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iTunes – 2010 End

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iTunes – 2010 End

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!

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.

CAUTION: When it comes to problem solving, engineers are fearless.
Graphic version: virtualmusic.tv/2010/06/10-engineering-rules/

What Do These Performers Have In Common?

Answer posted below.

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.