Ok, we all use or at least have heard of Spotify, We7, iTunes and other competing music download sites, now it’s time for a renewal.
mflow, an innovative social music discovery service, currently in beta testing in the UK, plans to launch the service in April by partnering with several major music magazines titles like Clash, Q, Mojo and NME.
With the new service you’ll be able to listen and download music files based on other mflow users recommendations. The perk of the service is that when another member buys a song or an album based on you recommendation, your account will be then credited with 20% of the value of the transaction.
Each of the magazines will bring promotional activity to the service including advertising and free music download sales featuring major artists with their own profiles on mflow as well.
Clash magazine will be the first publication to promote the service. Soon mflow will be Q Magazine’s sponsor which lists the top 50 downloaded tracks each month.
Their marketing strategy is really smart, by helping users recommend, share and buy music this encourages social music discovery. With the backing of the top music publications this will only increase the level of trust between mflow and it’s users.
Beware Spotify and iTunes, a major competitor has arrived!
Who doesn’t take a look at Youtube at least once a day? We all do, it has became a routine, just to check out the latest movie trailer, music video of your favourite band or the daily scoop. Youtube has so many different categories mashed up together that basically any kind of topic can be find.
A study has been made by the research company Sysomos, to know which of the categories is the most watched. Well it appears that Music is the most popular category, accounting for 30.7% of all views on the video service. The music industry might be keen to know that that the main social group embedding video are bloggers aged between 20-35, accounting for 57.3% of all links
Of course this comes after Vevo, Youtube and Google’s premium music video channel.
Another study shows that Universal and Sony delivers an average 30m streams a day in the US.
Moreover earlier this year, comScore said that 92% of Vevo’s 35.4m visitors in December in the US actually came via YouTube rather than through Vevo’s own landing page.
So here are the main content categories on YouTube in order of popularity:
Last night was the annual NME music awards show which took place at the Brixton O2 Academy in London. The lucky ticket owners had the opportunity to see Kasabian, Lilly Allen, The Maccabees and many more perform live.
Kasabian and Muse were the big winners at this year’s NME Awards scooping four prizes between them including best album. The Arctic Monkeys won the Best Live Band award, taking the crown from past winners Muse.
The Big Pink won the best track award with ‘Dominos’ and the Best Dancefloor Filler award went to La Roux for the Skream remix of ‘In for the kill’.
Lady Gaga won an unusual and moreover unexpected kind of award, the Worst Dress Award, yes it does exist. Kind of strange considering she also won Best Dress Award, confusing right?
Quite different from the Brit Awards but still a talent worthy line up which saw an unsurprising collection of winners.
Tired of always checking out the same old websites? Want a way to make it a bit more fun?
Well with Codeorgan, a new web application, you can have your favourite sites turned translated into music. Confused??? Well read on!
What it does is analyses the body content of any site and follows an algorithm to determine the key, synth style and drum pattern that fits the site’s page best. You can then play back what your web site would sound like as a piece of music via “Play this website” button.
If you enjoyed the result you can share it the composition on Facebook and Twitter and make your friends wonder what you’ve been up to.
We know this web app is not going to change your life, but it’s worth trying and is just a bit of fun. It will take your mind off things for at least a few minutes in a musical way!
Here is how our Chatterbox blog sounds like: http://www.codeorgan.com/?url=chatterboxworldwide.com
Your turn!
Today, music will be brought to you in total different way. The Music Bar, a reinvention of the Twones service, will offer you the chance to discover, bookmark and share music found on the web. You can download the new service for free, unfortunately only on Firefox for the moment.
Basically Twones scours the internet for you for new music, from myspace, online sites or blogs. And when you’ve found a track you like, you can bookmark it and share it with your friends.
It’s a ‘music discovery engine’ that works to show you every song in context of the site or page its on, giving you further insight into the song, it’s background, artist information, upcoming concerts, tweets etc.
You can also share your music feed, scrobble your online plays to Last.fm and autopost favorites to Facebook and Twitter.
It’s a social network as well since it works to connect you and your friends through a sidebar that shows what your friends are listening to.
With The Music Bar, Twones effectively turns your browser into one huge music library, with an estimated 70,000 music sources already indexed and growing.
Twones has everything to please you. All of your digital music life stream just in one place!
Who wasn’t in front of their TV yesterday following the Brit awards? Well if you weren’t, here’s a little update for you.
So yesterday was the 30th edition of the Brit Awards. The ceremony was held at Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London and was broadcasted live on ITV1, hosted by Peter Kay with Fearne Cotton.
A selection of the worlds top artists were there, including Lady Gaga, Florence + The Machine, Lilly Allen, JLS, Kasabian, Dizzee Rascal, Alicia Keys, Jay-Z, Cheryl Cole and Robbie Williams.
As usual Gaga stole the show with an elaborate white lace outfit and poignant performance which she dedicated to Alexander McQeen. She topped things off by wining all three awards she was nominated for, International Female Solo, International breakthrough and the International album award.
Kasabian won the British group, which hopefully made up for Tom Meighan’s fall onto the stage! While a surprised Lily Allen got the British Female solo award.
Jay-Z can’t have regrets by flying to London as he scooped up the International Male Solo award, dedicating it to his controversial performance at Glastonbury last year and The Spice Girls as inspiration!! Dizee Rascal finally managed to get his hands on a coveted Brit Award by winning British Male Solo artist
To wrap things up, Florence + The Machine won the Mastercard British album award ( Sponsors of the Brits for 3 years now) and an ecstatic, if not slightly tipsy JLS won the British Breakthrough Act.
A good year all round for British music. And quite an exciting night for everyone!
We all remember when the iTunes store was launched in April 2003 in the US and June 2004 here in the UK. It signified the start of digital music sales as we know it.
By February 2006 iTunes had sold 1bn songs and by June 2008 5bn.
Quite an impressive accomplishment.
And today after 6 successful years iTunes reveals us the top 10 selling titles.
I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas takes the number one slot having been the biggest seller ever on iTunes.
2. Poke Face – Lady GaGa
3. Boom Boom Pow – Black Eyed Peas
4. I’m Yours – Jason Mraz
5. Viva La Vida – Coldplay
6. Just Dance – Lady GaGa & Colby O’Donis
7. Low – Flo Rida
8. Love Story – Taylor Swift
9. Bleeding Love – Leona Lewis
10. TiK ToK – Ke$ha
And of course to mark the occasion, the lucky downloader of the 10 billionth song will receive an iTunes Gift Card worth a whopping £6.36. How generous! You can also buy the full top 25 downloads as a bundle for £24.35.
Thanks iTunes!
Reckon you could give Simon Cowell a run for his money? Well UK music startup the Bizmo has launched a new Facebook application called “Hit Or Not”, giving you the chance to try your hand at being an A&R scout.
To join in just start picking out your favourite musical genre and let Hit or Not do it’s thing. Only tracks from your requested genre and from theBizmo’s catalogue will be played. The interesting part however is that you’ll only hear independent artists, giving you the chance to really say whether you think they’ve got what it takes to make it or not.
You can even create your own company and the success of it all depends on your music skills and how good you are at finding talent. You will have to buy hit songs and sell them as they fall on the charts. The hard part is that you’ll have to judge if it’s a hit song on a 30 second track.
25 Years ago, I recorded the song “19”. The idea came about whilst watching a documentary which highlighted the plight of young men and women who fought in Vietnam.
“In World War 2 the average age of the combat soldier was 26, in Vietnam he was 19” these words really made me stop and think.
When I first approached Chrysalis Records with the Demo of “19” most people there didn’t believe it would get any attention as there would be no interest from the media, and I quote “the public don’t want to hear a song about war”.
Two people thought otherwise, the promotions guy Ken Grunbaum, and Simon Fuller who was working for the Company at the time. I gave the record company an ultimatum, either release “19” as my first record or I would not sign with them.
As luck would have it they agreed, and within three weeks “19” was at the top of the charts in 13 different countries and Simon became my Manager, he later went on to name his company after the song.
At the time it all seemed a long way from home as Vietnam was an American war, but now it seems “history is repeating itself”.
It’s now the 25th anniversary since the release of “19”, only this time the documentary I am watching is about the British soldiers who would be serving in Afghanistan. I hear the words “I looked at my Men, The average age was 19, my god I’m taking boys to war”, It was unbelievable, almost the same words that gave me the original idea to record “19”, this was all sounding too familiar.
I had it in my mind to do a remix for the 25th anniversary of the original track but after hearing that, I felt it would almost be an insult not to mention the British and others, who have lost their lives in recent years whilst doing their duty so I rewrote the song completely.
This time the song is written from the perspective of how I would see things if I was in the position of a young Soldier being sent off to war.
What’s interesting is the fact that a few years earlier I was approached by the BBC to remake 19 to be included in their TV programme “Power to the People” which highlighted the fact that there were no British hospitals for soldiers returning from duty.
At the time I declined, but having listened to the Soldiers and even high ranking army officials from several TV documentaries, it appears that there are many who are unsure that the way we are going about things is the right way,
Some even believe this can easily become another Vietnam scenario which would be a catastrophe for all involved, I’m not here to preach or impose my opinion on anyone and like with the original record I leave you to make up your own minds.
I am no anti government crusader, but take a look at the video trailer , the similarities between Vietnam and Afghanistan are quite alarming to say the least.
Luckily for me, In America I have been fortunate to have sold more records over the last decade than when 19 was at it’s peak so this is something that I don’t need to do, But on the other hand It’s something I feel I should do.
This is the last time I will ever revisit this song so I hope you like and understand what really are THE FINAL ever versions of “19″.
Paul Hardcastle – Feb 2010
A voice in my head is saying welcome to hell,
Will I get to survive I‘ve got no way to tell,
I’m in a situation where one of us dies
I get a stone cold stare from my enemies eyes,
A voice in my head is saying kill or be killed
But my mind is numb and my blood is chilled,
There’s bodies all around they lie on the ground
And all I hear is silence, and it’s a deafening sound
A voice in my head is saying this ain’t a game
If I survive this Hell I will never be the same,
Should I be here? I can’t say for sure,
If I don’t understand what I’m fighting for
If you are accustomed with Spotify, you may be getting a quite bored with their choices of music.
Let’s be honest, Spotify has a limited choice of tracks from a chosen artist and has to face real competition from other services.
Good news though, Spotify has announced that it is launching new artist discovery features in its desktop client, including a new Related Artists tab to help users find more music they might like.
It’s based on a recommendation engine built in-house by Spotify’s R&D team, based on millions of user listening hours.
Thanks to his, fans can now dig down much deeper into the Spotify catalogue.
