Jazz Odyssey

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Digital Music News brings us statistics this morning indicating that Yahoo Music edged out AOL Music in traffic during January as the top online music destination. In addition to covering traffic data on the rest of the top […]

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"It’s wildly, glorious excessive, indulging the prog-rock impulses that are simply too ecstatic for rock to leave behind." — John Pareles @ the New York Times offers his take on the new Mars Volta album.
"…the result is a homogeneous shitheap of stream-of-consciousness turgidity." Sam Ubl over at Pitchfork has a slightly different viewpoint than […]

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The March 2005 issue of Wired is certainly worth a read if you are at all involved with radio. Good articles on podacasting, Satellite radio and the rise of digital terrestrial radio and the changes that these technologies may catalyze. However, as noted by Rags at the Digital Music Weblog, notably absent in […]

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My colleagues who don’t appreciate my prog rock proclivities are advised to stop reading this post now and go back to fawning over the Bright Eyes album. This post is of interest to those colleagues who’ve requested to see a bit more about the music near and dear to my heart, and also for […]

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"iPodder is the bastard offspring of the blog and the Apple MP3 player. It
combines the hyperactive talkiness of blogs and the hipness of iPods into
something utterly new: the podcast. iPodder uses the blog syndication tool RSS
to automatically download homebrew radio shows, podcasts, directly into a
portable MP3 player."
Wired explores the explosion of podcasting and talks to […]

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This article which was published a few days ago in the Washington Post covers a lot of ground about the various (possible) futures in the acquisition and consumption of music. The variety of possibilities makes one thing very clear–the splintering of the mass market is creating an array of consumers who have different motivations, […]

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The New York Times has an article today on the use of viral and interactive marketing for consumer products. The article indicates that the percentages of advertising budgets earmarked for online campaigns is still very small but that "text messaging and web fluency" is on the rise among consumers but focused on the under-30 crowd.
Critical […]

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"MotorFM is determined to transform radio in Germany, and it thinks it has the tools to do it: MP3 downloads and songs streamed directly to mobile phones. The first step has seen MotorFM, launched Feb. 1, abandon on-air commercials in favor of generating revenue from MP3 downloads and targeted sponsoring of its programming. The […]

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Blogs and news sites are all abuzz over the "workaround" to the Napster-To-Go DRM that allows you to "bypass" the copy protection and burn "hundreds of thousands" of songs to CD. I’m not exactly sure why this is shocking or even mildly surprising. The tools for directing audio output to .wav files […]

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The folks over at Digital Music News report that Motorola is preparing to offer a new service it calls IRadio:
"Motorola is planning to make the mobile phone the center of a new music
experience, combining high-speed internet access with Bluetooth
technology to offer music “anytime, anywhere”. The new service, called
iRadio, will allow consumers to easily beam radio […]

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The MGM Vs. Grokster case is going to be centerstage for many of us next month as years of legal questioning and wrangling over issues of copyright, fair use, safe harbor and centralized control over the means of distribution continue to be argued and counter-argued.  Technological determinism and innovation is accelerating evolution in the […]

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Here’s a terrific article on creating and optimizing one sheets from Bob Baker’s Indie Music Promotion blog. While one sheets have traditionally been more an "analog" tool in the setup and promotion of a new album, digital versions also proliferate, and whether analog or digital the tips in this article are valid. Many […]

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Melodeo has announced the deployment of their Bluetooth P2P technology for sharing music between mobile handsets. Melodeo’s technology allows consumers who have purchased music for their handset to send a copy of that song to another Bluetooth capable phone. The beamed song will play only as a 30 second preview until the recipient […]

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Wired magazine has this to say about a new study on teens and websites:
"If you’re designing a website aimed at teenagers, you’d better not make
the text too small. That’s not because teens have bad eyes, but because
teenagers tend to lean back in their chairs when they’re at their
computers.

That advice and much more about how websites […]

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The Digital Music Weblog reports that CDBaby (an essential outlet for independent musicians to sell their music) has added a website construction and hosting service called Hostbaby. It offers all the essentials…the ability to stream music samples, create a mailing list, a photo gallery, a blog and more. It has been built […]

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ChangeThis.com brings us a worthwhile read from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. In a manifesto that is long on smarts but a quick read, Craig discusses the elements he believes make Craigslist such a success. Inspirational quote: "Unless we listen to our community very carefully,
they’ll find another site that works better for them."
Craig’s points-of-view […]

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Wired reports on a film inspired by rabid fans of The Lord of the Rings:
"After the 2004 Academy Awards, the filmmaking team behind The Lord of the Rings headed out to celebrate. That’s no surprise — they had just won 11 Oscars. What was unusual was the party — it wasn’t the one put […]

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A tip of the hat to the just released Hatwise Choice compilation which is a stellar collection of previously unreleased rare and live tracks by Canterbury legends Hatfield & the North.
Hatfield & the North recorded 2 superb albums for Virgin in their 3 years as a band and toured Europe relentlessly. With […]

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The New York Times reports on a major policy shift for Universal who will begin charging fees to cable TV and Internet services that provide video on demand. Universal becomes the first of the majors to take this anticipated step, but expect the other majors to take similar action and avoid the "MTV mistake" […]

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Tivo has launched an open source development initiative for its DVR. Tivo has made an SDK (Software Development Kit) available as a free download at the Sourceforge Open Source software website. This allows applications to be developed and collaborated upon by users with ideas and Java programming skills.
By creating a platform […]

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