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.

Indaba Music is one of many web-based remixing applications.

Remixing in the current, virtual realm is enabled by online, collaborative, remixing platforms like Indaba Music and JamGlue. Remixing is widespread through networks that share collaborated audio like ccMixter and SoundCloud. Our Remixed section is meant to tune into remixes created using virtual platforms and collaboration networks. We’re open to covering remixes from all genres—the more diverse the better.

If you are interested in writing for this section, then please email virtualmusictv@gmail.com. Please review our content guidelines before submitting entries. Not a writer? You can help contribute by letting us know the remixes that you’d like to see featured. For your reference, the ongoing list of remixing applications and collaborative production networks listed below is viewable at Delicious » ryanve » remixing collaboration apps.

Friend recommendations seem to be the hottest source—whether they are in person, on the phone, or through the web. We discover music through sharing in mainstream social networks—Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace—and also through music-specific social networks like Last.fm, Imeem, Grooveshark, TheSixtyOne, and Blip.fm. Mainstream networks are broadening their music capabilities, and music applications within them are going to be pretty huge. Smaller music sites that may not survive on their own might do better as Facebook, Twitter, or smartphone applications. The latest, big-name buzz has been about MySpace’s iLike purchase, Spotify—whose potential entrance to the U.S. may be through Facebook’s doors—and Grooveshark, whose iPhone application may be arriving in the future. Imeem—which started as a social network—made a complete shift into the social music service that it is today. YouTube is a major discovery source and video links are widely shared via email, IM, and Facebook. Ustream.tv is live video platform that can be used to discover music through live interaction—a crucial feature that I emphasized in my debut VirtualMusic.tv forecast.

Before one can recommend music to their friends, they have to discover it themselves first. They are, say, early adopters. This initial discovery is increasingly enabled by open, social, music discovery sites (see the clickable link cloud above) and through integration of their applications with the existing mainstream networks I mentioned above. This integration from site to site is a key usability factor that facilitates sharing and alleviates the need for users to ‘sign up’ for a million sites. For example Twisten.FM is a nice Twitter–Grooveshark blend that lets me hear a playlist made from the people I follow on Twitter, and there are a number of other applications built for sharing music on Twitter alone. The speed that information is shared on Twitter is awesome, and I often discover new artists through Twitter convo. Open remixing applications like Indaba Music are another up-and-coming source of discovery. The others ways exposed in our brainstorm include movies, live shows, videogames, bittorrent and p2p file-sharing, fan-funding sites (more about these in an upcoming article), magazine articles, blog posts—including mp3blog posts via aggregation sites like elbo.ws—and all types of radio—traditional, satellite, and web-based. We’ve seen a definite shift away from download sites and towards streaming sites. But what did we miss? How/where do you discover music? Please give us your say below.

• How Do You Discover Music? by VirtualMusictv//Flickr
• Music Discovery Link Cloud by VirtualMusictv/Flickr

Read more posts tagged Music Discovery here.

Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba performing in 2008.

It was September 2000 and the course of my life was about to change. Attending school in Boulder in a time when punk rock was center stage in my life, one of my favorite bands—Face To Face—was coming to Denver for an event that I would not skip. My hazy recollection tells me that they put on two back-to-back shows at the Ogden Theatre and that I attended both nights with two different friends. The three opening bands—all then new to me—were New Found Glory, Saves The Day, and Alkaline Trio. The venue was uncrowded during the first set, New Found Glory. By the time Saves The Day was on stage, Denver’s punk-rock fans had begun to fill the room, and we had magnetized to a position right up front at the rail. The first two sets rocked, but it was the third set—Alkaline Trio—that altered the course of my life.

Alkaline Trio’s straight-up intensity and heart was undeniable and I was hypnotized. It was their performances those nights that inspired me to learn to play guitar and later write my music. Maybe it would have happened anyway—I’ll never know. This was the spark that started the fire. When Face to Face was up next, the venue was surging!

Let’s flash to the now and to Alkaline Trio’s recent “I Found Away” open remix contest—listen to the winning remixes here. Had I been in the loop earlier about this contest, I would have been all over it and contributed my own remix. There’s no chance I’d have topped the winner—MacLes Music Factory—who remixed pop punk into dub. Punk rock and dub both had their alpha stage in the ’70s. I think this song works so remarkably well as a dub remix because punk and reggae are similar in that they often share lyrical themes like social criticism, angst, and love—Alkaline Trio’s lyrics cover dark subjects in an upbeat way. Both punk and reggae also tend to share simple chord structure and 4/4 time signature. Regardless, there doesn’t need to be a reason—if it sounds good, then it is good—so why ask why? This is just a great example of creative collaboration and music 2.0 promotion. Open remixing gives genre-crossing artists a stellar way to broaden their fan base.

There’s no doubt that collaboration brings brilliance to life. Collaboration is king. Online collaboration is still embryonic. Open remixing will put more diverse and imaginative music into scene than ever before. Genres will blend. Interpretation is in the ear of the remixer. With the thriving emergence of virtual collaboration platforms, it’s easy to be a remixer. The music is there and you can be a part of it. You know you want it. Go remix the planet.

• Photos: “Matt Skiba” by Victoria Morse. “Soundwaves Mix 2″ by chrisharve
• 2000 Event Info: Past event detail via Last.fm