Playlist work in progress

We have been experimenting with Yahoo! Music Unlimited shared playlists, exploring the boundaries in an informal way. This blog entry is to share two things that came out of it.

Playlists by Lyndsey Parker

Yahoo! Music Unlimited Playlisters Group

P.S.

Dave Goldberg to Record Labels: No DRM, Please

By now you’ve probably seen the news that Yahoo! Music’s General Manager (that makes him my bossman’s bossman), Dave Goldberg, urged record labels to ease back their insistence on DRM yesterday at the Music 2.0 conference. I was in the audience and quite proud to hear such a statement come from the head of the business unit for which I work as I agree wholeheartedly with him (note my post “On DRM” from last June). You can read about Dave’s statements elsewhere (Slashdot, c|net, Digital Music News, Digital Music Weblog, A VC, etc), but here’s a few interesting points/quotes from my notes:

• On-demand (digital downloads and subscriptions) are not the entirety of the “music business” online. The business of buying CDs, cassettes, digital downloads, etc is about $30B globally, while media supported music businesses (radio, music videos with ads, etc) is about a $40B business globally. Yahoo! Music is in both businesses.
• Despite tremendous progress of legal, for-pay music services, the mainstream digital media consumer today is still listening to CDs, Internet radio, and using P2P services. 80+ percent of the music on iPods is from ripping and 3% or less is from legal digital services.
• The playlist is key to Yahoo! adding value to digital music; it’s a unit of currency for users to create and share music with each other. Dave also gave a nod to Web 2.0 at Music 2.0, pointing to Web services as a way we will go “beyond the media player” with our music offerings this year.
• Exploring ways the music industry could help move the pay market forward, Dave asks the labels to lighten the DRM requirements. “DRM is not a consumer value proposition, it’s a consumer cost. It creates a nice barrier of entry for the tech companies, rather than something that’s beneficial to labels, artists, or consumers.” In the Q/A session after his keynote Dave pointed to eMusic as a service which offers MP3 files as part of their subscription, files which are easily burnable and play just fine on the iPod. Due to restrictions from the major labels we aren’t able to offer hit content in a similar fashion with Yahoo! Music Unlimited. He reminds us that the major labels are selling DRM-free content every day in the form of CDs. I agree with Dave. DRM definitely has a cost, and eMusic is showing that consumers are willing to pay a premium price for unfettered access to digital media. What value is DRM providing in our service? What is the cost? Is it worth this cost?
  What Dave is really asking the labels to do is to experiment along with us to grow legal music services as a category. Legal services are a very small percentage of the downloading activity on the Web, yet studies tell us people *are* willing to pay for high-value content and services. The larger subtext of the “No DRM” message that got headlines is: help us build great legal services for users, don’t hold us back.
• Yahoo! Music served 4 billion videos last year (which, if you believe another figure that 17B videos were served on the Web last year, Yahoo! Music videos were fully 20% of the Internet’s video traffic in 2005).

Ironically, I went from Music 2.0 to UCLA’s Anderson’s school to participate in a panel about DRM, where I talked way too much. Like Jack White said, “Any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most.” That was me. Sorry, y’all.

Oh, and, sorry this damn post took so long. I had to fly up to the Yahoo! offices in Sunnyvale for some meetings today which, after the UCLA thing last night, left me no time to post about this. My loss, I missed a whole day of net buzz and maybe even a /.-ing for ymusicblog. That is teh suck. Damn day job.

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

Mojo Filter vs. Yahoo! Music Unlimited, November, 2005 to January, 2006

The UK’s Mojo is my favorite music magazine. In fact, it’s the only one I read these days. In Mojo you’re just as likely to read a story about a single MC5 show thirty years ago as you are an interview with Antony from The Johnsons (who won the Mercury Prize as well as Mojo’s album of the year in 2005). It’s the only major magazine I know of that feels 100% free of music PR agent input. For music nerds by music nerds.

Every month Mojo Magazine features a large section known as “The Mojo Filter”, forty to fifty pages of music reviews. It reviews new music first, reissues second, followed by books, DVDs, and live shows. Essentially, it’s an attempt to monthly collect the albums any “popular” music fanatic might be interested in checking out. It’s usually things that are new and great, or anticipated for some other reason. They cross all popular music genres, from Rock and Americana, to Hip Hop and Jazz, to Folk and Underground.

As you probably already know, Yahoo! Music Unlimited is Yahoo!’s $5/month music subscription service. All-you-can-eat music, low monthly price. Yahoo! Music Unlimited contains more than 1.5 million tracks from labels large and small.

But Yahoo! Music Unlimited does not have all the music in the world. Some music isn’t there because the artists are intentionally keeping it out, not releasing their music digitally until someone writes them a big check; The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Seger (yes, Bob Seger) are holding out for major loot before they license their music to services like ours. Some have exclusively licensed their music elsewhere; AC/DC is exclusively at MSN right now, the pre-Sticky Fingers Rolling Stones catalog is only available at iTunes at the moment. Most of the music we don’t have, however, just hasn’t been licensed yet; whomever controls the licensing hasn’t yet done a deal with Yahoo! or MusicNet (our provider) to put the music in our service. For example, I just spoke with Ian MacKaye (whose music and idealism changed my life at 15) of Dischord Records and he was explaining that they aren’t really set up to deal with digital distribution in a big way just yet — sorting out the right model for their artists isn’t always immediately obvious or logistically easy for a small label like them to pull off.

We work with a company called MusicNet to license the music for our service and they work tirelessly every day to get all recorded music into our catalog. And I am constantly sending them emails asking why we still don’t have Merge, Touch and Go, etc. They’re trying, they tell me. It’s a struggle, though. Warp, for example, decided they didn’t want to be a part of a $5/month subscription service (too cheap, they believe), so they pulled their music and made their songs download-only (too bad, because the Jamie Lidell record was my favorite of last year).

Because Yahoo! Music Unlimited has a lot of music, but clearly doesn’t have everything, it’s easy for one person to say “Oh my God! They have everything!” and another (an electronic music fan, for example) to say, “Man, they don’t have shit!” So in an effort to see where some of our holes are, I’ve been comparing The Mojo Filter to the Yahoo! Music Unlimted catalog since Yahoo! Music Unlimited was released to the public last May. Because Mojo is a UK Magazine and Yahoo! Music Unlimited is (so far) a US service, the comparison isn’t 100% fair, but it’s still fun to see what we have, what we’re lacking, and end up with a great playlist of new music to share at the end of each month. Check out the past issues and playlists:

• October, 2005
• September, 2005
• August, 2005
• July, 2005
• June, 2005
• May, 2005

I’ve decided to move this monthly exercise to YMusicBlog to give some visibility into what we have and don’t have, let people know that we care and take depth of catalog very seriously, and invite some ongoing discussion on the topic. In this post I’ll cover three months of Mojo (catching up), but going forward I’ll try to make this a monthly feature of YMusicBlog.

Mojo Filter, November, 2005

The following music is available in Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and you can listen to a nice big playlist of it simply by clicking here:

Franz Ferdinand – You Could Have It So Much Better…
Cream – Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6-2005
Gang of Four – Return the Gift
Wolf Parade – Apologies to the Queen Mary
Neil Young – Prarie Wind
Brad Meldhau – Day Is Done
Carleen Anderson – Soul Providence
Simply Red – Simplified
The Go! Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Rev Run – Distortion
Cage – Hell’s Winter
Barbra Streisand – Guilty Pleasures
Paul Weller – As Is Now
John Cale – Black Acetate
Blondie – Live By Request
Soulfly – Dark Ages
Starsailor – On The Outside
Depeche Mode – Playing The Angel
Boards of Canada – The Campfire Headphase
Dirty Three – Cinder
Jim White – Music From Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus
We Are Scientists – History Repeats
Animal Collective – Feels
Francoiz Breut – Une Saison Volee
Herbie Hancock – Possibilities
Mark Eitzel – Candy Ass
Grandaddy – Excerpts From the Diary of Todd Zill
Louis XIV – The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
Robbie Williams – Intensive Care

And here are the ones not found in Yahoo! Music Unlimited, along with what label they’re on, and which other sites Yahoo! Audio Search tells us have them (if any):

Ian Anderson – Ian Anderson Plays The Orchestral Jethro Tull (Zyx)
Phil Manzanera – 50 Minutes Later (Hannibal)
Texas – Red Book (Mercury)
In The Country – This Was The Pace Of My Heartbeat (Rune Grammofone; iTunes)
Baby J – Presents FTP (All City Music)
Prince Paul – Hip Hop Gold Dust (Antidote)
Lushlife – West Sounds (www.kanyewestsounds.com)
Ms. Dynamite – Judgement Days (Polydor)
Silver Jews – Tanglewood Numbers (Drag City; iTunes)
Various – New Sounds of the Old West Vol. 4 (Loose)
The Fiery Furnaces – Rehearsing My Choir (Rough Trade; iTunes, MusicMatch, Rhapsody)
Sugababes – Taller In More Ways (Universal)
The Fall – Fall Heads Roll (Slogan/Sanctuary; AudioLunchbox)
Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3 – …tick …tick …tick (Blue Rose)
The Paddingtons – The Paddingtons (Poptones/Mercury)
Steven R. Smith – Crown of Marches (Catsup Plate)
OOIOO – Green and Gold (Thrill Jockey; iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic)
Dion – Bronx In Blue (Orchard Enterprises)
Various – Dream Brother (Full Time Hobby; Wippit)
Vashti Bunyan – Lookaftering (Fatcat; iTunes, eMusic, Wippit)
John Tams – The Reckoning (Topic)
James Raynard – Strange Histories (Unearthed)
The Witches of Elswick – Hell’s Belles (Selwyn Music)
Andrew Murray – Hell or High Water (White Cow)
Jim Causely – Fruits of the Earth (Wild Goose)
The Cardigans – Super Extra Gravity (Stockholm)
Arab Strap – The Last Romance (Chemical Underground)
Pure Reason Revolution – Cautionary Tales for the Brave (Sony/BMG)
Shelly Poole – Hard Time for the Dreamer (Transistor Project; iTunes)
The Corrs – Home (Atlantic)

So lets do some math:

Total albums: 60
Haves: 29 (48%)
Don’t haves: 31 (52%)
Of the Don’t haves, how many iTunes has: 6
Assuming iTunes has all of our haves (note that I’m not running that test), how many iTunes has: 35 (58%)

So there you go. A few interesting points:

• iTunes does very well on the larger indies (Rough Trade, Drag City, etc). Why is that? I think it’s three things: a) iTunes is by far the biggest, and bands *want* to be in iTunes. Multiple indie labels have said that their bands kept asking them when they were going to be in iTunes, so they actively sought a deal with iTunes — labels are coming to iTunes, in our case we’re going to the labels for the most part; b) iTunes did a brilliant thing with the indies early on — they invited them all to Cupertino, gave them a tour of the Apple campus, lunch, a personal visit from Steve Jobs (The Messiah to many in that audience), and at the end a non-negotiable contract, (paraphrasing) “Here’s the contract. Sign it. Or don’t. Up to you. Don’t have your lawyer call our lawyer. It’s not negotiable. Sign it and you’re in our store. Don’t sign it and you’re not. Pretty straight forward.” I heard this from someone who runs a small label who went for the visit three or so years ago. A very smart, scalable and effective approach, IMHO. c) There are definitely some musically savvy folks at Apple talking to the right labels — not the #1 reason, but I’ll give ‘em some credit (whaddup Chris B and Steve G).
• There’s a lot of music (40%) that *none* of the services have. Note eMusic and AudioLunchbox don’t score much higher than anyone else. Any notion that with some combination of iTunes and eMusic you have all the music that’s fit to hear is bullshit. Yes, we’re using a UK magazine as our test, but this is all music that someone thought was worth writing about in November, yet 40% of it is unavailable in the US through legal channels, period. And in 2006 isn’t this a “global” music market? I’d be curious what percentage you could get through P2P channels — anyone want to run that test? I’m guessing it’s very close to 100%.

So that’s November. As a bonus for reading this far, check out this playlist of the 50 greatest US Punk tracks, based on the Mojo article of the same name. Starts with Louie Louie, ends with Sleater-Kinney, and features the likes of The Seeds, Weirdos, Bad Brains, and The Gun Club in between. Rules. And that’s not all! I also made a playlist from the Reissues section of Mojo this past October and November. Some good stuff in there. Check ‘em. Now on to December…

Following are the albums from Mojo Filter, December, 2005 that you will also find in Yahoo! Music Unlimited (click here for the playlist, more than 30 hours long):

Kate Bush – Ariel
Burt Bacharach – At This Time
Howard Jones – Revolution of the Heart
The Darkness – One Way Ticket To Hell…And Back
Madonna – Confessions On A Dancefloor
Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks – Selected Shorts
Deerhoof – The Runners Four
Mary Timony – Ex Hex
Nickel Creek – Why Should The Fire Die?
Richard Buckner & John Langford – Sir Dark Invader vs. The Fanglord
Richmond Fontaine – The Fitzgerald
Peter Bruntnell – Ghost In A Spitfire
Charlemagne – Detour Allure
Amy Rigby – Little Fugitive
Chris Mills – The Wall To Wall Sessions
Why? – Elephant Eyelash
Stevie Wonder – A Time 2 Love
Damian Marley – Welcome To Jamrock
Wilco – Kicking Television
Alicia Keys – MTV Unplugged
Her Space Holiday – The Past Presents The Future
Brad Paisley – Time Well Wasted
Adrian Belew – Side Two
Carly Simon – Moonlight Serenade
Michael Powers – Onyx Root
Maria Muldaur – Sweet Lovin’ Old Soul
Deep Purple – Rapture Of The Deep
Gravenhurst – Fires In Distant Buildings
Bill Frisell – East West
Bobby Bare – The Moon Was Blue
Rogue Wave – Descended Like Vultures
Killing Joke – XXV Gathering
Ozzy Osbourne – Undercover
Two Gallants – The Throes

And the Have Nots (the albums we do *not* have in Yahoo! Music Unlimited, plus what label they’re on and what services do carry them according to Yahoo! Audio Search):

Test Icicles – For Screening Purposes Only (Domino)
Teddy Thompson – Separate Ways (Verve Forecast)
Sid Griffin – As Certain As Sunrise (Prima; eMusic)
Bobby Earl Smith – Turn Row Blues (Muleshoe)
Half Man Half Biscuit – Achtung Bono (Probe Plus; Rhapsody)
Bell Orchestra – Recording A Tape The Color Of Light (Rough Trade; iTunes)
Tokyo Dragons – Give Me The Fear (Escapi)
Orenda Fink – Invisible Ones (Saddle Creek; iTunes)
Sky Saxon – Transparency (Jungle)
Blockhead – Downtown Science (Ninja Tune; iTunes, Rhapsody)
Lightning Bolt – Hypermagic Mountain (Load; MusicMatch)
Ari Up – Dread More Dan Dead (Collision)
Various – Electric Institute (New Religion/Art)
Richie Hawtin – DE9: Transitions (Novamute)
Pier Bucci – Familia (Crosstown Rebels)
Francisco – Music Business (Nature; iTunes)
Whomadewho – Whomadewho (Gomma; iTunes, eMusic)
Richard Thompson – Grizzly Man OST (Cooking Vinyl; iTunes, BuyMusic.com)
Tiny Tin Lady – The Sound Of Requiem (TTL/Proper)
Various – 1980 Forward (4AD)
Infantjoy – Where The Night Goes (Sony/BMG)
Merz – Loveheart (Gronland; iTunes, Wippit)
Tom Ovans – Honest Abe and The Assassins (Floating World)
Various – Akoustik Anarkhy Present Class aA: Beyond Entertainment (Akoustik Anarkhy)
Bobby Hebb – That’s All I Wanna Know (Tuition)
Big George Brock & The Houserockers – Club Caravan (Cathead)
Duster Bennett – The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions (Columbia/Blue Horizon)
The Mannish Boys – That Represent Man (Delta Groove)
Aidan Smith – Fancy Barrel (Analogue Catalogue)
The Howling Hex – You Can’t Beat Tomorrow (Drag City; iTunes)
David McAlmont – Set One – You Go To My Head (Blue Port)
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – The Quality of Mercy (Gottidiscs; iTunes)
Emmanuel Jal & Abdel Gadir Salim – Ceasefire (Riverboat; iTunes)
Cheikh Lo – Lamp Fall (World Circuit)
June Tabor – At The Wood’s Heart (Topic)
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis – The Proposition (Mute)
Salif Keita – M’Bemba (Universal Jazz France)
Ozomatli – Live At The Fillmore (Concord; iTunes, Rhapsody, MSN Music, eMusic)
Various – Congotronics 2 (Crammed Discs; Rhapsody, Wippit)
Bananarama – Drama (A&G)
Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Summer In The Southeast (Drag City)
Ralfe Band – Swords (Skint; iTunes, Wippit)
Mari Wilson – Dolled Up (Beehive)
Tracy + The Plastics – Culture for Pigeon (Too Pure; BuyMusic.com)
Abram Wilson – Jazz Warrior (Dune)
David Cross – Closer Than Skin (Noisy)
Sonny Rollins – Without A Song – The 9/11 Concert (Milestone; iTunes, MusicMatch, Rhapsody, eMusic)
Sunn 0))) – Black One (Southern Lord)

Math time again:
Total albums: 82
Haves: 34 (41%)
Have nots: 48 (59%)
Assuming iTunes has all our haves, their haves score: 45 (55%)

Random thoughts:

• iTunes did much better than us this month (14% better as opposed to 10% better last month). It’s those larger indies we’re missing that kill us: Saddle Creek, Ninja Tune, Rough Trade, etc.
• What’s with everyone having Concord except us? That’s a great jazz label, plus they have Ozomatli.
• eMusic doesn’t have Drag City? Weird. What’s up with our Drag City connection? Why do we have all of the old Smog records but none of the Palace or Bonnie “Prince” Billy albums?
• It was a kinda weak month, music-wise. The Deerhoof and Bill Frisell records are AMAZING, but aside from that, nothing terribly outstanding. I like the Richard Buckner record ok. I was disappointed by the new Stevie Wonder, Wilco, Alicia Keys, Damian Marley, and Rogue Wave records. The Two Gallants record was a bit of a surprise. I’ve only listened once through but I think I like it. And the more I listen to this Kate Bush record the more beautiful it sounds.

Now finally (until next month), January 2006:

The Haves (click here for the playlist of these albums, 371 songs, 25 hours of music):

Cat Power – The Greatest
Brian Wilson – What I Really Want For Christmas
Kate and Anna McGarrigle – The McGarrigle Christmas Hour
The Bad Plus – Suspiscous Activity?
The Mars Volta – Scab Dates
Dave Matthews Band – Stand Up
Lina – The Inner Beauty Movement
Marah – If You Didn’t Laugh, You’d Cry
Tommy Lee – Tommyland: The Ride
Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine
Billy Bob Thornton – Hobo
Jackie Leven – Elegy for Johnny Cash
Kingsbury Manx – The Fast Rise and Fall of the South
Numbers – We’re Animals
Billy Childish and The Buff Medways – Medway Wheelers
Howard Shore – A History of Violence (Original Score)
Alex Wurman – March of the Penguins (Original Score)
Aerosmith – Rockin’ The Joint
Kevin Coyne with Jon Langford and The Pine Valley Cosmonauts – One Day In Chicago
The Drift – Noumena
Jerry Douglas – Best Kept Secret
John Vanderslice – Pixel Revolt
Lowgold – Keep Music Miserable
Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham – Moments From This Theatre
Reigning Sound – Home For Orphans
Ox – Dust Bowl Revival
Film School – Film School
Decoration – Don’t Disappoint Me Now
Souad Massi – Mesk Elil (Honeysuckle)

The Have Nots (including label and which services do carry the album according to Yahoo! Audio Search):

Gemma Hayes – The Roads Don’t Love You (Source)
Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene (City Slang; iTunes)
Eric Bibb – A Ship Called Love (iTunes, MSN Music)
Ted Barnes – Underbelly (Sketchbook)
Babyshambles – Down in Albion (Rough Trade) *
Danger Doom – The Mouse and The Mask (Epitaph; iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, MSN Music, AudioLunchbox)
Coldcut – Sound Mirrors (Ninja Tune)
Breakestra – Hit The Floor (Ubiquity; iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic)
Various – I Believe To My Soul (Work Song/Warners; BuyMusic.com)
Public Enemy – New Whirl Odor (Slamjamz; Rhapsody, eMusic, PassAlong)
Klashnekoff – Focus Mode (Reprezent) *
Jehst – Nuke Proof Suit (Reprezent)
Proof – Searching for Jerry Garcia (Iron Fist)
Practical Headz – Who Iz It? (Timeless Music Project/Chocolate Fireguard; iTunes)
Ray – Deep Blue Happy (Pito)
Robert Pollard – From A Compound Eye (Merge; eMusic, Rhapsody)
Charlotte Greig – Quite Silent (Harmonium)
Bronagh Gallagher – Precious Soul (Saltydog)
David Ford – In Sincerely Apologise For All The Trouble I’ve Caused (Independent)
Tim Ries and Friends – The Rolling Stones Project (Concord; iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody, Napster, MSN Music)
Spiers and Boden – Songs (Feelside)
Various – And They All Sang Rosselsongs (Fuse)
Flook – Haven (Flatfish)
Various – Never The Same (Honest Jons)
Cherish The Ladies – Woman of the House (Rounder; iTunes)
Akron/Family – Akron/Family (Young God; iTunes, Napster, MusicMatch, Rhapsody, eMusic)
Department of Eagles – The Cold Nose (Melodic)
Panico – Subliminal Kill (Tiger Sushi; iTunes)
Jackie-O Motherfucker – Flags of the Sacred Harp (ATP) *
Hototogisu – Ghosts From The Sun (Important)
The Hospitals – I’ve Visited The Island of Jocks and Jazz (Load; Napster, PassAlong)
Nurse With Wound/Jim O’Rourke – Tape Monkey Mooch: Angry Electric Finger 1 (Beta-Lactam Ring)
Randy – Randy The Band (Fat Wreck-Chords; iTunes, MusicMatch, Rhapsody, PassAlong)
Linval Thompson – Inna De Yard (Makasound)
Mi and l’Au – Mi and l’Au (Young God; iTunes, eMusic)
Thione Seck – Orientation (Stern’s Africa)
Krzysztof Komeda – Rosemary’s Baby/Cul-De-Sac/The Fearless Vampire Killers (Harkit)
Bobby Johnson – King of the Ants (La-La Land)
Dario Marianelli – The Brothers Grimm (WSM)
Hockey Night – Keep Guessin’ (Lookout)
Isabel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – Ballad of the Broken Seas (V2) *
The Lobi Traore Group – Lobi Traore (Honest Jons) *
Lords of Altamont – Lords Have Mercy (Gearhead; eMusic)
Tortoise/Bonnie “Prince” Billy – The Brave and The Bold (Overcoat/Touch & Go; eMusic)
Various – Start Your Own Country (Loose)
Paula Frazer – Leave The Sad Things Behind (Bridman; iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, MSN Music, PassAlong)
Mike Stinson – Last Fool At The Bar (Boronda)
Jim Noir – Jim Noir (My Dad)
The Ruts – Babylon’s Burning Reconstructed (Collision)
The Wrens – The Meadowlands (Absolutely Kosher; iTunes, Napster, Musicmatch, Rhapsody, MSN Music, AudioLunchbox, eMusic, PassAlong)
Sandrine Kiberlain – Manquait Plus Que Ca… (Virgin France)

Final Math:
Total Albums This Month: 80
Haves: 29 (36%)
Have Nots: 51 (64%)
Assuming iTunes carries all our Haves, their score: 38 (48%)

Comments:

• Pretty poor score this month. But note that on a percentage basis iTunes didn’t do any better than they did last month, so it’s the entire category of “licensed music” that didn’t fare so well this month, not just Yahoo!.
• This brings up one of my long-standing concerns that the trends we’re seeing in the music industry (higher percentage of all sales are independent labels than ever before, high percentage of digital sales are “catalog” releases rather than “new releases”, known artists are moving to smaller labels) actually work against the notion that we can proactively go out and licenense all the music in the world. If the number of music producers is increasing daily, there’s clearly a licensing bottleneck. I’d argue that iTunes has more music not because they’ve been more aggressive about licensing, but because they’re the largest and the labels and artists are coming to them, rather than them seeking out every label Ian MacKaye’s story of how Dischord ended up with iTunes backs up this notion.
• Check out that Kevin Coyne record! Quite a surprise how amazing it is. I sent a copy to my dad (via Amazon — the old fashioned way ).
• A few questions for John at MusicNet: a) Why don’t we have the Broken Social Scene album? We seem to have other albums on City Slang. Is it because it’s on Arts and Crafts here in the states? b) Why are we missing the Danger Doom album? It’s on Epitaph/ADA (which we carry). Every service has this but us. c) Also curious how I would find the Joe Henry-produced “I Believe To My Soul”. Am I just not finding this because it’s oddly labeled as a various artists release? d) Why don’t we have the new Public Enemy record? It’s on SlamJamz, which we do seem to carry (we have the single), and eMusic and Rhapsody both have it. e) After this exercise I’d like to cast votes for Concord, Young God, and Absolutely Kosher as a few labels that most services seem to have except us.

As an added bonus, check out this playlist of Mojo’s Best Music of 2005. They printed 50 and we had 46 of them (92% of the best music of 2005, not bad), including 18 of the top 20! Lots of good stuff in there. Put that playlist on random and you’re certain to find some great music you missed last year.

Thanks for reading. I hope this was interesting or illuminating in some way. Most of all I hope it’ll make you think more critically before making any one of the following (untrue) statements:

• Yahoo! Music Unlimited has everything!
• Yahoo! Music Unlimited doesn’t have shit!
• iTunes has everything!
• eMusic has all the indies!

The truth is much more complicated than that in 2006. The good news, though, is that all of the above-mentioned digital music services are adding great music to their already gigantic catalogs every single day, and you’re already able to enjoy the entire catalog of Deerhoof in each one of them (that is, no one is betting on strictly the most popular of music). The catalog is headed toward commodity status. In the future you’ll choose your service based on who gives you the most utility around this commoditized catalog. But we’re not there quite yet. The free market for digital media is just now being built. We all have a lot to do to figure out the most scalable and efficient way to build this catalog and marketplace.

Best,
ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

In Radish We Trust: Robert Radish’s Yahoo! Music Playlist Portal

True playlist afficionados are already familiar with Robert Burke’s insane Rhapsody and MusicMatch Radish playlist sites. Clearly the work of a music-loving madman, they feature hundreds of playlists covering eras, moods, producers, labels, holidays, situations, and more. Being a firm believer in the axiom “anything worth doing is worth overdoing”, I got in touch with Robert as soon as Steve Clark brought his site to my attention a few months back.

I let Robert know we were about to release a shared playlist feature of our own with the latest version of the Yahoo! Music Engine, and asked if he’d be interested in a preview. Thankfully he was and he started making playlists and finding the outer limits of our platform pretty much immediately.

So now it’s with great pride and pleasure that I invite you to check out Robert’s Yahoo! Music Unlimited-based playlist portal, Playlist Radish, featuring tens of playlists and growing daily. Subscribe to the RSS feed via My Yahoo! or better yet set it up as a Yahoo! Alert (visit Yahoo! Alerts, choose Feed/Blog, paste http://feeds.feedburner.com/YahooRadish into the box, and hit save) to get new playlists delivered to your mailbox or via Messenger daily.

A few of my recent favorites from The Mighty Radish (a list of lists — way meta, dawg):

• J. Dilla aka Jay Dee – This week’s news on the death of young Jay Dee from complications due to lupus was terribly sad. Experience his too-brief legacy with this spectacular playlist.
• Best Album Covers of 2005 – A great way of slicing the releases of 2005, reminding us that cover art does still matter (and when we get our standard for digital packaging, XIPF, going, it’ll matter even more).
• Produced by Rick Rubin – Beastie Boys, Slayer, Johnny Cash, Public Enemy, Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down, Jay-Z, Danzig, and most recently Neil Diamond? Ladies and gentlemen, the career of the great Rick Rubin (often referred to as “the world’s fattest vegan” by Buddyhead).
• The Songs of Dan Penn – Dan Penn might look like your average southerner but he’s an incredibly prolific songwriter and a great singer in his own right. Check out this playlist and also his excellent new live record with Spooner Oldham.
• Songs Accused of Satanic Backmasking – The devil made me include this playlist.
• Bill Gates has a posse – Rap songs mentioning Gates. Oh yeah, Robert gets pretty random.
• Spectacular Sadcore – Musical downers featuring the kings and queens of sadcore: Red House Painters, Arab Strap, Mazzy Star, and more.
• Celebrity Playlist: Lucinda Williams – As if you needed any more reasons to think Lucinda is rad, check out her playlist.
• Coltrane on the Side – Coltrane plays well with others.
• Paranoia – Songs with a Paranoid bent, featuring my favorite from a most underrated Kinks album.
• AC/DC Covers – Hayseed Dixie and Mark Kozelek have very different approaches to the same material. Both worth hearing.

Thanks very much to Robert for seeding our playlist community with such excellent playlists. Come to L.A.. Dinner’s on me.

Robert asked me to put the word out that he’s looking for other great playlisters to post playlists to his site. Contact Robert if you think you have the skills.

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

The Strokes Go Global with Y! Music

Hi. Colleen, your friendly Music Video Maven, here with another update.

Have you been wondering how my quest for worldwide domination is going? Well I’m here to tell you it’s going just fine. Continuing to bring hipsters together everywhere, our Yahoo! Music sites in the US, Canada, UK & Ireland, Spain, Germany, France and Italy all premiered The Strokes “Heart in a Cage” video today. That’s right we rocked the Globe with a video about isolation. Is that an oxymoron or what? Watch it for yourself and join in the worldwide lonliness, together.

Since the beginning of the year we’ve premiered videos from A-listers in all genres:

• Country: Rascal Flatts, Toby Keith and Nicole Kidman’s man, Keith Urban plus America’s favorite redneck, Gretchen Wilson. That was in the last week!
• For those Urban lovers we’ve had Young Jeezy, Heather Headley, Avant, Lil Bow Wow and Bubba Sparxxx!
• Popsters enjoyed Pink’s ‘Stupid Girls’ (where she takes on Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson), and Madonna on the Grammys performing with The Gorillaz. Madge actually had our servers going bonkers all over the world. She’s still got it so hope her groin injury heals quickly. Lucky for us she filmed her video ‘Sorry’ before that happened. You’ve got to see this continuation from “Hung Up” as Madonna nabs men off the street and tells them how it is.

The premieres keep on coming! Check back for upcoming premieres by The Foo Fighters, Christina Milian and Damian Marley!

Later!
Colleen Quill
Yahoo! Music

The Strokes Premiere

Yahoo! Music Personalization Primer + Pandora, Last.fm, Soundflavor

Yahoo! Music has been offering personalized music recommendations to music-lovers for more than 6 years.

Recently there has been a fair amount of buzz over some new music recommendation offerings, and we thought we’d share our thoughts on these products as well as our own, and ask for your thoughts in return.

First, in case you’re not famliar, let’s start with an overview of some of the music personalization that Yahoo! Music provides. In 1999, LAUNCHcast hit the scene, offering each user the ability to customize a station based on his/her favorite genres, artists, albums, and songs. As the music plays on LAUNCHcast you can rate it, and your ratings will teach LAUNCHcast more about what you like (or don’t like), so it can recommend similar music as well as help other fans find music they’ll like (in the same way Amazon shows “people who bought this also bought”). LAUNCHcast Plus enables folks to create Moods that focus their station on particular genres and discovery levels. On My Station page, you can see I have have some moods for discovering Adult Alternative (that I haven’t yet rated) and Groove music (focused on electronica, jazz, and blues). If you haven’t created a station yet, get started here. It only takes a minute.

Soon after LAUNCHcast radio, we introduced similar functionality for music videos and added fan radio stations, where you can listen to a stream centered around songs liked by fans of a particular artist. Just search for your favorite artist, go to the artist page and look for the “Fan Station”. While fan stations are not personalized based on your individual ratings, they are based on aggregated listener preference ratings, of which we’ve collected over 6 billion (!) to date. See below for a comparison of the music our “Fan Stations” plays compared to the competition.

In late 2004, Yahoo! Music acquired MusicMatch, which offers quite the complement of personalization options, including implicit personalization based on the music you play (no rating required) and AutoDJ, which enables listeners to create highly customized similarity and criteria-based playlists with just a few clicks. We are working hard to integrate these great MusicMatch features into Yahoo! Music so we can offer you the best of both worlds all in one place.

This past year, we expanded our personalization features by showing artist, album, song, and new release recommendations within the Yahoo! Music Engine and through the Yahoo! New Music Alert, the only service offering personalized new music recommendations via email, SMS, and/or IM each week. This means that while iTunes and other folks are forcing Barry Manilow and Destiny’s Child down everyone’s throats on their homepage and in their blast emails, you could be getting your own personalized notifications of new releases by your favorite artists that only you care about in email and on your personalized Yahoo! Music Engine homepage. I got notified of Watashi Wa’s new album, based on my LAUNCHcast ratings, while Ian was notified about Jello Biafra and The Melvins and Michael was notified of The Presets. We also brought back the ability to browse members with similar music tastes (In Yahoo! Music Engine, go to My Music Profile -> Browse Similar Members), based on your ratings. We leveraged our similarities data to bring you similarity-based playlists centered around artists or songs, accessible from the artist and song pages in Yahoo! Music Engine.

It’s challenging to build a system that delivers tens of millions of music fans exactly the music they like, including music they might not know they’ll like. We’ve spent a good bit of time tweaking the algorithms over the years to minimize the amount of effort our users have to put in, and also appeal to the users that want the maximum amount of control possible. Our personalization aims to provide the perfect mix based on a variety of data sources, including similarities, genre categorization, editorial input, your ratings, what’s popular, what your influencers like and what you’ve heard recently. We feel we’ve made a good bit of progress over the years, but there’s always room for improvement, and we’d love your feedback.

We’d also like to hear your thoughts on the other personalized music offerings out there. Some that have caught our attention lately include Pandora, Last.fm, and Soundflavor.

Pandora offers similarity playlists based on one or more artists or songs (similar to our fan radio stations). However, unlike our fan radio stations, which are built from the music an artist’s fans rate highly, Pandora’s come from a database built by music experts who have painstakingly attempted to classify music based on attributes like instrumentation, melody, orchestration, and rhythm. My experience with Pandora is that it tends to promote music more obscure than LAUNCHcast fan radio. And while they do let you provide feedback on the station for each song that plays, it does not appear that you can customize your station beyond specifying the seed artists and songs (for example, by rating music on a scale or saying “never play again”). Pandora’s flash player is pretty nice looking, with convenient preset access and nice album art. However, it lacks links to additional information like music videos, biographies, reviews, news, similarities, and discographies (aside from shopping). Overall, I found the Pandora experience to be a bit novelty, appealing to hard-core music afficionados who really want to dig deep into obscure music. See below for an example recommendations face-off, where I thought Pandora’s recommendations were a little off-target.

Soundflavor is another site that showcases recommendations based on expert tagging, from a company called Siren Systems. Some of their more interesting features include song and playlist similarities/recommendations (like Pandora, based on the attributes of songs, as opposed to listener tastes). I’ve found these recommendations to be decent, especially at the song-level, but they haven’t completely wow’d me. How about you? Have you found examples where Soundflavor’s attribute-based similarities blow away the taste-based similarities that Yahoo! Music offers?

I’ve been reporting my plays in LAUNCHcast and Yahoo! Music Engine to Last.fm via their Audioscrobbler plug-ins. You can check out my profile here. It’s been interesting to watch what I play most, and it’s helped us think about how implicit personalization based on plays might factor into personalization. For example, during the holidays, I checked out some Michael Bublé and a holiday CD by the Carpenters. I was a little alarmed to see those artists go to near the top of my Top artists lists. I definitely wouldn’t want those artists as inputs into my personalization, as I was only in discovery mode when I listened to them. I recently checked out my personal Last.fm station, and it was pretty decent. Their customization is pretty straightforward, with simple “love it, skip it, ban it” (hmm, wonder where they got those ideas from! ) It’s too bad they don’t offer the customized radio for free (Yahoo! Music does). Like Yahoo!, Last.fm also offers neighbor browsing and similarities. Overall, I’ve found their charts and similarities to be rather popularity-skewed. Radiohead and The Postal Service seem to show up everywhere. I especially like Last.fm’s journal recommendations which directs you to community posts that mention your favorite artists. This sort of functionality has been on our internal wishlist for a number of years, and it’s nice to see last.fm making it happen.

Here are some results of a test we did comparing the results of Yahoo! Music LAUNCHcast Fan Radio to Pandora to Last.fm Artist Fan Radio for Black Eyed Peas. We’ve highlighted results in red that we think are not-so-great recommendations for Black Eyed Peas fans. What do you think?

Here at Yahoo! Music, we’ve tried hard to lead the music personalization space, and we’ve been thrilled that tens of millions have customized a LAUNCHcast station and/or used Yahoo! Music Engine recommendations. Of course, we’d love to offer all of the features outlined above, but our resources are limited and we have had to pick and choose what to focus on. As we look ahead to 2006, we’d love to hear what features you think would be most valuable to you and the broad music audience. Would you rather us focus on improving the quality of the existing recommendations or add new types of recommendations (like recommended music videos, playlists, etc.)? What’s working for you in LAUNCHcast and your Yahoo! Music Engine recommendations? What isn’t? Share your experiences with us (via comments on this post or via our yme-feedback and launchcast feedback groups) so we can improve personalization to meet your needs. After all, it’s our mission to provide the best “music that listens to you”.

Todd Beaupré
Director, Personalization
Yahoo! Music

SST Records Catalog Starts Rolling In

Today was like the 1980s in two ways:

1. I skated the Santa Monica city skate park, The Cove, for the second time since I tore some cartiledge in my knee skating there last year. The Tick cancelled our lunch meeting and starting the first of this month The Cove is open at noon during the week again (they finally gave up the ghost on the ridiculous 3-5pm only “winter hours”), so I took advantage of the hole in my schedule and broke out for a skate break.  It’s good to be back out there.
2. Jon O. pointed out that the SST Records catalog started appearing in Yahoo! Music Unlimited finally (via The Orchard). For those who don’t know, SST is what Mojo aptly described as “The Motown of U.S. Hardcore”, the label started by Black Flag guitarist (and Raymond Pettibon’s brother) Greg Ginn and housing no less than the likes of Black Flag, Husker Du, Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, The Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr., The Minutemen, and The Descendents.

The celebrate, I made a little “Best of SST” playlist. If you spent the ’80s listening to what’s now commonly referred to as “80s Music”, it might be time to go back and check out what you missed and this playlist is a fine place to start. Yahoo! Music Unlimited has the best known SST stuff, but it looks like we’re still lacking quite a few of the Black Flag records as well as some less-popular personal favorites such as Bl’ast! and The Tar Babies. Hopefully the whole catalog will roll in soon.
Click here to check out the SST playlist I just threw together. Or check out these seminal records:

• The Minutemen – Double Nickels on the Dime
• Black Flag – The First Four Years
• Meat Puppets – Up On The Sun (Ryko reissued this but this was originally SST)
• Sonic Youth – Sister (Geffen reissued this one, but it was originally SST, too)
• fIREHOSE – Ragin’, Full On
• Descendents – Milo Goes To College (I never much cared for pop punk, but this one did start it all)
• Bad Brains – I Against I
• Black Flag – Slip It In (the best one with Rollins, IMHO)

Enjoy!

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

Madonna, The Gorillaz, and Sly

To me personally, the biggest story around tonight’s Grammy Awards is the possibility of a public appearance of everyone’s favorite shut-in, Sly Stone. Surprisingly he actually showed up for rehearsal on Monday, though didn’t make it through three takes. As much as I love Sly (I have his face tattooed on my arm) I’ve got $100 riding on tonight’s Grammy performance not coming to fruition. I figure either way I win. Anyway, go listen to Fresh now if you’re not familiar, there’s nothing like it.

But in less personal news, Yahoo! Music managed to score the Internet-exclusive rights to show the Madonna/Gorillaz performance from tonight’s Grammys. It should be up on the Grammys site by around 8pm PST tonight. You heard it here first!

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

New Yahoo! Music Engine: You Asked, We Listened

Just a few moments ago, we posted the latest version of the Yahoo! Music Engine on our fancy Web site. If you’re a Windows-type user, go on and download it now.

This release falls into the “you asked, we answered” category. We’ve taken your feedback from Yahoo! Music Engine’s initial release, prioritized it, attacked as many of the issues as time allowed, added a few new innovations, and packaged it all together into this latest release. Here are a few of your requests we answered:

[screenshot]

You told us playlist managing and sharing should be easier. We added a “scratch playlist” that shows you what’s currently playing and allows you to add/remove/edit without having to leave the page in Y! Music Unlimited you might be on at the moment. Drag and drop right from Y! Unlimited pages (just drag the album covers to queue the full album) to the scratch playlist or the playlist of your choice. Also, your playlists follow you from computer to computer like that sheep of Bo Peep’s. Make a playlist on your home computer and it’ll follow you to your work computer. Add a short description to your playlist and “make it public” to share your playlist masterpiece with the world. Click “link” on the playlist page for a link to the playlist which you can easily post on your blog or send to your friend (you might want to join our affiliate program to make some loot on your playlist sharing, even). As an example of how nuts you can go, check out the many playlists created by the illustrious Robert Radish, creator of MusicRadish.com.

You told us using your portable MP3/subscription music player should be easier. In the latest version of Yahoo! Music Engine we’ve added a device wizard to make creating a custom playlist for your device simpler than stealing a car in GTA. Just choose a few artists and we’ll take care of the rest, every time you connect your device. Or transfer ad hoc by simply dragging an album cover directly to the device from Yahoo! Music Unlimited. That’s what I do on conference calls. I browse my recommendations, and drag interesting-looking things to my Toshiba Gigabeat.

[screenshot]
You said you wanted to take your Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription to your living room. Word. Me too. We built and included the industry’s finest and most full-featured media server, compatible with (UPnP A/V) devices from Dlink, Roku and many others. Your subscription music will play on any device that supports the Windows Media Connect application from Microsoft. But get this, we out-did Microsoft at their own game. Windows Media Connect (the competing Microsoft product) requires .NET, XP SP2, and won’t play files that aren’t local on your computer. Yahoo! Music Engine on the other hand, in its infinite radness, doesn’t require .NET or SP2, and plays songs you’ve just “bookmarked”. So, make a playlist “Like You Gots To Chill” (using our one-click similar song playlist creator button) for your next dinner party and stream it to the Roku in your living room without downloading a single one of those songs. So hot. I love my Roku (but yo, Roku, what’s up with the clock radio I ordered in NOVEMBER?!).

[screenshot]
You told us CD burning should be easier. Aight. Now you can drag and drop tracks directly from My Music to your blank CD and we’ll help you sort out if these tracks are burnable or not before you hit burn. You can still easily burn any playlist, but it isn’t necessary to make a playlist before burning anymore.

You told us we should always remember where you last were (guess you’re lazy like that). Now when you navigate to the Neil Diamond page in Yahoo! Music Unlimited, then click on My Music or a playlist, and go back to Y! Unlimited, you’re back on the Neil Diamond page, not at the Y! Unlimited home page. Also, select an album or artist in My Music, navigate away, return to My Music. Just the way you left it. Helpful, eh, Mr. Short-Term Memory?

You told us you wanted more music. We now have so many songs that Charlene our PR pal won’t let me tell you how many songs we have. Suffice it to say we have all the majors, mad indies, and that record your mom recorded and sent to CD Baby. h0tnizz. Subscribe to this blog because I’m going to post a little something about our catalog coverage and how it compares to the competition just as soon as I can find a couple late night hours to finish it up. Don’t listen to Bushwick, size matters.

You told us the app should load faster. So now it does. Tested against iTunes and we win, thank you very much. If you’re still seeing load slowness, check that you don’t have fourteen thousand plugins installed and active.

You told us the look and feel should be more streamlined. We put Yahoo! Music Engine on a diet (see screenshots above). We slimmed down that beefy top area and thinned out the lines between the panes. We hope you like it. If you don’t, there’s a new skin engine and we’ll be posting a skin creation tool and some docs (along with a new plugins gallery) to the Yahoo! Developer Network soon.

You said we used too much memory. We trimmed that, too. Note that we do use Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, and those, um, well, lets say they use a little memory. Also, the size of your media database will affect the amount of memory you use in this release (fixing that some more in the future). But for the most part, you should see the working set size shrink in task manager in this release.

You told us that horrible Windows Media “license store is corrupted” bug must die. So we lit a fire up under Microsoft and made them give us a hotfix. Boy was that fun. Thanks to our pals at Microsoft for fixing that ish. That was a super wack bug and we took a lot of heat for it. Why just this weekend Yahoo!’s Chief Operating Officer, Dan Rosensweig hit me on instant message, unable to play a single track or transfer anything to his new Creative Zen Vision:M. That’s always a good feeling: “Hey, the boss is on the line and the product he associates with you is sucking.” So I transferred him a copy of the latest Yahoo! Music Engine via Yahoo! Messenger (shameless Messenger plug), he installed it, and his problem went away. Phew. Thanks to this new version, I got to go to dinner with my wife this past Saturday night rather than walking Dan through a Microsoft support page. THANK YOU YAHOO! MUSIC ENGINE.

You told us we needed more responsive and better informed customer service. Well we heard you and we recently just completed an overhaul of our customer service FAQs (the responses the Customer Service team sends out) to make them more detailed and helpful. In addition, we just completed a hands-on training session where the we met with the Customer Care team in person and walked them through all the features of the latest version of the Yahoo! Music Engine. We know there’s still more work to be done to improve Customer Care, but we’re on it and making improvements everyday.

You told us you didn’t want Messenger to be installed automatically without a choice not to install it. We required Messenger because music sharing via Messenger is a core (and IOHO very cool) part of the player, but we heard your complaints and changed the installer so you have the choice. Enjoy your free will, tough guy.

Yahoo! Music Engine still isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly headed the right direction. Give it a test spin and let us know what you find. Clearly we listen when you give us your feedback (though we do prefer it to be thoughtful and constructive — those “dude this shit doesn’t work” emails really don’t help us fix much of anything). See you in the feedback group.

Congrats to the team that made this release happen, including our new bretheren from MusicMatch. Everyone came together to do a bang-up job. Good work!
Oh yeah, I wanted to give a shout out to Joey, Steve, Inc, Dave, Burley, Rod, Mark, Robert, T-Prime, Mitchelle, and the rest of our early beta testers. Thanks for your valuable feedback. Much-appreciated. See you in IRC.

We’ll be at the Daily Pint tonight if you wanna come by and say hi.

Assuming Matt New is sleeping on my couch tonight,
ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music