David Beach's Blog

Swedelife

Since I was encouraged to "promote" die old here. I thought I'd do the same with Swedelife; yet another blog in the itsbeach network. :p

I think my life is divided into thirds: Family, Work, Music; and the three blogs represent that. Die Old is about me getting in shape so I don't die too early. This here thing is mostly about my working life. And Swedelife represents the music part of my life.

Music has always been a huge part of my world. I was six when I bought my first album; Kiss -Dressed To Kill, and I haven't stopped since. My brother was/is an accomplished woodwind musician, Saxophone mostly. But I never had the patience to get from nothing to something musically. If I didn't sound like the record, then why not just listen to the record?

In 1991 I left school to start an independent record label called Quagmire, the label. We released several CDs nationally and had a pretty healthy little business. In 1993 our distributor went chapter 11 and our inventory was locked up. With nothing to sell, we went online to become the first label on the Internet. We had a gopher site then a web site. We hooked up with IUMA and released the first album to be distributed electronically. A Western Front's Full Blown Dave. At the time it was revolutionary. It's cool how things have changed. I went on from there, working at IUMA then a bunch of other stuff, yadda, yadda, yadda, I work at Yahoo!.

All this time, we never stopped recording. We have about a hundred albums in the can... from before Quagmire all the way up 'till yesterday. We keep recording. We decided to launch Swedelife in order to showcase this incredible music. The idea is to give a song away, everyday, for as long as humanly possible. It's hard to keep that pace up, but if an audience begins to grow, I will make it happen. Of course it's podcast and we also feature video.

Essentially the Swedelife Collective is a group of freaky folks from the Quagmire days and beyond getting together to write and record all kinds of music. It's an awesome community. It includes musicians from around the Bay Area and the globe. When people are in town, we get together and lay some tracks. It works out well.

So please, check it out. www.swedelife.com. Let me know what you think. And help me find that audience. If you know anyone interested in this type of thing, ping 'em. Above all this music needs to be heard. Thanks.

emusic

I started an emusic account today. (what? something not w2.0? – thank god!) Pat Goddard sent me a spam for 50 free tracks for trying it out. I haven't used emusic since 1999 or so. Maybe earlier. I sort of have a history with them. They were one of the first players in the pay for download space. They also bought IUMA. Then,  I almost worked for them once. It's really amazing that they're still around. I remember when they were on their last legs.

Here's what I like about them:

1. No DRM! 'nuff said.
2. Browse by Label! I've been wanting this from iTunes and Yahoo Music Engine. emusic has an easier time with this because they only have indie labels; but 18,000 of them. The theory is that indies are easier to browse because their catalogs are smaller. Shouldn't matter, in fact emusic does a good job of label navigation. This feature is important because many labels have a brand off their own and feature a specific style of music. Why shouldn't you see all releases available from SST, Ninja Tune, Matador, etc.?
3. "Save for later" feature. Again this is also something that I'd like to see from iTunes or Yahoo! Music. If I'm interested in something, but don't know if I want to commit, I should be able to keep track of it. Besides if done right there's  a lot you can do with that data. It's great for cross and up-selling.
4. The design. I like the design and most of the interface features of emusic
5. User reviews. Not that they have them, but the majority of the ones they have are well written, insightful and intelligent. The iTunes reviews are killing me. They are terrible and a complete waste of space. They either need to kill them or do a much better job of filtering them.

I don't really care for the limited downloads per month. It's $9.99 for 40 songs per month. I can eat that up in ten minutes. But I guess it's worth it for the lack of DRM and the indie spirit.

Audio Overload!

I was wondering when this would happen. Music and other audio content has reached a saturation point for me. I'm saturated with sound. It's a good thing, but I'm trying to figure out how to deal with it.

Let me explain. I have a 30 GB iPod, I have about 1,000 CDs ripped and stored on my hard drives ready for listening. The CDs are now in storage. I subscribe to about 25 to 30 podcasts. Including Dawn & Drew, Zoe, Barack Obama, The Ricky Gervais Show, TWIT, The Sound of Young America, Swedelife, and a bunch of others. I subscribe to Yahoo! Music Unlimited and can listen and download nearly any album that's been released. I have a Creative Zen for that. I subscribe to XM Radio to listen to baseball games, especially the Oakland A's. But I also listen to XMU and Air America Radio on XM as well. They have about 160 other stations too. I listen to NPR and sports talk on the car radio too.

I also just started using iFill by Griffin. iFill lets you record audio streams from SHOUTcast channels and saves it to your iPod. That means I can record KCRW and Indie 103 from LA and listen to it whenever I want.

This doesn't include the new music that I still purchase either as a CD or through iTunes. Do I dare mention audio books?

There is now not enough time in the day to absorb all of this. I'm not complaining, this is what I've been wanting. But there needs to be a better way to handle it all. Either I need to change my behavior and limit my choices, or someone needs to invent an intelligent system to allow me to absorb and manage this content more effectively. I feel the same with RSS feeds, in fact they are very similar.

Another problem is that I have to deal with several different services, mediums, devices, and systems in order to get the audio that I want. I have to pay for them all differently and manage them differently. Hell, if I really wanted to, I don't have to pay for any of it.  The fact that I do bother to pay should give me some way to manage it better.

The music like water concept becomes more appealing. Maybe it should be "sound like water."  Anyway it's more than a payment solution. It's a distribution system that flows like water as well. It's everywhere. You can get it when you want and where you want. It's portable. It's alive. And most important... you don't even have to think about it. It's just there for your enjoyment.

But for now, when am I going find time to listen to that new The Sword album?

Songbird Released!

My dear friends at the Songbird Nest have released what I think will become the ultimate desktop media player.  Songbird. Their site is getting hammered right now so here are some mirrors to download it. I can't wait to use it! This has inspired me to think about another direction! Yea!

Mirror

Mirror Info

Best Albums of 2005

I compiled a Yahoo! Shopping Pick List of what I think are the best albums of 2005. I don't know if I can ever dismiss the album. I still buy them either on CD or Yahoo! Music or iTunes. It's difficult for me to just buy one song at a time like so many seem to be doing. To me it's all about the artist's complete expression. I feel if only a song or two is the only thing decent on a particular album, then really, the whole thing is crap. Why bother? If the artist can't put in the effort or isn't talented enough, then they don't deserve my attention.

So anyway here's my list: The Best Albums of 2005.

I Want My LAUNCHcast Station Everywhere!

I love my LAUNCHcast station! It's so damn good that I want it with me where ever I go. Especially in my car for that long drive over the hill. Is this so hard? I'd pay a premium for it. I promise.

Yahoo! Music's launchcast does such a great job of playing what I want to hear. Sure I've spent a lot of time fine tuning it but it's so simple, I've barely noticed.
In the last hour or so my station has played: DJ Shadow, Wilco, Flaming Lips, Triumph The Insult Comic Dog (?), The Replacements, Yo La Tengo, LCD Soundsystem, The The, White Stripes, Robyn Hitchcock, Air, Granddaddy, Blonde Redhead, Oingo Boingo, Built To Spill, Curtis Mayfiled, Handsome Boy Modeling School, The Pouges, Cornelius, Queens of the Stone Age, John Coletrane, The Streets, Bad Religion, The Libertines, Descendents, Solomon Burke, The Specials, Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground, Prince, Meat Puppets, Rancid, Elliott Smith, and Blackalicious...

No radio station is going to give me that.

Hey genius! Help me out!

Swedelife Audio Blog

Link: Swedelife: Audio Blog

For the past six months Pat Goddard and I have been working on the side (in our spare time) to find a way to promote online the music that is associated with my old record label Quagmire. We have nearly a hundred albums and growing. In retrospect the concept was too big. We were going try to set a precedent for how an online label should work. We were going to put up an album a month, with a podcast version, message boards, ratings and reviews, artist pages, album pages, downloadable album assets, video, images, etc, etc. And all of it would be free for the taking. But life gets complicated when you work more than full time and have a family. We had designs but it was unrealistic to think we could manage this huge undertaking as a hobby.

In 1994 Quagmire put up the first album on the Internet for download. iTunes, Napster, MP3.com, My Space, Rhapsody, etc. etc. were nothing but Hershey bars in someones back pocket at the time. We were first. We kept it up for a couple of years by putting out about seven albums, but then had to concentrate on our careers and building web sites for other people. Ever since that time we've wanted to try it again. As the technology grew, bandwidth, and services, it seemed like a no brainer. We tried a few times with a site called freakshow.com and then swedlife earlier this year, but our eyes were bigger than our stomachs (not easy).

Then yesterday, I was reading Wired magazine and I thought; "why don't we just do an audio blog?" Use blogging software to manage the site and put up a song a day. We can still do a lot of what we wanted but without the hassle. Someone get me a hammer.

The point of this from the very beginning was to release this music for free. We can still do that and more. We've always believed that it was more important to be heard than to make money. There's plenty of ways to make money, but music isn't one of them. Distributing the music through an audio blog is the easiest way to get people to hear this stuff. Minimal work on our end, and the music gets out there to your ears. Win Win.

So every day until we run out of music, we will put up a new song. The first set will be the album by Baby called Pourquoi Liquoi Sisz Boom Bah. We'll do that in order and tell the creepy story about the album along the way. Then we might mix it up a bit. Random songs from random albums from random times. Each song will be podcast every day. Some days might have two songs, you never know.

So hopefully you'll check it out and tell some friends. Leave some comments and share the music in any way you wish. Again it's free for the taking. Enjoy... and let me know what you think.

Go to the Swedelife Audio Blog now.

Yahoo! Music Engine and Plays For Sure Update

I'm still patiently waiting for my PC to arrive...

I decided to go out and get my MP3 player, or should I say WMA - "Plays For Sure" player that will work with Yahoo! Music Unlimited. You see that's the catch. The service is great but if you want to move your files to a portable digital audio device, you need to make sure it works with the service and there are only a few types and brands of players that apply. And get this, even though the Rio Carbon is supposed to work with Plays For Sure services, it may not work with the YMU. It's not totally clear.

Last night I drove to Best Buy. I was lucky enough to have a $100 Gift Card in my pocket. I thought I did enough research, but, well, apparently not. I ran into my buddy from Yahoo! Ben (or he ran into me), and we tooled around the store. He was looking for the new MLB game for PSP, and I was there for my MP3 Player.

I saw an iRiver 800 series device, and thought it might work. It said it supported WMA and the dude at the counter wasn't much help. The thing looked good and the price was right so I took a chance. When I got home to check, I found out I was out of luck.

Here's what I did. I went to the new MP3.com and on the top page found the article about YMU and devices. This pretty much told me what I feared. I was in this for $200 at best. Okay. I'm too invested already in using Yahoo! Music Ulimited to let a hundred bucks get in the way.

I read the reviews on the various players and decided on the Creative Labs Zen Micro, the only hitch is that you need to install a firmware update for it to work.

This morning I went back to Best Buy to suck it up and get the Zen. I'll let you know how it works out. I haven't opened it yet.

Saw Star Wars... Pretty damn good.

Yahoo! Music Engine = PC for Me

I bought my first PC ever on Sunday. I didn't think that would ever happen, but it's because of the Yahoo! Music Engine and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. First people need to understand that YME is much more than meets the eye. It's probably the most fully featured music application available. Plus the team has opened it up for folks to create plugins that add to the feature and functionality set. Fan-freakin'-tastic. Reminds me of the old Winamp days. The way it should be. (Go to Yahoo! Music Engine Plugins and check them out. If you code, code some good ones.) Ian has been busy and you know that this is his baby.

The PC is a Dell Dimension 3000 with a 2.6GHz Celeron D chip, 512 RAM, 80 GB, DVD/CD RW, Flat Screen, Keyboard, Mouse, Photo Printer for $547 out the door. So cheap. Soon they'll be a dollar. I plan on using the hell out of it getting as much music as possible. I think of it as a stereo with an operating system. 

So with that and the Canon A95, I've had my fill of tech shit. We'll see how long that lasts... Oh yeah I need a WMA Digital Audio Player. I'm looking at the Rio Carbon or Rio Nitrus. Amazon has a refurbed Nitrus for 99.99. Okay that should just about do it.

Thanks to the YME I've been able to listen to the new Kings of Leon album. Really good. One of the best things I've heard in a long time. They've really made a great record.

I can't wait to find more.

Some other new things for my shelf... New Mercury Rev - The Secret Migration, and the documentary about the Flaming Lips called The Fearless Freaks. Good stuff. I'm also reading Seth Godin's Free Prize Inside. Good book about developing, fostering, and selling innovations within an organization. I need this right now. :)

-beach

 

Yahoo! Music Unlimited

Today was the official launch of Yahoo! Music Unlimited beta. I've been using it for several months as it's been in build mode and I'm very happy it's launched. I'm listening to it right now. The Resident's new album called "Animal Lover" very cool that they even have it. When I first played with it I was afraid that the selection wouldn't be that large, but now it seems to be very deep. 1 Million songs. A decent indie selection, good fidelity, and pretty easy to use. You can't argue with the price point. 6 bucks a month for all the music you can handle. Not too bad.

I don't have a PC at home, but this is making me think I might want to purchase one. Especially now that a good PC costs about a couple of weekends worth of walking around money. It only works on a PC and only with non ipod audio players.

Here's how it works, if you don't know. You pay a monthly fee of about 6 dollars or you can pay up front for a whole year. That's a little less. Just like Napster or Rhapsody, you can listen to or download any song in their catalog and transfer it to your music player. You can listen to it all you want either on your PC, streamed from their server or on your audio player. As long as you pay the monthly fee. You can purchase the album or song for to keep for about .79 cents a song. Then it's yours forever. If iTunes did this, I'd be all over it. But since they don't, I'm considering buying a PC... funny.

After using it for the day, I've noticed that the display of the pages and search results is a bit slow. But the streaming is good. The interface is still a tad clunky, but that could be due to the slowness. If it's sped up I might feel differently.

It has recommendations that are personalized based on your LaunchCast profile and behavior on the service. These work very well. You have access to your LaunchCast station. Probably the coolest feature is that you can access songs from your friends that use the service who are connected to you through Yahoo! Instant Messenger. Anything on their drive, you can hear. iTunes has network views, but it's nothing like this. Using your IM contacts is awesome.

If I could improve anything it would be the speed of the tool. I would make sure that any song or album had its own unique url so that it can be linked to from sites, blogs, etc. I would allow users to view all new releases for that week. That's one thing I like about iTunes. It really has a retail feel that I like. It's very well merchandised. I would make sure this application had that same presentation or at least access to it. It's not enough to see recommended new releases for me. The interface is a tad complicated and fragile feeling. Even though it's heavy, I still think there's too much going on, it's busy. The good thing is that all of this can be improved. I would also like to see it manage podcasts and offer user reviews of songs and albums. I think this is a great product, and I'm happy for Ian and the team that built it. They should be proud.

While writing this I changed the album to the Meat Puppets, Up on the Sun. Great album.

Try it for free now!

Ian Rogers - Why You Should (or Should Not) Use the Yahoo! Music Engine