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.

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

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.

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 ?

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.

In my previous post I speculated that Google Wave will allow new possibilities in how we share and experience music together. This also changes how artists/bands can potentially interact with their fans.  Last weekend I attended GTUG Campout: Silicon Valley (Google Technology User Group) which centered around developing gadgets and robots in wave. There were many interesting and inspirational development efforts at this weekend hackathon where the focus was to complete the development of a Google Wave gadget or robot in a single weekend (starting at 9 PM Friday and finishing by 4PM on Sunday). After the demonstrations by each of the teams that finished, during dinner, all participants were invited to vote on the applications presented to pick some winners. The 1st place winner was a Wave gadget  called “Videowave”, created by Sol Wu, Aaron Tong, and Nelson To.

The Videowave gadget allows real time video sharing and commenting in Wave.  So how does this work and how does it translate to social media and music? You can start a wave that contains the videowave gadget and load a YouTube video.  Say for example, you and your friends are big fans of Britney Spears or the Jonas Brothers and you are the 1st one to notice that a new Britney or Jonas Brothers video has been uploaded to YouTube. Being huge fans, you will of coarse want to share this with your friends. With Google Wave and the videowave gadget, you can invite your friends to watch the video together, all watching the video play at the same time and all able to chat and comment about what’s happening in the video, lyrics, dance moves, favorite parts etc. As you all chat, it’s all in real time with text everyone is typing appearing as it is typed.  Since the YouTube video is new and more of your friends are joining the Wave, you’ll probably want to watch it a few more times.

At this time, Google Wave is only available to those who’ve applied for and received wave sandbox developer accounts.  You can “sign up” now to hear more about Google Wave.  It’s probably a good idea to get on the list now as I doubt Google will turn it on for 50 million new users simultaneously.

Google showed a preview of Wave at Google I/O last month. A few of my friends were able to attend the event, but I was only able to watch the video playback of the Google Wave rollout. The key takeaway I would describe for the technology is “Real Time”.  Real time chat; it displays as you type (no waiting to type into a chat window and hot ‘enter’). Real time spelling correction is context sensitive.  If you can integrate Google Voice into the Google Wave framework, you’d have a powerful Unified Communications platform, but that would be the topic of another blog on another site entirely. Google rolled out the technology partly to encourage developers to begin creating gadgets and robots. A gadget is a program application similar to a facebook application.  A music player or video player would be good examples of gadgets.  A robot could be an automated conversation participant (like a character in a game).

So how will Google Wave impact the way we socialize around Music? To hypothesize around the possibilities, focus on ‘real time’. I would imagine that someone will create an internet radio or internet video widget that would allow real time chat among the listening audience. Imagine a fan page for a popular artist with over a million fans pre-announcing the release of a new single exclusively on a Google Wave-powered fan page? Do you think this would instantly draw the fan base over to a waves-powered social media site? I do. This would be a very good test of the platform’s scalability. Imagine a hundred thousand fans furiously typing away “Love the new song!” and similar messages all at the same time. Will it scale? It likely will. Google’s app engine technology allows for multiple processors in a cloud computing environment.

Google Wave could also be a viable platform for social media game development. So take the previous example and take it a step further adding some robots. Imagine playing a virtual reality game that you 1^st must reach the end of the game to play the newest music video release of your favorite recording artist. Follow the clues. What was the lyric from the 2^nd song in the 1^st album that opens that the door to the final stage of the game? Imagine the buzz created on the social media web site(s) that will have fans teaming up to solve the problem. What? The game new I was playing from the SF bay area and I just stumbled across two tickets to the next concert in my area? Fans chasing Avatars of the recording artists for a free poster? The possibilities are endless.  Could Google Wave be the basis of a social media and gaming platform that could seriously undo MySpace and possibly even Facebook? The potential is there. It will be very interesting to watch the Google Wave story unfold. It could significantly change the way fans socialize around music on the internet.

I’ve mentioned some unique and novel iPhone instruments from Smule in a previous post , but when I ran across the music and instruments of Norwegian percussionist and composer Terje Isungset, I thought that I simply have to share this. Terje crafts his own instruments from Norwegian natural elements such as arctic birch, granite, slate, sheep bells and even ice.  The sounds are pure arctic poetry. Is that gong tone coming from ice ?

Some links to Terje’s music  (listen with a decent set of headphones or multimedia speakers, not laptop speakers):

• Terje’s Myspace page
• Mondomix page entry (where I discovered this artist today)
• Terje’s web page

The music itself I would describe as ambient. I’m amazed by the tonal character of the sounds. The sparse simplicity of Terje’s compositions allows the natural beauty of the instruments speak. Not everyone has “ambient music” in their collection. If you don’t, you might give this artist a listen and consider adding some Terje Isungset music to your collection.

I suppose the connection to Social Media Marketing is that I’m writing about this in my blog and you might be amazed enough yourself to retweet or post a link to this on facebook. Or if you are a traditional instrumentalist or solo vocal instrumentalist, you might be interested enough to contact Terje to collaborate as some other artists have. Bring a warm coat.

I attended a Facebook Developer Garage event in SF a month ago. Andreas Weigend, former Chief Scientist of Amazon.com, articulates a PHAME methodology for optimizing results from social data: 

Problem -> Hypothesis -> Action -> Metrics -> Experiments

This would be an excellent model to apply to:

• Social Media Marketing of bands/artists
• Application Development (Music player apps for example)
• Social Media Marketing in general.

So for example, for promoting an artist or a band, one might utilize the PHAME model to engage in a number of marketing activities. For example, one “P” problem might be ‘how to bring new fans to our myspace site and get more plays’. An “H” Hypothesis might be ‘Using a Myspace friend add automation tool could be an effective and not too costly way to get new fans’. “A” Action might be “Google search on ‘Myspace friend automation’ and select one of these tools to purchase and use (sparingly … so as to not overdo it with ‘friend adds per day’). “M” Metrics – track friends requests resulting in acceptance vs total requests, track number of song plays before and after. Track increase in song purchases (if applicable). “E” Experiment: What are the results like? Any new ideas surface from results so far. Can we add more fan requests per day without getting banned? Should we drop back on friend requests per day? Checking out some of the new fans playlists, is there a similarity in their musical taste to our songs? Are there features or adjustments in the automation tool we have not fully explored that might make a difference? 

The point is that there is no ’set in stone rule’ that is going to magically work for everyone. In fact,  some musicians might be turned off by the idea of using an automation tool as just ‘being another spammer’. Or maybe your band gigs and tours enough that you are doing fine with building a fan base by more traditional means. You may have your own PHAME experiments to do (YouTube Video? Last.FM ? Use crowd source funding for next recording session using http://www.sellaband.com/ ?)

What should you try next?  There may be many ideas. Start with one. Use the PHAME model. Measure results and tweak the experiment if needed. Have some fun doing it.

Audio Category for Webware 100 2009:

http://www.cnet.com/html/ww/100/2009/about/audio.html?tag=mncol