Groover’s Paradise is a great music blog. It’s a collaborative effort by a bunch of knowledgeable music bloggers, featuring short posts around a single song. I’ve liked just about every song they’ve featured. Recently, they went from awesome to absolute must-read when they featured a song by the most wonderful Freddy Fender. I liked the Texas Tornados. And I liked Doug Sahm a lot. But I knew about Freddy long before I’d ever heard of either his future band or his future band mate. One of my favorite records from my teens was Freddy’s excellent Before the Next Teardrop Falls.
Here’s about the best cover you’ll ever hear of What’d I Say. Tell me that doesn’t rock. Seriously, if you don’t love that song, you better call 911.
One of the contributors to Groover’s Paradise is the guy from The Adios Lounge, the music blog that I have repeatedly raved about. Another excellent music blog I discovered via Groover’s Paradise is The Rising Storm. Any blog that dedicates posts to Mountain Bus and this fantastic record (here’s my take) is a must read. I don’t know these dudes, but I wish I did.
John Doe (of X fame) and the Sadies have a new record of classic country covers and originals, called Country Club.
The other night organicsue, one of my favorite Blip.fm DJ’s, played a great Gretchen Peters/Tom Russell song off of their new record. I immediately bought the record, once again proving that these social network sites are good for musicians. The song that made me buy the record is Sweet & Shiny Eyes, but every song on the record is good. Update: Even though I bought the record and gave it good press, I got a take down notice from Gretchen and Tom’s record label. No more sales or good press here, folks.
Album covers, much like science fiction book covers, can attract me to buy a record by someone I’ve never heard of. Here’s the latest example of that. You can hear all the songs on the record on Ronnie Fauss’s web site. Or you can buy the record off iTunes like I did- before I listened to the songs. The songs are as good as the cover.
Obviously, one of the records everyone has been waiting for is Potato Hole, Booker T. Jones‘ new record on which he is joined by The Drive-By Truckers and Neil Young. Neil’s ever-growing political weirdness is starting to wear on me a bit, but he is still one of my all-time favorites. And anyone who reads this blog or knows me in the real world knows how much I dig the DBT. It’s an amazingly effective mashup of styles, with a definite DBT vibe surrounding Booker T’s organ and keyboards. It’s an instrumental record, as should be expected. I don’t know that I’ll sit and listen to it over and over, but it’s clearly good car music. My favorite track so far is Warped Sister.
Rarely in my life have I discovered a musician I like some and dislike some any more than Colonel Bruce Hampton. Cold Mountain is one of my all-time favorite songs. Many of his records have some great stuff- I’m talking about as good as it gets, intermingled with songs I really don’t like. Yesterday I heard Colonel Bruce do an awesome version of Skip James’ I’m So Glad. The version I found for sale is off the Code Talkers’ 2007 record, Dee-Lux Uh-dish-un. That song completely rocks. I bought the record and so far, it sounds consistently good. Really good, actually.
I’m a big fan of Blip.fm, the “Twitter for music” service that lets you search for songs, post them to your Blip.fm page with brief, Twitter-like commentary and, if you want to, export that post to Twitter or another service. It’s a great way to introduce others to good music, and to allow others to do the same for you.
While my primary music genres are classic rock, blues and alternative country, I am in the middle of an A-Z survey of new wave bands. Using thesetwo lists from Wikipedia, I am finding and “blipping,” the Blip.fm jargon equivalent of “tweeting,” a song from as many new wave bands as possible. At the end of this exercise, I’ll have the greatest new wave mix on the internet! In the meantime, I am turning people on to some great music, and the Twitter integration facilitates some good discussion.
As cool as Blip.fm is, it could be better. Here are 10 things that would improve the Blip.fm experience.
1. Survival.
This sounds trite, but it is probably the biggest hurdle Blip.fm has to overcome. Between the catless bag holding RIAA slinking around looking for innovation to quash and the inevitable end of the Web 2.0 cash supply (undoubtedly heavily contributed to by said slinking by the RIAA), there is the unpleasant possibility that Blip.fm could just shut its doors. leaving music lovers sad and silent. Unlike most Web 2.0 services, Blip.fm actually has at least one revenue source- Amazon affiliate purchase links to each song. See the “Buy MP3” link at the bottom of the box below.
I have long proposed that services like Blip.fm be permitted by the priority-challenged record industry to pay a share of the affiliate revenue in lieu of royalties. Face it, lots of people hear songs on Blip.fm, especially via the Twitter integration, that they would not otherwise hear. Some of those people buy the songs. That market simply would not exist without services like Blip.fm. In other words, the RIAA should be thrilled about Blip.fm, and not anxious to kill it.
2. Queued Blips.
While the process to search for, locate and blip a song is not hard or time consuming, it would be a lot easier if there was a dedicated place to store blips until you are ready to post them. That would make it easy to search for and save a queue of songs and blip them later, one or two songs at a time. Currently, I use my playlist to queue blips. Your playlist is a separate page where you can add songs by clicking on the star (see the star at the bottom right of the box above). If you’re willing to use your playlist for this purpose, you can store songs there to blip later, but it would be preferable to have a separate place to queue blips without having to use your playlist page for that purpose.
For example, I don’t want to blip any non-new wave songs until I get through my alphabetical survey. But I see other good songs all the time on Blip.fm and via Twitter. There should be a dedicated place to save those songs for easy access later. Sure, you can do this with a third party service like Blipster, but it should be a native feature.
3. Multiple Playlists.
Speaking of playlists, an easy way to solve both the queued songs problem and vastly improve the playlist concept would be to allow the creation and naming of multiple playlists. Currently, you get one playlist (see the navigation box below; the 3 means I have 3 songs in my playlist). I’d like the ability to have a separate playlist for classic rock, blues, alt. country and queued blips.
4. Ability to Rearrange All Songs.
Once you have blipped a song, you can delete it from your main Blip.fm page, but you can’t rearrange the order on that page. You can drag songs around to rearrange the order on your playlist page. But I’d like the ability to rearrange songs on my main Blip.fm page. The lack of this feature prevents me from dragging other new wave songs I previously blipped up into the grouping of the new wave songs I am currently adding. It also limits my ability to control the genre, tempo, etc. mix for better effect, as more blips are added.
5. More Developer Interactivity.
On the one hand, I could argue that @blipfm is a clinic on how not to use Twitter. None of my @ twits have been answered, even though I write often and positively about Blip.fm, and the activity there is sporadic at best. On the other hand, it seems Blip.fm may be operating with a skeleton crew. I want to see Blip.fm secure its survival, and then take advantage of the built-in interactivity of Twitter and other networks to improve its service and build its brand. You don’t have to hire people to do that. You can create an group of dedicated volunteer users (like Blogger does, and like Microsoft’s MVPs) and let them brand build Montessori style.
6. Improve Embedding.
Blip.fm allows you to embed songs. Here’s a great one:
The problem of course is that gigantic, space eating graphic and the fact that the embedded player is just too big in general. The graphic needs to be a lot smaller, as does the player in general. Compare Blip.fm’s embedded player to the much more elegant divShare one (more on divShare here):
7. Don’t Get Bought by Last.fm.
There has been speculation that someone will scoop up Blip.fm if it gets in dire straits, rather than let it die. If that’s the only way Blip.fm can survive, so be it. But please don’t let Last.fm buy it. I tried to like Last.fm. I really did. But it is the Photobucket of the music space. Good idea, but horrible design. If someone has to save Blip.fm, let it be Google.
I really want Blip.fm to survive and thrive. I hope it happens, and I hope we see some of these features added over the coming months. If I am ever able to connect with anyone at Blip.fm, I will invite him or her to our next podcast to discuss Blip.fm in more detail.
If you’d told me three hours ago that I’d ever write a post defending in any way the sorry state of affairs in the music industry or criticizing someone’s idea of how to reform it, I’d have laughed in your face. Literally.
But I guess you never know. . .
I saw a link on Twitter to this post, in which a partner at a venture capital firm waxes philosophical about the music industry. You know it’s a serious post because it uses the word “paradigm” in the title and nine more times in the post itself. Now that we’ve conquered Earth Hour, maybe we could plan Paradigm Day?
Fancy words aside, the author (in a nod to Cher and both Madonnas he goes by the mononomial Albert on his blog, but being a completist with a mouse, I know his full name to be Albert Wenger) makes a couple of good points. He also makes a really, really bad point, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
There is no disputing the fact the the more immediate and direct distribution channel provided by the internet has the music industry (and the newspaper industry, among others) all twisted up. And while I don’t know about profitable, I agree that many of the smaller, more creative music services are probably unlawful, at least under the current pre-shift paradigm (I feel smarter, having just typed that word). All of this means, of course, that something has to change. Either the technology has to change or be restricted to conform to the old ways of selling music (very unlikely, having been unsuccessfully tried) or the laws and licensing practices have to change to adapt to the technology (the industry isn’t happy about it, but this is already happening).
I have long said that the cat is out of the bag, and that all the lawsuits in the world against grannies and dead people are not going to get the cat to jump back in the bag. I have also said that I think shutting down these new music services is bad for artists and songwriters. Recall that I am a songwriter who gets an occasional check from BMI, so unlike 95% of the people who chime in on this issue, I actually have a little skin in the game.
Having said that, there is nothing appealing to me about the three “experimental” services that Albert mentions. For one thing, artists can always make their music available, via their web site, MySpace or any of a countless number of other online services. The difficulty is getting enough buzz to make people listen to it. And, of course, paying those who help create it. Secondly, I have no desire whatsoever to get “scenes which play differently each time based on your interaction with them via external sounds, touching and moving the [iPhone].” I just want to queue up a record and listen to it, using technology that makes that more portable and convenient.
Dressing up the experience with smoke and mirrors like faux interactivity will neither placate the empty bag holding record labels nor improve the experience of the listener, who just wants to hear the music.
The reason a lot of music should be accessible over the internet, via some of these new music services, is simply because it helps generate a buzz that will cause people to want to hear more music by the artist. Which increases sales at Amazon or iTunes, and attendance at concerts. No one is going to use MixTape.me as a substitute for a music collection, but lots of people may add songs to their collection they hear at MixTape.me. Give away some goods to sell more. That’s the ticket. And if you need to add some Web 2.0 flavor, pay a percentage of the ad sales in lieu of royalties.
The best way to tell someone what they don’t want to hear is to just put it out there, without beating around the bush. Albert uses that most hated four letter word. You know, the one that begins with an f:
I believe these experiments point to the future of online music which will be a paradigm shift in why music is distributed (and how it is licensed) and how we consume music, in which a lot of music will be free and will be experienced interactively!
Again, the only interaction I want it to click the play button, but I don’t quarrel with the concept that people should and will be able to hear lots of music without paying for the privilege of hearing it.
Then, the train falls horribly off the tracks. Recall that Albert is a partner at a venture capital firm, which assumedly means he invests in new products to make. . . money. Cash, dollars. Probably millions of them.
With that in mind, this little gem:
Of course one immediate question about such a new paradigm is how artists will make money. I think it would be a grave mistake to be caught up in that question. For starters, it seems to me that over the course of history very little of what we now think of as great music was produced specifically because the people making it were concerned about making the music a commercial success (I was reminded of that this morning listening to “Breakfast with the Beatles”). Here too is a parallel with “The Invention of Air” – Priestly and many other scientists were and are not motivated by making a lot of money. On top of that we may finally be entering an age of post-materialism.
Where to start?
For one, it’s epically ironic that a venture capitalist is preaching to starving artists and songwriters about entering an age of post-materialism.
I guess what he’s saying is that if you focus on the music, the money will take care of itself. Of course, musicians have been doing that for centuries, and it hasn’t worked so far.
Second, if you don’t convince a critical mass of artists and songwriters that the monetization of their art will put food on their table and money in their savings account, there will be no good art to monetize. Is Albert suggesting that people make music at nights and on weekends, after working at a real job? There are many reasonably successful musicians and recording artists who have to work at real jobs to support their music under the existing system, which at least gives a nod towards getting them paid. It is, at least, naive to ask these people, many of whom have already been sold down the river by the music industry, to trust a bunch of developers and venture capitalists to take care of them.
And, finally, to say that much art was made for the love of art and not for money is so completely beside the point and devaluing that it’s hard to respond logically. Other than the alarming number of made for TV acts, just about every musician begins with a calling to the music, not just to get paid. What starts out as a form of self-expression sometimes turns into a career. To say that artists who become successful should not worry about getting paid is like saying that some chef who used to make brownies with her mom for fun should let diners eat at her five star restaurant for free. It also says a lot about the value placed on the music, as opposed to the web applications and capital that promise to turn that music in
to money. To value the store more than the good sold is backwards and dangerous.
Look, blog posts don’t have to be footnoted dissertations. And Albert has some good points hidden beneath the smart talk (that’s a reference to one of my favorite movies). But to say we shouldn’t worry about how the artists get paid is not the way to start the ol’ paradigm a shiftin’.
You have to give credit where credit is due. These mixtape services are resilient. In its futile effort to stuff the cat back in the bag, the RIAA keeps shutting them down. And like weeds, they pop right back up.
The latest mixtape service to cross my radar is MixTape.me. Let me tell you- I have made a mixtape or two in my day. I remember sitting by the FM radio for hours with my Maxell cassette tape ready to go. I’d record the start of every song, and if it was one I didn’t want (as were most of them), I’d just rewind and wait for the next song. It took forever, but I created some awesome mixes. My mixtape glory years were from 1982 to 1985, courtesy of Vanderbilt’s WRVU. I taped Webb Wilder, the Beat Farmers, Raging Fire, Love Tractor, the dBs, you name it. Later, when I had enough money to actually buy tapes and CDs, I made a few mixtapes for the girls of the moment. Hey, it could have been worse. It could have been poetry. Well, come to think of it, I might have done that too, but let’s not talk about that.
So, given my illustrious mixtape history, I decided to give MixTape.me a spin.
And since I am a fan of Blip.fm, a similar- though not identical- service, I think I’ll compare the two.
MixTape.me
Registration is as easy as it can be. This is all there is to it.
Fill in the blanks, type the captcha (note the refresh and speaker buttons, to help you through the process), and you’re done. Once you login, you’re presented with a simple black and gray interface. It’s refreshingly uncluttered.
The gray column includes your library of saved songs, two pre-set playlists: popular songs and recently played songs. These pre-set playlists show the day’s most popular songs and songs that were recently played by MixTape.me users. Today’s most popular song was Flashdance. Flashdance!? Jeezus.
Below those are your playlists. You can see that I have created two so far.
To add songs to your library and/or a playlist, you search via a search box at the top right of the screen.
When you get results, you can drag songs into your library or a playlist.
The search process is fast, but I noticed that a lot of songs appearing in the search results are not actually available. If you click on a song that’s not available, the player will first look for another copy of that song in the database (good) and, if one isn’t available, play the next available song in the list (bad). Because the next available song is most likely a different song, I don’t like that feature. Like Blip.fm, you can add the URL of a specific MP3 to add it to your mix. This feature is not readily apparent, however- click in the +MP3 button at the top right of the song list window (the one just below) to add the URL.
Once you’ve added the songs to your playlist, click on it, and the song list appears.
From this screen, you can rearrange songs, edit the artist and title information, get information about the song or buy the song via a handy link to Amazon. In a neat design feature, the link leads to the Amazon download page, if one exists, as opposed to the CD page.
MixTape.me has two features that Blip.fm lacks. You can easily rearrange the order of your songs, and you can add songs to your library to store until you decide to add them to a playlist. On the other hand, there are not as many songs in the MixTape.me database, but it’s still in beta so more songs will likely be added over time. I also noted that MixTape uses music search engine SeeqPod. SeeqPod is being sued by Warner Music, so there is at least some question as to the longevity of at least that part of the search function. For all I know, Blip.fm may use SeeqPod too.
Once you create your mix, you are undoubtedly anxious to share it with your friends, love interest, dog, etc. There are two ways to do this. Via a link (handy for email) and by embedding the playlist on your site. Here’s one of my playlists (the first song is dedicated to all those cats on Twitter with arrogant Fg/Fs ratios):
Tell me that Jean Knight song doesn’t rock! People who’ve known me for a long time have told me the fourth song reminds them of me. That used to irritate me, but the older I get the more I kind of like the thought. I ain’t asking nobody for nothin’, and all that.
MixTape.me’s embedded player is more functionally and aesthetically pleasing than Blip.fm’s.
Blip.fm
I’ve been a Blip.fm user for a few weeks, and have really enjoyed it. One of the its best features is neat integration with Twitter, which let’s you automatically post songs to Twitter as you “blip” or add them. Lots of people blip songs into Twitter regularly. Of course song blips get in the way of all the rampant self-promotion that has become the main course on Twitter, so some people don’t like it.
Like MixTape.me, Blip.fm makes registration a breeze.
To add a song, you search for it in the search box.
You can preview the songs, and you should because some of them will be unavailable- though I find the frequency to be less than at MixTape.me. I find the searching and adding process on Blip.fm to be better that at MixTape.me, but not by a great margin. There are also more songs to be found in the Blip.fm database, though as noted above, MixTape.me is new and its database will likely grow.
Once you find a song you like, you can “blip” it or add it to your song list, with a witty comment.
Click OK, and the song gets added to your page, to the Blip.fm front page, and, if you so-configure your account, to Twitter.
If you have your account configured to post to Twitter automatically, you can add an exclamation point (!) to the beginning of the message, and that particular song will not be posted to Twitter.
You can also give other Blip.fm users (and receive from them) “props” by clicking a little thumbs up button below a song you particularly like. Props are calculated and your number of props appears at the right hand side of your Blip.fm page.
As noted above, there is no way to rearrange the songs in your song list, though you can delete songs. It would also be nice to have a place to hold songs you want to “blip” later- sort of like MixTape.me’s Library. The sharing features are not as robust on Blip.fm either. The primary methods of sharing are to share the link for your Blip.fm page and to post your “blips” to Twitter. There is a third party Facebook app, but it didn’t work for me. There is a widget you can embed on your site, but the gigantic Blip.fm logo is too much of a space eater. My inquiry about that went unanswered. Not a wise practice, particularly when the question comes from someone using and writing about your service.
You can, however, embed individual songs.
That is one sad and beautiful song.
Conclusions
I think both services have a lot to offer. At the moment, if I could only use one, it would be Blip.fm, because I think the interface is more mature and elegant, but if MixTape.me grows its database and reduces the number of unavailable songs in its search results, its superior arranging and sharing capabilities would give it an edge.
Both are reasonably well designed and fun. And that’s good for everybody.
After I got run off Twitter last night for having the gall to post music instead of quasi-spam or sycophantic retweets of the latest SXSW blather, I found myself listening to some of the old RanchoCast podcasts I used to do. Those podcasts were a pain in the ass to produce, but they were fun to do. And there was some mighty good music to be heard there. I’m not sure what’s going on with the old RSS feed, so I thought I’d use all my non-Tweeting time to create a permanent, museum quality archive of the RanchoCasts.
Here’s the list, with the original descriptions. Sadly, the 3 beta versions have been temporarily or permanently lost.
You can listen directly from this page by clicking on the play buttons.
10/30/05 (Beta 1): This one only has 3 songs, including one of mine- Haunted House, which I co-wrote with Ronnie Jeffrey. It’s still in early beta, so we’ll see if and how things progress.
11/1/05 (Beta 2): This one actually has a discernable theme- great songwriting. It has songs from Steve Pride, The Star Room Boys and others. It even has a musical history lesson about Jesse James.
11/5/05 (Beta 3): Cassidy and I play 7 songs, including a rocker by the Drive-By Truckers, some Richard Buckner, the song Cassidy is named after and a live John Prine song that will blow your socks off.
11/12/05: The theme for this one is cover songs. I play some great covers by X, Iris Dement, Gerald Collier and even a cover of a song that Ronnie Jeffrey and I did a few years ago.
12/2/05: This episode contains a short review of the Rolling Stones concert and songs from my three new discoveries: Bucktown Kickback, Chuckanut Drive and The Cigar Store Indians. It also has a classic number by Jesse Colin Young and one by Baker Maultsby.
12/16/05: The theme is hard to find. I play some rare and hard to find songs by The Del Fuegos, Dancing Hoods, Steve Young, Fever Tree and The Judys.
12/24/05: Christmas Edition. It consists of nine Christmas songs ranging from the awesome Elvis Presley recording of Santa Claus is Back in Town to the great version of I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus by John Prine to some more off the beaten path songs by Commander Cody and 5 Chinese Brothers.
12/30/05: New Year’s Eve Edition. I talk a little about the past year and play a few New Years Eve songs by Chuck Prophet, Jim Cuddy, Slaid Cleaves and others. Next episode we’ll get back to our typical alternative country thing.
1/13/06: I play some good, off the beaten path songs, including one off Dan Zanes’ first solo record, a Scruffy the Cat number, an excellent John Starling song and a song about my son Luke’s favorite pastime.
1/21/06: The theme is the Dillard & Clark show. I play a couple of Dillard & Clark gems, a Gene Clark solo number, the first recording of Wild Horses (trivia: it was not the Stones’ version), some Syd Straw, one by The Buckets, some other good stuff and an original blues number.
2/4/06: No particular theme tonight, just some good alternative country and Americana songs. I play songs by Whiskeytown, Uncle Tupelo, Steve Pride, Robert Bobby, Neko Case, Mark Barker and others. I also talk in some detail about the forthcoming new versions of Gmail, Windows Live Mail and Yahoo Mail, which I discussed in an earlier post. Best of all, Cassidy joins me and introduces her first ever podcast song selection.
2/11/06: No theme, just some good alternative country and Americana songs by Ray Wylie Hubbard, Gary P. Nunn, Jonathan Edwards and others. Cassidy was at a friend’s house so I was once again solo in the studio.
3/4/06: Lots of good, hard to find songs, including songs by Country Joe McDonald, Daniel Moore, Ray Riddle, Hasil Adkins, Mason Proffit and more. I end the show with a great blues jam by Wet Willie. Also there’s a little more talking than normal, as I talked about the gatekeeper business, Steve Rubel’s social media tour, lessons from Bubble 1.0 and why Web 2.0 is less than it may appear. Almost 58 minutes of country rock, tech and blues.
3/10/06: The theme is the Young Bromberg Show. I play some great songs by Jesse Colin Young, the Youngbloods, David Bromberg, the Pixies, Dave Gleason and others. I also talk about Google’s office application initiative, why all nerd camps are not created equal and my new Sprint mobile phone. 57 minutes of country rock, classic rock, tech and blues.
3/24/06: No particular theme, but it has my favorite selection of songs so far, including songs by Goose Creek Symphony, Slobberbone, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Toby Darling, a funk song I spent 20 years looking for and more. The blogosphere’s been a bit slow lately, so there’s not a ton of tech talk. I did talk a little about old media arrogance in the context of the recent Berkeley CyberSalon. 50 minutes of country rock, classic rock, tech and blues.
4/7/06: Raina and the kids are visiting her parents this weekend, so Lucky Dog and I turned it up and played some of my favorite classic rock songs. Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Grateful Dead, Mountain, a live gem from the Guess Who and much more. 64 minutes of good classic rock.
4/29/06: I play a little Alice Cooper, two great songs by the Bluerunners, some more great alternative country numbers and a classic blues number by Rising Sons. This episode’s tech talk involved the Lance Dunstan lawsuit (which should be immediately dismissed in my opinion) and a great new blog I have discovered.
5/5/06: The theme is the Girl Power Show. Lots of great obscure music, most of it by female musicians and singers.
I play some gems by Holly Golightly, the Greenhornes, Neko Case, Bonnie Bishop, Rico Bell and others. I end the show with a great jazz/blues jam by Rashaan Roland Kirk. You can also hear my take on these self-important bloggers who don’t think they need to link to anyone.
5/12/06: I play some Deadstring Brothers, Pieta Brown, a two-fer from the Gourds, a song I once described as “perfectly beautiful,” a song by the greatest American rock and roll band working today and much more. 60 minutes of great music. Not much tech talk tonight, as I am profoundly bored with the blogosphere these days.
6/24/06: I play some gems by the Cranberries, the Smiths, the Cure and others. I end the show with a great live rock jam by Humble Pie. I also talk a little about blogger conferences and digital photography.
6/30/06: July 4th Edition. We play some July 4th related songs by Bruce Springsteen, Pete Droge, Lonehawk, Three Finger Cowboy, Galaxie 500 and others. I end the podcast by playing 6 great songs in a row called 4th of July.
7/15/06: The theme was the Joe Show. I play songs by all sorts of Joes, including Ely, Cocker, Tex, Henry and many more. I end with a blues jam by Big Joe Williams.
7/21/06: The theme was the Live Show. I play great live cuts by the Waterboys, Whiskeytown, the Allman Brothers, Grand Funk Railroad, David Baerwald and others. I end with a live Bruce Springsteen bootleg cut from 1978. In the techtalk portion, I talk about various approaches to blogging, and suggest the best one for new bloggers.
7/28/06: The theme was great, but under-appreciated, guitarists. I play deep album cuts by Peter Green, Frank Marino, Brownsville Station, Derek & the Dominos, The Guess Who and more. The finale is a 12 minute blues jam by Boz Scaggs. I also talk a little about HR 5319 (the MySpace Law) and the underground blogosphere.
8/4/06: I play some great songs by Jonathan Edwards, the Reivers, Jethro Tull, Jesus and Mary Chain, Leslie Gore and a 2-fer by the best blues singer ever. The finale is a blues jam by Albert Collins. I also talk a little about the marginal utility of extreme political correctness in the blogosphere.
8/11/06: It starts out without a particular theme, but quickly turns into the River Edition, as I play songs inspired by our recent trip to the Frio River. I’m hoarse from too much fun at the river, but manage to introduce some great songs by the Hangdogs, Jesse Dayton, Johnny Cash, Mother Hips, Julie Miller and others.
8/18/06: In honor of the lovefest that resulted from the newest gatekeeper discussions, the theme was the Dedication Edition.
I play great songs by Wagon, the Push Stars, World Party, Cowboy Junkies, Richard Shindell, Blind Faith and more. Each song is dedicated to a blogger, including Shel Israel, Robert Scoble, Seth Finkelstein, Mike Arrington and others.
8/25/06: The Gram Parsons Edition. Inspired by a great new documentary on Gram Parsons, I play great songs by the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers and both of Gram’s solo records.
9/2/06: I play great songs by Hem, Chris Mills, Steve Fromholz, Trout Fishing in America, Mark Barker and others. I also talk a little about the Foo Camp invitation-only debate.
9/15/06: The All-Vinyl Edition. I play hard to find cuts by The Don Harrison Band, Fever Tree, Bobby Bare, Country Joe McDonald, Eddie Hazel and more. Tech talk involves converting LPs to digital format and the myth of infinite advertising.
9/22/06: I play some great, hard to find songs by Guadalcanal Diary, Country Joe McDonald, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, Stoney Edwards, Leon Russell and more. The blues finale is a great song by Scott Dunbar.
10/6/06: No theme, no tech talk. Just great music. I play songs by the Stone Coyotes, Kate MacLeod, the Spud Puppies, Mojave 3 and a classic duet by Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. The finale is a live two-fer by Thin Lizzy.
10/13/06: I play some great songs by 5 Chinese Brothers, Asylum Street Spankers, the Bodeans, Blaze Foley, Traffic, Utopia and others. The finale is a blues jam by Taj Mahal. No tech talk, but I make some book and video recommendations.
6/9/07: In a surprising reunion of the RanchoCast, I play some great music by Lloyd Cole, Charlie Robison, the Gourds, Manassas and others.
I’m thinking about a weekly video thing, but I don’t know if I’ll ever do another RanchoCast. But they were all kinds of cool while they lasted.
A word about the music files: As I noted on the podcasts, I am a songwriter and musician, and I have no desire to take money out of anyone’s pocket. To the contrary, I did the RanchoCasts to promote some great music that you likely won’t hear on mainstream radio. Go buy the records I talk about. You’ll be glad you did. These are single-file low bitrate MP3s, and I will remove any song I am asked to remove by an interest owner.
When I first moved to Houston back in the mid-eighties, I used to frequent all sorts of music halls. Fitzgeralds, The Ale House, Rockefellers, etc. One of my favorite bands back then was Austin’s The Reivers (originally called Zeitgeist). John Croslin and Kim Longacre made some fine records, and were great live. Their vocal arrangements, both on their records and on stage, was among the best I have ever heard.
Take Electra, for example. I love the way Kim wails in the background while John sings the lead (this is not the best version of Electra, but it’s the only one I have). The trade-offs in Cowboys are just as good. Another favorite of mine is their cover of Atlantic City.
Great stuff. My favorite Reivers record, Saturday, is hard to find on CD- if you see it, grab it because it is a good one.
Here’s a post at 30 Days Out with more information about The Reivers. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have a MySpace page, where you can hear Secretariat, my favorite Reivers song, and learn about Right or Happy, their new project.
Tonight, I added the only two Reivers records I have in digital format, Translate Slowly and Pop Beloved, to the Rancho Radio (our internet radio station) playlist. Two great additions to the best playlist on the net.
After messing around with various internet radio options this weekend, I decided on a gameplan for our Rancho Radio radio station (note that I switched the name back from Jukebox Deluxe because the station has been broadcasting for 9 years as Rancho Radio and the change created confusion for our existing listeners). I have decided to do a combination of live and pre-set broadcasts.
Here’s what that means. Assuming we get some traction and the listenership continues to grow, I will broadcast much of the time in live mode. What this means is that our music server, which contains around 28,000 alternative country, classic rock, Americana and blues songs, will crank out the music directly, in real time. You will hear what people at Rancho DeNada hear, as it plays. And best of all, the live broadcasts are AD FREE. During the times I cannot transmit the audio stream directly from our server, we will switch to pre-set mode. This is the same format the station has been operating under for 9 years. Lots of great music, but with a few more ads (I have no control over the ads in pre-set mode).
So if you like hand-picked, mostly commercial free alternative country, classic rock, Americana and blues, give Rancho Radio a try (Update: Rancho Radio is now Newsome.fm). Below is a real time playlist. Note that the ads that appear in the playlist below DO NOT appear in the live audio stream. If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you may need to visit Newsome.Org to see the real time playlist (cool album art and all).
Give it a listen. Let me know what you think. If you like it, PLEASE pass the word via blogs, twits, etc.
When I started this site back in 1996, my primary goal was to create a place to promote my music, in hopes of getting a better publishing deal, and more record cuts via direct marketing to recording artists. Over the past 12 years I added tech, family life, humor and general interest topics to the mix, as I realized that my desire to live indoors trumped my desire be a musician.
But that doesn’t mean I have forgotten my first love. There’s lots of music to be had at Newsome.Org. Here’s a summary.
Original Music: You can stream hundreds of fully produced original song demos at the Err Bear Music page. Look for the “Read and Hear Songs” menu in the left column of the Err Bear Music page. There are streaming Play buttons beside almost all the songs on the pages listed under that menu. Want a preview? Give Straight into Goodbye a listen. If you’re one of my old pals from Cheraw, check out Dreams of McKenzie. You’ll recognize a lot of places mentioned in that song. If you’re into traditional country, I give you Loser’s Rodeo. That one was originally called The Mad Max Rodeo and was written a long time ago about a girl named Madeline. I had to change the name to get it cut, but it worked, as it’s been on several records.
Pandora Stations: I’ve been a Pandora fan since it was released. I’ve spent a lot of time fine tuning the ratings, and the results are pretty darn good. We have three stations to choose from:
1. Rancho Radio – my favorite online radio station, bar none. A broad mix of classic rock, alternative country, blues and more. It plays an eclectic mix of songs, but all of them are good, thanks to Pandora’s music genome and a lot of thumbing up and thumbing down by yours truly.
2. Alt. Country – if you’re interested in a focused alternative country station, this is the one for you. Seeded with artists like the Drive-By Truckers, Old Crow Medicine Show, Whiskeytown, Lucero, Slobberbone, Reckless Kelly and more.
3. Blues Mix – I really like classic 50s-70s blues. Byther Smith, Otis Spann, Junior Kimbrough, Otis Rush, Luther Allison, Roy Buchanan and more populate this narrowly tailored, hand cut blues mix.
As much as I love my Pandora stations, you can only seed the music that plays there. You can’t pick the exact songs. Since I have a (legal) music library of around 28,000 MP3s, I have always liked the idea of picking a specific playlist. I have used Live365 to operate Newsome.Org’s Jukebox Deluxe (f/k/a Rancho Radio) for years. It’s a pretty popular Live365 station. I’m not all that happy with Live365, because I think they put about 3 or 4 times too many ads in my audio stream (I pay several hundred dollars a year for my station). But it’s the best (or least worst) option I have found so far. Today I added a completely new rotation to the Jukebox. Over 30 hours worth of hand-picked albums and songs. Give it a listen!
As an aside, if there are any developers our there working on a good online radio station service and need a really good classic rock, alternative country and blues station, me and my 28,000 songs would love to talk with you!
Enjoy the music.
UPDATE: I found out that if I broadcast live, there are no in-stream ads on Live365, so I switched my broadcast to live. I don’t know if it will be feasible long-term, but for now, I’m broadcasting directly from my music server. This means 28,000 or so songs, with NO ads.
As I continue my love affair with my iPhone and, more recently, my AppleTV and as I partially capitulate to the slow, inflexible and generally crappy iTunes as a required gateway to my beloved devices, I am reminded of the golden era of online music. I feel sorry for those who were too young or too old (and technophobic) to have experienced that fun and enlightening time.
Let’s reminisce a moment about the good old days, from around 1997 through the early part of this century. Back when MP3.Com was a legitimate music hub, with hundreds of new, unsigned and independent musicians and bands bringing their music directly to the eager public for the first time. If I ranked the songs on my music server, a surprisingly high number of my favorite songs would be songs I found on MP3.Com. Songs like Dear Elaine, by a band called Buckeye. San Antone by Brementown. Driver 75 by Shy Dragger. If You See Mary, by Juarez. Crooked Country’s Whiskey Burns. Piece of Heaven by Chochamo. Jerkwater USA from The Calamities. There were hundreds more. I remember spending hours upon hours surfing around MP3.Com in some musically induced euphoria from all the great stuff I found and legally downloaded there. I even formed a cyber-band called Rancho DeNada and put some of our songs up there. The web was still relatively new. Getting great songs without having to go to the store and buy a CD was new. Life was mystical, musical and fun. No one had ever heard of the RIAA.
These years were also, perhaps not coincidently, the height of the alternative country movement. Every time I logged into my computer there was another new band filling my mind and ears with rock and roll songs played twang-style with country instruments. Steel guitar and Caitlin Cary‘s violin became the soundtrack of happy musical stories taking place all over the world.
eMusic was another place to mine for new music. It took a little work to separate the wheat from the chaff, but you could find good stuff from new and emerging artists if you looked around. eMusic still exists and is the only one of these services that looks anything like it did during the golden era. But eMusic lost its mojo somewhere along the way. Like AOL, it’s still around, but it’s no longer the hip place to be.
Then came Napster. I didn’t really understand the concept when I first heard about this so called “peer to peer” song sharing application.
It wasn’t until late 2000 that I finally relented and gave it a try. I didn’t use Napster to find new music. I used it to digitize some of my thousands of LPs and CDs (all of which now sit in storage thanks to my music server), and to look for old, obscure and out of print songs. I probably found 90% of the old, obscure stuff I looked for. One song, Fred Knoblock‘s Why Not Me, proved so elusive, I had to buy the LP on eBay and convert it to MP3. It was also fun just to look at people’s libraries, particularly people you knew shared your musical tastes. I bought a ton of CDs from Amazon just because I saw them listed in libraries I knew to be close to my tastes. It was a stone age Pandora of sorts.
It was also sharing with a purpose. Not the synthetic sharing that seems to drive many of today’s applications. I once met a fellow musician who lived half way across the country and within the first half hour of chatting we realized that we had shared libraries on Napster for months.
But like just about everything that seems too good to be true, it didn’t last. Metallica, Dr. Dre and the cat-chasing, empty bag-holding record labels ganged up on Napster like a horde of peasants outside Frankenstein’s castle and destroyed the technology they feared. MP3.Com, in a move that foretold the future, started letting users register (not upload) their CDs and access them anywhere, leading the increasingly panicked horde to its castle door. Before long, the record labels were suing grandmothers for allegedly sharing music they’d never heard of, while the guerilla sharers moved from one lesser substitute to another.
The golden age was over. The record labels embarked on a schizophrenic quest to either kill or embrace online music. They tried DRM. They tried futilely to plug as many torrent holes as possible. Ultimately, they began to tire of tilting at the infinitely reproducing windmills and let Amazon and now (sort of) Apple sell songs the right way, accepting the inevitable fact that most music buyers aren’t pirates and those that are will always find loot to pillage.
At the end of the day, Amazon, CD Baby and, maybe, iTunes will become acceptable substitutes for the direct distribution of music. But the experience is not as fun as it used to be and, sadly, there is not as much unsigned and independent music to be discovered there. I like Amazon MP3 downloads. I loved those MP3.Com downloads.
I suppose MySpace is the new direct distribution point for a lot of bands (here’s Buckeye’s page), but MySpace has a lot of extraneous content cluttering up the experience. MP3.Com and the others were all about the music.
So while the hardware has gotten better and better, I’m not sure the applications have. I miss the good ol’ days.
Groover’s Paradise is a great music blog. It’s a collaborative effort by a bunch of knowledgeable music bloggers, featuring short posts around a single song. I’ve liked just about every song they’ve featured. Recently, they went from awesome to absolute must-read when they featured a song by the most wonderful Freddy Fender. I liked the Texas Tornados. And I liked Doug Sahm a lot. But I knew about Freddy long before I’d ever heard of either his future band or his future band mate. One of my favorite records from my teens was Freddy’s excellent Before the Next Teardrop Falls.
songs on the record on Ronnie Fauss’s web site. Or you can buy the record off iTunes like I did- before I listened to the songs. The songs are as good as the cover.
If you’d told me three hours ago that I’d ever write a post defending in any way the sorry state of affairs in the music industry or criticizing someone’s idea of how to reform it, I’d have laughed in your face. Literally.
The latest mixtape service to cross my radar is 
As I continue my 
Newsome.Org 