp3 files on the web. We call this "volatile" content - it's always changing and one can't rely on a file being alive for very long.

To combat this, at SkreemR we are continually testing to see whether or not links in our index are still valid. The trick is to do this without downloading any files which would eat up our (and the host sites) bandwidth very quickly. So we have a program that checks all the links and does a "HEAD" request to see if the file is still available and hasn't changed. The HEAD request is quite handy - there's a good post about it here if you are interested:

http://www.greywyvern.com/?post=272

The article sums up the value of HEAD quite well: "You can verify that a file exists, and is the proper MIME-type, without actually downloading all of the data contained within that file." One problem is that some servers block or do not implement HEAD requests, but mostly it works quite well for us.

We try to validate each link every 24 hours. With an index of over 10 million links, our program has to be very fast (it is!). Occasionally you may come across a link in SkreemR that doesn't work but that means you have hit it sometime in that 24 hr window between checks. For the most part, I think compared to other mp3 search engines we have the best ratio of working vs broken links. That's probably why people like to use our API and why people who do not use our API like to try and scrape our site for links...but that's a post for another day ;)

My Music RSS Feeds

2009-12-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

I thought I would share some of the music news sites I follow in my feed reader, so I added a blog roll feed to the sidebar as well as an RSS widget with the latest headlines. I can't believe how easy Google makes it to do cool stuff - thanks, Google! There might be some of you out there looking for some new sites to follow so for those interested, the link to my public shared feeds is here:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F04448201383079623474%2Flabel%2Fmusic

A few of these may be defunct or updated very infrequently. However at one point or another each has offered some good insight into the digital music or audio search sphere.

Welcome

2009-12-07T13:55:00.000-08:00

Hi! welcome to the "unofficial" SkreemR blog. I say unofficial because these are just my thoughts and ramblings on the state of audio search and digital music in general. Hopefully from time to time there will be something useful and/or informative.

thanks for reading!