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mediaor

a*bout me*dia*or

[mee-dee-uh, -awr] - noun

1.) A transient fiery streak across the web produced by the fusing of media and technology as it passes through the earth's blogosphere

2.) A "river of news" style feed aggregation network of music and technology

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Sources
16 Replies

Started by Jason Herskowitz. Last reply by David Rose Jan 30.

I've listed the sources that I currently aggregate for mediaor's "tail" in the sidebar. Are there are any other sources that you guys would like to see added (or removed)? Read More »

Tagged: feeds, sources

pop music and genre classification

Started by bryon Oct 14 2007

I became agitated when I read the wikipedia article for pop music (specifically the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs). Is it just me or should there be a real difference between pop music and popular music (... Read More »

Tagged: classification, pop, genre, music

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what's hot on hype machine

tail sources

muSick in the Head
Digital Music News
Duke Listens!
Getcha Info!
Billboard.biz
Lefsetz Letter
Listening Post
Future of Music
The Future of Music, Media & Entertainment
hypebot
DJ Alcehmi
Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll
Coolfer
Sampled + Sorted
Rags's Soapbox
CNET
MyStrands Blog
Qloud Blog
Streampad Blog
Pandora Blog
Foxytunes Blog
Wordpress of Lucas Gonze
Rhapsody Web Services
MusicInPlay
Hear Here (MusicIP Blog)

Soundflavor Blog
Mixed Content
Musicmobs Blog
Music Interfaces
Digital Media Wire - Music
Hear 2.0
Last.fm Blog
Devices, Media and the Future of Everything
Songbird Blog
AOL Radio Blog
AOL Music Product Blog
Yahoo Music Blog
MTV Labs Blog
RocketSurgeon
musicbites
Google Blog Search: "music 2.0"
iLike Blog
The Register - Music & Media
The Beals Media Update
The Hype Machine Blog
GrooveShark Blog
RealPlayer Blog
ClickNoise
David Card (Jupiter Research)

Playlist Magazine
OnlineFandom
PaidContent
Rusty on Radio (SomaFM)
PodComplex
The ListeNerd
Ad-Supported Music Central
Digital Media Rants
Medialoper
Yahoo News
New Music Strategies
The Death of the Music Industry
TechCrunch
Engadget
Brands | Bands | Fans

Mashable
nonsmokingarea
Digital Music - The Future
Inside Music Media
Tom Conrad
Mark Mulligan (Jupiter Research)
Surround
Global Music Business Seminars
MIR Research
Geeking with Greg
Go2Web2
The Plugg
Digital Music Collector
Techmeme
SimpleSpark
The Death of the Music Industry
Valleywag
BetaNews
Crenk
Dischorde
Radio2020
Why I Failed
Lifehacker
Read/WriteWeb
Million Music Marketing
Somewhat Frank
Can't Stop the Music
Zprocket
musikkteknologen

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me*dia*or tail - music 2.0 news and views from across the web

[PaidContent] Broadband Content Bits: Microsoft; Oprah-XM; Complex Media; Few Get Their TV Online: Poll

-- Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) launches video on Messenger Users will now be able to watch video clips with their network of friends while chatting via Windows Live Messenger, reports Reuters. Messenger TV will offer content from MSN Video including MTV shows and music clips from providers such as Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG. Launched in 20 countries, including many European countries, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Brazil, Canada and Mexico—but not the US—the company hopes to amp up users' social experience.

-- Oprah's XM (NSDQ: XMSR) Radio show available online: Some episodes of Oprah Winfrey's XM Radio show, Soul Series are now available on Oprah.com as streaming video and free video podcasts, with the podcasts also offered by xmradio.com and the iTunes Store. The show can also be found on its own branded channel on XM Radio Online, which complements the existing "Oprah & Friends" channel offered to XMRO and XM Radio subscribers. Release.

-- Complex Media expands network: Complex Media will launch two new websites in addition to the four sites it added with its latest acquisition of PlanetXbox360.com and new partnerships with OnSmash.com, Karmaloop and Eckotv.com. With the new ComplexVideo.com and DasGamer.com, the network will expand its gaming, music, video, style and lifestyle content geared towards men aged 18-34. The company also has custom video and static content for AT&T (NYSE: T), Pepsi, Southern Comfort and Mountain Dew currently in the works.

-- New poll shows few Americans view TV online: Entertainment Weekly just conducted a poll of 1,000 adults to determine common TV viewing behaviors and found that only 1 percent said they "most often" view TV shows by downloading or streaming them online. 58 percent of Bittorrent users use the site once or more per week; 52 percent of YouTube users said they use the site once or more per week; 51 percent of Hulu users use Hulu once or more a week; and 45 percent of network site users use sites like ABC.com once or more a week. Other findings reveal 60 percent still watch their favorite shows live. Fourteen percent digitally video record these shows and watch them later in the week, while 9 percent of DVR users watch the show the same day it airs.

[Digital Music News] Facebook, Google Follow MySpace Portability Announcement

MySpace will soon allow its users to extend their profiles into a variety of different destinations, an innovative portability ...

[PaidContent] @ NBC Upfront: Under A Soggy Tent, The TV Upfront Moves To Its Next Stage

As promised, NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) did not host the usual bombastic stage show for this year's upfront. Instead, attendees had to navigate through a crowded maze of lights and plasma screens that had the feeling of being trapped in a Radio Shack theme park. From there, the throng moved on to the bar at Rockefeller Center's rink, which was covered by a huge white tent to shield the party from the rain.

NBC had some TV-related digital news today, highlighting plans to premiere additional webisodes of The Office and Heroes in July, a new Saturday Night Live political site and more community based features. On the mobile front, NBC will create 30 show WAP sites with recaps, quizzes and over 500 short-form streaming clips. Release.

-- Saving money, trying something new: Advertisers' views on the proceeding were mixed. While in line near a stage featuring performers from the game show American Gladiators, one media buyer said this all seemed "over the top, but not in the usual way. This isn't making a good impression, but I hope they at least saved some money." Another media buyer tried to be philosophical. "I don't think this is the kind of thing I would like to bring clients to, but given the stresses of the economy and the impact from the writers strike, you have to give them credit for attempting to do something different. The upfront was invented for a different media universe. It needs to be updated. And you can't move forward without trying something else."

-- Upfront 2009: falafel stand meetup: In an attempt to provide some star power to the event, Conan O'Brien was introduced by NBC News anchor Brian Williams. O'Brien, who will move to Hollywood to take over Jay Leno's role as host of The Tonight Show, took a look back at how times have changed during his tenure at NBC. O'Brien: "When I first started at this company, 15 years ago, NBC's upfronts were held at prestigious Avery Fisher Hall. Then, they moved to Radio City Music Hall, a beautiful majestic palace. Now, we're all standing a in soggy tent outside the NBC store. I hope you'll join us at next year's upfronts at the falafel stand on 49th St." (Video is here.)

-- Zucker and Michaels: I spoke to Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal's president and CEO, who said that the scaled- down presentation this year was the best way to show off the entire NBCU range of properties: "Everybody thinks about NBC, but they sometimes forget the huge array of other content NBCU has. We have so many different assets and we just wanted to expose them to a little bit of everything. Digital is changing the way we do business. And doing it right is what we all have to do to survive." Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live, also said that the web has had a huge influence on the show: "The Digital Shorts were key to relating the show to the internet, but the way the show is set up is meant to take advantage of viewers' habits. Each skit is short and self-contained. The web will continue to be very important to us. I don't think anyone over the age of 12 comes home and puts their TV on before their computer."

Related

[ListeNerd] Video: Another child prodigy guitar showoff

If you are not sick them yet. “Valse du Zenith” played by Sungha Jung.

[ListeNerd] Links for 5.12.08: Hype’s payday, Banksy’s face, Metallica’s clips…

*Maybe Viacom will buy Hype Machine for a lot of money, or maybe someone else will. But still, do they know that people like the Hype for the stealing? *TechCrunch posits that Blip is Twitter for music. *The New Yorker on American Idol. On the flip side, NYer editor David Remnick offers up 100 Essential Jazz Albums. *Earlier, [...]

[ListeNerd] Video: Clips of new Metallica songs

From Metal Sucks. Clips of new material at the end. from www.metalsucks.net posted with vodpod

[Digital Music News] HBO Securing Better iTunes Store Deal Points, Report

Apple likes neat, clean, and uniform pricing on its iTunes Store, though there are exceptions to the rule. And HBO could be fe...

[Why I Failed] Highlights from the Web Today

I haven’t posted like this before, but as a result of having too much interesting stuff vs. time to write, here are some highlights from the web today: Ben Stein correctly states the affect of the media on our economy. And by the way, they affect more than that. Read about Bruce Lee’s Top 7 Fundamentals [...]

[Coolfer] EMI To Cut Another 1,000 Jobs

The Telegraph just reported that EMI will cut another 1,000 jobs. Those cuts are on top of previously announced plans to cut between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs. About 2,000 jobs -- down from 4,5000 when EMI was purchased -- will remain after the next round of cuts are made.

People familiar with the situation said Mr Hands was looking to cut more jobs at the company because, even after the round of redundancies announced in January, the business will still have more employees generating less revenues than its competitors at Warner Music and Universal.

Insiders speculated that the next job cuts will come in waves throughout the year.

From where I sit, it appears Terra Firma head Guy Hands is content to starve the beast rather than gain strength. For all its talk of improving A&R, which would impact its top line in the coming years, EMI seems to want the same bottom line simply through lower spending. It would have to be a far more efficient operation than currently exists. Cut just enough and EMI should be able to properly develop its artists. Cut too much and it will be undermanned and unable to realize its artists' potential. The wild card is EMI's future organizational structure and creative vision for monetizing its recordings. Just how the company will do more with less is quite a big question mark.


[ from the job board ] Digital Revenue Manager at Razor & Tie entertainment in NYC

[Digital Music News] A Tale of Two Scorecards: Sirius, XM Reveal Quarterly Totals

Proposed merger partners XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio have a great deal in common, including massive and recur...

[Listening Post] Tapes 'N Tapes Have a Mind for Math and a Focus on Fun

Tapes 'N Tapes at the Fillmore in San Francisco on Saturday. The recent release of Tapes 'N Tapes' second full-length album, Walk if Off, met with lukewarm reviews from critics but their fans don't seem to have gotten the memo....

[Digital Music News] Clear Channel Buyout May Happen After All...

A proposed buyout of Clear Channel may survive the torpedos after all. According to a Wall Street Journal report published Mon...

[Engadget] Vita Audio adds a splash of luxury to R4 iPod / DAB radio

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio


Nothing says sexy like a sleek wood trim, wouldn't you wholeheartedly agree? Vita Audio obviously does, as it's £499.99 ($980) R4 integrated music system just screams lavish. The all-in-one unit packs an iPod dock, slot-loading CD / MP3 / WMA-music disc player, USB port, DAB and FM tuner with RDS, front and rear auxiliary ports, built-in display, alarm clock function and the firm's detachable RotoDial remote. For those not feeling the rich walnut veneer, there's also a high-gloss white (surprised?) version available for £50 ($97) more. Sadly, the "coming soon" tidbit leaves us clueless as to how long you actually have left to save up for either of the pricey systems.

[Via ShinyShiny]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

[Digital Music - The Future] Nine Inch Nails do it again

slip_banner.jpg



Nine Inch Nails, pioneers of the correct way to do online distribution, have done it agian, but this time they've gone one better. Rather than charging for a new album in perfect quality; they've done it for free.

You heard right; Trent Reznor has released his new album, titled "The Slip" entirely for free, and not in crappy MP3 quality like Radiohead did, but in full lostless FLAC, and even above FLAC DVD-A WAV files. It's a truely monumental step for the industry, and really shows what an independant artist can do. A physical release for people like me who like real items as well as digitial copies is planned, so there you have it; everyone is happy! It's a damn good album for those who like that style of music too, check it out.

Theslip.nin.com See full article.

Related Entries:

Virtual nails - 09 September 2006

Nine Inch Nails release part of new album for free - 04 March 2008

Nine Inch Nails Ghosts I-IV - 04 May 2008

Nine Inch Nails strike again... - 07 May 2008




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[Digital Music - The Future] Yo!

Hi all, I just wanted to introduce myself as your new editor here! I'm Jordan, and much like any readers here, I love music, and digital music is even better, so long as it is done correctly. The usabillity and freedom correctly presented digital music gives is brilliant; being able to transfer what you own to various devices, free of restrictions, and then getting the pleasure out of listening to it is fantastic.

I hope I can bring you all interesting and relevant news and info posts; I'll do my best! See full article.

Related Entries:

Yet another reason for music decline: boring music - 24 April 2006

Yet another reason for music decline: boring music - 24 April 2006

Idea of the Week: Home Based Music Tutor Business - 18 September 2007

Create music nerd style - 11 March 2008




Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you'd like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

[Red/Write Web] Powerset vs. Google: The Completely Premature Head-to-Head

As our network blog AltSearchEngines reported this morning, the long-awaited and much hyped natural language processing search engine Powerset launched this morning. Kind of. For now, the search service only uses Wikipedia and Freebase as source material for answers to your query. So it's not really fair to compare it to Google yet, but this is a search engine, and that means it will always be held to the gold standard set by the market leader.

Comparing the two is tricky, since Google searches the entire web and Powerset only processes two sites. The admittedly not very scientific method that we came up with was to compare a handful of searches on Powerset, to the results for the same query on Google restricted to "site:wikipedia.org."

Powerset does some interesting things with general queries, such as displaying "Factz," which is an ontology showing various concepts related to your query and how they relate to one another, or "Dossiers," which are a summary of key information about your query. Sometimes it yields some odd results (such as this query for "ants" for which the key finding is that ants are "a fictional race from the video game Crash Twinsanity.") However, the real promise of NLP search engines, in our opinion, is that users will be able to make search queries using natural language -- or in other words, by asking a question. So we chose a few questions at random -- things we knew Wikipedia would have answers for -- and threw them at both Powerset and Google.

Query: Who invented dental floss?

Powerset's answer for this query was curious. The number one result comes from the Wikipedia entry for dental floss and highlights this line: "It was around this time, however, that Dr. Charles C. Bass developed nylon floss." Charles Bass, however, is not the correct answer. Earlier in the same article is this line, "Levi Spear Parmly, a dentist from New Orleans, is credited with inventing the first form of dental floss." Why didn't Powerset find it? It's second results, which comes from a Wikipedia entry on scientific achievements from the year 1815, correctly highlights Parmly as the inventor.

Google performed poorly for this query. The same 1815 article is identified in the sixth spot on the results, with the sentence mentioning Levi Spear Parmly highlighted, but the first few results aren't even close. Even though that's not as impressive as Powerset's results, both would require a user to click through to the article to verify the answer (because Powerset returned two different answers), and is scrolling to the 6th spot really that taxing? Taxing enough to make you switch to a new search engine? Interestingly, this query set loose on all of Google does quite well, returning the correct answer in a link to a trivia site in the first result.

Query: What is the capital of France?

Not surprisingly, both Google and Powerset nail this one. Both point to the Wikipedia entry on Paris, France in the number one spot with the sentence, "Paris is the capital of France" highlighted.

Query: Where is Paris?

This is a fundamentally more challenging query, because there are a large number of cities and towns called "Paris" in the world. And not surprisingly, neither search engine gives what we would call a "perfect" result.

Both return the article on Paris, France first. On Google, that's followed but a handful of other articles about the city and one about Paris, Tennessee. On Powerset, the second article is about Paris Hilton -- um? -- followed by one about Paris, Texas, and in fourth place the most helpful article it could have returned, the disambiguation page on Wikipedia for Paris. (Oddly, with the question mark, the query returned "Paris, Missouri" from Freebase, and without the question mark it returned "Paris, Texas.")

On Google at large, the results focus almost exclusively on Paris, France.

It would seem that both search engines generally understand that "where is Paris" means that Paris is a place (though upon reflection, perhaps we could have been searching for the location of Paris Hilton...), but neither recognize very well that it could mean any number of different places.

Query: Who is Joey Tribbiani?

Both Powerset and Google correctly call up the article about this fictional character in their first spot, but Google actually does a better job of highlighting who he is. Compare:

  • Google: After the 2003/2004 final season of Friends, Joey Tribbiani became the main character of Joey, a spin-off TV series, where he moved to L.A. to polish his ...
  • Powerset: In the end of the series, Joey was the only Friend that ended up without a lover or a spouse, even though he is the one that dated the most women. ... Joey becomes good friends with an attractive female attorney named Alex, who, along with her husband, a travelling [sic] musician named Eric, is Joey's landlord.

Google has the name of both shows in which the character appears in their excerpt, while Powerset's excerpt is made up of information about the series' that only someone who already knew the character would understand (without clicking through to read the full article) -- and it doesn't differentiate between the two -- before the ellipses the excerpt is talking about "Friends" and after it is talk about "Joey."

Google at large also finds the Wikipedia article first with the same excerpt -- it also finds clips of the show on YouTube, and the actor's (Matt LeBlanc) IMDB entry, as well the official site for the spin-off "Joey."

Conclusion

This was really just a very quick and informal test, and we barely put Powerset through its paces. But our first snap impressions are that Powerset doesn't do a markedly better job of finding answers than Google for most queries. Some might argue that we didn't play to Powerset's strengths and frame our queries properly, or search for things obscure enough to notice any differentiation. But the promise of natural language search is that people don't have to learn how to search -- they can just ask questions as they normally would. We also can't expect that everything they're going to look for will be obscure and hard to find via traditional search engines -- more often than not, they probably won't be.

Powerset will have an immense uphill battle to make any sort of dent in the search market. Google controls 67% of searches in the US, and the top 4 search engines make up about 98% of searches. If Google remains "good enough," Powerset will have a hard time convincing people to switch. It will be easier to make a judgment about the company's future as a real Google competitor once it is crawling more than two sites, however.

What do you think about Powerset? Impressed? Not impressed? Let us know in the comments below.


[Listening Post] David Byrne Converts Building Into Giant Instrument

As an architect of the legendary Talking Heads, David Byrne once offered up an album called More Songs About Buildings and Food. These days, he's tripping into architecture and turning a building into food for the ears. I think I...

[Coolfer] For The Last Time, The CD Is Not Dead

In an article about digital music, Wired editor Nancy Miller proclaimed the CD to be "dead and gone" and advised record labels on how best to sell their products. "At a certain point record companies are going to have to go with what is the cheapest way of distribution, and that's digital," she said.

That's especially funny because the previous paragraphs had quotes from record store owners -- the people that sell CDs -- that pained a different, more realistic picture. For example:

I really wasn't concerned with loss of sales because Radiohead is the kind of band whose fans want the physical album as well," said Lee Wolfson, owner of independent Tampa music shop Vinyl Fever. "I knew we'd sell plenty of the CDs when it became available.

Some people -- maybe not the Wired crowd who live in a digital silo -- still want and purchase CDs. Some consumers still want a physical product, and music companies and retailers are still very much in the business of selling physical product.

No, the CD is not dead. Sales are down, true, and many retailers are shifting floor space to other products. But the CD is far from dead. According to RIAA figures, 511 million CDs (net) were shipped last year.

Journalists are too dazzled by the efficiencies of digital distribution and tend to ignore the diversity of consumer preferences. Music distribution is not one single, cheapest route. Wired blogger Eliot Van Buskirk said as much when Radiohead signed a deal to release the CD version of In Rainbows, the album that originally got a tip-jar release. While the digital release grabbed on the headlines, "there's still a great deal of money to be made by letting unconnected music fans purchase this album," he wrote. (Truth be told, it's not just the unconnected fans who are buying physical formats.) Heck, Van Buskirk has even written about vinyl's resurgence. C'mon, Wired. Now we're up to two physical formats that are obviously not "dead and gone."

Labels, keep on pressing CDs and LPs. Physical products and physical distribution are not going to go extinct any time soon. Retail will continue to be gloomy but there will be outlets to sell your physical product, and there will continue to be distributors to get your product into those stores. The bottom line is nobody should mistake digital adoption for complete physical abandonment.


[ from the job board ] Digital Revenue Manager at Razor & Tie entertainment in NYC

[Listening Post] New Spider Species Named After Neil Young

From Buffalo Springfield to CSNY to a storied solo career, Neil Young has more than made his name in the rock game. Now, thanks to East Carolina University biologist Jason Bond, he's also making a name for himself in science....
 
 

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