What's In My Ipod?

At the end of the year every year, I like to use some of the down time between December and January to comb through the various MP3 blogs end of the year lists to discover new music. While I love Led Zeppelin, REM and Radiohead, I have found that taking the time to find new music is something that keeps me in touch with what is new and exciting that I would otherwise not necessarily discover. As a kid, the radio was my number one discovery tool. Today, my radio listening is about zero, and when I do find myself in the car, I tend to listen to the NFL network which feeds my football obsession. The radio has been replaced by sites like Hype Machine and Motel de Moka.

So what am I listening to right now? A bunch of good stuff.

Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros - The song Home is without question my favorite song right now. The band's music is very reminiscent of early California folk/psychedelia. I don't know a bunch about the band but in this track and several others I have listened to, I really like the sound, which doesn't sound like The Mamas and Papas or Jefferson Airplane, but certainly evokes that sort of feel.

Phoenix - Their release Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was everywhere on people's lists this year. The big track 1901 is a fun and uplifting song. If it wasn't everywhere already, the recent Cadillac commercial has certainly made it all the more familiar.

Passion Pit - Tim in my office turned me onto this band and while it didn't click the first listen or two, it certainly has now. Sleepyhead and Little Secrets are played over and over again in my car. I haven't listened to all of Manners, but I would definitely recommend it as a catchy, upbeat sound that doesn't necessarily remind me of MGMT in style but certainly in spirit.

The xx - This band had a lot of buzz on the same level of Phoenix. I heard them first on NPR on an end of the year music special, and while the first track I heard didn't do much for me, some repeated listening of the various tracks got me hooked. I especially like Crystallized and Night Time. Their sound is haunting and dense, but the male female vocal teaming and the ethereal sound really is something that I keep coming back to.

Julian Casablancas - Whatever happened to the Strokes? I don't know as I was only really into their debut release, but a listen to the latest effort by their frontman reveals a high charged, almost disco revival sound that has hints of the initial Strokes release although more lively and I guess danceable?

The Rest - I discovered this band on some obscure indie music blog whose name escapes me. This band out of Canada is way up my alley. The track Coughing Blood/Fresh Mountain Air reminds me of Radiohead and U2 with a more haunting backdrop. Seriously, of all the new stuff I have heard, this one song has blown me away the most. I hope to hear more like this from them.

Atlas Sound - I can't put my finger on the sound of this band, but the track Sheila, is something I never tire of listening to. The chorus "And when we die we will bury ourselves" is very Wilco in a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sort of way, but much more catchy and earnest way. The link here is to a live video of the song Sheila.

Metric - Not sure how to describe Metric, other than it has hints of fast paced electronica and the lead singer's voice is just great.

Major Lazer - My kid's favorite right now. Somewhere between hip hop (T-Pain) and dance hall with a bit of Daft Punk to boot. The song "Keep it Going Louder" just defies you to sit in your seat and not move.

White Rabbits - I tend towards the punk or heavy rock sound and I wouldn't describe anything in this list as of that vein with the exception of this band. While not really punk, The White Rabbits have a great fast paced beat and a stripped down sound with some hints of what I would say is early melodic punk stylings.

My Current Media

This is for me. If you find it interesting, I am glad I can share. I like to look back on these periodically and I find it is a good way to keep friends up to date. Nuff said.

Television - Yeah, I watch TV sometimes. While in general TV is muy malo, there are some very notable exceptions.

Friday Night Lights - I love this show. It hits me on three levels. 1. It reminds me of my soap opera phase where I was glued to each passing day of Day's of our Lives. 2. Great acting, great directing, great look and feel. 3. High school football. It doesn't get any better than this and a big thanks to Direct TV for keeping the show alive. For those of you not on Directv, you are missing out.

True Blood - Currently my hands down favorite from HBO. It carries on the great tradition of Oz, Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood and Big Love, except, it is heavy on white trash and vampires. I LOVE THIS SHOW. Great music, great story line, great creepy swampy vampire vibe and a lot of of social commentary to boot. It may be the best HBO show yet.

Supernatural - CW show. Demons and other freaks. I have to say that I want to hate all shows on the CW but this one keeps sucking me in. Probably has to do with my True Blood fetish.

Entourage - I always want to skip Entourage, which Jessica loves, but I keep watching and have to say that it is a great low engagement show that reminds me of how much fun I had in LA in my 20s.

Mad Men - I am not religious enough in watching but love it when I pull it up on TV. This show nails the period piece on the head and given my age it always hints at things I recall experiencing as a child. Except my dad wasn't an advertising exec.

Football - It is a great year for Football. The Titans undefeated? Tom Brady out on day one? Miami a playoff contender? Outstanding.


Movies - We try to get out every so often and watch some shows. With Oscar season we will step it up but for now it is whatever strikes our mood. The last three are as follows:

Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist - This was such a fun movie. It was the indie kid / emo version of Linklater's Before Sunrise ( in my opinion). It had great music, compelling actors and clearly hit the hipster youth coming of age market.

Choke - Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favorite authors. Hands down. One night Jess told me that his book Choke had been made into a movie and it was in the theater and she wanted to know if I wanted to watch it. Hell yeah! I forgot to tell her it was about a sex addicted, con artist who intentionally chokes himself on food to obtian sympath and money to support his institutionalized mother. She was disturbed. I was delighted. It was well done and I think Anjelica Huston is going to get an Academy Award nomination as well as Sam Rockwell potentially. I couldn't properly explain why I love his books so much so I just gave up. Hopefully Survivor or Invisible Monsters comes out soon!

W - Josh Brolin knocked it out of the park. Stone has been better and he has been worse. I liked it a lot.

Music - I haven't been listening to a whole lot of new music. It seems like I am stuck in an emo punk (Brand New, Saves The Day, Alkaline Trio ) world on one hand, and an eclectic world music electronica one on the other (Thievery Corporation, Federico Aubele, Azam Ali). I need to branch out. That said, there are a couple of exceptions...

+/- is the name of a band I am really into right now. Their page on Allmusic is here. Really good stuff. People who have heard it compare it to Postal Service. Since I don't listen to Postal Service or Death Cab For Cutie, I can't comment. I just like it.

Faded Paper Figures - So there is this series of commericals on television for Lexus that has some really cool snippets of music. I was so drawn to the music that I had to find out who made this music. Well, there wasn;t really a band, or even a song, just a snippet. It kind of reminded me of a fake memory of a replicant. Or something like that. Fortunately, the guy behind the music has a band and recently released a CD which I love. The commerical didn;t lead to buy a Lexus but I did actually buy a CD...which leads me to the last point.

MP3 Blogs - I am advising a company called Notify.me. They have a cool notification service that subscribes to email addresses or XML feeds or whatever. I initally signed up for some nerd news and after a day or two of seeing headlines pop up in my IM window thought there had to be something better. I subscribed to some Football news feeds for fantasy football. Very cool. I am now getting IM messages as fast or faster than the unemployed guys in my fantasy football league. Progress. Both of these use cases, while interesting, didn't speak to my soul. Then I remembered MP3 Blogs.

When we started up Rabble we reached out to some cool punk/indie and hip hop labels. One of then was Nitro. The head A&R guy at Nitro told me about an MP3 blog he was involved in called 3hive. 3Hive has a number of contributors with some seriously good music sensibility and taste that runs the genre gamut. I went to their site and checked out the sites they linked to. I ultimately subscribe to 3 hive, Aurgasm, Motel De Moka, and Cover Lay Down. Every so often, not to often, a friendly little message pops up in IM and I know that I have some tasty new music to survey. That is how I found out about +/-. And a bunch of other cool bands.

Ok, I was going to do political, tech and mobile blogs but I will do that some other time. I am out.

Genius, unless you are Tool!

Not sure how many of you have tried Genius yet on your iTunes/iPod. It rocks! Big time!

When I first installed it I was kind of annoyed by the MASSIVE iTunes upsell that is off on the side. I almost didn't get over it but then I started playing with it and figured it out. You select a song from inside your library and then click the Genius button. iTunes then returns a playlist of songs that are sort of like that song or at least seem to make sense to me.

Picture this, you head out on a run and are listening to Metallica and all of a sudden a mile into the run your ipod set to shuffle starts playing Dashboard Confessional's Screaming Infidelities. Buzzkill right?

Genius pulls together a bunch of songs into an on the fly list. For example I just selected Mastodon's Colony of Birchmen and I get back tracks from A Killswitch Engage, It Dies Today, Metallica and Black Flag. Proper running music. Nothing emo. The part I especially like about this is that I of course can make a playlist of all the songs I know but Genius actually picks a variety of songs including a bunch I have never played or listened to. True music discovery.

That is as long as you are part of the iTunes infrastructure. I have 6 Tool CDs ripped into my library and I was excited to get some playlists based on songs like Eulogy, Pushit and Sober. No dice. Not on this software. I am not sure if this is a technical limitation of not having the tracks in iTunes or a policy retribution but I always find the Tool vs. digital standoff pretty funny. And since I love Tool, I can respect that.

Sirius

This is the year I took the satellite plunge. I have posted before how certain things can really drive technology adoption. For me it has been the NFL. Thanks to the NFL I made the switch to Directv. In fact I think they kick ass over my former digital cable provider.

Last year I came really close to getting Sirius. The big sticking point for me was that there weren't any portable models except on XM, and XM doesn't have the NFL. This year while looking through the selections offered I discovered the Stilleto which is a portable unit that can be played on the go, in your car with a dock, or in your home. Nifty. Well, mostly nifty. I had no desire to do an install in my car so I thought I would walk around and listen on runs or while killing time. Two problems with this. First, the only way to remotely pull that off is to wear some industrial strength antenna headphones and pray that you get more then one bar. Second, you better be outside with an unobstructed view of the southern skies with said contraption on your head. I don't mind looking stupid but the headphones actually hurt.

So I broke down and did the car install. Since then I have been really digging Sirius. I expected to get NFL and college football. What I didn't expect was that I would get into listening to music. Sirius has some great genre formatted stations that I am getting into. Right now the three music oriented channels I listen to are Elvis, Punk and Faction. Elvis is, well, Elvis. 24/7. Punk is mostly real hard core old school punk. Think Dead Kennedys. Faction is for lack of a better word skater music. The play punk, hardcore, reggae and hip hop. You know skater music. In any case I am excited about the football season and getting to spend some time discovering some new bands I wouldn't normally listen to.

Media Next - Introduction

I am not a long form blogger but for the last several months, maybe even almost a year there have been a number of ideas and issues swirling around in my mind that warrant a long discussion which is not something that I am prone to do. I like punchy or personal. Sometimes that isn't the right approach to address a topic or some specific subject matter.

One of the things I started pushing on at work over the last year wasdoing outreach to colleges to talk about the lessons I have learned over the last several years and to talk about the things that I think are important to share with those who will hopefully determine the future of media and content. I have spoke at a number of schools and have a handful set up for this semester that have really been the catalyst for this post and a series of posts that I want to write in the coming months.

Although different classes have different subject matter and I generally try to tailor what I am saying to the specific audience, there are some recurring themes that I find myself repeating over and over and I realized in the process that these are things that I assume other people consider and that I have never formally put structure around my thoughts. Acknowledging that there is not an original thought, I think we do each synthesize a combination of our experiences as well as material we have encountered in our journeys. The things I plan to cover in the coming weeks or so will be a combination of my experiences and things/thoughts I have encountered in the past. I hope to give proper attribution where I can remember.

So here I am four paragraphs in and I haven't made any meaningful points...

CDs were an incredible invention. As a consumer I recall that I was excited about the idea of a form of media that wouldn't get eaten by a tape machine or melt on the dashboard on my car. So much for vision on my part. What I didn't get at that time way back in the early 80s was that the promise of crystal clear digital sound was the seeds of massive change in what the future would hold for the media and content businesses.

Over a decade later while working at MP3.com I would experience firsthand the intersection of technology and content and watch as both sides grappled with what would come next and what would the future hold as consumers marched rapidly into unchartered territory. A big reason for this was that very same digital CD format that was transformed by the rise of personal computers.

Again almost a decade later the changes continue to come and still the clear cut impact or rather the clear outline of what is to come next is not obvious to me or many others who watch the media and content space. To me there are a number of historical things that are worth exploring and discussing as they give hints to what has transpired and hopefully may give some indications of what the future might hold. I don't pretend to have any answers but I think that a good hearty discussion of the issues might point to some future possibilities.

My goal in the coming weeks is to hit on the following specific topics: The role of scarcity in the creation and maintenance of value in media and content, the rise of personal distribution and publication platforms, the rise of inexpensive content production tools, the differences between open and closed networks, and possibilities for future business models. I don't expect to have any divine revelations but I do hope to get a handful of people engaged in a conversation, if not now, hopefully soon.