HIGH FIDELITY

Thought I’d post an update on Jango and the social music front. The May Comscore data ranking the top 520 music sites in the US reveals some interesting things:

• Jango is now at spot 32, up 10 slots from the March ‘08 version of this report
• we moved ahead of MP3.com, ilike.com, Audible.com, RollingStone.com, eMusic, Zune.net, and Disney Music
• we will soon pass Billboard.com and Spiralfrog in monthly uniques
• we are more than half the size of Last.fm in the US (bought last year by CBS for $280 million)
• we are #9 of all 520 sites in terms of average minutes per visit (an important measure of user satisfaction), beating AOL Music, Yahoo Music, Pandora, playlist.com, last.fm

And we got here only 7 months after public launch; Last.fm, by comparison, has been around since 2002.

I am estimating our July numbers to be much higher than May and June.

Here’s an excerpt of the Comscore chart, in order of US monthly uniques (in 000s):

Great old ad from I’m guessing the 60s; need to find the exact year:

the-best-part-of-wakin-up-is-folgers-in-your-cup

Whether to allow users to tag or not is something of a debate in the Web 2.0 world; of course, since many web 2.0 companies allow it in the interest of unfettered user-generated content generation, it’s not really a huge debate. But here’s a funny post on the drawbacks of user tags:

http://blogs.sun.com/plamere/entry/last_fm_in_a_box

The production and consumption of music is different than other forms of entertainment, like movies, books, games or TV. A great deal of high quality music is being produced at any given time for a relatively low cost. Therefore, there is a huge, and ever-growing, supply of music. At the same time, an individual can consume music more quickly than he can other forms of entertainment, about 12-15 songs per hour, compared to a one TV show per half hour, one movie per two hours, or one game or movie per 5+ hours.

This creates an information gap between supply and demand, which, until now, has been (inefficiently) filled by critics, magazines, and the music cos themselves. The dilemma is this: given so much music choice on the one hand, and an insatiable demand on the other, how does a regular person easily find new music? Subscribe to every music magazine available? Expensive and time-consuming. Get it from the radio? Terrestrial radio (other than college radio) is pretty much dead as a source of discovery; the same artists circulate ad infinitum. Get it from TV? Some shows, such as the OC, have been effective at promoting new music talent, but given an endless supply music available digitally, this is just a drop in the bucket.

The Interent, of course, offers the perfect mean of filling this gap. Enter music discovery services like Jango.

I love “post-rock” as a genre classification. It seems to refer to a kind of musical equivalent to “post-modern” but at the same time also kinda refers to nothing. Like a signifier without a signified, except one sort of knows what it means. Sort of like reading Derrida, but with less frustration.

Here are the bands that All Music Guide considers part of the genre:

No longer tired, Henry comes away from the wall where he’s been leaning, and walks into the middle of the dark auditorium, towards the great engine of sound. He lets it engulf him. There are these rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they’ve ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything you have to others, but lose nothing of yourself. Out in the real world there exist detailed plans, visionary projects for peaceable realms, all conflicts resolved, happiness for everyone, for ever — mirages for which people are prepared to die and kill. Christ’s kingdom on earth, the workers’ paradise, the ideal Islamic state. But only in music, and only on rare occasions, does the curtain actually lift on this dream of community, and it’s tantalisingly conjured, before fading away with the last notes.

So writes Ian McEwan, in his excellent novel Saturday. This is probably one of the best passages I’ve read on the subject of music and its ability to transform a moment or even convey a religious experience. In that sense it reminds me of Kerouac’s On the Road. And perhaps, to a lesser degree, Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus . Good company to be in.

One of the great things about working at a music company is all the new releases you get access to (as well as just stuff you hadn’t heard before). On a recent trip to Vermont I grabbed about 20 CDs from the Jango library for the 6-hour car ride. The big standouts for me were NOT the usual favorites: White Stripes (Icky Thump), Velvet Revolver or the latest by Smashing Pumpkins. All of these felt a little boring and formulaic, and frankly the Stripes’ stylized pose of having a kick-ass guitarist but a drummer who sucks is getting a bit tedious. No, the inspiring music came from a band I’d never heard of, and one I’ve grown up with.

The first is Inside In/Inside Out by The Kooks, a very catchy, original-sounding UK band. The second came from The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen Live in Dublin. I am a Bruce fan but not a huge one, and this album really blew me away. Most of the songs are Irish folk tunes, and the band is exceptionally tight. Really worth a listen even if you’re not a Boss fan.