“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.

Social Rocks.

The stage is lit—music has always been social, and the web continues to make it even more so. Communication is on the rise. People want to share and “everyone who shares is an influencer.” Music discovery is powered by your friends and by recommendation engines—the technology is only getting smarter, and, in their case, everyone who listens is an influencer. Web apps like Blip.fm and Twisten.fm rely nearly entirely on friend-powered playlists and realtime recommendations. Music streamers crave sharing, simplicity, and depths of controls for customizing their listening experiences.

Shareability and community spin music in the social web. Pandora and Last.fm’s widely popular iPhone apps encourage users to share songs they like with their friends as they’re listening to them. Grooveshark’s web interface heavily encourages sharing, and its integration with Twitter via Twisten.fm and Tinysong have helped fuel its rapid growth in 2009. Nearly all of today’s free (ad-supported) streaming sites include links to purchase mp3′s via iTunes or Amazon. Vevo has them, but, YouTube—arguably the largest and most engaging music streaming site—does not.

The Delicious user base has a relatively high concentration of developers, designers, techies, nerds, etc.—individuals likely to have above-average internet savvy. As a group they are an acute filter for quality content. The chart below shows the popularity of the same music websites based on data from Delicious. You can see there is some divergence from the traffic heat map. The most notable difference is MySpace Music, which showed the highest website traffic, but shows the lowest Delicious rank. Pandora is the top-bookmarked music site on Delicious by far, with last.fm second, and Grooveshark climbing quickly. Pandora is also the top-ranked music site on Xmarks.

Musicians—many are at the center of the social mix lifecasting on Twitter, Ustream, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace. They’re communicating like never before, and evolving the industry. Revenue comes in new forms. The urge to be “indie” is contagious. The amplifiers are on.

Mobility Rolls.

Seven of the top twelve are radio/streaming apps. But smartphones are not just for listening to music. Gigzee is an events app—a location-aware tool for finding shows/concerts in your area. With more people on smartphones, more people can take advantage of location-based services like this. Music creation apps like Virtuoso Piano, Drum Kit, freestyle, NLog Synth, Digidrummer, Looptastic, and Jamble Music Mashups are wildly popular. Every human is an artist in some way—as technology improves more people will find themselves creating, and collaborating remotely. Who’s at center stage now? Creative Commons-released music encourages open remixing via sites like JamGlue, ccMixter, Indaba Music, Jamendo, SoundCloud, and more. Maybe influenced by NIN, many musicians are releasing audio source files for open remixing, fan remix contests, remix apps, or fan music videos.

Tweets about Apple acquiring Lala have been flooding Twitter for 3+ days now. A number of sources have provided news and analysis on the acquisition. Personally I think Apple aims to move iTunes to the web in an effort to control mobile cloud-based music streaming via iPhones and iPods. Mobility is paramount, and I think that buying Lala was a sound move for Apple. By combining the best features of iTunes and Lala, Apple should be able to make a more seamless streaming experience with a simpler payment process—a simple payment process leads to more people buying. You can bet there will be an iPhone app that enables buying and simplifies the buying process.

Die-hard Lala users hope that Apple will keep Lala’s key features in tact, and many are looking forward to new feature possibilities. Hopefully with the help of its Lala’s developers, Apple will be able to build onto Lala’s platform making music more accessible. Lala enables users to upload mp3′s from their computer so they can access them from anywhere through their Lala account. In Lala’s words, “Play it anywhere on the web. Most of your music will be matched to Lala’s catalog [and] any remaining unmatched MP3s can be uploaded to Lala.”

A massive user-submitted music library is being built in the cloud. What I’d really like to see is for everyone’s uploads to be available to everyone, much like they are in Grooveshark—a free music streaming service that lets users upload tracks to the cloud. Let’s compare their relative popularity with other some streaming/download services—Spotify, MOG, and Amie Street—in the graph below:

What’s worth noting about MOG having the most visitors is that MOG markets itself more as a social network—their tagline is “Discover People Through Music and Music Through People.” Having social features clearly plays a big role in web-based music discovery—it’s social music discovery. Extended stats and analysis are to follow in Part 2 later this week.

• Photo: Lala Apple Logo Mashup by VirtualMusictv/Flickr
• View Lala screenshots.