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.

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.

(n)ICE music

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.

UserVoice survey of topic requests for this blog

I just discovered UserVoice and their great feature suggestion/survey tool.  I set up a free account to try it out to have readers suggest and vote on blog topics for Social Media Marketing in Music (this blog). You can find the link both in this post (below) and always find it from the right hand side navigation column directly under the author’s picture.

Suggest or vote on future topics

In order to tempt you into checking out the topic request survey, I’ve pre-populated it with a few topics I’ve been considering (but feel free to add your own suggestions):

Compare the new HD video services out there
YouTube now offers HD formats but YouTube is not the only game in town. What are the players? How do you embed a video in a blog, webpage , Facebook, or MySpace?

Creating a Musican/Band webpage on Ning
4000 new web sites are being created every day on Ning by ‘regular folks’ . It isn’t that hard to make a page … and it’s free.
http://bit.ly/16xW1
… and their Music Player can be embedded in both MySpace and Facebook
http://bit.ly/mnKuH

Music sites (the new ones)
http://mashable.com/2007/11/08/tools-independent-musician/
For this blog, I’d spend some time using Google trends to see which ones are registering traffic.

Digital Music startups
Check this list: http://musically.com/blog/2008/12/17/200-digital-music-startups-from-2008/
Any of these interest you ? If yes, don’t just vote for this topic… but rather create a “new idea” in this forum with this tool and suggest the one that interests you as a “New idea”… more

Mixcloud player
http://bit.ly/zg4He
I met Mixcloud founder at a Facebook Garage event. He offered some free user account codes.

Jamzee – create a playlist of YouTube videos
Jamzee is a service that allows you to create a playlist of YouTube videos that you can share on other websites like your own blog or MySpace.

How musicians/bands can use twitter … and why
By adding a twitter feed from this blog, I’m now getting views from other followers tweets. Might this work for you?

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Reminder, please don’t comment here, but rather use the survey tool to vote or add your topic preferences.

Suggest or vote on future topics

Bigfoot’s Lookin’ for Bernie

A while back I wrote a blog entry titled “Can you get your song on someone else’s blog?”.  Obviously, having a YouTube video that has viral properties that get lots of links from friends on social media networks like Facebook could help do that.  That’s how I discovered the song  “Here comes another Bubble” by the Richter Scales in the first place. But probably even more important than getting on someone else’s blog would be to have a video that has viral properties.

What would make a music video viral?

1. Humor – everyone likes sharing a video that makes them laugh.

2. Outrageous – although sometimes distasteful (and hopefully faked or simulated) a headline like OZZY BITES HEAD OFF BAT! will grab a lot of attention.

3. High Tech/ Novelty – iPhone App by Smule: Ocarina [Stairway] video (YouTube) has over 500,000 plays and a 4 ½ star rating.

So if you are an unknown band or recording artist looking for new fans, how can you capitalize on ideas like these to get your YouTube video seen and heard?

Humor

Pick something topical and newsworthy and keep it short. If you have a gift for comedic writing and can turn around a song in 1 or 2 days, imagine the number of plays you could get if Jon Stewart played your song on The Daily Show. That should be your goal. How you will get your song noticed and chosen, I don’t know. Surely Jon Stewart has writers and producers. Check Wikipedia. However, even if your song is not picked to be featured on the Daily Show, if it really makes people laugh, surely it has the potential to spread virally as a YouTube video. Post it to YouTube and show it to some Facebook friends. If it’s funny, your friends will share it with other friends. They will share it with their friends… and so on. Keep in mind, producing a video is not easy. If you have a great song and shoddy video production, it will fall flat. Use stills. Use PowerPoint. Think “How would Ken Burns shoot this”? Look at the Video by the Richter Scales I featured in my post “Can you get your song on someone else’s blog?”

Notice the credits at the end ? The last thing you want is to create a truly viral video that you have to pull because of copyright infringement or legal issues.

Outrageous

The now defunct Weekly World News had a very long run as a supermarket tabloid and should be your inspiration if you need to create a headline grabbing song title. Buy Bat Boy Lives!: The WEEKLY WORLD NEWS Guide to Politics, Culture, Celebrities, Alien Abductions, and the Mutant Freaks that Shape Our World (Paperback) on Amazon as your resource. Nothing more needs to be said. Consider this your “bible” for outrageous headlines or, in this case, song titles.

High Tech/ Novelty

If you can associate your song with the latest high tech buzz related to Music, you could quite easily reach new fans with a YouTube video. Certainly Smule will be coming up with other instruments that will even surpass their success with the Ocarina  iPhone app. See if you can sign up be a Smule Beta tester (if you and your band mates own an iPhone or iPod touch). You can sign up for the Beta trial of “Leaf Trombone”. Read the agreement, though. You have to promise not to release your YouTube video until Smule releases the product. Would one of your songs benefit from a horn section? Maybe a “Leaf Trombone” horn section is your answer.

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Here is an idea for a song and YouTube video that combines all of the above…

Song title:”Bigfoot’s lookin’ for Bernie”

Storyboard: Bigfoot comes out of hiding to find Bernie Madoff after losing most of his savings. Bernie Madoff escapes to the woods and “Bernie Madoff sightings” become the stuff of legend and tabloid news for a few months. Bigfoot ends up managing a successful (and legitimately run) Hedge fund. Bernie eventually gets caught and goes to jail. Since Bigfoot makes a fortune as a hedge fund manager and no longer has hard feelings, Bigfoot visits Bernie in jail. The song ends with an iPhone Leaf Trombone duet played by Bigfoot and Bernie.

If you choose to write this song and create the YouTube video, please include me in your song credits. After all, I just came up with the idea. Don’t forget to show a link to your band’s website in your video. After all, that is the whole point of doing all this work … getting fame, new fans, and brand awareness for your band.  If it’s good, who knows, maybe you could get it played on The Daily Show.

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May 2, 2009 Update:

A friend advised me of this useful URL if anyone was seriously considering adding Bigfoot” to thier music video.  http://www.livingsasquatch.com/

962,631 Facebook fans vs 199,240 Myspace friends

Radiohead has 962,631 Facebook fans versus 199,240 MySpace friends (today’s count). Think about this for a minute. Without a music player app that can store a playlist, Facebook has nearly 5 times the number of fans on the www.facebook.com/radiohead page than the number of Radiohead friends on www.myspace.com/radiohead. I do not claim to know why, but here are some thoughts.

1. Demographics. It just may be that the demographic for Radiohead’s fan base uses Facebook more than they use Myspace.

2. Visibility of the facebook wall. I joined the Radiohead fan page and this fact went up on my wall. I’m not sure that if I became a “friend” of Radiohead in MySpace any of my friends would know.  If I see one of my friends joining something on Facebook and it looks interesting to me, I will usually click on it to find out more. So Facebook has “social networking” virality

There are things I like about Facebook and and there are things I like about MySpace. If I find a new artist I like, I will invariably check out their MySpace page before I do anything else. I often look at “Friends” of a particualr MySpace artist and check out their music too. It’s nice to be able to sample entire songs (and now videos). I much prefer this to listening to 30 seconds in iTunes or other music commerce sites. YouTube videos might be a next choice. Th artist’s website might be a next choice as well.

Facebook is where I will typically see Videos that someone else likes enough to post a comment about. I have added links to videos on my Facebook wall I think my friends might enjoy.

Leave your room and meet new people

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.  ~  Carl Jung

Social interaction via the internet will only get you so far. I would highly recommend leaving your room and finding events or meetups to meet real people in real time.  Meetup.com and Facebook groups are a good place to start. If you don’t find a group that looks interesting, why not start one yourself? I live in the SF Bay area so my problem is not “finding an event to go to”, my problem is sometimes “choosing which event to go to”.

Here is a chain of events that led me to doing my blog right now:

1. I joined Meetup.com, found Silicon Valley New Technology meetup to attend in Palo Alto.

2. Went to Silicon Valley New Technology meetup in Palo Alto and heard about Weekend Apps Feb 20-24. Signed up.

3. Did the Weekend Apps event February 20-22. Wrote my 1st blog entry on the Weekend Apps blog. Decided to blog about my teams app Playlist Power as part of marketing strategy for promoting the app.

4. This is my 15th blog posting about 2 weeks.

5. There are now about 5 other distinct active sidechain activities resulting from my doing step 1 above and I’ve met about 20 new people as a result.  My world is much larger.

CDs – Facebook app

When I 1st joined facebook, one of my friends had an application that displays what music he is listening to. I actually thought this was a pretty cool facebook app. That is, I thought it was a cool app until I got my friends list up to about 20-25. Then the CD app became one of the prime delivery mechanisms responsible for TMI (Too Much Information). I like the concept of the app. I like to see what others might be listening too and maybe check out a new artist. The question is “How can one balance the utility of an application without delivering such a volume that you consider moving the friend to your ignore list?”

Here is the application link:
http://stanford.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2419261583

It has over 4,600 active users.

My feature enhancement suggestion would be this:
Have the feature track ‘listened to CDs’ but not post every CD played. Instead, allow the owner to throttle ratio of CDs displayed to 1/3 or 1/4 or 1/5 (as an example). Track ‘CDs listened to’ to favor posting a new CD never played. Allow post recipients to choose to see the entire list or CD’s your friend played that day by clicking on the wall post.

I would then likely click on the friends CD post to see what he or she has been playing.

The choice I seem to have now is to either put the friend in the ignore list or to block the CD application.