I was fortunate enough to stumble across them back in 2004–05 when You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine was released and I immediately understood that this band was something else in terms of basically everything. The brilliant elephant trunks logo on the pink background was one of the best album covers I had ever seen and the songs where all simply brutally amazing, the lyrics smart and quirky as fuck and the lads looked boss in all of their pictures. I was lucky to see them live on a small show in the Mercury Lounge during that time:

They were bound to be massive, and it came to a point when everyone started to know the name. During this transition into mas popularity, as the snobby cunt I am, I started to follow them less, although I understood this was a band that was destined for glory: they were fuckin’ savage. Then one day in the blog in their website that Jesse use to update that they were disbanding and though I thought it was a shame I did respect the fact that they call it quits before it all became too shabby.

A few weeks ago I read that they almost caused a riot on SXSW and I immediately relived the excitement and curiosity that they had produced in me when I was a little 20-year-old little bitch. Death From Above 1979 is back. Death From Above 1979 is back. Death From Above 1979 is fucking back!!!

2012-01-05: Reposted via Terrace Fashionista.

The image above is based on the numbers in my Gmail over the last 365 days. For every 10 emails that I received, I deleted 7, I saved 3, and replied to 1. Of course some of those incoming emails were confirmations and newsletter-type bullshit. Then there’s the opposite—the few awesome ones that make it all worthwhile. I prefer to meet people in person rather than in emails.

I’d rather focus my free time on writing articles than emails. I’d rather write articles that come out of my own head than ones that get pushed onto me. I’d rather deliver unexpected awesomeness than predictable mediocrity. I’d rather make cars than faster horses. We’re not TechCrunch or Billboard—we’re virtualmusic.TV.

I was especially irked last month after writing about GigsWiz and Tom Silverman. Both those articles were pushed to me through their public relations agency. Less motivated, I still took the time to write and design them. Neither GigsWiz nor Silverman nor their agency retweeted them. I was offended.

Ironic: It’s a coincidence I mention “public relations.” I’d always thought PR was a dirty word. The news is that last month I took a full-time job as a digital strategist for Stern + Associates—a public relations agency—and thus far it’s amazing. All views that I express here are (of course) still my own.

Even more so from now on, my promises to you as a writer are raw awesomeness and total transparency. The email generation is dying because emails are unlike drugs and there’s so much art and knowledge to take in outside of the inbox. P.S. Call me when think-to-text technology is available.

There’s a lot of green—as a whole music consumption on the web is clearly increasing. One contributing factor to that is that the percentage of people that have internet access is growing. Notably extreme growth occurred for SoundCloud, OurStage, Bandcamp, Grooveshark, and ReverbNation. It’s understandable why SoundCloud is rocketing—it offers rock-solid tools, widgets, community, and an API. In summer 2010, SoundCloud launched a Creative Commons search page. Like Indaba Music, SoundCloud is heavily geared towards electronic music and producers. IMO electronic music is growing faster than rock and has more room to evolve. In my analysis of the 2009 heat map, I referred to Grooveshark as Jaws-like and this year was another feeding frenzy. Grooveshark now gets more visits than Last.fm. But let’s zoom out and view the bigger picture:

In February 2010, Sysomos reported that approximately 31% of YouTube videos are music—roughly one out of every three. The YouTube Music area on the map below represents this 31%. Its size is roughly equivalent to 3x everything else combined. Compared to YouTube, Grooveshark is a minnow. You want pop perspective? According to the Compete data, ladygaga.com had more visits in 2010 than any other artist, and although her traffic decreased 55% over the year, she still gets 5x as much traffic as nin.com. According to data from Next Big Sound, Lady Gaga videos got played 45 million times on Vevo* in December 2010. Dividing that number by the 2 million unique visitors that Compete estimated for Vevo that month tells us that the average Vevo user watches 23 Lady Gaga videos per month. Scream now if you have to. Who had the most visited website at the end of the year? I thought is was going to be paramore.net, who with over 400,000 website visits in December 2010 had Eminem, Bieber, and Gaga all beat. But it was taylorswift.com who had the most, with close to 600,000—that’s like half of Bandcamp right there.

Bonus tracks: Right now The Pirate Bay gets as much traffic as MTV.com. Based on its current trajectory Pandora will soon surpass The New York Times. The most popular music magazine online is Rolling Stone—2.2M visits in December 2010. The most popular music blog is Pitchfork—1.4M visits in December 2010—like two Hype Machines. NPR is in the same ballpark as Last.fm.

Update 3/20: Based on requests to add additional sites to the heat map, there is now an alternate edition on page two that includes 8tracks and We Are Hunted rather than Thumbplay and Deezer. All are now on the data table. Regarding Lady Gaga’s 45 million plays, Colin—presumably Colin Willis from Next Big Sound—commented that Next Big Sound’s Vevo play count included Vevo plays from YouTube and therefore the 23 Lady Gaga videos per month calculation is inaccurate.

Get On Bits.

Digital is the bomb. When I say ‘get on bits’ I mean get digital. Get on YouTube. Get on Facebook. Get indexed. Become bits. Bits outlive memories. Legacies live on bits. ‘All we are is bits in the cloud.’

Bring Me The Horizon singer Oliver Sykes pushes the edge of the Vans Warped Tour 2010 stage in Dallas, TX.
Photo: earlylove/Flickr

YouTube it.

In 2010, YouTube takes the cake as being the sweet spot for music. Their fact sheet reads currently that “people are watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube” and that “52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues.” Vevo, which launched in late 2009, saw screaming growth through 2010 largely due to its integration with YouTube. It’s pretty understandable why video is so engaging—it combines multiple senses: sight, hearing, and—if you’re pressing a keypad or touchscreen—touch. Triggering the brain from multiple angles makes for strong communication and vivid memories. Video influences people. Last month in Wired, TED curator Chris Anderson and Jon Chu talked about how access to free online video accelerates innovation. Chu used the example of kids who learned dance moves by watching videos of other dancers, “Kids in Japan are taking moves from a YouTube video created in Detroit, building on it within days and releasing a new video, while teenagers in California are taking the Japanese video and remixing it to create a whole new dance style in itself. This is happening every day. And from these bedrooms and living rooms and garages with cheap webcams come the world’s great dancers of tomorrow.”

Live is unique.

Seeing a live show is an experience—it’s not a product, but that’s not to say that it can’t be captured on one. Ask Aderra, a company who “records live concerts to flash drives and MicroSD wristbands which are available to the audience immediately after the performance.” Their USB drives can also be used to access exclusive content on the web. It’s important to realize that experiences have more intrinsic value than products.

Cut the intro.

Get right to the hook. Two time lessons in 2010 were seconds and clicks. At NMS NYC 2010, Jay Frank (@futurehitdna) said that artists have, “10 seconds to engage someone—to impress them.” He said to “clicks to content,” because the more clicks it takes, the more it’s bye-bye attention span. In a way this explains the addiction to YouTube, whose videos are one mere click beyond Google search results. “Anything more than two clicks and you’re missing out on the majority. … Impress them fast.” If you’ve made it this far into the post, you’re a champion, and deserve a video for the rest of the ride.

API breakout.

Expect to see more mashups based on music APIs. Most notable IMO are mashups built on APIs from The Echo Nest and from SoundCloud. The Echo Nest is a data-driven startup that launched in 2008. Its platform is in use on MTV Music Meter, MOG All Access, Indaba Music, Bandintown, exfm, and more. Based on data from Compete, web visits to SoundCloud were up 850% in 2010. A number of apps—many mobile ones—support integration with SoundCloud. Keep Grooveshark on the radar, their web visits were up 235% based on Compete, and unofficial Grooveshark API documentation is available on APIshark. The Grooveshark library is also accessible through the Tinysong API. Spotify too has potential for a mashup explosion. See the API list: 30 Music APIs.

Mystery tour.

There are several events/ticketing services out there beyond Ticketmaster/Live Nation, such as Eventful, Songkick, Ticketfly, and Live Music Machine. Ticketing is mysterious and because of that I think less music startups have gone in its direction. But live music is really what music is all about, and I think we’re going to see a lot more action in this space, especially when more people have smartphones and are using location-based apps. But the question I’m asking about ticketing is, ‘what could possibly stop Facebook from wiping away the entire online ticketing industry with an official ticketing service within Facebook Events?’

Brainmelt.

I’d like to write about licensing, but it’s just so boring and complicated, still, in 2011, and this article is already way to long for the YouTube Generation. I do think something about the licensing needs to change, especially in the U.S. where “WTF is SoundExchange?” is the typical reaction, and many musicians believe that receiving payouts from rights organizations is a straight-up myth—it’s not, but setting it up may melt your brain. For now what I think is worth knowing is that the majority of money that SoundExchange pays out comes from Pandora. So if you’re on Pandora, then you definitely want to be registered with SoundExchange. If you’re asking “how do I get on Pandora?” then read this. First, push to the end of this article. You made it this far. I promise you it’s worth it.

Born free.

If you asked Austin Powers what he thought about the internet, I know exactly what he would say..: “it’s freedom, baby, yeah!” His nemesis, Dr. Evil, would be saying “throw me a frickin’ bone here!” Who would you rather be? Free is the nature of the internet and what makes it such an advance. If you’re not embracing that free spirit, then you’re in the wrong industry. It’s like the accelerated innovation I mentioned at the start of this rap. Everyone is building on each other’s work. It’s human nature. Pablo Picasso would tell you that “good artists copy—great artists steal.” Picasso didn’t become famous by making a few great paintings. He became famous by making thousands of them. He only sold the ones that he needed to, keeping the rest in his possession, and nowadays I can’t help but wonder if he’d be getting them on bits. Really it comes down to more than creating fresh music, but being innovative on every front, and living it. That, my friends, is art. // @ryanve

The sky’s the limit—Ryan Van Etten self-photographed in summer 2010 and ready to take on the world in 2011.

For years I joked that my New Year’s resolution was to get into hard drugs, and have good posture. Well, luckily for my health I never followed through with the former. Actually it might be luckier for your sanity too. I have to say though that my posture has stayed pretty straight. Hell, I think I’m still getting taller at 31.

I know it’s already a month in. It felt like a 25-day jet lag that just avoided a crash landing when I saw a moment of clarity. I have a new resolution for this year—be edgier. And I mean that in a ‘challenge the norms’ and ‘push the motha’ f’n envelope’ sort of way. You can dig it or not. (FYI: You don’t need drugs to be edgy.)

be edgier.

“If you want to build a brand, you should own the .COM domain.”
–Chris Vinson/Bandzoogle.com

I consider my URL selection of virtualmusic.tv as a minor fail. Of course when I launched the site in July 2009 I thought it was brilliant, but truly, only hindsight is 20/20. Last summer a conversation with Bandzoogle founder Chris Vinson helped confirmed in my mind that the URL choice of virtualmusic.tv was not ideal for the core reason above—it’s no .COM.

There are of course plenty of .TV urls that work well: e.g. motherboard.tv, jawbone.tv, or justin.tv. Many people like .TV for video sites because it’s the abbreviation for television. Yet the .TV extension is actually the country extension for Tuvalu—a tiny group of islands in the Pacific that even smarter-than-5th-grader adults can’t locate on a map.

Aside from the extension, there are other issues. Due to MMORPGs, people increasingly associate the word “virtual” with virtual worlds, which is not what this site is about. This site is about online music culture and the technology that surrounds it. It’s about pushing the music industry forward.

Doesn’t the name ‘Music Flux’ align better with the content? Music culture and business will always be in a state of flux, right? (Other ideas?)

Like ‘digital music,’ the phrase ‘virtual music’ is somewhat of a generic word pair, making it hard to show up at the top of Google search results. One solid formula for a strong unique URL is:

(keyword) + (2nd word or keyword not typically phrased with 1st word) + .COM

e.g. ticket + fly + .COM

e.g. band + zoogle + .COM

e.g. sound + cloud + .COM

A name change can be a damaging blow if executed poorly or done for the wrong reasons. I’ve tried here to present a solid case for a URL change. I think musicflux.com is more descriptive, unique, memorable, and stronger as a brand identity. Do you? I’d really appreciate your input in the poll below and in the comments…because I don’t want to F it up. (Note: Functionality-wise the change for readers would be pretty seamless, as all existing links and feeds would redirect.)

Thank you! // More end of the year 2010 analysis is on deck.

Update 1/17/2010: We’re not changing it.

Okay so I obviously “planned” to write this post a little earlier. I even planned to write it last year. ;)

Giving gifts can be really hard, but if you really know someone, it’s much easier. Everyone is different.

Especially for a musician who is eager to promote themselves and be out there, I really like the idea of a pocket HD camera. If you want people to find you YouTube is the place. Get it on tape—not literally. Get it on bits. I won a Kodak Zi6 from Mashable in 2008 and the quality is unreal. Now there’s also the Zi8. I think the right book could be really good, like something on mixing for someone who does that. The best non-fiction book I read this year was Rework by the people from 37signals.com.

• More Ideas:
• Audiofanzine » Christmas Shopping 2010
• Hypebot » 10 Christmas Gift Ideas For Old-School Record Execs

Merry Xmas (or whatever your holiday of choice is:) and be safe! My end of the year posts are coming up next week. If you’re not already, tune in via RSS or Facebook. I better go start my shopping. Don’t worry I steer clear of the mall and I’ve already done some mental preparation. I’m going to hit Barnes and Noble, Campmor, the Polish store (for chocolate), and Total Wine. That should cover everyone!

I had used a free, probably pirated version initially for 3 years to create over 100 drum tracks. In 2007, I decided that if anything in this world was worth paying for, it was FL Studio. You have to respect how they address the issue of piracy head on. They know how to make a compelling offer. (Initially the current sale was available via the GroupBuy tab on their Facebook page.)

These are buttons in an elevator in Belgium, where Image-Line is based. They look like a drum pad—don’t they? photo: joaomoura/Flickr

In 2010, I hadn’t worked on many drums this year until FL Studio 9 came out. I installed it and within minutes I was ripping away with the new samples. I’ve rethought and evolved my whole philosophy on drums. Instead of making rock songs, I want to bring out the beat! I want to roll with The Chemical Brothers and bounce like turbulence. Inspired—by software.

Update 1/3/2011: The discount end date was changed from 12/30/2010 to 1/6/2011. Image-Line emailed, “This is your last chance to get in, or get back in, if you maxed out the CC last month.”

Go to Pirate Bay and search your band’s name.

• Zero search results = Basically you don’t exist.
• Torrent(s) with 50+ seeds = You’re definitely on the right track.
• Torrent(s) with 500+ seeds = Highway to limousines and vodka.

I’m sure by now I’ve already offended someone, but I assure you it’s an oh-so-effective indicator. On Pirate Bay, SE = seeds, LE = leechers, and both are sortable columns towards the right side of the PB interface. A seed a.k.a. seeder is someone who has the entire torrent. A leecher a.k.a. downloader is someone who has part of it. The more seeders there are, the more exponentially available the torrent becomes. [see BitTorrent Vocabulary.]

The number of seeds and the overall size of the swarm are the most defining metrics. Browse Music (or specific genres) and sort by the number of seeds to see what has the most. In the screenshot below I’ve done it, and as you can see it paints a pretty good picture of what’s hot right now.

Most Popular Music Torrents 2010-12-15 – link

Less than an hour ago when I took this screenshot the #1 music torrent, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West, had 6,993 seeds. Now, minutes later, it has 7,528 seeds. With that many seeders, the downloads are like lightning—approx. <2 minutes for the entire album. For perspective, compare Kanye to the #1 movie torrent, Inception (2010) which right now has over 20,000 seeds. I can’t remember ever seeing a torrent with that many seeds. P2P is anything but dead. The surprise to me here was that Mumford and Sons are the sole rockish act as hot as the mainstream mayhem.

U.S. Cost of Living Comparison: an infographic comparing estimated livings costs in 100 cities based on military BAH rates and categorized by region; West, Midwest, Northeast, and South. The ten most expensive cities or metro areas are New York, San Francisco, Long Island, Boston, New Haven, Northern New Jersey, Los Angeles, San Diego, Washington DC, and Baltimore. Many of the most expensive cities (shown in dark purple) are located in California or the Northeast. (Image: virtualmusictv/Flickr)

While not exactly proportional, it’s reasonably assumed that entertainment spending goes up with housing spending. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that for the average American in 2009, 5.5% of total spending was on entertainment and 34.4% was on housing—both down slightly from 2008. The funny thing though is that online retailers don’t (or can’t) change their price based on location like a merch booth can. An mp3 from iTunes costs the same from no matter where you buy it, right? The same goes for almost everything else you buy online—with the exception of shipping rates. Any bands out there already doing price variation or pay what you want on the road? Any stories from the most expensive or cheapest places you’ve ever toured?