When it comes to Canadian celebrities, you don’t get much bigger than Rick Mercer. I was actually surprised by this– I know he still has his show, but I though his fan base was mostly limited to people who remembered his 22 Minutes/Talking to Americans Day. Boy, was I wrong.
He was in town after UNBC won the Spread the Net student challenge, raising $18,000 to buy nets to protect people in malaria-risk zones from infection. The prize was a visit from Rick Mercer, who held a rally, filmed segments for his TV show, and put together some sequences for a rock video. It was nuts– more people than I’ve ever seen on campus, including concerts. Estimates ranged from 400 to 700. This is my unplanned reaction to walking into the university and seeing wall-to-wall bodies:
And here’s some sound from the rally:
Fortunately, I was there with a CBC microphone. Even though I wasn’t actually with the crew, no one else knew that, so it was pretty easy to get through the crowds– people saw the logo and stepped aside, without me saying anything. I also got have a quick conversation with the man himself. Here’s a portion that, while funny, didn’t fit into my main story (plus a picture snapped by a friend who happened to be there):
As you’ll hear in the piece, people were young, old, students, and residents from Prince George and beyond. People brought their kids, exchange students turned out to see what the big deal was. The First Nations drummers normally used in basketball games were there, and incorporated into scenes for a rock video also being filmed. At the end, everyone spilled outside so a helicopter could get some overhead shots.
The moral of the story? Rick Mercer is still a pretty big deal.
Alright, so I promised this two days ago, but things got…. crazy. I’m sure no one was waiting with baited breath, but I do want to finish what I started here. So today, I’m going to be getting into Soundcloud:
Full How Do You Music? Series:
Introduction
The Hype Machine
CBC Radio 3
Tumblr/ex.fm
Last.fm
What Is It?
Easiest way for me to describe it: YouTube for audio. Someone uploads a track on Soundcloud, and they can post it anywhere: embedded in Facebook, blogs, Tumblr, etc. The crazy thing is, no one thought of doing YouTube for audio until these guys. Or at least, no one executed it well. It’s weird: the web is so visually oriented– we’ve got Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Picplz, Picasa– all these competitors in the photo and video-sharing spheres– but when it comes to sound, MySpace was pretty much the dominant player for bands, even after everyone else had migrated away– and the only way to listen to music uploaded to MySpace is to actually go to the MySpace page. Soundcloud isn’t focused on just the music sphere, mind you (their philosophy of sound sharing being the next evolution of the mobile web is one that I agree with), but they ARE a great place to find musicians and bands by bringing back a direct distribution model. Here’s how it works:
What’s Hot?
Once you sign up, you’re given a number of options. Since we’re talking music discovery here, this is going to be about finding people to follow so you can hear their music. There’s a few ways to do this.
The first is similar to the Hype Machine’s method: take a look at what’s popular, and what’s new at http://soundcloud.com/tracks. Hotness is based on comments, plays, and “hearts”, latest is exactly what it says. Browse through here, see what’s good.
If you like a track, you can “love” it by clicking on the little heart. If you’d like to hear more by the artist, click on the artist name (highlighted in blue after the words “uploaded by”) to go to their page. Here’s the page for Doug Koyama, an improvisational multitrack artist from Quesnel:
In this view, I’m looking at the tracks he’s uploaded in order from newest to oldest. You can also check out his sets (a set is a playlist, with tracks put in a specific order by the user), as well as comments he’s made on other people’s tracks, and tracks he’s favourited. If I decide I’d like to stay up-to-date on music he’s making, I click “follow”, and I’ve now subscribed to his music.
Exploring Users:
Next, I’m going to get into using comments and favourites from other users. I find them to be another good way to find new music. If you like a musician, or you find another user who likes some of the same things as you, you can start going through their favourites or the artist they’re following to see what else they’ve found that you might enjoy. Here’s my favourites page, and here’s users I’m following.
Other Ways to Explore:
There’s other ways to explore, too. There’s search. And creative commons search. Tags are genre stamps placed on tracks by the person who uploaded them. Groups are communities of users clustered around certain commonalities. And the Soundcloud blog and Tumblr pages showcase interesting artists every day, and have regular features on Soundcloud musicians in different cities around the world.
Apps:
There’s some cool apps built around Soundcloud, too. My favourite is called CitySounds.fm. It lets you choose any location in the world and listen to the latest and most popular music being uploaded to Soundcloud there. Some cities are more active than others, but it is a neat way to get a little snap shot of different places, and randomly drop in on artists you might not otherwise hear.
Also, Joe Laz has built a cool little app that accesses your last.fm data to find musicians you listen to a lot who are on Soundcloud. If you’re a last.fm user, you can try it here.
Back to the Dashboard:
So now that you’ve started following a few artists (or labels, or blogs), what do you do? Back to the dashboard. When you log in to Soundcloud, you get a news feed not unlike Twitter or Facebook. The difference is, this is only the tracks, comments, and favourites of other users you’ve followed.
A nice feature of Soundcloud is that when you’re within the site itself, there’s continuous play. That means that here I can start listening to the track from Digital Shadow, and once it finishes the track from Greg Gibbs will start up. Again, great to put on some headphones, do some work, and heart tracks you like for later investigation and listening. Soundcloud also has mobile apps (I have an Android). When I work out at home I’ll fire it up, plug my phone into my speakers, and see what’s new.
Exclusive Tracks/Dropbox:
One last thing I should mention, particularly if you’re someone who musicians or labels might want to be sharing tracks with (like a promoter, blogger, or radio programmer) is the dropbox. This is a way for people to share their tracks directly with you. Just send them to http://soundcloud.com/<username>/dropbox/profile and they can upload a track, which will then appear in your dashboard under “exclusive tracks.” You can embed your dropbox on other pages, too. I’ve actually had a couple of my favourite songs come to me through my Dropbox.
Direct Relationships:
One of my favourite things about Soundcloud is that it’s a direct relationship with bands or their representatives. Hype Machine is a cool way to see what fans and bloggers are thinking, and CBC Radio 3 is a great curated stream with aweseome customization features. On Soundcloud, I’m mostly following musicians directly. I send them a message through Soundcloud, and it’s them getting back to me. It’s a nice place for labels and publicists to be, too, because they’re able to put showcases together. This is a step removed from the direct-artist relationship, but it still feels more personal. At CFUR, I’m dealing with bands and their representatives who really want me to hear their stuff. Soundcloud is the closest thing to replicating that experience online, except I’m able to filter out the stuff I’m not interested in a lot easier. It also has a lot of non-music-discovery-related features, too, that add to the overall experience, but it remains a fantastic music-discovery tool. And once more: I strongly recommend you follow the Soundcloud team on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and/or their blog— they’re very good at showcasing and promoting the community.
Further Reading:
Lifehacker: SoundCloud Helps You Share and Discover New, Free Music
The Guardian: How Justin Bieber Gave Soundcloud A Boost
NME.com: The Rise and Rise of Soundcloud
Soundcloud.com: Soundcloud 101
In this series, I’m providing an overview of how I use the web to discover music. Today: CBC Radio 3.
Full How Do You Music? Series:
Introduction
The Hype Machine
Soundcloud
Tumblr/ex.fm
Last.fm
Yesterday, I wrote about the Hype Machine, which is a pretty comprehensive music discovery site. But it doesn’t cover everything. For one, as good as its filters are, it does skew towards remixes, djs, and big cities. Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes you want something a little closer to home. Well, why not go to our very own public broadcaster (and my part-time employer, incidentally), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation?
Contrary to the sometimes staid reputation of that venerable institution, the CBC Radio 3 arm operates much more like a web start-up than a large corporation. It’s mission is very simple: to promote independent Canadian musicians. It does this by combining the best parts of radio with the customization available on the internet. Let’s begin at the beginning.
The Best Radio Station Out There
When you visit radio3.cbc.ca, you are greeted by what you might expect: radio. It’s a web-only stream, yes, and there are no commercials (except the occasional in-site promo), but in every other way it’s just like a radio station. Songs play, DJs talk. If you wanted, you could just put it on and start listening (as I frequently do).
However, this is the internet, so there’s more interactivity than than that. You can look and see what’s playing (in the case above, Ketch Harbour Wolves and the song “Body Without Organs”). You can give the song a thumbs up or thumbs down, which influences whether it’s played again, and how often. But it goes deeper than that. And this is where CBC Radio 3 gets amazing.
A Place for Artists
You see, not only is it a radio station, but it’s a music repository, sort of like a MySpace for independent Canadian musicians. If you’re a Canadian musician and you’re not signed to a major label, you can create an artist account and start uploading songs and videos. This is what Radio 3 draws on, exclusively, for its music. It ranges from my friends’ old high school bands to the Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene: hundreds of artists, probably thousands of songs. And every one of these artists have their own pages where you can browse the music they’ve uploaded.
Even better, you can become “fans” of the artists and be alerted (opt-in) by email whenever they put up something new. Doing this requires a user account, which I highly recommend, because it also gives you access to playlists– and when it comes to online playlist management Radio 3 is as good as or better than every other online service out there.
Playlist Management
Pictured above is my playlist page. My two most frequently used are “songs I’ve liked” and “song to listen to.” As I’m listening to music in-site and hear songs I enjoy and might want to hear again, I hit the “+” and add them to the first. Other times, I’ll want to check out a new artist or song (like when I get alerted a band I like has added something new via email), I’ll add them to “songs to listen to.” I’ve also got a few other playlists for specific sounds, and I’ve favourited other people’s playlists that I like (yes, you can browse other user accounts). You can drag songs between playlists, and mix and match their order, either by dragging or changing the number beside them.
This is a great management system. All the other sites I use only give you one playlist– loved songs– and let you either play it newest to oldest, or random.
Plus, it has real depth. The Hype Machine has lots, but it doesn’t have everything, and there are quite a few great Canadian acts that you’ll never find on the Hype Machine that have entire discographies uploaded on here. This includes acts from the nineties and earlier– as time has gone on, Radio 3 has become more of a driving force in the Canadian music scene. It’s certainly where I discovered a lot of my favourite acts, including the New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene and the Weakerthans, long before they were as big as they are today.
Actual Music Curation
Another great feature of Radio 3 is the curation. Not only are there other passionate music fans making lists, but there are paid DJs and producers who are legitimately paid to put together music programming– but they aren’t beholden to any commercial interests. So you’re getting people who are going out to concerts, listening to albums, and filtering the best into showcases from a “track of the day” to a weekly top 30. In addition to the main radio stream, they have genre streams like hip-hop and pop, and occasional showcase podcasts, highlighting electro, heavy metal, or country.
Blogging Community
They also have a blog, updated with every new block of programming, and an active commenting community which is a great place to branch out and meet other music fans. I’ve seen people trade tickets, give advice, and even foster friendships in the comments on Radio 3. That’s not something you see many other places.
The Future of Radio?
When I started getting into music, Radio 3 was one of the first places I went. It is the best music radio station around: great programming that would hold up against any terrestrial station, combined with the customized experience of the web. Streaming, on-demand, playlists, podcasts: it’s all there. Canadian or not, if you’re a music fan you should definitely check it out.
Further Reading
James Cridland: CBC Radio 3: new music discovery meets social media
Andrew Kurjata (yes, me): How Independent Music and the Internet Helped Transform a Nation
Northern Voice 2009: Making the Worst. Radio Station. Ever. (via Miss 604)
Full How Do You Music? Series:
Introduction
The Hype Machine
Soundcloud
Tumblr/ex.fm
Last.fm
Part one in my music discovery series is the Hype Machine. I actually don’t know how I first discovered the Hype Machine, but it is the best place to discover music, artists, and even genres you wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to. Where services like last.fm and Pandora are about finding music that they already know you’ll like, the Hype Machine is just a bunch of music fans throwing stuff around– whether it’s catered to your tastes or not. But first, what is it?
Full How Do You Music? Series:
Introduction
CBC Radio 3
Soundcloud
Tumblr/ex.fm
Last.fm
What the Hype Machine is:
At it’s simplest, the Hype Machine is a music blog aggregator. As they put it:
“We handpick a set of kickass music blogs and then present what they discuss for easy analysis, consumption and discovery. This way, your odds of stumbling into awesome music or awesome blogs are high.”
Without getting into technical details (mostly because I don’t understand them), they have a large list of blogs they follow, scrape out the mp3s, and sort them into a playlist. When you visit the site, here’s what it looks like:
The default view gives you the most recently blogged-about music, with the newest track first. When I took this picture, the blog SUCKA PANTS had posted the song “I Don’t Wanna Go Out” by the band “X“. If you hit the large play button, that song starts playing. If that song ends, you hear “Cybernetics 9” by David Kanaga, then “Norway” by Beach House. It’s continuous play, which is great for background listening. You’re also being exposed to random blogs and artists, sort of like dipping into some sort of collective radio stream. You can see it action at http://hypem.com/#!/latest.
Tapping Into the Zeitgeist
This is all well and good, but it gets better if you make an account. It’s a painless sign-up, and once you do you can save songs you like by clicking the heart next to them. These “hearts” are then used to make up the Hype Machine’s popular songs chart, seen below. Artist charts are based on which musicians have the most bloggers writing about them, and the Twitter chart is whoever has the most people Tweeting about them (you can link your Twitter account). All good ways of tapping into the zeitgeist.
Finding Blogs
There has been criticism that the Hype Machine strips the music of its context by taking it out of the blog that posted it, and as such undermines the value of a music blogger. I disagree. I’m not reading random blogs to see what they’re about. But I do go through the “popular” or “latest” charts to find new music and if I come across something I like, I’ll go to the blog to find out more. You do this by clicking where it says “posted” (see picture below), which then opens up the entry about that song.
Subscribing
If you decide you want to see more stuff posted by a particular blog, you just click on its name. This takes you to a page that plays only songs from this blog. Here’s the Hype Machine page for a great Canadian blog called Herohill:
Here, you can browse through and listen to songs posted over the last few days. If you decide you really like the blog, and don’t want to miss anything it posts, you can subscribe to it within the Hype Machine. I’ve already subscribed to Herohill, as you can see on the right-hand side of the picture above– if you haven’t subscribed, there would be a “+” saying subsribe where I have the “-” and unsubscribe.
You can subscribe to artists, too. Just do a search for their name or click on it when you see it, and hit subscribe. Then, everytime someone posts a track by them, it will appear in your subscriptions to. Here’s the page for Shad:
Again, you can use the Hype Machine to sample an artist, and if you like them, subscribe. Once you’ve started susbcribing to artists and blogs, it becomes a more personal experience. You can subscribe to everything from professional music sites like Pitchfork and Stereogum to more independent experiences, and any artist you want. Then, when you go to the Hype Machine and log in the first thing you’ll be greeted with is a playlist from these artists and blogs (you can filter to just listen to the blogs, as I often do, or just the artists). You can “heart” songs you like, and then visit your loved tracks to listen to just things you’ve liked, either continuously or on random. Here’s my “loved tracks” page, shuffled.
The Social Experience
And, that, by the way, is the last piece of the puzzle: other users. If there’s someone whose music taste you like, you can start following them. I, for example, follow the music director at CFUR, and will regularly browse through the songs he’s been liking. His picks also appear in my subscriptions stream, alongside blogs and artists.
Digging Deeper
There’s lots of other ways to start discovering new music on the Hype Machine, too. If you read or hear about a new artist somewhere else, you can search for them on the Hype Machine to see what other people have liked or posted by them. You can spy on other users to see what people are listening to at that moment (you can filter by location, too). They have a radio show. The blog directory is a good place to discover people who write about specific types of music, and they recently started importing music tags from last.fm so you can browse music by genre (here’s dubstep).
True Music Discovery
At this point, I feel like the Hype Machine is the best music discovery tool out there. You can follow artists, other users, and taste-makers. You can filter lists in any number of ways, you can go for completely random discovery, and you can listen to everything that’s on there (no thirty-second previews). It’s a great starting point to learn more about an artist or a genre, and whenever I have a DJ tell me they are running into a roadblock in finding artists to play, I recommend they go there.
One thing that I feel is really important to this is the fact that all its content is provided by blogs. That means that somebody had to like and want to share every piece of music on there. Some are making money off of it, but many more are just enthusiasts. It’s like hanging out with a bunch of people going “You gotta here this!” It’s not based on some mathematical formula or your previous listening history: it’s true browsing, and it results in true serendipity.
Basically, if you can’t find something you like on the Hype Machine, you’re using it wrong.
Further Reading:
Pretty Much Amazing: The Thinking Man’s Take on the Hype Machine
Alex Eichler in the Atlantic: The Joy of the Hype Machine: Music Ex Machina
Nick Hornby: the Thrill Of It All
Dailybeatz: Hype Maching Hunting
the Hype Machine: the Hype Machine blog
Here’s a series I’ve been mulling for a while. I’m doing it now following a conversation over on Tumblr about a decline in people listening to audio posts. My response was basically a sketch of how I go about discovering new music, so I figured I might as well fill it out now.
So, over the next four days I’ll be posting on how I use the Hype Machine, CBC Radio 3, Soundcloud, and Tumblr/ex.fm (edit: and Last.fm) for music discovery and playlist management. I’m hoping it might encourage some more people to start using these services because (a) they’re fantastic but still mostly under-the-radar and (b) I’m actually kind of hoping to get people who are into music but not into the web to start using these so I can follow their tastes.
Before we start, I want to throw a couple of things out there: first, this is mostly about music discovery. It’s mostly song-based (not album based) and it’s largely centred around new artists, though I do occassionally come across something older. Second, I don’t do all my music discovery digitally. I listen to other DJs on CFUR, and I go through stacks of actual albums there, too. But you already know how to do that.
So: see you back here tomorrow for the Hype Machine.
Full How Do You Music? Series:
Introduction
The Hype Machine
CBC Radio 3
Soundcloud
Tumblr/ex.fm
Last.fm
NOTE: This post originally called this a “weeklong” series. As life got in the way, it turned into more like two weeks. But the url structure remains.
Iceclimbing – Daybreak Edition
“Please don’t mess this up.”
That thought kept jumping into my head as I stood on the outskirts of the city, in a complete strangers’ front yard, against the backdrop of a completely frozen tree being used for iceclimbing.
That’s right. Iceclimbing. On a tree.
I first got wind of this before Christmas, when an associate producer based in Kelowna told us about some people who lived near her parents in Prince George.
She had been visiting three years ago over Christmas, and saw this tree, completely covered in ice.
She talked to them about having a story done for CBC, but the timing never worked out. Three years later, she still wanted to get the story out there.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the contact information. All we knew was the street, and that there was a tree covered in ice on it. Assuming the people were still there. Assuming they still did it.
So one day in December, after finishing all my other work, I took the CBC vehicle for a drive. Once I got to the street in question, my search began.
The problem was, on this particular street, there are A LOT of trees. Like, forests of them. I drove one way. Nothing. I drove the other, further. Nothing. Not yet.
I saw a couple of people walking dogs. I stopped and asked them: “Have you seen an ice tree? Like a tree covered in ice? For iceclimbing?” They thought I was crazy. “I’ve lived here for years, and I’ve never seen that. Someone would have told me about it.”
She paused.
“Unless it’s down that way. I don’t go that way very often.”
A glimmer of hope. But it was getting dark. And there were A LOT of trees. It would be easy to miss it if it was hidden behind another one. And what does an ice-covered tree LOOK like, anyways? I was ready to give up.
And then I saw this:
Read more →
Immediate disclaimer: This isn’t meant to be an attack on Jason, nor a full-on defence against his criticism. Just my thoughts after reading an intriguing point of view from a regular political commentator. Also, as always, these are MY VIEWPOINTS AND OPINIONS, informed by nothing but my own misunderstandings of the world.
Over on his blog, UNBC political scientist (and my former professor/soccer teammate) Jason Morris writes about his experience as part of an interview with Christy Clark on Daybreak North last week. Clark is running for leadership of the ruling Liberal party, and had said she would try to reopen the door for a controversial mining project the federal government had rejected. Says Morris:
“I was recorded asking a question that came off like this:
‘Christy Clark’s plan to lobby the federal government to get the Prosperity Mine going is just that, a promise to talk… While it’s important for dialogue between the federal and provincial government, it’s also political posturing if there is no wiggle room to overturn the decision.‘
And it would be played for Clark to answer.
And she would also get similar recorded questions from an environmentalist bashing her for putting jobs before fish. And I believe, a First Nations representative maintaining her promise leaves out First Nations as an important stakeholder to consult on such natural resources decisions. If there were also some other angles, no doubt these would haven been added to the dog pile on Christy Clark.
One, two, three… bang, bang, bang, three bullets at the candidate who is only trying to get her message out. In some circles, this ganging up would be described as media bias, media bullying. And unfair, even if it obviously makes a more interesting story and that’s how the game works.
To some, unfair to me, too. I was commenting in the position of also representing my employer. While I have freedom to comment as I see fit and given what I know, when my question is later rebuked by Christy Clark, it could make the institution I work for look ill-informed or put in a bad light.
The questioner here never gets the last word!”
This raises some interesting issues. Read more →
Ah, what a great weekend. Yesterday, for what could well be the first time of 2011, I had nowhere to go. Coldsnap is done. No out of town trips (which are fun, but not always relaxing). No Ferret Information days or anything, either. And today, not a ton on the hopper. Which means I can write, a little. I’ve got a bunch of blog drafts that I want to finish this week, but I probably won’t. First, I want to try this– a round-up of the week (I’ve done this in the past by importing Twitter and/or Delicious manually, but didn’t like what it did to the look of the blog. This is more personal– which also means if you don’t know me, it could be boring. Heck, even if you do know me, it probably will be).
Read more →
There’s been a complicated history of arts publications, both on and offline, in Prince George over the last decade. The latest (and best funded) venture into this landscape is The Scene PG. Published by the daily newspaper Prince George Citizen, it currently functions as an online band directory/coming events calendar and a biannual glossy distributed freely around town. I was approached in my capacity at CFUR Radio to write some short reviews of local musicians. Even though writing about music is like dancing about architecture, I went for it. The results are below (and since this is the internet, I added music):
Read more →
I’ve complained about the Prince George transit system before, (I’ve also lauded it) but that doesn’t mean I’m done with it. But before going any further, I’d like to point out that the problems I write about are not at all limited to the Prince George system– I just write about what I know. Anyways:
The other day I was waiting for the bus. My particular stop is between two “timed stops”– what I’m calling the stops where the bus schedule actually says when the bus is supposed to arrive and depart. Waiting at a non-timed stop is always a little nerve-wracking, because unless you’re there before the bus is scheduled to depart from the previous timed stop, you’re not entirely sure if you’ve missed it or not.
So I was waiting, not sure whether to stay or go, and I started ruminating on things that would make my decision easier. They ranged from a system that would use geolocation to allow users to check in on where their buses are in real time using their cellphones to having portable bus stops that you could purchase and put on your back, so that if you’re walking between two stops the bus driver could see you and know that you want to be picked up. But the one that I think is the most practical, and requires the least amount of effort/new technology is this: have the bus come by more frequently. Read more →
So, I’m now a researcher at CBC Radio. I’ve even taken some training. And as time goes on, I’m starting to feel more and more like I might actually know what I’m doing around there. But over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had to do something I wasn’t sure I was ready for: go live on the air.
The first time came on January 5, when after a huge dump of snow I went out early with a cellphone to do an “on-the-spot” report on what the roads were like. I did it from the parking lot of one of the main bus terminals after being dropped off part way and walking. It’s OK, although I keep on saying “paved” rather than “ploughed”– the dangers of doing it completely off-the-cuff.
The second spot was what’s called a “tape talk.” This is the term given for when a reporter goes out and interviews multiple people about a single subject, then sits down with the host of the show to share what they found out. It’s used when there’s multiple angles to a story, and one guest won’t really present them all. My first experience doing this came with this piece about neighbourhood opposition to the expansion of a recycling depot. I talked to some really expressive people, and it was difficult narrowing down the focus. We stayed on the emotions here, rather than the clinical analysis, which works for the narrative. Listening back to it, I’m actually really happy with my delivery. I’ve developed a radio voice, I think, and having pulled it off without throwing up, I may be ready to do it again– but not too soon.
Heavy Snowfall Spot – January 5, 2011
BBK Bottle Expansion Tape Talk – January 13 2011
Over a week in to 2011, and I’m finally posting my favourites of 2010. Thing is, I’ve had the list written up since before Christmas, it’s just that I did it as a three-part radio show that I’ve been producing prior to posting this. Fortunately, that’s included in this post (at the bottom — and downloadable). I’ve also put together a nice playlist with all 41 songs (don’t ask me how I arrived at that number), which is below. Click play and read on.
Read more →
Merry Christmas from our house.
I know this isn’t new news to a lot of people, but Snapfish is great. If you’re looking to print photos, I highly recommend them.
We started using them after getting a bunch of free coupons: Flickr gave me a free photo book for renewing my account, as a new user I got free prints. That’s one nice thing about Snapfish: they just keep throwing free stuff at you, even though their prices are pretty competitive in the first place.
But the reason I’m writing this is this: we made our photobook (for free) and got it a few days later. It looked good, but a few pages seemed kind of off. We thought maybe it was the quality of the pictures. But today, I check my email and it’s from Snapfish saying they noticed that a recently round of quality control may have caused photobooks sent out to not be up to snuff. As a result, we would be getting a new copy of the book for free plus another free photobook that we could make.
Let’s go back to this: we didn’t complain. The company noticed something was wrong and let us know. They are replacing the product, like that, because there’s a possibility we might have received a subpar product. They could have said “If you believe you have received an affected product, please return your photobook to the address above.” They didn’t. They sent out a new one, and to top it off, they’re giving us another free product— just in case we weren’t happy with the quality of our first free product.
Beyond this, everything else is great. Prints are nice, website is easy to navigate and use, great integration with Picasa and Flickr, reasonable prices and super-fast delivery. If you’ve been looking for somewhere to turn your digital photos into physical products, I highly recommend Snapfish.
Ad nauseam
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March 8 2011 | ∞
Alright, now we’re into the service that started it all: Tumblr. More specifically, Tumblr and it’s music apps, primarily ex.fm.
Music Microblogging
I’m not going to go too much into what Tumblr is, because that’s a different conversation altogether. The fact is, it’s a lot of things to a lot of people. The simplified version is it’s a microblogging service. For our purposes, what sets Tumblr apart from a traditional blog is the ability to blog mp3s without the need to write a title, etc that are needed in a traditional blog. That’s on the content creation end.
On the consumption/discovery side of things is Tumblr’s dashboard. This is, again, like Facebook or Twitter. You follow other Tumblr users, and their posts, newest to oldest, appear when you log in.
Now, as I said, Tumblr is a lot of things to a lot of people. And one of those things is a quick and easy way to share music. I do it everyday. And, if you start following other people who post music, it can be a great addition to your discovery patterns.
[note: one might reasonably ask why you would use Tumblr to subscribe to music blogs when you could do it on the Hype Machine. And this is true for bigger blogs, but not all blogs are on the Hype Machine. Especially if you have friends or bloggers whose music you like but who aren’t professional/regular music bloggers]
Ex.fm for continuous play
Tumblr CAN be great for music discovery, but the Tumblr dashboard is not the ideal platform for music listening. If you start a track, it doesn’t automatically skip to the next one. If you go to a new page, the music stops. And since the music is interspersed with writing, video, and pictures, it can be easy to miss or be distracted by something else. More on those issues can be found in the discussion centred around this post.
Fortunately (if you’re a Google Chrome user), a clever app has been developed called ex.fm. What it does is scans the content of whatever web page you’re on and finds embedded mp3s. It puts those mp3s in your library, allows you to queue songs, and best of all gives you continuous listening, even if you close the window the music was originally found. And on Tumblr, it automatically finds the most recent songs posted in your dashboard. Let’s see that in action:
1. ex.fm tells me there’s song on the page
2. I click on the bookmarklet to see what they are
As you can see, I can “play all”, “queue all” (for later listening), or play/queue individual tracks. I can also share them on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr or “note” them– the ex.fm equivilent of “hearting”/”loving”.
ex.fm dashboard
You can also go to your ex.fm homepage, which will let you know what songs your Tumblr friends have been posting, and give you access to a library of pages you’ve visited, whose interface should be familiar to anyone who’s used iTunes:
Going Beyond:
Of course, ex.fm wasn’t built just for Tumblr and Tumblr wasn’t built just for ex.fm, though they work so well together it sometimes feels that way. As far as ex.fm goes, it’s meant to be compatible with any page that has mp3s on it, which are featured on the site of the day. When you go to the homepage, you are also greeted with an activity stream that shows you what your contacts are posting via ex.fm on Twitter and Facebook, as well as Tumblr. Oh, and you can follow other users and their “noted” songs, too: ex.fm/username. You can listen to a user’s noted songs in a continuous stream on any modern browser. I sometimes “note” songs on my Chrome browser as a “listen later” queue for when I’m at work, where Chrome is not yet approved for use (Firefox is, fortunately).
Tumblr, too, has other methods for listening to music in a continuous stream, which is especially fortunate if you happen to be using a browser other than Chrome. Many music bloggers have incorporated a music player called Streampad into their sites so you’re able to listen to every audio post continuously. Others have even made standalone web pages that act more like autoplay web players. I first saw this done by fredwilson, and I’ve copied it for my own music blog.
If a Tumblr that you’d like to listen to DOESN’T use Streampad, try. TRNTBL.me. It let’s you put the username of any Tumblr in at the end of http://trntble.me to give you a continuous playlist– and it can be randomized, too. The homepage also gives you a list of recommended blogs they like. Shuffler.fm works with a lot of Tumblrs (and other music blogs, too).
Democratizing Music Blogging
The thing I like about Tumblr for music discovery is that it’s a happy medium between following full-on music critics and hardcore bloggers, and simply following the more passive “hearts” put out there by someone listening to music. It takes very little effort to “heart” something, and so that means that someone hearting things might not actively be trying to share something, just noting them for their own purposes. When they post to Tumblr, they are putting a little bit of extra effort in, saying “I want YOU to hear THIS.” But Tumblr is simple enough that the barrier to entry is lower than it is for traditional blogging, meaning you get more diversity of voices. However, Tumblr isn’t ideal for music listening, which is where other services, particularly ex.fm come in. Hopefully, this motivates someone else to start up their own music (or partial music) blog, or at the very least gets them to check out some of the very good ones out there.
Further Reading:
me: ex.fm May Have Just Found the Holy Grail of Music Blogging
joelaz: Trends in Tumblr Audio Engagement (and my response)
yvynl: Best Music Tumblr Blogs
Fred Wilson: FredWilson.fm
Filed under: how to, music | Discussion