In NJ, summer 2011, I witnessed a violent conversation about what is the best mobile music app. It pretty much sums up the state of mobile music streaming in 2011:

Alternatives that come to mind are MOG and Grooveshark—both of which share the same main attraction as Rdio and Spotify: on-demand streaming. They are fundamentally different from discovery-centered apps like Pandora. Last.fm and exfm are in the cross. Who’s back do you have…what’s your vote? ▼

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.

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!

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RIP Lala, but let the music rock on. I’m optimistic—what’s your reaction?
previous post: iTunes Is The 7-Eleven of Media

Device Dependency

Apple continues to create a major dependence on iTunes through their mobile products—the iPod, iPhone, and iPad—and I don’t think that anything is going to “kill” iTunes without a war. iTunes is the 7-Eleven of media—it’s more convenient and expensive, but it’s closer to home. For many, the iTunes experience is ingrained behavior—a household name—and part of their daily commute so to speak.

Generation Gap

The second huge advantage Apple has is the generation gap. Older people are more likely to have money to spend, and are less likely to adopt something new—especially if it’s less convenient. For Spotify to compete stateside, it will start through today’s youth. I love the Spotify concept, its mobility, and its adaptivity. They are smart to develop/test/improve their service in one location (Europe) before attempting to roll it out in another market (U.S.)—that’s business expansion 101. I hope that Spotify becomes a hit in the U.S. mainly for the sake of the music. Who wants an iTunes monopoly?

Apple Affinity

Apple products have strong affinity, and an army of enthusiasts drinking their Slurpees. Anyone looking to compete with them has to have an equal or greater affinity, and/or introduce something totally disruptive (which Spotify has done to a degree). Spotify has game, but so does Apple, who made a calculated move with last year’s Lala acquisition. One big thing to remember is that music has always been about the experience, and it always has been.

Apple Shuttle

Judo Paris Grand Slam 2010. (Flickr/ryusha)

Now if I got an email explicitly saying “you’re breaking our rules and we’re going to shut you down” then I would react immediately but apparently these bloggers missed this chance. I’m sure Blogger’s TOS states that they have the right to delete violating blogs, and to protect themselves legally they delete them. But I find it hard to believe Google didn’t warn them. I think the bloggers had to have known they were in a legal gray area. They should have exported a backup of their blog.

The DMCA’s ‘safe harbors’ for online service providers give linkers a strong incentive to remove links upon receiving a DMCA takedown notice, because if they do so, they are protected from paying damages in any copyright infringement case. (EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann via BoingBoing in 2006)

Regardless of whether we may be liable for such infringement under local country law or United States law, our response to these notices may include removing or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating subscribers. If we remove or disable access in response to such a notice, we will make a good-faith attempt to contact the owner or administrator of the affected site or content so that they may make a counter notification. (Google)

We need better laws surrounding internet music journalism that reflect today’s Internet behavior. We need better education regarding copyright so that writers know how to properly license intellectual property. Oftentimes music bloggers have gained permission to include mp3′s directly from the artist or their record label. The same may even go for some YouTube videos that have had their audio removed due to “copyright infringement.” Is anyone asking the artists or contacting the uploader first? Who exactly is making the complaints? Theoretically the DMCA criminalizes anti-DRM tactics and copyright infringement. In practice, is it working—or rather—is it worth it?

The trouble with filing a formal, legal DMCA counter-claim is, that most bloggers don’t know how. What’s more, many of Blogger’s DMCA notices allegedly omit the name of the offending song. Bloggers aren’t even sure what they are denying. (The Guardian)

From what’s being talked about from the blogs that did have their content removed, it sounds like the newer system (unlike the old system) did alert them to what was happening, but they just felt hopeless to respond. Google has put up a response, basically saying that if it doesn’t receive a counternotice, and it keeps getting DMCA takedowns on the same account, eventually it takes the blog down as a “repeat offender.” So we’re back to the point that I predicted in August, where your average everyday blogger has no idea what a DMCA counternotice is and how to use it — so it would be much better if Google made the process of filing such a counternotice a lot more intuitive. (Techdirt)

In order to prevent any legal confusion, I would include a disclaimer making it painfully obvious that that the artist (or label) gave permission to have the mp3 on the blog. Even better, I would use legal embedding tools such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, or Grooveshark as opposed to a direct link to an .mp3 file. This saves bandwidth and covers your a**. In the case of Bandcamp, you would be helping the artist because Bandcamp downloads usually require an email address and ZIP code giving bands a direct connection to their fans and valuable location data. I think most Bandcamp artists would happily issue free download codes to mp3 bloggers. Another route would be to use Creative Commons-licensed content—there’s plenty of CC-licensed content on Jamendo.

All that said, the best solution is to set up a blog on your own domain with an opensource blogging platform like WordPress. But even still you should backup your posts. Blogger and WordPress both support exporting (backing-up) into a transferable .xml file. Mini-blogging platforms Tumblr and Posterous are also good free alternatives—Posterous supports transferring from another blog but I don’t think Tumblr does yet. See Mashable’s head-to-head comparison. Squarespace is a paid service that supports importing and is also worth considering as an out-of-the-box solution.

If you’re already using WordPress on a WordPress.com blog, I recommend buying your own domain and hosting. You remain in more control that way. Buy your hosting separately from your domain though—most domain registration services offer cheap hosting that sucks as an upsell. It’s worth paying for good hosting. Of course the DMCA could issue a complaint to you through you or your host, but it’s less likely and the complaint would be more direct to you and not through a 3rd party.

Update 2/12/09: Last night Google put back one of the deleted blogs and updated their response:

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.

Based on estimated traffic data from compete.com, this visualization compares November 2009 website visits for 27 popular, legal, music stream-or-download destinations. The heat map is to scale—larger map areas represent higher website traffic. Green indicates positive growth in 2009. Red indicates negative growth in 2009. Hold your mouse over each area for stats. Use Ctrl + to zoom.

Pandora is the radio powerhouse, but MySpace Music, disturbingly, has the highest traffic, and MySpace acquired both Imeem and iLike this year. iTunes is omitted here because it’s not web-based—yet—but clearly it is widely used. The top three percentage gainers were Grooveshark, Lala, and Spotify. Grooveshark has shown the most consistent growth throughout the year, and let me tell you I think it’s going to be a Jaws-like monster (especially when it goes mobile). It delivers free full-on cloud-based streaming and user uploads. Grooveshark’s iPhone app is pending Apple’s approval, but I wonder if Apple will be reluctant to approve it because it would be sharp competition with iTunes and their newly acquired Lala. It’s no surprise that Google was also looking to buy Lala—maybe they’ll turn to bite Grooveshark. Grooveshark’s minimalistic home page is even Google-esque, and there’s something to be said for simple design. Being curious as to mobile applications’ influence on website traffic, I listed available mobile apps with the sortable data below.

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.