There are so many great ways to discover and enjoy music that didn’t exist 10 years ago.  Internet radio, music blogs, social networks, recommendation technology.  The prevailing wisdom is that we need all these new forms of music discovery because Clear Channel killed terrestrial radio in the 90s by rolling up all the good old stations and programming them from an office park in Dallas with lowest common denominator corporate schlock.  Which they basically did.

But it turns out you can’t kill great radio completely.  We Angelenos are fortunate to have an incredible station in Indie 103.1.  Ian Rogers (who knows I dig the alt-country and other forms of cool roots) first tuned me into Chris Morris’s excellent Sunday morning show Watusi Rodeo a few years ago.  Its still my favorite program.  Excellent week in and week out.

Dwight Yoakum – Close Up the Honky Tonks

Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band – Harlan Man

Johnny Adams – Hell Yes I cheated

Another solid program on 103.1 is Big Sonic Heaven weeknights from 10-12 PM.  I usually tune in a few nights a week while reading or playing Wii.  Its heavy on the Sigur Ros, Portishead and other chill out type stuff.  I bet Mick O tunes in regularly.

Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols has a show called Jonesy’s Jukebox at noon and 6PM. He gets some great long format interviews and guest DJs (Robert Plant, Public Enemy, Spoon, OK Go, Harry Shearer as of late) and plays some great R&B, soul, etc. as well as pre through post punk.

There is also a great DJ (forgot his name) who plays around 7 or 8PM midweek who is totally geeked about rareties, the vinyl-ier the better.  He doesn’t pre-announce the tracks he is going to play,  but he gives a great post-play synopsis including how to find the rare tracks.  They don’t appear to have a page for him on the site so I’m not sure what the show is called, but he’s turned me on the some great rare stuff in the past few weeks.  His setup for Makanda Ken McIntyre’s Cosmos was “get prepared for 5min and 26 sec of sonic perfection.”  I thought so too – check it out (loud works better).  It’s off an Complete United Artists Sessions compilation which is only available new on Makanda’s site (the vinyl is amazing and also hard to come by).

Tenor Saw – Ring the Alarm

Makanda Ken Mcintyre – Cosmos

If you are like me and had given up on ad-supported terrestrial radio, start tuning into 103.1 on your stereo or checking out their live stream on their site.  They run fewer ads than most stations by a longshot, and a lot of the ads they do run seem to be promoting local music events and festivals – like this tribute to Johnny Ramone in Hollywood next weekend that I want to attend (as long as it doesn’t interfere with Broken Ocean’s gig that night at Viper Room).

Amazon links:

Dwight Sings Buck

The Mountain

Hell Yes I Cheated

Tenor Saw Lives On

Posted: July 25th, 2008 under digital music, internet radio, live music, mp3blog.
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I bought an Apple TV on a spur of the moment as a Christmas present for my wife (lame, it was really for me). I had never really given the product much thought before, I bought it primarily to be able to access the huge number of mp3s I have on hard drives in my house from the living room. We live in a relatively small place, I really only need to send music to 1 set of speakers with 1 control panel so I didn’t need to do much thinking. When purchasing the Apple TV (I got the $300 version with the smaller 40G hard drive), I sort of felt like I was overpaying for a box/functionality that if I did some research I’d be able to get much cheaper.

But I knew (instinctively, that the Apple solution would look good, minimize cables, and work with my iMac and home network out of the box. So I said screw it and shelled out.

Damn what a great brand they have. There are all kinds of case studies you do in business school about brand marketing, but my experience with Apple in the last year basically tells you all you need to know about brand marketing. Oh and don’t forget the engineers and product people, because the whole experience has delivered.

After this latest free software upgrade here is what I can do with my 6 button remote.

• Access all the music/photos/video on my iMac and any external drive connected to it
• Browse iTunes and purchase music
• Browse iTunes and purchase or rent movies and TV shows
• listen to or watch free podcasts
• Youtube
• Flickr

I can’t power the thing off, oddly enough, which I don’t get.

But there isn’t much more internet functionality I really want on the TV. I’d love to add some tweaks on the margins and I’m sure new stuff is coming, but for really anything else (ie. requiring a keyboard or mouse) I can grab my phone or laptop or sidle up to the desktop. A year ago I was hoping Apple didn’t get the internet, now it’s obvious they really get it.

I’ve been working on the fringes of the Interactive TV space since I went to an international conference on the subject in the fall of 2000. eNow/Relegence founder and product genius Edo Segal had the web 2.0 server-side xml/rss syndicated feed model down before just about anyone else and I was over there looking for distribution opportunities for our content indexing tools. WAY too early of course, thank god my Amsterdam boondoggle was the limit to our investment in interactive TV at that time. Of course at Musicmatch and then Yahoo I had lots of meetings and numerous deals with hardware companies, software companies, MSOs, and retailers about digital home products and concepts. It would be scary if I actually listed them all out. I even helped launch and market a few. The “digital home” space is a lot like mobile on a smaller scale: there have been a lot of entrants, a lot of ideas, a lot of money spent bringing failed products to market. Big corporations with vested interests in yesterday’s cash cows creating walled gardens, copyright issues muddying the waters, competing standards, etc. Meh.

So where are we in 2008 on the digitl home front? There are basically 3 products that can be considered really good in the market: Tivo, Sonos, and Apple TV. And Apple TV is by far the best (I think – I don’t have a Sonos or a Tivo anymore, but I know people that do). Not to flog a dead horse as Ned Martin would say, but notice none of the products were brought to market by cable companies, satellite companies, non-Apple PC companies, MSFT (although Xbox 360 deserves honorable mention even though they have lost close to $30B on it), Intel, telecom companies, etc. My DirecTV DVR sucks, but I had no choice if I wanted dual tuners which is the killer app. And I have no hope that it’ll ever improve to the Apple TV level.

These 3 products have a few things in common

• They set out trying to tackle specific problem (time shifted TV integrated with personalization and guide; synchronous or asynchronous streaming music in every room of your house, getting the content from your computer onto your TV/stereo) and avoided extra features that added complexity.
• They were willing to lose money at the beginning (and for a while) as the market filled in
• They charge a premium for the device, making sure it has a feature-set rich enough for early adopters, and avoid the temptation to compete downmarket with undercutting products.

Generally this is is the model that worked so well for Apple with the iPod. Focus on making the hardware excellent (interoperable, reliable, easy to set up). Don’t aim for the mass market at first. The last point is the interesting one IMO, because it goes against what we are taught usually happens in consumer electronics and PC businesses. Calculators, walkmans, boomboxes, CD players, HD TVs – they all started diving in price almost immediately upon release.

Of course, Apple needs to open up Apple TV at some point – same problem they have with iPhone. Let me add cool 3rd party apps. And I’m not buying any content with DRM on it (ill happily rent DRM’d content though). But they definitely nailed it with this upgrade.

Posted: February 16th, 2008 under digital entertainment, digital music, internet radio, portable devices.
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Check out my post on ymusicblog.

Posted: May 2nd, 2007 under digital music, internet radio.
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The CRB clearly has its head up its ass. The good guys are fighting back. The Myth vs. Facts section is worth a read. Follow the link to email your Congresspeople. People who don’t understand the Internet should hurry up and retire.

Internet radio is such a fantastic idea, and the existing set up appeared to be working. Anyone, large or small, business or hobby, could set up an Internet radio station or stations according to some rules set forth in the DMCA and pay some statutory licenses to the content owners. How do we know the old rates were fair? Internet radio was steadily growing, and nobody was getting rich from it. The website has it right, this new legislation is going to kill a lot of it off. Maybe most of it. That means less people listening to music. Sigh. I guess the recording industry is hoping this will lead to more CD sales. It won’t.

Sooner or later there will be Internet radio again – maybe this is good in that it will ultimately hasten the demise of the broken status quo.

Posted: April 16th, 2007 under digital music, internet radio.
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