Pandora on Roku and Google TV

I’ve rediscovered Pandora. First I noticed it appear on my ROKU box. I see it’s also available on Google TV. Pandora grew out of the ‘Music Genome Project’. It’s a pretty nice way to listen to music … music you likely already have in your library intermixed with similar music that Pandora finds for you, some from artists you may not have heard of. I’d gotten in the habit of browsing ‘similar artists’ while in on Amazon.com. Pandora takes the work out of it and saves you from possible future carpal tunnel syndrome from using this serice. So with a ROKU box or Google TV hooked up to your nice stereo system, it makes for a very nice way to take the headphones off, kick back, and do something ‘offline’ like read a book or magazine. Pandora is still ‘online’ of course.

It’s not something that you actually watch, but I often do leave the TV on so I can fine tune my ‘station’ with some selective ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’. I’ve not yet done much experimentation, but I may try to do more than one station based on exactly the same artists but choose up tempo vs down tempo song selections for the 2 versions.

I started with this station based on Ceu (brazilian with some elctronica mixed in) and added some African artists I like as well. You  are welcome to ‘take a listen’ here at http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh143342416227699431

Draft Conan O’Brien for MySpace CEO

It makes a lot of sense.  MySpace could add “comedy” to it’s stable. Music, Games, and Comedy is not a bad line up. Judging from Conan’s Twitter stats after just one week, maybe having a celebrity voice to lead MySpace to it’s next incarnation is not a bad idea.

If Conan becomes the next CEO of MySpace, this will be your 1st friend.

Conan vs. Ashton twitter followers algebra problem

(a small departure from my normal blog topic … but relevant to Social Media)

In a momentary snapshot in time on Feb 25th 2010 the following  facts are observed:

• Ashton Kutcher has 4,578, 376 followers on twitter.
• Ashton is averaging 5 new followers per minute.
• Conan O’Brien has 335,838 followers.
• Conan is averaging 87 new followers per minute.

VEVO vs Playing for Change

Looking at VEVO in the 1st hour of Dec 9th, 2009 … I have these thoughts:

• Nice quality video and excellent sound (as expected)
• HD coming in 2010 (why not now ?)
• Advertisements and a playlist from AT&T (a little disappointing)
• Blog claiming that Music Videos from the major labels will be on VEVO while user generated content will be on YouTube ( What will happen to MTV? )
• Content promoted is more of the same old “top artists”
• Share your favorite music on Social Networks (as expected)
• “Sign-up” link gets me “This Web page is not Available” (Ooops … or maybe 5,000 users are trying to create an account simultaneously?)
• Me … spending hours listening to Music Videos right now because of the new service offering? (not going to happen … no compelling new content to keep me interested)
• Me … writing a blog post about this (Of course, how could I not blog about this major launch)

Now, to put it in perspective, last week I watched a TV show on NPR about Playing for Change .

• After the TV show, I spent hours at my computer listening to and watching the videos. Stayed up too late.
• I posted a link on Facebook and joined the Playing for Change Fan page
• I was thoroughly engaged with the story behind it. The “largely unknown” but very talented musicians.
• I was not surprised to find Bono here (He seems to be everywhere … including the VEVO launch)
• Me … wondering how it is that we have missed such great music from so many people in so many places until now.
• Me … thinking “here is an expression of a truly inspired vision and the real power of social media to share it and make a difference “.

5 thoughts on Apple’s interest in Lala

Hearing about Apple’s interest in acquiring Lala, I have these thoughts as to why Lala is a great value to Apple.

1. The 10 cents per song music streaming price

I’ve previously posted a blog post on Lala titled ‘10 cents a song is pretty tempting‘ .  Maybe Steve Jobs read my blog post. How many times do customers not follow through with an iTune purchase because “they like the song, but maybe not enough to buy it … just yet”.  Paying 10 cents a song to essentially bookmark the song for internet streaming rights to play back, in my mind, is the unique thing Lala offers that is a very nice feature…. and one that may lead to a  further sale. Note; this #1 reason influences all the other reasons, in my mind.

2. User music interest data mining – adding the 10 cent streaming purchases to purchases gives two levels of indication of user interest. Plus the conversions of 10 cent to full mp3 purchase is yet another data point to measure.

3. Playlists – User created playlists can feed recommendation engines. What if this were channeled into crowd-sourced online radio station programming ?

4. Home Theater play ? –  I don’t hear that Apple TV has been a huge success. What if your music library (including streaming only purchases) were added to an Apple home theater system offering? That may be more attractive to consumers. Roku just added Pandora to their Roku box (which I purchased awhile back to stream Netflix movies … for free …  since I have a Netflix account).

5. Response to Google – Google’s music search addition announce October 28 2009 brings up Lala as one of several matches to searches for  music at the top of the search page. Frankly, I was expecting to hear something from Facebook as a response. Apple’s response is pretty impressive considering their dominance in the digital music already with iTunes. And with the launch of Vevo.com (powered by Youtube), maybe Apple’s Lala acquisition is a counter attack in the making.

Will Facebook respond to Google’s Oct 28 Music announcement?

I saw on Techcrunch that Google will launch a music service on October 28th that combines some services from Lala and iLike  (no details yet …).

Screenshots

Some suggested listening on Lala while you read on.

I’ve previously posted an article on Lala titled ‘10 cents a song is pretty tempting‘ . Now if Google turns that into billions of songs, this adds up to real money.  So while no details are available yet, if I were to guess, I like Lala’s player and 10 cents per song online price for purchasing rights to internet plays.  I like iLikes ticketing/concert information. All they need now is a great recommendation engine like Last.fm or Pandora (I slightly prefer Last.fm), but then Google likely has the talent in house to develop a great recommendation engine. The hard part of starting from scratch would be doing the licensing deals. Lala and iLike have that.

So will Facebook respond ? I would be very surprised if Facebook does not announce something (at least an intention) either prior to or within a week of Google’s October 28 roll out. There were rumors just a few weeks ago that Mark Zuckerberg likes Spotify . I was unable to check that music service out as it is not available in the US … probably licensing … the hard part.

If both Google and Facebook partner up with just a few of the multitude of music players out there, there will likely be some other music services that just end up fading away.  One thing is certain. Most people are pretty attached to their music. An awesome music service coupled with broad music licensing can make for some very loyal customers, perhaps even loyal enough to follow their preference with a compatible phone service.

Google Wave Amazon MP3 Bot

The features that make Google Wave most interesting as a social platform are Widgets and Robots  (bots).  The Google Wave Amazon MP3 Bot is a great example of a recently developed robot application.

What is a Wave Robot ?  A robot is an application that is invited to participate in the wave just like you would invite a person. Once added to the wave as a participant, the robot performs a particular automated task. In the case of this robot application, the Amazon MP3 Bot, auto detects the artist name that one of the other participants types in and automatically converts identifiable artists, songs and albums into Amazon MP3 product links.

Rather than embed the excellent video demos here in my blog post, I would invite you to go to the Google Wave Amazon MP3 Bot micro-site blog. Not only is there a great Vimeo  demo of the bot in action, but the author also shows how to install a robot.  As many of you do not have a wave developer account yet and can’t try it out, you will definitely want to check this site out to get a taste of how Google Wave works.

Google Wave Amazon MP3 Bot

view all Google Wave related posts

Playlist Power Myspace app has been decommissioned

The Playlist Power app has been decommissioned.

Bemmu, our programming ace who lead the software development effort has ported his revenue generating apps to AppEngine and has terminated his hosting service that hosted the Playlist Power application.

Thank you to all who tried and used our Playlist Power MySpace application.  We had over 3200 downloads as of this summer. We hope you enjoyed using it.

Adobe previews Augmented Reality Music Video at Adobe Max

Music content delivery is taking an evolutionary step using Adobe Flash. Adobe invited John Mayer out on the stage today to preview and talk about an augmented reality music video track in the works at the Tuesday Oct 6th Adobe Max Keynote event. John is working with Blitz and Adobe in what appears to be a mashup of the music video with virtual reality gaming environment construction techniques. Not being entirely sure of how the augmented reality music video is created, I would guess that John Mayer is filmed in front of a green screen and that the virtual reality environment is also delivered in Flash.

Ok , searching Blitz’s website, they do have a blog post titled “Augmented Reality Sings a New Tune” , so I’ll comment more on where I possibly see this going in the future.

Where might this technology lead us?

1. Guest music performances embedded in games?
2. Games that know your musical preferences?
3. Virtual reality music players emulating the concert venue?
4. Brand-sponsored Augmented Reality Music Videos?

This could get interesting for the music and game industries and for consumers.

1. Guest music performances embedded in games?

Imagine playing your favorite virtual reality game and walking or driving by a night club in your game and hearing a song by one of your favorite artists. Maybe you’d be tempted to drop in and have a listen? This type of thing could be coming soon to a game near you. Or how about the reverse scenario. You may see a go see a live performance and have the graphics from the game showing on the big screen monitors. Buy the game at the concession stand while you are there. Mashups of music and game industry content certainly will offer up some interesting co-marketing opportunities.

2. Games that know your musical preferences?

Why would the above scenario ever need to present you with a music entertainment that is not your taste? Depending on the player and their favorite music preferences (as pulled in from your favorite Social Media site music player), the musical act in the virtual reality club you just happen by could be served up to your particular taste. Perhaps in order to play the game, you had to sign in with your Facebook, twitter, or google ID ?

3. Virtual reality music players emulating the concert venue ?

Imagine seeing your favorite band perform up close in an intimate club (even if they typically play large amphitheaters). Might you not be tempted wander over to the virtual concession stand and buy music, t-shirts, video games, concert tickets, and other items geared to a true fan.

Oh, and why not choose your club venue ? Just as virtual reality golf games allow you to play golf on many world famous courses, why wouldn’t we be able to choose to see the band in a venue of our choice?

4. Brand-sponsored Augmented Reality Music Videos ?

Augmented Reality Music Videos using this technology could be expensive to produce. Subtle brand placement could be placed in the music video you are watching. You’ve seen it in movies and on TV for years. It need not be ‘in your face’ advertising, although I’m sure there will be some of that as well (buy the track on iTunes, order the CD on Amazon).  One could potentially change the branded items placed in the video to match your user demographic. Oh, did I mention that perhaps in order to play the augmented reality music video, you had to sign in with your Facebook, twitter, or google ID ?

Music service coming soon to Facebook?

A Techcrunch post on Tuesday titled “Mark Zuckerberg: “Spotify Is So Good”” caught my eye this week. Rumor has it that Facebook is in talks with Spotify. If Spotify becomes Facebook’s music service either by acquisition or partnership, this will be very bad news for MySpace. This will be true even if MySpace closes on the acquisition of iLike, a very respectable and popular music service. Over 9 million current Facebook users have downloaded the iLike application. iLike has attracted 55 million total users, a number reported in a recent Financial Times article covering the MySpace iLike deal.

In March of this year I posted a comparison of Radiohead Facebook vs Myspace fans titled “962,631 Facebook fans vs 199,240 Myspace friends“. Since then, in less than 6 months, the numbers have grown to 1,202,643 Facebook fans vs 237,601 MySpace fans (as of today). While both have grown, Radiohead’s Facebook fan numbers are up roughly 25% compared to Radiohead’s MySpace friends up 19%. To put it in perspective, Radiohead added 240,000 fans on Facebook since March 09. This number of new Radiohead fans on Facebook since March exceeds Radiohead’s total number of Myspace friends acquired since Myspace’s inception.

I still go to MySpace often to check out songs from new artists I’ve discovered or check out the new songs from artists I like. However, that’s mostly the only reason I go to MySpace since I’m really not into online games, another of MySpace’s strengths. Like many users, I find Facebook’s cleaner interface, “not in you face” advertisements (they are there, but not distracting), and social networking value to be far superior to MySpace’s offering. I do not currently go to Facebook to check out new artists songs although I will occasionally link to a YouTube video of an artist I particularly like on my wall. When Facebook adds a music player service, that will likely mean fewer visits to MySpace. With the rumors about Spotify and Facebook surfacing, it looks like this day is coming.

What would I do if I were the CEO of MySpace looking to stave off a death spiral? I have some ideas, but that is a topic for another day’s blog post.  Purchasing iLike may have been a good move for MySpace, but it probably is not enough given that whomever Facebook chooses for a competing service, whether it be Spotify or any one of many other music service startups out there, their choice will immediately become a “de facto” music service leader.