Posts from My Music

This has been a tradition since I started this blog. While I have moved all of my music blogging to my tumblog and fredwilson.fm, I've continued to do a year end roundup on this blog. I used to do a top ten and I would post every day for ten days (sometimes eleven or twelve days), but I collapsed that to one post a few years ago. I'll do that again this year. Here are the records I enjoyed the most this year:

Sir Lucious Left Foot - Big Boi – This record is so much fun. In classic Big Boi/Outkast fashion, it combines hip hop and R&B into something unique and special. It's my favorite record of the year.

Brothers - Black Keys – I think this is the best record yet from the awesome blues rock duo from Akron Ohio. It was a close runner up for record of the year.

Teen Dream – Beach House – Beach House's dreamy music held sway in our home all year long. If you check out my last.fm profile, you'll see that this record got more listens in our home than any other this year.

Gorilla Manor – Local Natives – My favorite new band of the year, this indie rock band from LA has a great sound combining cool afro guitar and excellent harmonies.

Down By The Way – Angus and Julia Stone – We discovered this brother and sister duo from Down Under late in the year, but even so, this record was the eighth most listened record all year with only about six weeks of air time. It became our standard morning music late in the year.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Kanye West – @kanyewest got on twitter and got his mojo back and this record is on non stop in our family right now. This is another record that was in the top ten in listens this year with only a few weeks of air time.

The Wild Hunt – The Tallest Man On Earth – The "Swedish Bob Dylan" put out a great record that was another our morning music standbys.

This Is Happening - LCD Soundsytem – The Gotham Gal wasn't a fan and wouldn't let me play this much until she saw them live at ACL. After that, this record got more rotation. This record is pure fun, perfect for getting your energy up for a late night or anything else.

The Lady Killer – Cee Lo Green – Almost perfect soul and R&B from the current master of the genre. 

The Suburbs – Arcade Fire – This was a hard choice as there were really solid records from some of our favorites this year. But on the strength of the outstanding Sprawl II, I am making this one my tenth and final top pick.

Other favorites – Come Around Sundown – KOL (Gotham Gal loves this record), Write About Love – Belle and Sebastian, High Violet – The National, Broken Bells – Broken Bells, Recovery – Eminem, Sigh No More – Mumford & Sons.

Mixtapes – All Day – Girltalk, I Am Taylor Gang – Wiz Khalifa, Vizzy Zone – XV

For the next ten days, until the end of the year, I will feature a track from one of my top ten records on fredwilson.fm and fredwilson.vc. Check them out if you want to sample some of this music.

I love coming across a quote, a tweet, an image, a video, a link and being able to quickly share it with my friends on Facebook or my followers on Twitter and Tumblr. Its a big part of what I do on the web everyday.

I listen to a lot of music. In our car, in our home, in cafes and bars and restaurants. I want to be able to take out my phone, shazam the music to identify it, get the mp3, and post it to fredwilson.fm and possibly some or all of the social services I use. And I want to be able to do that as easily and quickly as it is to use Instagram.

I am in my car listening to SIRIUS XMU and I've heard three tracks in the past ten minutes I would do this with.

I know there are rights issues standing in the way of something like this. But more and more artists, particularly the emerging artists I hear for the first time when I am out and about, are posting their music to services like Soundcloud.

I don't know if Shazam and like services have APIs but I know that Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Soundcloud do. It might be possible to build this. If you do, I will be your first user (if you build it for Android).

And yes, I did write this blog post on my Android in my car listening to music waiting to pick up my son.

I'm sitting here writing a blog post and listening to my radio station, fredwilson.fm. And I'm thinking about what the Internet means for radio. The reason is next Tuesday afternoon at 3:40pm I'm going to sit down with my friend David Goodman and Joe Crump from Razorfish and try to answer that very question. We'll be at the Radio Ink Forecast 2011 conference at the Harvard Club. If you work in the streaming media or radio industry, maybe I'll see you there.

David and I were talking the other night about this session and what we should talk about. We agreed that we should throw it open to all the readers of AVC to make sure we are talking about the most important issues. So, if you were coming to see this talk, what do you think we should talk about and what do you think the Internet means for Radio?

Answers in the comments please.

So I finally got around to downloading iTunes 10 and playing around with Ping.

I agree with Swizec who makes all the points I would make in much more colorful language.

In summary, Ping is not very social and it is not really about music. It is about music purchases and celebrities.

If you want to see a social network about music, check out last.fm. It knows what I am listening to right now no matter where I am listening (not in iTunes hopefully). It knows what music I like and it doesn't ask me to tell them what that is. It knows who likes the same kind of music I do.

Ping shows what a command and control culture thinks a social network is. I am sure millions of people will use Ping. And I am equally sure that it will not advance the state of the music business one bit.

I read Om Malik's early take on Ping. I was shocked that I would have to download software to create a social network and said so in the comments. Of course that is what Apple would do in its iTunes centric view of the world. But tying Ping to iTunes is wrong. And tying Ping to music purchases is wrong. And tying Ping to top artists is wrong.

I didn't find any of my music friends on Ping. Just a bunch of tech pundits and VCs who had to check this thing out. So I'm headed back to the places I hang out with my music friends online; Tumblr, last.fm, hype machine, Soundcloud, extension.fm, etc.

I hope you'll join me. And while I am on the subject of music, you might enjoy listening to my internet radio channel this weekend. It is called fredwilson.fm and it was built on tumblr, streampad, and soundcloud. Not one bit of Apple technology in it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Apple's Ping is a social disaster (en.onsoftware.com)
• Apple's Ping is a big pile of steaming dung (swizec.com)
• iTunes Ping: The Missing Thing (mashable.com)

We've had all sorts of digital music systems over the years. And they keep getting cheaper, simpler, and better.

We started over a decade ago with an over the top multi-room system that was built on Audio Request music servers and controlled by Crestron. We scrapped that system about five years ago (although I kept two of those music servers for each home we own). We moved to a Sonos based system. We still use that in the main rooms of the homes we own.

But my current favorite music system is an Airport Express connected to a simple and cheap amplifier and speakers. We use that in all of our kids' bedrooms and increasingly in other rooms in our homes like our guest rooms. Basically you bring your laptop and iTunes library and we provide the sound system. I like it very much.

But my main beef with the Airport Express is it is limited to iTunes. In the past couple weeks, two friends mentioned Airfoil to me. So yesterday I downloaded Airfoil to my laptop and gave it a whirl. Basically Airfoil intercepts any audio stream on your machine and sends it to the Airport Express.

This is the perfect freemium experience. I downloaded it and tested it by playing fredwilson.fm in my Chrome browser and it played flawlessly on the music system in our beach house. I've been wanting to have fredwilson.fm on our pool deck for years now. I've got it now. Sweet.

So of course I bought a five license bundle just now for $46. We'll have Airfoil on all of our laptops before the day is over.

Of course Apple should offer this feature built in on the Airport Express. There are a lot of things Apple should do. I've given up hoping or expecting them to do it. I'm just happy some crafty software engineers built the hack we all want. Thanks Airfoil.

When our oldest daughter came home from college this year, we had already moved into our new apartment. I showed her how the Airport Express worked in her new room. She said, "cool, how do I play last.fm radio on it." I didn't have a good answer for her. Now I do. That's progress and I'm really excited about it.

One of my favorite Firefox extensions is download them all, you visit a web page that has mp3s on it and in one click, you can download all of them.

But that requires a bunch of additional steps. I have to then add the files to itunes and doubletwist libraries and then synch with my iPod and google phone.

Our friend Dan Kantor, creator of the awesome Streampad service that powers fredwilson.fm has come up with an even better idea; create a library in your browser and autofill it with the songs you come across on the web. The service is called Extension.fm and it is only available for Chrome right now and is invite only (but I’ve got 50 invites).

Here’s a video that shows how it works:

My favorite feature of Extension.fm is it allows you to play the last fifty songs in your tumblr dashboard as a playlist. That is something I’ve wanted to do for at least a couple years now. I’m doing it right now as I write this post. A total game changer for me. Thanks for doing that Dan!

If you want an invite, leave a comment and a way to reach you, email, twitter, etc. The first fifty requests in the comments gets an invite. No direct emails please because I need a way to calculate the first fifty so we have to keep all the requests in one channel.

I hope you like Extension.fm as much as I do.

In a post a few days ago about People First, Machines Second, I suggested that 8tracks.com could create a playlist that was the "best of" the "best of 2009" playlists. They've done it. Here it is. Enjoy.

The brilliance of Google' Page Rank algorithm is that it leverages the actions of real people to determine what pages are the best result for a given search term. The specific action I am thinking about is creating a hyperlink on a web page.

That human action of saying 'if you want to know more about fred wilson, here's his blog' tells google's machines that this blog is a good result for a search on 'fred wilson.'

Someday machines may be smart enough that they don't need humans to give them cues, but today I believe the state of the art in machine intelligence right now is 'humans first, machines second' as Google did it.

The particular event that got me thinking (and thus writing) about this today is the year end best of music listmania that has been going on the past few weeks.

You saw it in action the past three days on this blog and it is going on all over the blogs right now.

I took my 25 top songs of 2009 and created a playlist of them at 8tracks.com. I then embedded that playlist on this blog.

Well I wasn't the only one to do that. At this time, there are 141 "best of 2009" playlists on 8tracks. Click on that link and you can see all of them. But you'd be hardpressed to listen to all of them.

But 8tracks can now take the human intellligence that is contained in all of those playlists and do something interesting. They can have their machines go through all of them and create a 'best of best of' playlist. It could be just the most popular tracks across all of the best of 2009 playlists or it could be weighted by the times each playlist was played or it could be some other algorithm. My point is simple, if humans are doing the curation upfront, then you can turn the machines loose and get some interesting results.

On January 4th, the Hype Machine will unveil its second annual Music Blog Zeitgeist. I am very much looking forward to it. They scour the music blogs for all the "best of 2009" posts and then put them into their machines and crank out the results.

Last year's Music Zeitgeist was terrific and provided our family with weeks of listening pleasure and introduced us to dozens of new artists and records. I'm sure the same will be true this year.

As much as I enjoy reading everyone's best of lists this time of year, I can't get to all of them. Machines can and that's where they can add the most value. But you need humans first, then the machines can take over.

My friend Rich Caccapolo egged me into doing this. So, Rich this one's for you.

I've spent the past couple weeks going back and reviewing all the music that I got into this decade. I looked at the last.fm data, my top ten posts each year, and re-listened to a lot of it. And here are ten records that define the decade for me, plus another 30ish that I considered for the top ten list. 

1) Aha Shake Heartbreak – Kings Of Leon: A friend of mine who has been in the music business for thirty years said to me recently that KOL is the only rock act that broke big this decade. And if that is true, they did it on the strength of their two most recent records. But it is Aha Shake Heartbreak that is their greatest effort and without question in my mind the best rock and roll record of this decade. I penned a piece on this record on Newcritics back in 2007 that explains why I love it so much. Go give that a read and then buy the record if you don't already own it.

2) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – Wilco: This record defines this decade for me. Let's start with how it was released. On the Internet because Wilco's label decided it wasn't good enough to put out. You all know that story. And the 9/11 references in songs written before 9/11. And the fact that Wilco is my generation's rock act. I can listen to this record anytime, anywhere. I can sing every word. And some songs still make me tear up or give me chills. 

3) Marshall Mathers LP – Eminem: At the end of the decade, it's easy to forget about how big Eminem was. His first three records were on all the time in our house. And this record was the biggest of them. The lyrics on this record are jarring and raw. The samples are creative. The record flows perfectly through the deranged mind of one of the greatest rappers of all time at the top of his game. I went back and listened to this record recently and it has not lost one ounce of its intensity and entertainment value.

4) A Grand Don't Come For Free – The Streets: I vividly remember the first time I heard this record. I was on the train out to the east end of long island. It was so packed there weren't any seats. So I sat in a stairwell and put on my iPod headphones and hit play. Roughly an hour later, it was like I was leaving a thoroughly engrossing movie. This is a "concept record", a story about a day in the life of rapper Mike Skinner that starts with him losing a bunch of money and trying to get it back. The songs are great, the imagery vivid, and it makes for one of the most original and best records of the decade.

5) Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I Am Not, Arctic Monkeys: If Wilco showed you could break a record on the Internet, the Arctic Monkeys showed you could break a band on it. And they did it with the songs that eventually came to be this record. For the better part of a year, these songs were available on MySpace, the music blogs, pretty much all over the web. And even so, when the record came out in January 2006, it became the fastest selling debut record in the UK. The Arctic Monkeys signature sound is blazing dual guitars and Alex Turner's blistering and acerbic lyrics. And as good as their subsequent records have been, it is still best experienced on this one.

6) Funeral – Arcade Fire: This decade brought us a few breakout rock bands and certainly one of them is the Arcade Fire. They've only put out two records in five years and both of them are fantastic. But their debut record, Funeral, is a masterpiece. It builds slowly, beautifully, to the epic Rebellion (Lies) and then ends hauntingly In The Backseat. I love how the vocals interact with all the different instruments being played. The result is, as one Amazon reviewer put it so well "wild, mad, and beautiful".

7) Is This It – The Strokes:  You may wonder how I can put Kings Of Leon first and Arctic Monkeys fifth if neither would have happened without this band and this record. I don't have a good answer for that question. The Strokes took the signature NYC punk rock sound from the Ramones and the Velvets and upgraded it to the next millennium and that sound became the defining rock style of this decade. This record, the third debut record in a row on this list, showcases The Strokes at their best, young, cocky, full of talent and ambition, and showing the world how NYC rocks.

8) Takk.. – Sigur Ros: Some call this kind of music "post rock". I call it hauntingly beautiful. Some bands and records come and go and others stay with me. This one stays with me. I listen to it regularly, often when I want to write something important and need some inspiration. Although there are eleven songs on Takk.., I don't think of them as such. I can't imagine listening to this record any other way than start to finish. One of my great music regrets of this decade is not seeing the full blown Sigur Ros live show. I've heard it's mind blowingly spectacular and I can imagine why.

9) Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots – The Flaming Lips: I love The Flaming Lips and I love this record. Nominally about a girl's fight against robots, it's actually about life, love, and death. Heavy topics for sure, but Wayne's goofy optimism pulls it off in classic Flaming Lips fashion. Like Wilco, the Lips made two classic records, one in the 90s (Soft Bulletin) and one in this decade. Yoshimi is a psychedelic pop at its best.

10) The Blueprint – Jay-Z: I love the cover of this record. Jay-Z smoking a cigar and taking claim to "moguldom". No top ten list of the decade would be right without Jay-Z on it. He is the king of hip-hop, and hip-hop is the music of the moment. I debated between The Blueprint, The Black Album, and Reasonable Doubt, and eventually decided The Blueprint best represents all that Jay-Z means to the music industry, hip-hop, and NYC. He is the next Sinatra.

In no particular order, here are roughly thirty other records that I considered for this list and all of them are excellent and worthy of picking up. You'll note that in the case of some artists, I have listed multiple records. I have not linked to them, but if I find some time later today, I'll try to do that.

Badly Drawn Boy – Born In The UK, Have You Fed The Fisher Catering

The National – Alligator

MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

Okkervil River – Stage Names, Stand Ins

Belle & Sebastian – Dear Catastrophe Waitress

Ben Kweller – Ben Kweller, Sha Sha

Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha

Jamie T – Panic Prevention

Jens Lekman – Oh You’re So Silent Jens, Night Falls Over
Kortadela

M Ward – Transistor Radio

Kooks – Inside In/Inside Out

Killers – Hot Fuss

Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Modest Mouse – Good News For People Who Love Bad News

Eels – Grace Kelly Blues, Shootenany

Sufjan Stevens – Illinoise

Shout Out Louds – Howl Howl Gaffe Gaffe

MMJ – It Still Moves

Bloc Party – Silent Alarm

White Stripes – Elephant

Jay-Z – The Black Album, Reasonable Doubt

Green Day – American Idiot

Gillian Welch  –
Soul Journey

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Stadium Arcadium

Eminem – The Eminem Show

Shins – Wincing The Night Away

Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning

Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend

Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People

Radiohead – Kid A