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THE INDUSTRY STANDARD'S
B E A T S H E E T
A Weekly Report on the Convergence of Music and the Net
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| http://www.thestandard.com |
Tuesday, March 7, 2000
TOP STORY:
* We Know What You Like: Can sites like MongoMusic and LAUNCHcast
really tell your musical tastes?
NET NOISE:
* No commercial breaks at Dublab.com
UPBEAT:
* Record exec Danny Goldberg's online project signs Todd Rundgren
* ArtistDirect to sign Mjuice.com
* Myplay.com hooks up with a plethora of online music sites
* Farmclub drops pre-negotiated contract obligation
SOUND OFF: What are the pros and cons of letting a Web site know all
about your musical tastes?
ERRATA: Last week's Net Noise site review was for Luxuriamusic.com,
not Lumeria.com. Luxuriamusic.com is the site with the funky grooves.
We regret the error.
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TOP STORY:
~~~~~~~~~~
We Know What You Like Can sites like MongoMusic and LAUNCHcast really
tell your musical tastes?
By Julene Snyder
Telling people what they like is a tricky business. We imagine
ourselves to be unique in the cosmos, and finding out that your
musical taste is shared by anyone - much less darn near everyone - is
not only sobering, it's potentially humiliating.
Despite the risk, MongoMusic and LAUNCHcast are jumping into the
business of finding music that matches their users' (absolutely
peerless and unequaled) tastes. "We find music that sounds like music
that you know," explains MongoMusic founder and president Jeremy
Hinman. "You can find a song that you know in our database, listen to
a clip of that song, and if you hit the 'sounds like' button, you get
a list of 20 other songs or so that sound just like that song."
Yeah, yeah, but does it work? Oftentimes, the answer is yes. For
example, I pulled up Pink Floyd's "Speak to Me/Breathe in the Air" off
the seminal "Dark Side of the Moon" album and hit 'sounds like' with
some skepticism. (I don't happen to think very many songs sound
anything like this one, since it's part of the larger whole of the
concept album itself.) Much to my surprise, the list that came up was
a varied one that wasn't at all loaded with hoary old prog-rock
tracks. In fact, the recommendation to listen to Porno for Pyros'
"Black Girlfriend" was right on the money; it's a tune that fits the
mood of the Floyd track perfectly. Other options included groups like
Dead Can Dance, Spiritualized and The Verve.
According to Hinman, one of the reasons the service works so well is
that there is little human involvement in its Intuitive Music Search
System. "The differentiating factor between this and anything else
that's out there at this time is that this is fundamentally based on
the music itself, as opposed to being based on collaborative filtering
or user preferences," he explains. He describes the patent-pending
technology as a "semi-automated, semi-human-based system." Basically,
IMSS matches songs based on musical characteristics such as tonality,
rather than using pre-matched song lists. The company declines to
elaborate further on its proprietary information.
Of course, sometimes the system stumbles. But catching the site in
such an occasional "error" can be even more attractive than always
getting it right. When I choose Neil Young, and Mongo takes me to
Megadeth, my tastes are reaffirmed as matters ultimately too complex
for any machine to predict.
Launch.com's LAUNCHcast takes a different approach to finding music
its users will like. The site, which left beta a few weeks ago, works
by asking users to rate songs on a one-to-10 scale. You can key as
much or as little information as you like into the system before
launching and listening to your own online radio station. Unlike
MongoMusic, the more information you provide to LAUNCHcast, the better
the system works in screening out music you won't like and pointing
you toward tunes you might enjoy.
Launch.com CEO Dave Goldberg hastens to point out that his service
isn't "personalized," explaining that would not be allowed under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects copyrighted
information online. The DMCA forbids complete personalization, since a
user could choose to hear Bruce Springsteen all day long, and that
wouldn't be fair to the Boss, who wouldn't get paid. Complying with
the DMCA keeps Internet broadcasters jumping through hoops. For
example, you can't play four songs by the same artist within three
hours or play more than two songs in a row by the same artist.
Of course, the bottom line for LAUNCHcast and MongoMusic is not just a
touchy-feely wish to turn people on to cool new stuff. Their mission
is to sell records. Whether telling people what they like to hear
turns out to be a parlor trick or an enduring part of the online music
scene remains to be seen.
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NET NOISE:
~~~~~~~~~~
This week's review: Dublab.com
Ever wonder what you're missing when you're spending so much time
snuggled up with your computer? If you just can't tear yourself away
from that monitor, you can at least take a peek inside a porthole to
another way of life at Dublab.com. Here, live video streams and audio
serve up real DJs at work. (True, they're just four centimeters tall
on that tiny RealPlayer screen, but they're recognizably human
nonetheless.) Their mission? Sheer passion for music. Insofar as I can
tell, there are no ads to be found and nary a trace of suits pulling
the strings behind the scenes. If you happen to tune in during a
sweaty set of house or trip-hop, don't scamper away - the DJ's musical
taste ranges from hither to yon. You're invited to chat live with the
DJ if you so desire, peruse studio archives and join the utopian quest
to create a "community for positive, music-driven lifestyle." Who
knows? It may even inspire you to walk away from the workstation and
shake your groove thing out amongst the life-size humans.
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UPBEAT:
~~~~~~~
ArtistEnt: Big Guns, Casual Duds
Danny Goldberg's new venture adds Todd Rundgren to stable
Widely revered record executive Danny Goldberg has a new project, in
addition to the Artemis Records label that he founded last year. The
former head of the Mercury and Warner music groups - which included
Mercury Records, Motown and PolyGram Classics and Jazz labels - has
just added Todd Rundgren to his Internet company, ArtistEnt. Already,
he's got some names in his stable of artists, including fresh and
original content from Peter Wolf, Rosanna Arquette, Scott Weiland and
Sugar Ray. The idea is this: "By partnering up with established
artists and Web sites, the company is given access to rare and
exclusive material, which can then be broadcast across the Internet."
Rundgren is an old hand at this sort of thing, having supplied
subscribers with what the New York Times described as a "constant
stream of new music and sounds" via his own Web projects for years.
Www.artistent.com charms with a goofy video of Arquette sitting down
at her kitchen table talking music with her former paramour, Peter
Gabriel. With talent like Goldberg and Rundgren on board, this is a
site worth watching.
Playing With the Big Boys
ArtistDirect to sign Mjuice.com
Encino-based ArtistDirect filed an amended S-1 application on Friday
spelling out its plans to acquire Mjuice.com, a Web site offering
secure MP3 downloads, in a $15 million deal. Publicly-held
ArtistDirect includes four of the "Big Five" record labels among its
investors: BMG Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Universal Music
Group and Sony. News that the fifth label, EMI, is merging with Warner
means that ArtistDirect may well be allied with all the majors.
See http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,12657,00.html
for the complete story.
Music For Nothing Department
Myplay.com partners up with darn near everybody
It took a jumbo-sized press release to provide details of Myplay.com's
most recent bevy of partnerships last Friday. The Redwood City-based
company, which calls itself the "popular, legal and industry-supported
Web-based music service," is hooking up with a plethora of online
music Web sites. These include Epitonic.com, iFUSE, Knitmedia's
knittingfactory.com, jazze.com, ListenSmart.com, The Orchard,
Rapstation.com and SOUNDSBIG.com. Whew. The gist of it all appears to
be that MyPlay is creating a network of sites representing a wide
variety of musical genres, each of which will allow consumers to get
free MP3 tracks by clicking an "add to myplay locker" button. MyPlay
gives customers a free digital storage locker with enough room for 60
to 70 songs; the idea is that MP3 collectors can keep their tracks on
MyPlay's server so that they don't overload their own hard drive. The
feature also lets consumers listen to music in their locker from any
computer.
Chalk One Up for the Good Guys
Farmclub drops pre-negotiated contract obligation
A notice at Farmclub.com's site just went up in an attempt to turn
dross into gold. As reported in Beat Sheet on Feb. 15, the online
record label/TV show/popularity contest had been hit by a bevy of bad
publicity, largely due to one band's objections to signing a
pre-negotiated contract prior to performing on the site's TV show.
Thus, Farmclub has opted to bag the contract entirely. Now, bands can
appear on the show without a contract. The announcement is headlined
"Farmclub.com Listens to the Internet!" and explains that the contract
"(stood) in the way of accomplishing our goals, (and) allowing you to
hit our stage." Way to go, Rosenbergs!
SOUND OFF:
~~~~~~~~~~
Last Week's Question: Can watching a Web site be comparable to
attending the event? In particular, if you caught Grammy.com's
Webcast, did you feel like you were at the event?
"He$% no! There is no way a Webcast on a 17-inch screen can begin to
capture the physical and visceral response of really being at the
Grammys - or any other event for that matter. As a veteran of the
music business, I've become fairly cynical about awards shows, but
being at the Grammys always gives me shivers at some point or another
... like this year, when those kids in their early teens blew everyone
away with their jazz performance! And of course, there is no
substitute for seeing Ricky Martin wiggle his hips live and in
person." - C. Reed
"The Grammys wasn't the Grammys at Grammy.com, it was an exercise in
resurgent hegemony. I exited the site hurriedly and disenchanted a few
minutes after I'd logged in, but my click had been reduced to a
statistical addition to Grammy.com's counter, which was the site's
point anyway. I'm a geek from toe to crown, and I like my coverage of
events subjective, iconoclastic and fiercely opinionated. If I can't
be at the live event, I want to see it from as many angles as
possible, warts, scanties and all. Grammy.com was a monochromatic
coverage of a wildly technicolor event." - Kajal Basu Director of
Content, 4cplus.com
"Absolutely NOT. I have a really fast connection here, but you had to
have TV to see the one redeeming value of the show Jennifer
Lopez. Otherwise, the Grammys on TV didn't do anything for me, so why
would a Webcast in a 2-inch square window?" - Herbert H. DuPree II
Information Overload Evangelist
This Week's Question: What are the pros and cons of letting a Web site
know all about your musical tastes?
E-mail your opinions to julene@well.com with "sound off" in the
subject line, and we'll print a selection of the responses in next
week's newsletter. Letters may be edited for clarity and length, so
keep them short and include your name and affiliation, if any.
STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Julene Snyder. Send newstips and press releases to
julene@well.com.
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