Mixcloud: Re-thinking Radio - One Million Streams Old

Mixcloud is a website dedicated to streaming music. The main difference is that they focus on radio content as opposed to individual singles. Put simply, in their words, Mixcloud "helps connect radio content to listeners more effectively". By hosting radio shows, podcasts and DJ mixes in the 'cloud' (without software or storage), the audio is available to listen to on-demand and instantly, whereas podcasts require downloading to a hard drive. Uploaded audio is therefore referred to as 'Cloudcasts', and saves the owner or listener using slow and restrictive file hosting websites.

Having an efficient and clean uploading process and a strong search function, Mixcloud has the two pronged attack of helping content creators promote and helping listeners discover the audio that they want to hear. I have been using the site myself for nearly a year now, and have found that broadcasting is easy (and free!), and listening and discovering is an enjoyable experience. For more info, check the 'What is Mixcloud?' video after the jump...

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MIDEM 2010 Round-up

January saw a "highly productive and optimistic" MIDEM 2010 conference take place in Cannes. The event had kicked off with the "New Models At Work" panel session, with Amanda Palmer speaking about her 2009 self-funded solo album, and her online community of fans. Hal Ritson from The Young Punx added that artists need to "get some emotional contact with [the people listening to their music]" and that music bloggers giving away free downloads should be viewed as the modern equivalent of radio promo. Starting with an inspirational DIY discussion is great, but I'm sure people were looking for other ways to get involved, as each artist's strategy will be completely different.

Luckily, there was a diverse set of panelists and topics; with video games and mobile device apps being two major industries in the future of music, as well as possible revenue streams for artists, I am glad to see that those topics were of great importance, and even had specific discussion panels (see below). One of the quotes from the 'Apps' panel became the most retweeted live posts of the conference... the news that "Shazam #App is selling 300,000 songs a DAY via iTunes".

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Ok Go New Music Video Premiere

Chicago-based indie rockers OK Go caused a sensation with the video for their 2006 song "Here It Goes Again". The video featured a choreographed treadmill dance routine, and reached nearly 50 million views on Youtube, and inspired scores of remakes. The band became the perfect example of viral marketing in the new music industry.

So, any follow-up would be a tough task, and would need to be a pretty impressive video. "This Too Shall Pass" premiered yesterday, and has received some great reviews so far. The latest project collaborated with Syyn Labs on a two-story Rube Goldberg machine. The machine, constructed in a warehouse in Echo Park, keeps perfect time with the band's latest single "This Too Shall Pass," thrashing TV sets, dropping pianos, launching paper airplanes, blasting paint, and much more in spectacular synchronicity with the song.

Check it out here...

Reactive Music

What is reactive music? Well, it is music that responds to it's surrounding environment and manipulates the sound accordingly. A simple example, is whilst playing music through your iPhone, you can effect the sound with different swinging and shaking movements. Essentially, it enables you to remix songs live and create a different recording every time.

RjDj is an iPhone app and web platform operated by the team at Reality Jockey Ltd. They hope to create a buzz around reactive music and turn it into a consumer format. The startup launched its own free app last year that offers an ever-changing variety of tracks and effects. Below is a video explaining some of the options.

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Lee J the DJ Dec/Jan/Feb - ORD/MSP/ORD/LHR/ORD/SNA/ORD/NRT/ORD

It's been a couple of months without the monthly updates. Life gets in the way of blogging sometimes. I kinda realise that my friends don't actually live in my computer and I was out there getting up to mischief on a regular basis.

December kicked off with of my favourite gigs ever. I was invited up to Minneapolis to play for Hotdish. The guys looked after me so well and the crowd were so into hearing great music, old and new, that it really reminded me of the Moochin parties of old. I even met Jack the Snowman. *le sigh* I'll be heading back there this summer.



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Apple buy music streaming service Lala

I’ve always liked Apple. They may not have invented digital music, or the portable digital player, but they fine-tuned them and distributed them to mass markets to perfection. More music is being heard by more people in more places than ever before, and for that, we should be grateful. (Figuring out how to strategize and monetize these new markets is a different matter.)

It seems that iTunes has ruled the mp3 generation, but times and trends are moving ever faster, and there’s now a whole new generation of consumers that may never even own an mp3. Streaming is big business these days. Enter Lala, one of several successful (read: popular but not entirely profitable (yet?)) online music streaming services that has established itself with the non-owning and mobile music markets. Being able to listen to music through a web browser is something that gives music fans greater freedom, and access to their collection from any computer, smart phone or other mobile device, and is something that Apple lacks within iTunes.

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Imeem is now Myspace Music

MySpace has recently completed a deal to acquire music streaming service Imeem, and is in the first phase of integrating certain assets into its Myspace Music network. Although the sum of the deal remains undisclosed, sources report a total deal worth around $8m. (CNET shares, "The News Corp.-owned MySpace has agreed to pay $1 million in cash, but the total figure also includes money for accounts receivable and employee earn outs".) These figures fall wildly short of the $30m+ that had been invested in Imeem during it's 6 year development, and point towards, essentially, a fire sale.

Imeem is one of several sites that have recently gone bust or sold for next to nothing. Pressure from both major labels and large indies in the form of 'infringement payments' have helped smother another promising start-up, although the Imeem team had the relatively simple choice of selling up or packing up.

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Spotify Royalties Under Fire from Artists - Should You Expect Income from Streaming?

For many members searching for jobs in the music industry, each little bit of income helps, and streaming seemed to offer hope of another revenue source to help make a living from music. However, Spotify, the streaming application that is immensely popular in Europe (and due to launch in the US soon, has come under fire along with the performing rights societies about the minuscule amount that artists actually receive.

Hypebot recently reported that Spotify paid Lady Gaga just $167 For 1M Plays:

Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks for 5 months on Spotify; being played more than 1 million times. But according to reports this weekend, the Swedish Performing Rights Society only paid her $167. If true, it confirms other complaints from other artists like those of Swedish musican Magnus Uggla who pulled his music off Spotify declaring, "I'd prefer to be raped by Pirate Bay than played on Spotify".

When an artist starts out with earning no income from their music, they are quite happy to give it away for the exposure it may create. Obviously it is easier for a small band to offer a free mp3 and say "we may have lost a potential $1000 in order to gain some new fans", than it would be for Universal to do it with a Lady Gaga single and consider losing (potentially) a lot more.

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ArtistData - Helping Independent Musicians Remain Creative!

ArtistData is an innovative tool for the independent musician and can certainly help music job members seeking to make the most of their time and efforts. They build solutions to help an artist save time with the "monotonous updating" of their online music profiles, Myspace calendars, Facebook and Twitter updates, and the endless stream of concert calendars and gig websites. Being able to enter the data once, to the ArtistData website, then allows more time for being creative - something that is at the core of every musician.

Named a "Top 10 Indie Marketing Tool" by Hypebot, the Chicago-based ArtistData has created a lot of buzz recently. Rian Rochford of Universal Motown / Universal Republic says "ArtistData has provided a priceless tool enabling us to provide accurate and up to date artist info in the most efficient way possible", and the site has also been awarded a Chicago Innovations People's Choice Award.

Founder Brenden Mulligan was interviewed by Tim Jahn for part iof his Beyond the Pedway creative businesses series. Here he speaks about the about starting of the company, and also how artists and startups are alike.

Watch the video and read more...

Lee J the DJ Nov’09 - Funky Thang / Chart-y Thang / Gig-gy Thang

Funky Thang
Any day now sees the release of Chemars’ Funky Thang single, which also comes with a remix by yours truly. I’m a fan of Chemars’ music: it was great to work with some smooth jazzy samples, and I was able to really put my stamp on this release. Give it a listen here...

Chemars - Funky Thang (Lee Jarvis' Sneaky Thang remix) (320promo) by Lee Jarvis


Chart-y Thang
I was asked to compile a chart for online digital store Stompy. A great opportunity to share some great tracks that have been doing it for me recently, and spread the love about some very talented producer and label buddies...

http://leejarvis.blogspot.com/2009/12/lee-j-dj-nov09-funky-thang-chart-y.html