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Programming My iPod
There are no new insights in this post. Just ideas that I've been talking about non-stop for years. But I can't help myself.
I have ~5000 songs on my iPod from about 300 artists. Talk about abundance.
Each and every song is there for a reason. I value them all.
But in a world where content is so abundant, you need someone to program it for you.
That's the "discovery/navigation layer" I've been talking about lately.
Yesterday coming back from LI, Jessica took my iPod and created an "on the go" playlist of 61 songs from 35 different artists. I published it as an iMix and I'll embed the playlist here as soon as apple puts the iMix up in iTunes.
It's a fantastic playlist. We listened all the way home from LI yesterday. And I had it on for my bike ride this morning.
The playlist contains nothing new. All my songs which have been on my iPod for months/years. But programmed by someone else. I love it.
UPDATE: Here's the iMix. It's not the whole playlist because a bunch of the songs are not available in iTunes. None of the live Stones songs from the Brussels Affair bootleg that Andy gave me made it. The Beatles didn't make it. Nor did Ben Lee. All the Eels songs from Blinking Lights were left off. And so on and so forth. iMix has it's limitations, but the 44 songs that did make it are great. You can get the iMix here.
June 22, 2007 in My Music, Venture Capital and Technology | Permalink
Comments
great tunes arranged/organized/streamed by someone else which achieves freshness... sounds kind of like plain old radio, no?
Posted by: Steve Kane | Jun 22, 2007 11:28:47 AM
Fred -- IMO, your comments about data superabundance driving the need for a "discovery/navigation layer" apply to a lot more than just music... Just something to think about...
Posted by: fewquid | Jun 22, 2007 1:00:31 PM
A site that is "coming from behind" in my view is lala.com, who has recently released some features that position them well to "fill in the gaps" where iMix lacks, to wit:
- An entire iTunes/other library of tracks can be uploaded from multiple hard drives, making them stream-ready from anywhere.
- Online playlists can be created from among iTunes and non-iTunes libraries -- note that sharing is lacking at this point.
- Integrated discovery/acquisition via WOXY.com (disclosure: my college radio station) and CD-swapping offers physical CD's (for high-quality ripping) at $1.75.
Lala also recently announced "full-catalogue" streaming to be available soon, although many doubt the economics here are tenable -- I'll enjoy and support it.
Posted by: Chris | Jun 22, 2007 1:34:43 PM
dear fred,
i'm also really into mixes. for publishing some of my own compilations i opened up my blog (http://heyyouhurray.twoday.net). i concentrate on publishing mixes from mostly unknown but awesome bands. all songs are legal, offered for download directly from the artists or labels. no high-tech-itunes-bling-bling, just simply one great mp3 with 16 songs.
perhaps you like it.
cheers from germany!
Posted by: vlkr | Jun 22, 2007 2:31:07 PM
fred, your link to get imix is broken.
Posted by: david hyman | Jun 22, 2007 3:01:33 PM
We are in the process of building a recommender based system for media discovery of all kinds. As we have been playing around with early concepts, we have been using a recommender from mystrands (a fantastic company that just closed a huge $25M B round and good friends of ours) to create automatic playlists in itunes based on a seed. Somewhat like pandora but using your own music. I use it myself all the time and am re-discovering my own music all the time.I have found stuff I had totally forgotten I even owned. It's a blast.
Note that I'm going to be in NYC on July 13th, 14th and 15th and would love to meet with you at your convenience.
Allan Isfan
CEO, MYDYO
Posted by: allan isfan | Jun 24, 2007 12:06:53 PM
