Nightlight Playlist

I spent some time this morning picking a few tunes from Reverbnation to make a playlist called "Nightlight". Its worth a listen!

There are really great songs out there being made by people who are extraordinarily talented in writing and performing. These tunes may not be altogether popular with bigtime music executives, or with their fourteen-year-old daughters they pattern their music tastes to, but that is the best part about it. The music exec strategy reminds me of The Blues Brothers, "Oh, we've got both kinds of music: Country and Western."

I hope that you enjoy the playlist!

Merry Christmas!

My Christmas iPod playlist includes:

Winter Wonderland, Rat Pack
Silver Bells, Rat Pack
Sleigh Ride, Boston Symphony Orchestra
I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, Rat Pack
I Believe, Rat Pack
God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman, Pete Jacobs Orchestra
We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Pete Jacobs Orchestra
Santa Baby, Eartha Kitt
Baby, It's Cold Outside, Rat Pack
God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman, Bethany Dillon
We Three Kings of Orient Are, The Beach Boys
Shepard's Chorus, Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Christmas Song, Jethro Tull
Silent Night, Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Merry Christmas!

Muffin music discovery

I had recently heard about the new music discovery/recommendation site, Muffin. I finally gave it a shot.
Verdict: unimpressed.
I wasn't really playing fair though, to be entirely honest. I entered in the advanced search that I liked Jethro Tull and the track I wanted Muffin to recommend from was Kelpie. Actually, come to the think of it, considering how diverse Tull's songs can be, I may have been helping Muffin by suggesting a specific style of Tull.

My result:
1) Kelpie (hardly "new")
2) A blues band I've never heard of
3) Johnny Cash

Then when I tried to go to the next page, all went blank and all that was revealed was Kelpie. If you've heard this tune, you'll realize how off this actually is. Really, Johnny Cash?

Angela Ortiz

I decided to follow my own advice and pour over the last MANY, MANY months of NPR's Second Stage. I found a REAL gem: Angela Ortiz (NPR show) (here for her website). Great piano and song structure!
She's on a lot of different sites and signed with a label - hard to miss, I suppose, but I did. She has also done some work for me by choosing a number of really cool artists as "favorites" on her Reverbnation profile site. Guess who will be focused on next...

Anyway, enjoy.

NPR's Second Stage/apologies for taste

Yes, NPR Second Stage hits and misses in my opinion...just as they should given that everyone, thankfully, has differing musical tastes. I think that Robin Hilton hit it right with the top 10 for the year! Not only did he choose ten tunes representing varying genres and styles, but they are all fun to listen. Would my 10 probably have been different? Yup, but I dig these tunes to varying degrees.
SIDE BAR:
I'm not sure I agree with his rankings all the time (details, details), but I'm fond of the selections...and that is pretty big for me to admit - sometimes Robin Hilton's musical tastes and mine overlap, but oftentimes he digs something that I cannot find any value in (sorry), other than the fact that he is doing what he is doing, which is not only noble and challenging, but necessary - no matter how "wrong" I think he is. Everyone should subscribe to the podcast or log on daily to hear the selection (easier said than done, I know). That said, my M.O. is that I have little patience for slow-er tunes and "sappy/emotional" lyrics, so my musical spectrum is somewhat limited. If I don't hear something interesting within the first 30 seconds, I usually don't hear much more. Frankly, sometimes 30 seconds is too much to wait (again, sorry).
...off the soapbox:
Were these the best tunes he received this year? Only he knows. I'm, nonetheless, impressed with each of these tunes! I recommend listening to the "show" and then logging on to hear more from your favorites!

Music entrepreneurs, the online world, and two centuries!

Music Ally posted 200 music startups in 2008. Then posted that one announced its "departure". That's okay, because there were comments from readers mentioning a few they had missed. Still two centuries (or more) of the online music world.
Both elements are obviously intimidating from the perspective of a music startup. The first because of the popularity of this industry and the second because even one year out, someone folded.
As an entrepreneur one hopes that the difference between their company and the .com next door will lead to success. It is with this hope (see older post about what hope is unfortunately NOT) that entrepreneurs must persevere. I've been told many times that oftentimes half the battle in developing a company is following through on the initial idea and business plan. It is probably best to modify that statement to say half the battle is to persevere - do anything you must to see your product to the end and be successful with it. Only about 10% were focused on similar goals as Hounds to the Music, LLC; all developing the business differently with different ideas about how it "should be done".
Why were there so many online music industry companies developed in 2008? Hope and Perseverance.
Will some of them still be around when Music Ally posts the number of 2009 startups? Yes.
Why? Perseverance.
Was this a peptalk directed at me? Yup.

Joker's Daughter - NPR Second Stage

This time of year NPR's Second Stage puts together their favorite songs of the year. I have always liked that NPR offers the opportunity for independent, unsigned artists to be highlighted in a national manner. I also like that the songs are highlighted, not necessarily the album. In this digital music age where individual songs can be downloaded and the physical packaging of an album is, at best superfluous, and at worst archaic, the definition of an "album" may become "playlist". I know it has been for me since my Sony Walkman cassette player. Just about every weekday during the calendar year there is a new song uploaded to the website to give a taste. The only problem with NPR's Second Stage platform of songs on display is that all the albums are reviewed by an Editor(s). If your music likes, dislikes, motivations, and agendas are identical to that guy (Robin Hilton), then you are golden; otherwise...time to sort (ye same ole story: how do I begin to sort?!).
So, I'm sorting through the songs leading up to the Top 10 Great Unknowns, From Second Stage, and after the seventh song, I found something that I was interested in. The song is called Worm's Head, by Joker's Daughter. It wasn't something I'd really say is "my genre", but it was interesting enough for me to press repeat a few times. I really enjoyed the melody and rhythmic nature as well as the various timbres. Give it a listen.

New Music-Snake Oil Medicine Show

I got onto Reverbnation to find something new. I wanted to listen to a blue grass-y sort of thing, but not the traditional thing. I thought for a moment about how I would find this and resorted to looking for The Biscuit Burners, which I had discovered this summer and enjoy greatly. However, they had three recommendations, one of which looked a little different, they are called Snake Oil Medicine Show and, like the Biscuit Burners are out of Asheville, NC. SOMS have a few tunes on their Reverbnation site and I must say they are a lot of fun. They have tempo changes, vocal harmonies, funny song names that still describe the song, lots of instrumental space, banjos, violins, whistles, and a female vocalist's voice that is high pitched and has almost a comical, Old Time quality to it, but it works so well. They sound pretty accomplished and just super enjoyable to listen to. They describe themselves as "World/Reggae/Slam Grass/Psycho Billy".
I'm a new fan of SNAKE OIL MEDICINE SHOW! Check them out!

Christmas music - the old reliables

At home we've been listening to a lot of Christmas time music of late, as I expect many, many others are: carols from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Christmas with the Rat Pack, Handel's Messiah, and a hundreds of others. They are very enjoyable to listen to; one of my absolute favorite carols is "Carol of the Bells". I"m not talking about a pop version of the tune, nay, nay nay! I mean handbell ringing and a choir! It is almost a haunting sound and I get goosebumps whenever I listen to it. If one's music can provide a physiological response, like goosebumps, it is a winner! I never grow tired of "Carol of the Bells"...even in the summertime!

I cannot leave without also mentioning, however, another ole favorite: How the Grinch Stole Christmas - "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch".

Happy Christmas listening!

Problems and solutions (?)

So my previous post discussed the primary problem for listeners and musicians in this age of easy, cheap music recordings and everything internet:

Listeners: finding the right song

Artists: finding the right listeners

I glossed over how companies have approached solving this problem, but will address some of that here. There have been a lot of solutions, far more than I would want to get into on this post. Pandora may be the most logical and elegant so far - use known music to find new. It also lends itself to emerging artists something like 70%, but only 60,000 artists are present in the database and it is internet radio (which I'm not fond of). That said, it certainly has done well - an average of 2.3MM unqiue views per month according to Compete. Last.fm has also done well, albeit by using genre and social networking groups (average of 1.8MM unique visitors). (I'm not sure what percent of music on Last.fm is independent. Anyone know?)

These two sites have really caught people's attention and they should be proud of that (graph to the right), but they are not alone by any means. There are others out there trying to solve these problems too. Owl Multimedia is a really cool idea, but I'm honestly not yet convinced it works - it hasn't worked for me...yet. It also appears that I may not be the only one to think this, because so far it hasn't caught on (3,222 average unique visitors/month) according to Compete.

Then there are the hosting sites for independent artists. Of those that I've looked at Reverbnation does slightly better than Virb according to Compete (220K vs. 169K unique visitors/month average). Fuzz comes in a distant third with 11.7K.

The disparity in these numbers (successful modestly indpendent music search sites (Pandora) vs. mostly independent music hosting sites (Reverbnation, etc.) speaks volumes I think. It indicates that I'm not alone when I become frustrated scouring the sites for songs as a listener. When using Reverbnation, Virb, or Fuzz one resorts to the typical formulas: genre, band location, newness, and that popularity contest that I hated in high school. As an artist, one does all that one can do to get noticed - cool names, cool pics, but ultimately can only hope that the right people find one's tune, and as a former colleague of mine often said, "Hope is not a strategy". Truth be told, I've got original tunes posted on all three of these sites, and I'm really hoping that these tunes get noticed. The odds are against getting noticed by the right people randomly though...and that brings us right back to where we were when we started - we still have the problems.

Needles in haystacks - finding that tune

I must admit I'm pretty intimidated when I cruise over to a music hosting site like Reverbnation or Virb and try to find a tune I like. After the first few tunes I've spent time hunting for by genre I'm pretty impatient and irritated by the whole process. I'm impatient because of the time it takes to find something if, for example, I'm looking for Celtic music and find everything under the sun with "celtic" in the keyword, and I'm irritated because I ultimately decide on listening to a song because of the image or name associated with the artist, album or song. I've judged a book by its cover! I may miss the coolest tune, but alas have no "cue" to look for it. Perhaps this applies to me more than others simply because my music tastes tend to be on the outer rim of mainstream (there are some exceptions: loved early-career R.E.M, early Sting (solo), dig U2), but I'm sure everyone struggles with this to some degree. If there is someone out there who does not, I'd love to hear how you deal with tihs problem!


There are organizations that have brought in Web2.0 - I can think of many - to help sort through this problem by social networking, but there is always that someone that was the first to find a band/song/album. How did he/she do it? He or she must have some cue from somewhere. Moreover, is popularity really solving the problem? Just because "Roll out the Barrel" is well known doesn't make it interesting to listen to as discovery! It does make it easy to find, however.


The problem for listeners is finding something new and appropriate and the problem for emerging artists is getting listened to by the right group of listeners.

Hounds to the Music

Getting started

At Hounds to the Music, LLC we are working to change how independent music is discovered. We're currently working out the glitches of our prototypes in anticipation of a Beta launch sometime in summer 2009 (fastly approaching!). A few of us thought it would be great to begin blogging about the things we think about as we are building up to our launch. Not surprisingly, we think a lot about music! So we're going to write about music.

I'll start by writing about a song I've dug since I first heard it. If you like contemporary jazz (not the cheezeball jazz, but cool poppy-jazz with good progressions, tight instrumentation and musicianship, ebbs and flows) you should give this tune a try. The song is called "Fire Dance" by Armen Chakmakian. He's quite a pianist and this is song is energetic. The sound has influences from contemporary jazz, pop, world (Arabic and Armenian), fun rhythms and a lot of piano flare. Honestly, I never grow tired of that tune. If you prefer a little more mellow piano contemporary jazz feel, there is also "Rain, rain go away" that can be found at the same site. Another good tune, although there is an instrumental portion in the song that I could take or leave depending on my mood. I'm not a fan of all the stuff he's posted at this hosting site, but there are other jems there as well.