David Cross, Guest MC at the Y! Music BBQ

On Saturday, March 18, Yahoo! Music threw a good old-fashioned BBQ bash at the Austin, Texas musicfest South By Southwest, featuring memorable appearances by the Subways, KT Tunstall, Cary Brothers, Dashboard Confessional, and (perhaps most impressively) extra-special guest emcee DAVID CROSS (!!!!). Good times, good times. All the performances were awesome, of course, but perhaps THE highlight of the soiree was when David read aloud to the amused (and somewhat confused) crowd a letter from the “President of Yahoo!,” Carver Malone. (Bizarrely, I’ve never heard of this guy. Hmmmm…) Below is a word-for-word transcript of the letter, as emailed to me by Mr. Cross himself. (Incidentally, getting a personal email from David Cross has to be one of the highlights of my Yahoo! career thus far.) Read this work of comic genius and try to imagine every syllable uttered in David’s smarmy voice.

Greetings, I hope this finds you well. My name is Carver Malone, President and CEO of Yahoo! Inc. I guess you could call me Yahoo’s main “dude,” although you won’t find me on a dude ranch! I’m scared of horses…and unicorns. That’s why I never saw The Chronicles Of Narnia. Anyhoo, I would like to welcome you to the first annual Yahoo! SXSW Young Persons’ Music Jamout. We hope that by sponsoring this afternoon’s totally rad rock ‘n’ roll concert that not only will we be able to build spiritual bridges linking generations and cultures through music and art, but we will also be able to sear the Yahoo! name into the collective consciences of the fastest-rising disposable income demographic of our country. Hey, they don’t call it “branding” for nothing. And we think we’ve got a “totally rad” lineup for you this afternoon.

I know what you’re thinking: “Hey old man, what do you in your suit and tie and 2.5 kids know about us teens? We’re Generation X–the skateboard generation!” Well, it may seem hard to believe, but I too was young once. Whether it was hangin’ ten with my bro’s down at the auto shop or getting crunk with my black friends Jali’il and Eduardo, I’ve had my share of wild and wooly nights and I know how important Spring Break can be to a young adult’s life. It’s a rite of passage and rape for many men and women.

We here at Yahoo! know you have a choice in online servers…and we are trying to change that. Hopefully, by linking this great afternoon of emocore and free beer with the Yahoo! name, you will switch over to us and NOT the competition. Let’s drive AOL into the sea, where the streets will flow with their blood. They are a dirty, subhuman race of mud people who must be wiped clean from the holy land. And that holy land is Yahoo.com!

Anyway, enjoy Texas and all it has to offer–from its yellow roses, to totally slamming ‘Q, to its culture of institutionalized racism. Just kick back with some brewski’s or some Long Island Iced Teas, and enjoy today’s hottest musical acts and an acerbic, smug comedian who enjoys biting the hand that feeds him.

Let it all hang out. Surf’s up! Tune in, turn on, and drop out!

Carver Malone, Yahoo!

For those needing clarification, David Cross is a comedian, there is no such person at Yahoo! named Carver Malone, and the above was a JOKE intro to a Yahoo!-sponsored music event MC’d by said comedian. Happy April Fools day,
Lyndsey Parker
Yahoo! Music

Yahoo! Music Engine On Tour: Taiwan!

Our pals at Yahoo! Taiwan took Yahoo! Music Engine’s modular architecture and built their very own music service atop the engine. They went live this week with an all-you-can-eat subscription service similar to the Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription which is already available in the US and Canada. For the low low price of NTD 149/month (about USD$5) you get online streaming and tethered downloads from more than 25 labels they’ve licensed from. But they aren’t done with their rollout, they’ll be opening a permanent download store sometime in April.

Congrats to Dennis, Xuan-Xuan, Julia, Orbby, King-Kiang, and the rest of the Yahoo! Taiwan team (lemme know when the launch party is — I’ve never been to Asia), and welcome to all people of Taiwan to the world of on-demand music from Yahoo!.

Download the Yahoo! Taiwan Music Player here!

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

Y! Music Goes Up The Creek At SXSW

For more pics of Y! Music at the Cedar Creek HQ in Austin, click here.

Hey, Lyndsey Parker here, Y! Music’s managing editrix. I just flew back from South By Southwest, and boy is my liver tired. Ninety-six Shiner Bock-soaked, barbeque-gorged, band-filled hours deep in the heart of Austin, Texas, at the industry schmusicfest lovingly nicknamed “SXSW” by us folk in the biz–and all on less sleep than the parents of a newborn typically enjoy–sure can take their toll on a gal. SXSW is definitely not for the faint of heart, eardrum, or any other internal organ you can name.

But it wasn’t all grease-sodden, expense-reported Stubb’s meals and swag-laden Vice afterparties for me this year–oh no, I was there to work. That is, if you call watching SXSW’s buzziest buzz bands perform on command in a private studio for me and a select few of my Yahoo! comrades “work.” It’s nice work if you can get it, I must say. See, Yahoo! rented out Austin’s own picturesque Cedar Creek Studio (more on that in a bit) to shoot performances and interviews with SXSW artists, which means while other conventioneers were sweating it out in around-the-block lines to see, say, Editors or Nine Black Alps or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah play their regular sardine-packed showcases, I was chillin’ like Bob Dylan over at Cedar Creek, with those bands doing their thing maybe about 10 feet away from me. Yeah, real tough work. I may have missed a few hotly tipped parties as a result, but I’m sure none of you ditch-diggers out there are feeling too sorry for me right now.

The Cedar Creek Recording Studio was a real haven away from the all the hand-kissing and baby-shaking going on in the SXSW hub of downtown Austin. This was real Texas, guys. Standing alone in a Blair Witch field at the end of a tumbleweed-strewn dirt road, this unmarked building bore a startling resemblance to Steve Martin’s house in The Jerk. No, not the dream mansion with the S-shaped hedges and clamshell bathtub and stuffed camel that Steve’s character bought with his Opti-Grab fortune…I’m referring to the Deep South farmhouse he grew up in. As we pulled up warily to the studio–after following the charmingly hand-scrawled, purple-inked “This way to Y! Music” signs tacked to trees alongside the road–I swear I half-expected to see Navin Johnson himself dancing arhythmically on the wooden porch with Bernadette Peters and Mama from What’s Happenin’. But instead, that porch would soon be trod upon by many pairs of Chelsea-boot heels and rubber Converse soles belonging to the coolest acts at SXSW–including, along with the aforementioned bands, Elefant, Head Automatica, Lady Sovereign, The Lashes, the Magic Numbers, Persephone’s Bees, The Stills, The Subways, and We Are Scientists. That is, if they could find the frickin’ place…

Well, find it they did, although a few bands probably initially feared that they were being led into the woods under dubious pretenses to be fed into a Fargo-style woodchipper (Clap Your Hands, who self-release all their music, even joked that this was some major-label kidnapping ploy devised to force them to sign a record contract). Once the bands arrived, however, it was good vibes–and good music, of course–all around. Heck, it sure beat sitting through the “New Business Models For Record Labels” or “Music Publishing In The New Economy” panels over at the convention center.

Lots went on at Cedar Creek, too much to mention here, although all the stuff we caught on camera is hotter than Austin asphalt and will start rolling out in Y! Music’s special SXSW coverage starting April 10. In the meantime, here are my top 10 Cedar Creek highlights, in ascending order of overall radness:

10) One crew member–who shall remain nameless–mooning over Angelina Moysov, the doe-eyed, Jeanie Shrimpton-banged Russian chanteuse who fronts the supersuave mod-lounge band Persephone’s Bees. Don’t worry, I think it’s a harmless crush…but Angelina might want to get a restraining order, just in case.

9) Seeing the guys from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah frolic in their perhaps not-so-natural habitat, playing basketball in the gravel driveway in front of the studio. There are a lot of Clap guys, so between them and fellow amateur hoop-shooters the Lashes (see numbers 2 and 4), they could probably start their own basketball league.

The guys from Head Automatica kicking it in the makeshift green room, discussing their respective punk 7-inch collections with increasing fervor until it got to the point where they were sing-shouting their favorite old-school punk tunes at the top of their lungs. Hope you can’t hear them in the background during Persephone’s Bees’ performance, which was being shot at the time–because these guys were practically loud enough to render the studio’s soundproofing insulation as useless as tissue-paper. You gotta admire that kind of enthusiasm, though.

7) Elefant’s reigning Casanova, Diego Garcia–he of the impossibly high knife-edge cheekbones and Latin bedroom eyes–checking out his reflection in one of the studio’s glass panels about a jillion times, and futzing with his hair about every 30 seconds. Hey, don’t hate him because he’s beautiful.

6) Speaking of hair, the mustache belonging to We Are Scientists‘ Chris Cain was a marvel to behold and a SXSW highlight in and of itself. It is perhaps the most impressively lush set of whiskers in rock. Seriously, that thing could make John Oates weep with envy. This guy needs to get a mustache-wax endorsement deal. Any takers?

5) The burgeoning feud between two unnamed bands who appeared at our studio in succession; as one band left in their van, they were heard not-so-subtly muttering that the other band just arriving was a bunch of, shall we say, feminine hygiene products. That come in bags. You figure it out. I’m not going to tell you who said this, or to whom, because I’m a lady–and besides, I don’t want to start some sorta Killers-vs.-Bravery controversy here. But just look at the list of 12 bands above and try to guess who the culprits are. It’ll be fun! And it could lead to all sorts of fake-feud rumors, too. Awesome!

4) Seattle powerpop sextet The Lashes doing the seemingly impossible–improving on the perfection that is “Sometimes The Sun”–by adding a little impromptu snippet of Dem Franchize Boyz’ “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It” in the middle of their in-studio performance. Seriously! Wait until you see it.

3) Accidentally referring to Head Automatica as “Glassjaw”–the name of the lead singer’s other band–right in front of them (and on camera, yet). Luckily they had a sense of humor about my flub (which came in handy when they teased me mercilessly), but I still felt like a total loser. I blame the lack of sleep–and the lack of my drug of choice, Red Bull, at Cedar Creek–for this rare lapse in professionalism. Head Automatica, if you’re reading this…sorry, fellas.

2) Those impeccably pouffy-haired and lavishly accessorized Lashes enjoying their downtime by flying dollar-store kites in the field outside Cedar Creek. That’s right, kites! How cool is that? You know, I wish more bands practiced flying kites. The rock world would be a much happier place. There would be a lot fewer rock feuds, for sure.

1) Lady Sovereign’s studio visit was far and away the high point of SXSW for me. I pretty much fell in love with her (in a totally professional, platonic way, of course), all 5-foot-1 of her, from the top of her cornrowed head to the tips of her Adidas shell-toes. Whether this adorably bratty Brit-hopper was playing basketball with a crew member twice her height (a college team player, no less), attacking our junk-food-loaded catering table with all the gusto of a starving raccoon, practicing soccer kicks with a discarded rock, or best yet, coaxing a crowd of curious neighborhood children into the field for a game of stickball, she certainly knew how to keep herself and everyone around her entertained. And it’s a pretty good sign for her career that in the middle of nowhere, she managed to make a new set of young fans within 15 minutes. Too bad their mother wouldn’t let these new S-O-V fans stay for the taping: When Sov, as she is known, starting spitting her liberally profanity-laced rhymes, the kiddos were quickly ushered out of the studio and back to their stickball game. Classic. Lady Sovereign truly rules.

OK, so that’s all the SXSW news that’s fit to blog. Hope this made it feel like you were actually there–only without the pesky hangover.

Stay gold,
Lyndsey Parker
Yahoo! Music

Get Carried Away In Austin

The Lashes literally sweep the Y! Music crew off their feet at SXSW.

Yahoo! Music at Mix06: AJAX YMU, RSS + SLE

Acronym city, eh? But what does it all mean?

Mix06 is Microsoft’s big Web-dev gathering out in Vegas, going on now, where they’re showing off IE7 and more. Yahoo! Music is proud to be contributing a couple of works in progress to the festivities this year, a Yahoo! Music Unlimited widget for Microsoft’s Sidebar and Yahoo! Music RSS feeds featuring the SLE extensions used by IE7 and Media RSS:

• Hopefully by now you’ve heard of RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. Any Web site can be a publisher, and you can use My Yahoo! or any number of other sites and applications as RSS readers. Yahoo! Music is releasing a set of RSS feeds and My Yahoo! modules that let you listen to (or watch) top songs, videos, and albums. These feeds support IE7’s Simple List Extensions (SLE) for sorting and filtering. These SLEs actually solved a very real problem for us — when we were creating our RSS feeds we spent a good deal of time trying to figure out the best way to show what is basically a “Top 5 Chart” with RSS, and our feed seemed to look different in every RSS reader. SLE allowed us to specify sort order explicitly, not as a hack. Our RSS feeds also employ Media RSS, so they’re easily indexed by Yahoo! Audio and Video Search. Check ‘em out and add them to your My Yahoo! page now! Thanks to Nelson, Todd, and everyone else who worked on these. More RSS feeds coming soon!
• Windows Sidebar is an IE-based Gadget platform that comes with IE7. We took some of the work we’d already done for Yahoo! Widgets and decided to give Sidebar a test run. The result is a working Yahoo! Music Unlimited browser and player that works without having Yahoo! Music Engine installed; basically, it’s an AJAX app that runs Yahoo! Music Unlimited, built on Yahoo! Music Web services. This is merely a prototype but I’m sure you can imagine other uses for this. Very cool. Check out a few screen shots here: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4. Thanks to Carl Sobeski for pulling this demo together.

The RSS stuff is live and available today, the Gadget is just a prototype we thought we’d share a little early, but both are very cool. We thought you’d dig seeing some of the ways Yahoo! Music will integrate into your life in the future.

UPDATE: You can see the Gadget in action briefly in this video from the Sidebar presentation. Just fast forward to 28 minutes and 10 seconds.

Also, we wanted to give away a little code without giving away the whole Gadget (which isn’t yet ready for public release), so Carl put together a simple demo that lets you seach on an artist name and then browse through album images for that artist. Click here to get the Gadget. If you don’t have Sidebar you can just check out this screenshot.

But that’s not all! As a point of comparison, Carl also built a Yahoo! Widget (the artist formerly known as Konfabulator) of the same demo. Click here to download the Yahoo! Widget version. If you compare the two you’ll notice the Yahoo! Widget outperforms the Sidebar Gadget when scrolling through large numbers of album art (try Miles Davis, for example). This is because the Javascript engine and rendering model in Yahoo! Widgets really rocks compared to IE (on which Sidebar is based). It also looks a little snazzier thanks to the better looking text and alpha-blended images.  The Yahoo! Widgets version also has the added advantage of being Mac-compatible (and XP-compatible, for that matter). Let the games begin!

Enjoy,
ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

Mojo Filter vs. Yahoo! Music Unlimited, February, 2006

I’m almost done reading the March issue of Mojo, so I suppose that means I’m long overdue to post a playlist and catalog analysis for the February issue. Sorry for the delay, between BarCamp LA and taking Zoe to Mammoth Mountain, my weekends have been accounted for lately.

For those who haven’t played this game with me before, this is a monthly feature where I take my favorite music magazine, UK’s Mojo, and look for every new album they review in Yahoo! Music Unlimited (Yahoo!’s $5/month all-you-can-eat music subscription service). The point is two-fold: a) To look for holes and inconsistencies in the Yahoo! Music catalog, and b) To find some great music — I put every album I find into a playlist to share with you, dear reader, so you can sample tons of music (always more than 20 hours), all thought worthy of print by the editors at Mojo. For previous months and playlists, please start with this megapost. There’s some interesting conclusions this month, so read on.

Without futher ado, I present to you, Feburary 2006…

Below is a list of music reviewed in the Feb 2006 Mojo Filter which is also found in Yahoo! Music Unlimited. A playlist of all these albums can be found here.

The Strokes – First Impressions of Earth
Floetry – Flo’ology
Mark Murphy – Once To Every Heart
Robert Glasper – Canvas
Clearlake – Amber
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Gossip – Standing In The Way of Control
Belle and Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
Ray Davies – Other People’s Lives
Mary J. Blige – The Breakthrough
Rosanne Cash – Black Cadillac
Dar Williams – My Better Self
Levy – Rotten Love
Syleena Johnson – Chapter Three: The Flesh
Neil Diamond – 12 Songs
Bright Eyes – Motion Sickness
Magic Slim & The Teardrops – Anything Can Happen
Jason Mraz – Mr. A-Z
dEUS – Pocket Revolution
Richard Youngs – The Naive Shaman
No-Neck Blues Band – Qvaris
Boris w/Merzbow – Sun Baked Snow Cave
Howie Beck – Howie Beck
Jens Lekman – Oh You’re So Silent Jens
Calla – Collisions
Sun Kil Moon – Tiny Cities
Various – Different Strokes By Different Folks, A Tribute to Sly Stone
James Summerfield – Paint The Road
Jamie Hartford – Part of Your History: The Songs of John Hartford

The following albums could not be found in Yahoo! Music Unlimited. I’ve also included the label which released them (in the UK, at least), and other online services where the albums can be found (according to Yahoo! Audio Search):

Sparks – Hello Young Lovers (Gut)
Cast King – Saw Mill Man (Locust Music; eMusic, Rhapsody)
Duw A Yr – God Only Knows (Babel)
Jahcoozi – Pure-Breed Mongrel (Kitty Yo; eMusic)
Lou Rhodes – Beloved One (Infinite Bloom; Rhapsody)
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey – The Sameness of Difference (Hyena; Rhapsody)
Ketil Bjornstad – Floating (Universal)
Geoff Gascoyne – Keep It To Yourself (Candid)
Richard Ashcroft – Keys To The World (Parlophone)
Hawkwind – Take Me To Your Leader (Hawkwind)
Various – Walk The Line OST (Wind-Up)
Eric Burdon – Soul Of A Man (SPV)
Bitter Springs – That Sentimental Slush (Harvey)
Earth – Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method (Southern Lord)
Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat (Rough Trade; iTunes)
Various – Our New Orleans 2005 (Nonesuch)
Ian Siegal – Meat & Potatoes (Nugene)
Willie Mabon – 1949-1954 (Classics)
Roy Brown – Good Rockin’ Brown (Ace)
Matt Schofield – Siftin’ Through Ashes (Nugene)
Julian Cope – Dark Orgasm (Head Heritage)
Miracle Mile – Glow (Meme)
Nefilim Modulation Systems – Imperial Letters of Protection (Big Dada)
Pope – Grace of God (Aspop; Wippit)
Residual Echoes – Phoenician Flu and Ancient Ocean (Midheaven; iTunes)
Worsted – Chapology (Bassett Music)
The Drones – Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By (ATP)
Roger Eno – Fragile (Music) (Burning Red)
Castanets – First Light’s Freeze (Asthmatic Kitty; iTunes, Emusic)
Badgerlore – Stories For Owls (Free Porcupine Society)
The Psychic Paramount – Gamelan Into the Mink Supernatural (No Quarter)
Creme de Menthe – The Impossibility of Eroticism in the Suburbs (Disko B; iTunes, Emusic)
Various – The Enlightened Family, A Collection of Lost Songs (Voodoo-Eros; Emusic)
Martyn Joseph – Deep Blue (Pipe)
Soothsayers – Tangles Roots (Red Earth)
Various – Down in a Mirror, A Second Tribute to Jandek (Summersteps)
Various – Safe Haven At SMYRC (Cherchez La Femme)
Various – Fonotone Records: Frederick, Maryland (Fonotone)
Snooks Eaglin – New Orleans Street Singer (Smithsonian Folkways; Emusic)
Roger Dean Young and The Tin Cup – Casa (Loose)

Math time.
Total: 69
Haves: 29 (42%)
Have Nots: 40 (58%)
Not in Y! Music Unlimited that were found in Rhapsody: 3 (8%)
Not in Y! Music Unlimited that were found in iTunes: 4 (10%)
Not in Y! Music Unlimited that were found in Emusic: 6 (15%)
Not in Y! Music Unlimited that weren’t found in any other major online music service: 29 (73%)

A few interesting conclusions this month:

• This is the smallest gap Y! Music Unlimited has ever had between us, iTunes, and Rhapsody. We’ve finally received some of those larger indies that were causing us to not have some of the more “interesting” albums each month.
• This is the first time that Emusic has come in ahead of iTunes and Rhapsody in making up the difference. Could be a fluke, or it could be that Emusic is making good on its promise to provide the broadest range of independent music. We’ll see how they fare next month.
• Nearly 50% of all music reviewed still isn’t avaible legally from ANY online service in the United States. The Mojo Filter test is a bit of an unfair test because this is a UK magazine and more than a few of the missing albums are UK releases, but I still think this points to how far we are from making all the music fit to hear in the world available legally. I’m sure you’d fare quite well looking for all these albums on a P2P service.

Definitely enough music to enjoy yourself, though. Lots of good stuff this month. I actually like the new Strokes record (much better than their last one), new Neil Diamond is great, was great to see the Saddle Creek stuff flow in finally, I like the sound of this dEUS and Sun Kil Moon covers Modest Mouse albums, and Boris + Merzbow is mind-numbingly amazing. Let us know what your favorites from this list are by posting a comment below.

Music is the best,
ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

Shakira Puts Your Hips in Her Video

Prolific Latin rockera Shakira just added a new track called “Hips Don’t Lie” featuring Wyclef Jean to her album “Oral Fixation 2.”

Just like Shakira, we couldn’t wait to embrace this song. So we had our users come and upload video of their very own hips dancing to this new track last week. Your hips don’t lie, you love the song too!

You can see whose hips made the cut in the highly entertaining premiere for Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie (Fans Only Version)” right here.

The cool thing about this for me was being able to give you, the music lovers who visit Yahoo! Music every day, the chance to make what turned out to be (in my humble opinion) a more exciting video than Shakira made herself. I hope you enjoy this video as much as I do because it’s truly ‘of the people, by the people.’ Yeah, I went there. Lol!

In the true World Wide Domination spirit the video is being shown on our Y! Musica site, Canada and Australia. It was more of a challenge than most video premieres to put together and the result was worth it. Thank you to all who submitted their tapes and played rockstar just for us.

Colleen Quill
Yahoo! Music