The ever-expanding ‘record label etc.’ out of New York wanders further into the world of multimedia with a mobile music exploration tool.

Ghostly is a record label, an agency, a design house, a clothing designer, an online store, a publishing company, and more. They have always picked up new technologies quickly and pushed to remain innovative in a fast-paced industry. It is not a huge surprise, then, that they have quite a nifty mobile app for the iPhone and iPod. It is only surprising that it took me so long to find it, but the result is: I love it. And so, I want to share it with the Music Jobs world…

Being a record label since 1999, Ghostly has a fair catalogue to browse and discover, and the app is easy to navigate and fun to use. With ‘Discovery’, you get a free mood-triggered music discovery app that focuses on the roster of the Ghostly artists, where the seven colors of the natural spectrum correspond to musical moods.

The official ‘how to’ video is below. as they explain; “using mood-color information from the MOOD slider along with the values from the DIGITAL/ORGANIC and FASTER/SLOWER sliders, Discovery creates a playlist of songs that reflect exactly how you’re feeling, right now.”

Play with the web version here, and download the mobile version from iTunes here (free).
by Lee Jarvis.

As 2011 is drawing to a close, we thought we’d find out a little more about what kind of music listening preferences our members have used over the last 12 months.

There are now more ways to consume music than ever before, making the murky waters of the music industry even more treacherous for musicians, songwriters and performers, not to mention agents, managers and the like. Please consider taking our short poll and sharing some of your recent habits of consuming music in 2011. After you click submit you can see the results. Simply hit the back button on your browser to vote in another topic and see more results.

by Lee Jarvis.

A leading online curator of legal and free music downloads go mobile.

I have long been a fan of RCRD LBL, not only for the free downloads that they hook up, but the general music recommendations that they dish out. I’m always open to new sounds, and their emails make discovering new bands a regular joy in daily bite-sized chunks. As someone who constantly absorbs new music I am often pleasantly surprised by their suggestions in all genres and styles. Recent changes have made it easy to add these new discoveries to a ‘favorites’ list, and then re-visit via your profile page. Now, the blog-like music curator takes things to the next level: mobile.

In launching the RCRD LBL iPhone app, they reach out to the millions of music consumers who do so on the move. The in-house radio station is updated with constant fresh music, and users can create their own playlists as well as check out ready-made mixes from staff and celebrity guests. Sharing to Facebook and Twitter is simple enough, track info comes with artwork and short artist bio, and as the all important price point.. it’s free. Which, let’s face it, there are so many music listening apps out there now that you have to offer consumers at least a free basic version to try your product. The app keeps things simple, and does them well, rather than attempting to please everybody with overly complicated and buggy features.

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Most music on RCRD LBL leans towards rock, electronica and hip hop, and they often find boundary-pushing hybrids and throw them in the mix for good measure. It doesn’t seem that they will deviate from that current line-up, preferring to excel at certain niche markets rather than try and compete with iTunes to the commercial masses. Which is a good thing if your tastes align with the above – listening and downloading music via RCRD LBL is easy and fun, which is what music discovery should be all about.

Check out the iPhone app for yourself at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rcrd-lbl/id438702678.


By Lee Jarvis.

This playlist was partly inspired by my recent watching of ‘Still Bill’, a documentary following one of my favorite soul musicians of all time, Bill Withers. The film portrays an honest, well-grounded, talented man, and instantly after watching I went to stream ‘Use Me’ on Spotify.

Although I’m kind of disappointed that Withers didn’t make more albums, that early period of the 70s also gave us many other soul and funk greats, some new, and some veterans who were moving away from the polished pop sound of the 60s, and evoking more bluesy, gritty, melancholic soulful feelings in many of the records. I hope you enjoy the legendary voices such as the recently passed Gil Scott-Heron and James Brown, and also some perhaps lesser known album tracks.

Click the image below or check out http://open.spotify.com/user/leejarvis/playlist/1lYPWzWxuq4fBHLyG67hxU

Tracklist
Bill Withers – Use Me
Gil Scott-Heron – The Bottle
Bobby Byrd – I Know You Got Soul
Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues
Curtis Mayfield – If There Is A Hell Below, We’re All Gonna Go
Isaac Hayes – Walk On By
Bobby Womack – Across 110th Street
Roy Ayers – Aint No Sunshine
The Temptations – Papa Was A Rolling Stone
The Undisputed Truth – Smiling Faces

Enjoy!

by The Music Jobs Team.

This week I came across a presentation from New York marketing communications brand, JWT. Their October 2011 Things to Watch list is a special Music Edition, and covers a variety of trends in “accessing, discovering and sharing music”.

After a variety of research and specialist analysis, there seems to be a bit more clarity in this presentation than there has been in recent years. The digital age certainly flipped everything on it’s head, but the fact that the big digital guns have stepped into the arena means that they see a viable future. Independent artists are more common and more powerful, and the platforms available for them to communicate and reach out to consumers are much more of a regular way of life than previous years. The frustration of not knowing where to find the music you like, and then not knowing what the ‘legal’ options were seems to be vanishing, and whilst there is no one ‘savior’ of the industry, the combination of many new techniques and technologies has created the beginnings of a new enjoyable sharing experience for all music lovers and appreciators.

Says JWT director of trendspotting Ann Mack, “It’s all about the ability to listen to your own archives, and just about anything else, wherever you are. It’s a major change, and one that comes just as listening gets a lot more social, from Turntable’s DJ rooms to Facebook’s peeks into what friends are listening to.”

Some of the my favorite points include;

Access Over Ownership – in today’s music world, consumers are shifting to the convenience of simply having access to music (i.e. music for hire), as opposed to wanting to own a copy themselves.
The Celestial Jukebox – a dream come true! The advent of Spotify, Rdio and the like means that we seem to have near infinite music available at our fingertips.
Taking it to the Cloud – 2011 saw some major players offer cloud storage (Apple’s iCloud / Amazon’s Cloud Player and Google Music Beta), and with that remove the limitations of hardware storage and which devices have music on them.
The Death of the MP3 Player – we are moving away from both devices that store music, and also devices that have only one function. Being able to stream more music from a mobile device that has multiple uses is a big shift in trend.
The Facebook Effect – the world’s runaway leader in sharing and networking has recently unveiled real-time sharing of music listening habits, via third party apps such as Spotify, Vevo, Mixcloud, Rhapsody, Soundcloud and more.
Youtube IS MTV – albeit an on-demand version, with new licensed content, music documentaries, vintage live shows and much more, this offers something for every music fan to tune into.
Artists are Doing it for Themselves – services and platforms helping musicians manage, market and sell have come on leaps and bounds. It really is possible to be a self made superstar in the internet age.

by Lee Jarvis.

Groovebug is a new iPad app soon to launch that allows for simple and efficient music discovery, coupled with instant news on your favorite artists.

I recently had a chance to test drive the app prior to the official release on September 8th and must say that it certainly lives up to the label of “personalized music magazine + discovery engine”. The app is fast and easy to use, and made it fun to flick through new artists and end up in a well of new music. Its ‘Similar Artists’ page is pretty on the mark, and the database of music is vast. Groovebug also allows you to purchase full songs once you find an artist or album that you enjoy. Just a couple of clicks through the iTunes interface and you’re downloading and back to exploring.

Once you have music on your iPad, you can play the full versions through Groovebug; it will also play any previously purchased and iPad stored mp3s. Other pages offer Full biographies and a list of all Youtube videos available to watch full screen. Completing the one-stop-shop for music needs, the app also takes feeds from some of the biggest and best music blogs around to provide fresh news, reviews, and tour details.

This intriguing app; a combination of necessary content and a fresh and clean look, has attracted an array of active investors in the creative and business worlds, including the man behind Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, lead designers and COO of Feedburner, a teacher of Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University and more.

Check out the introductory video:-

You can sign up for updates and an e-prod when Groovebug launches at http://groovebug.com

by Lee Jarvis.

Things move fast in the digital age: only last week we told you about the launch of Amazon and Google’s music ventures, and now we have news on how two other powerhouses – Facebook and Apple – plan to shake up the way that consumers listen to, pay for, and share music on the internet.

Firstly, Facebook has announced that it is partnering with Spotify to launch a new way to listen to music with friends. Users will see a Spotify tab on the left hand side of their Facebook home page, and clicking in this will launch the Spotify player much in the same way that the desktop app currently launches. This integration is still being tested and will not likely launch for another two to four weeks. While this is not the creation of a new service from Facebook, their social reach is undeniably a hugely powerful thing, and so it will still have major impact in music industry circles.

However, this new service is unlikely to be available in the US right away. Spotify has been dealing with licensing issues with the major labels for some time now; we reported that there was almost a breakthrough back in summer 2009, but nearly two years later they are still unable to come to an agreement. Having Facebook involved may assist this issue, but it is still a huge hurdle to overcome.

Next up, it seems like Apple may have even been putting some of the talent they acquired from purchasing Lala to good use; it has been revealed that they have reached “tentative agreements with all four major record labels” that would enable music fans to listen from it’s own cloud-based service, and this could launch as soon as June 6th, according to one report from the LA Times. As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, this was one factor that both Google and Amazon’s service were lacking, and may lead to issues somewhere down the line. Apple, having developed relationships with the labels over the last eight years with iTunes, could have the edge when it comes to mainstream content in this respect; the fact that iTunes shifts somewhere between 75% and 85% of the entire download market has surely put them in good stead.

But…

Clearly, there are still issues that could come up with any new ventures in the music industry; that these ‘big four’ e-giants still struggle to get content online in 2011 or have to bow to some of the key copyright holders. Myspace Music made a huge mistake when it chose to drop the indie musician and cater to the majors, and now they are suffering. Hopefully one (or more) of these guys will come through with some news of how their service aids the discovery of new and exciting music from around the globe, rather than simply pushing the same pop stars with the biggest budgets.


by Lee Jarvis.

Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music both launched within a couple of weeks of each other. They join a number of well established and loved music streaming services such as Pandora, Rdio, Rhapsody, Last.FM and many more, with the supposed king of them all, Spotify (which is VERY good, by the way), still due “any day now”. So… what do the new kids on the cloud have to offer?

Amazon offers both a Cloud Drive and a Cloud Player. Cloud Drive is your hard drive, uploaded into the cloud (therefore backing up not just your mp3s, but other documents, also). The Cloud Player offers a place to store all new Amazon mp3 purchases, as well as access to your Cloud Drive. You can stream music on the go with the app for Android mobile phones or tablets. Cloud Drive offers all users 5Gb free storage, and, for a limited time, a free upgrade to 20 GB of Cloud Drive storage with an Amazon mp3 album purchase. Also, all new Amazon mp3 purchases saved to Cloud Drive do not count against your storage quota, essentially giving regular Amazon mp3 shoppers an ever-growing storage limit.

Google Music is still invite-only at the moment, but is essentially a similar idea – uploading of your current music files, and a place to easily add new purchases, that are then accessible from any Flash-equipped web browser, along with Android phones and tablets. Very similar indeed. The one big difference? You still need to purchase new music, and this will mainly point music consumers back to digital retail stores run by Amazon and/or Apple. The supposed reason for this hitch? Everyone’s favorite villains; the major labels. Wanting to much money up front apparently hindered Google’s ability to create a one-stop-shop, and has meant that the streaming launch is more of a stutter.

Worth noting is that both of these new players are iTunes friendly. They are not aggressively attacking the third big cheese, Apple, but instead recognize that millions of music fans already have playlists and organized folder based on 10 years of iTunes usage. To ignore this fact would be a foolish move, and making it easy and convenient for them to sync, swap, and move their music around is definitely the first step in taking a slice of the Apple pie (pun intended? Possibly.)

by Lee Jarvis.

So, it seems that Apple spent a ton of money on Lala only to close it down 5 months later.

This past weekend, Lala users received a notification email and this notice was posted on the music streaming website. Current users will be able to use the service until May 31st, after which any credits or balances will be transferred to the iTunes store. They also announce to Lala members that “In appreciation of your support, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store.” This will also be the last chance to hear our Music Jobs Lala playlist, ‘Rockin into 2010‘, so go check it out now.

I have no doubt that Apple will use some of the Lala technology to create an iTunes streaming service – music ‘in the cloud’ is where it’s at these days. While no official announcement has been made from Apple in this respect, reports and predictions have been flying around since the buyout, and the computer/music giant have their finger on the pulse enough to recognise the trends that have occurred in recent times.

It is a shame that another quality streaming service has to go (Imeem shut their doors after the Myspace acquisition), but hopefully there will be something good come of all this, rather than the usual bullish business moves and subsequent dumbing down of a great service.

Lee Jarvis.