Written on May 8, 2008 – 3:58 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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A brand new music service has just launched an open beta version: Guitarati. Yes, yet another new music service, but wait, this one has a totally different approach then existing music start-ups. Founder Sonal Pandey explained me in an email that the world of music discovery is dominated by tag clouds and rating systems, yet they don’t have anything to do with ‘feelings’ about music. According to Pandey, Chicago-based and self funded Guitarati has found an intuitive way of music discovery based on music-color co-relation. And it looks like this:
Click on the color that you feel it represents your mood and Guitarati offers you a list of songs. Within this screen, you can either choose a lighter or darker tone. When it gets too new-age for you, just pick a familiar genre.
The business model is more down to earth, as users can listen to a high quality full-length song stream for a cent, and these cents get deducted from the download price - which is determined by the artist - when they download the song. 75% of the earnings go to the musicians and their label.
So the barrier for uploading your own music is pretty low, though I’m not sure people can get used to this new way of picking music. What does a yellow song mean? And what’s the difference with pink? Moreover, I believe every culture has different associations with colors. When western people are in a love mood, they might go for red. But will Asians as well? I wonder how this will develop. One thing is for sure, it’s really interesting to see how the lists of songs for a color will change when more people from all over the world will rate the music.
The biggest challenge for the Guitarati team will be to prove its users they’re not just a gimmick, but a serious way of finding music. Maybe they could get a music star to write a testimonial?
Written on May 7, 2008 – 8:00 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
You might have read about this on Mike Butcher’s TechCrunch UK: Hobnox, a Germany-based start-up that aims to become the next big thing for people in the creative industries. It’s an online music and video platform where users can watch, connect, collaborate and create. Co-founder David Noël sent me an invite so I decided to give it a shot, as his plans sounded very ambitious. What struck me the most when testing the service were the über cool flash-based audio and video Noxtools. I’ve made a screen shot of the audio Noxtool to give you an idea:
Once you’ve figured this tool out it’s possible to upload your masterworks to a personal library. You can then create a playlist that you can publish to the stage for everyone to see. There are also three Channels which are maintained by Hobnox’s own editorial team and streamed in high quality. This team is screening the work of the community to find some hidden talent.
It’s an original concept, yet I’m afraid it’s not original enough to function as a closed platform. To me it sounds like MySpace on steroids. The only part of the service I haven’t seen on the web so far are the super sophisticated Noxtools that bring the music and video editing to the browser. Therefore, the guys from Hobnox should work on integration with other services. I don’t feel like starting another blog, I’d rather import one. Same goes for pictures (Flickr), movies (YouTube), songs (MySpace), and calendar (Upcoming). If you want to show your ‘old work’ on Hobnox you’ll have to upload it all over again, or link to it from your blog.
I’ve e-mailed David to ask whether this will change or not. He replied: “Good point. We plan to add API’s to sync with other services but they haven’t been created yet. We’re still working down the list of features. Users can simply upload their content into a Hobnox profile.”
They’d better hurry, since David also told me Hobnox will launch a rather impressive marketing campaign this summer, aiming it UK, US and main-land Europe. “We will start a contest in the early summer with which contestants can win a 25K€ artist development package. We are also looking for other means of directly approaching creative people. Bar camps, trade fairs, events etcetera, all centered around music, film, and culture.”
Hobnox is one of the coolest start-ups I’ve seen lately - the design, high quality Web Tv and Noxtools certainly make an impression. If they take the walls of their garden down, I’m sure they can attract the creative crowd they’re aiming for.
Written on April 5, 2008 – 9:39 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
With the online music business heating up - MySpace created an online music venture with three music giants to start a battle with iTunes - YouTube also wants a piece of the action. They’re aiming for the baby boomers by partnering up with one of world’s most legendary rock bands. Together they’ve started the entertainment channel Living Legends.
Although there might be some exceptions (like me), most of the Rolling Stones fans tend to be somewhat older than average. And now the Google-owned company wants to lure them into the endless archives of videos. The news came out yesterday, though I was then busy conference blogging. However, I didn’t want to risk the possibility that one of you guys missed the news about the web-moves of this British band.
So considering YouTube to be a film-focused site there must be some connection with movies or other forms of visual expression. And of course there is, since fans can upload questions about the Stones documentary Mr. Scorsese is working on - called “Shine a Light“. Either Keith Richards or Mick Jagger will answer the best questions - especially the “burning ones”:
Although Keith Richards looks like an I’m-really-still-rock-’n'-roll grandpa in the video, the gentlemen apparently like to keep up with new technologies. Or when being a bit more cynical: they just want to promote their new documentary whatever the medium. Anyhow, YouTube will find it’s way to the growing group of people in their fifties and sixties who are exploring Web 2.0.
By the way, watch “exclusive footage” of Shine a Light on Jason Calacanis’ blog
Written on March 15, 2008 – 5:37 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic to.
This week we’re interviewing Raphaël Arbuz from WatZatSong. Our UK WebTipr David Petherick met him during start-upcamp in London. Together with some fellow-students, Arbuz founded this English-with-a-French-accent named service. Users can hum a song of which they forget the artist or the title. The community can then guess which song it is. So you have the quiz-factor and you’re also helping people out. How did they come up with this funny and useful idea?
How did you come up with the idea of WatZatSong?
“Thibault Vanhulle and I were sharing a flat in London while finishing our studies. We were both absolutely crazy about music quizzes and one day, hearing a song that none of us knew, Thibault said “wouldn’t it be great if there was a website where you could hum a tune and the visitors would listen and tell you what it was?”. I loved this idea and, after having been joined by Erez Abittan, a fellow classmate from my French engineering school, then studying at Notre Dame University in the United States, we started developing it straight away.” (more…)
Written on February 26, 2008 – 4:27 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The world’s largest live music platform Fabchannel.com today announced that they’ve partnered up with the Dutch division of Universal Music. To be exact: concerts by Universal’s artists, recorded in the Netherlands, will be available as a high-quality video stream on Fabchannel.
Pop temple Paradiso
Fabchannel offers on-demand videos of more than 850 concerts, recorded in Paradiso and Melkweg in Amsterdam, Sala Bikini and Apollo in Barcelona and The Roxy in Los Angeles. Stars like Bloc Party, Damien Rice, The Frames and Simple Minds are already featured on the site.
Here in Amsterdam, Fabchannel is really popular. The only complaints I hear are about the lack of big stars on the site. Most of the times their record label doesn’t want to allow the video streams. This will change as Fabchannel has a deal with world’s largest record label.
I think it’s great news, and we partly owe it to Amsterdam and Foreman Capital, who bought some shares in Fabchannel. That allowed the music service to intensify their commercial and promotional activities and this deal probably is a direct consequence of that.
I hope other record companies will follow, so that I can watch more great recordings of my favorite bands. For now, you and I can enjoy this concert of The View:
Written on February 24, 2008 – 1:47 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
A great way to spend this lazy Sunday afternoon is looking up Yamelo and be ready for a music trip down memory lane. This site has collected almost every hit from the sixties and beyond. Just click on a year or search for an artist. Remember your first kiss, school party, rock concert or that first vacation without your parents? All the songs you listened back then, are there.
Yamelo presents the songs as videos, ripped from YouTube. That basically makes it a music video search engine annex directory, with a great interface. Try to look up a song on this page and then compare it with Yamelo, you’ll know what I mean.
I hope the makers of Yamelo will put even more effort in developing the site, and filter out the videos of bad quality. Also, the service lets you relive your greatest memories but wouldn’t it be great if you could also share them? Yamelo would become a beautiful archive of not just music, but also the funny, touching, great and sad stories connected to the melodies.
Written on February 16, 2008 – 4:25 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Last week I posted a story here titled “Record Label quits, uploads music to The Pirate Bay“. I had received a tip that Dependent Records had decided to quit their business and uploaded all their music to The Pirate Bay. The whole story turned out to be a hoax. Something I could have found out myself if I had taken the time to contact Dependent Records to ask for confirmation. But I didn’t. Instead I checked if the music was actually there, read a few comments and figured the story was good enough to run. The next day Dependent Records came out with an official statement that the whole thing was a hoax. By then the story was posted to many popular blogs and we all had to retract, edit and/or amend our stories and apologize to Dependent Records and our readers.
Since the news broke that this was a hoax and not a true story I have been having a heated debate with Stefan Herwig, the victim of this hoax, about the ethics of bloggers and their attitude in this whole situation both here in the comments and at the Dependent Records Forum. Stefan Herwig obviously is not very happy with all these blogs writing stuff about him that isn’t true. I understand that but also think that it will be hard to avoid and blame the person who started this hoax more than the bloggers who fell for it. Not a subject we will reach an agreement on soon.
Enough reason to give Stefan Herwig the chance to tell us what actually happened and who is to blame. The following is the result of an email interview between The Next Web Blog and Stefan Herwig from Dependent Records.
Stefan Herwig
We heard a lot of different stories of what happened. Can you give us YOUR side of the story?
“Well, someone over the weekend took the “liberty” to take parts of our record catalogue and put it online as torrent files through The Pirate Bay. This person added a little text in German and english, but it was only a few lines. Somebody at Torrentfreak stumbled over it, thought that it was true, and brought it as a story, without checking back with us. From there other magazines including yours linked the story or brought it themselves with minor modifications.” (more…)
Written on February 11, 2008 – 7:16 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
German Independent music label ‘Dependent records’ has announced that they are shutting down their business. But they don’t just hold a bargain sale or sell off their rights. They decided to upload ALL their records onto The Pirate Bay a few days ago accompanied with a message:
I closed down my record label Dependent Records for good. But since I want my music to be heard by the people out there, everything I have ever published is now available on The Pirate Bay. This is a LEGAL torrent!
Over the past few years more artists have decided to make their music available for free. But most do it in hopes of ultimately reaching more listeners who are willing to buy their records. This move sounds like a great PR stunt, except that there won’t be anybody left to benefit from it.
One of the reasons Dependent records has decided to give up on selling music is the P2P networks. Its CEO Stefan Herwig once wrote “A popular claim often seen on Internet fora maintains that the P2P culture weakens the majors and bolsters the independent labels. This is, we can assure you, 100% bullshit. Even if there are listeners who download first and buy later, they are clearly in the dwindling minority.”
One can’t help but wonder if other labels are going to follow this example. Until then, now is your chance to get “Bind, torture, kill” and “Cause of Death: Suicide” by “Suicide Commando” for free…
UPDATE: I received several emails (also see comments here) that this news is incorrect. So far, no official comment has been placed on the Dependent Records website but their music CAN be found on The Pirate Bay and their Wikipedia page has been updated with the same story. So it might be a PR stunt after all…
UPDATE II: Dependent Records have posted a formal reply in which they deny this story and blame blogs for not investigating further. Wikipedia has been updated and all blogs are updating their websites. So to recap: Yes, Dependent Records is shutting down. Yes, their whole catalog is available on The Pirate Bay. No, Stefan Herwig did not personally upload his catalog to The Pirate Bay.
I also have a note about his accusation that ‘we’ should have investigated further. In hindsight he is right, of course. In reality we do try to confirm if news is real or not. Unfortunately it would take way to long to prove that all news IS real. We check as many sources as we can and if all looks right we publish. The original article had a lot of comments, none hinting that something could be wrong. Wikipedia reflected the news and we could find the music on The Pirate Bay posted by a ‘Stefan Herwig’. Was that proof that this story was valid? No, but it was enough to run with it. We don’t actually check with Yahoo or Microsoft either to find proof for news. The companies who the news is about often simply reply with ‘No comment’ when we ask for confirmation.
Fortunately we can update our stories and say ‘We Were Wrong’. Mea culpa.
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
