Bombtune

Facebook, Please Face The Music

2010-03-17T19:14:46-04:00

Facebook is hurting itself by not being more cooperative with record labels.

The labels are shifting from Myspace to Facebook at a rapid pace.

That being said, 10k Facebook friends is more significant than 70k Myspace friends.

Why? Because you can easily post and have a chat with your fans. With Facebook, your fans see your messages in their news feeds, stuff is more noticeable.

Myspace is still a confused morass of content, necessary but becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Facebook should push itself to become the hub for the record industry. Or does it know the labels will come to them no matter what?

Finally, Broadband For All!

2010-03-16T07:10:54-04:00

The US plans to roll out a ubiquitous broadband line by 2020.

It's not very ambitious of a goal if you ask me. Why not start building for the future today instead of waiting 10 years?

By 2020, 4g network speeds should be just as fast as broadband in any case.

Why not build just one massive wifi network and make the Internet free, subsidized by the government?

Internet access is a right and should be free, just like renting free books from the library.

I want my kids to ask me, "you used to pay for the Internet?" That's what I want to hear.

Cognitive Surplus

2010-03-15T06:48:46-04:00

What to do with all that extra time? Watch television, read the paper, browse the Internet's most popular websites, update your status on Facebook. Do all four at the time same.

I spend my extra time looking for and reading about music on the Internet. That's why I started fakedjs. I wanted to share my music discoveries with the world.

How you spend your extra time has an impact on your mental health. You can watch television all weekend and see hundreds of ads. Or you can do something constructive and start a blog.

The cognitive surplus we have today can be narrowed if you shift your attention into productivity.

Do something, just don't sit there passively. Create, post content of your own.

Today's generation are contributors, the premise of Wikipedia.

When will you join the game and start to share your brilliance? Remember, you don't have to be perfect.

Mobile Potential

2010-03-14T06:34:58-04:00

550 million people in India have mobile phones.

About 750 million people in China have mobile phones.

276 million people Americans have mobile phones.

There's no doubt that mobile is how people will access the Internet in the future. That being said, music on these devices should explode.

Right now, music services are limited to the US, UK, and the rest of Europe. But ChIndia is the fastest growing and biggest market.

The ringtone business is down. Well, bring it back to life by exporting it to ChIndia.

Even rural people have access. Let's bring them the record business, even if it's local content. Get the Bollywood catalog up; anything people will spend micropayments on.

There is so much untapped potential here it's absurd.

When will the labels get more involved in these emerging economies?

Text Songs

2010-03-13T13:09:58-05:00

Give a song via text message.

Where is this technology?

You can zune a song to another zune owner. Why can't you pick from a catalog of songs and text a track?

It could be a logistics issue. But Apple clearly has this ability. Select a song in iTunes on the iPhone and send it to a friend via AT&T.

That's how you really grow the mobile business. Will someone please gift wrap and text me a song already?

Slow Down

2010-03-12T07:09:12-05:00

The record industry needs to slow down.

The last decade we have seen everything from ad supported music to fixed payment downloads, both of which didn't make up for CD crisis.

The fixed payment platform (e.g. iTunes) still came out on top. But a colleague of mine said recently that the spread of mobile phone will hamper the iTunes business. The reason Apple bought its way into the cloud by acquiring LaLa was to fight with free.

Glimmers of hope and stability can be seen from Spotify and MOG to the extant CD business which seems to be blooming for some artists, most typically artists that appear on television shows like American Idol.

We're surrounded by different formats and perpetual change. But we need to slow down because it seems the models that will come out on top are some form of all access download for storage. What I don't know is if the popular payment model will be fixed (a la carte) or subscription based.

It's still too early to tell.

Digital Music Store Ignorance

2010-03-11T07:15:35-05:00

The normal consumer doesn't know more than two digital music stores: iTunes and Amazon MP3.

Even Amazon MP3 is pushing it as I've come across many people bewildered, "Amazon sells MP3s now?"

No wonder iTunes makes up 70% of the US digital music market.

But can a consumer name a digital music store other than the big two? Probably not, according to a new survey.

If consumers don't know there's alternatives, then of course they will rush to Bittorent of their free P2P service to snag the file.

We need to educate the public on all the legitimate service available. For example, go to Amie Street or Emusic for cheap downloads, or go to Boomkat or Dancetracks Digital for your specialty music.

The digital world is no different than the physical world, the mom and pop stores exist online; you just have to find them.

Predetermining Winners

2010-03-10T09:49:01-05:00

The Internet is an amazing tool for prediction.

Thus the reason it's becoming easier to predetermine idol winners based on the amount of social media noise.

You can also judge an artist popularity based on the same metrics, their ubiquity on the net.

Some of the biggest noise producers are blog posts, free downloads and streams, and other giveaways like tickets and merchandise.

So how do you make noise?

Pandora Up and Again

2010-03-09T08:03:37-05:00

Pandora is finally profitable after years of struggling to pay royalties. Now it operates as the Internet's go to radio station.

So what happened?

The Pandora app changed everything, at one point acquiring 35k new sign-ups a day.

Pandora is at the heart of what I call 'music ubiquity' - the ability to play music wherever you are: the car, the gym, at your computer, or through your alarm clock. You know, just like radio.

And it's all made possible not because of Pandora technology but because of the developing technology around it, i.e. the Smartphone.

Internet based technologies spread good ideas. Pandora is one to benefit.

iPad: Where's the Music?

2010-03-08T07:13:13-05:00

Apple forgot about the music in yesterday's debut of its commercial on the iPad.

There's no indication whatsoever of how one can play music on the iPad and scroll through the visual experience of the album.

Not surprisingly, Apple's focus was on publishing. After all, it is a superior e-reader.

But just touching upon iTunes would have made the commercial complete.

I don't know about you but I'm not buying an iPad until I know how well iTunes works on it.

Bombtape 2008 (Part Deux) [Flickr]

2008-12-14T13:57:12-08:00

Bombtune posted a photo:

This is my artwork for part 2 of my Bombtape 2008.

Bombtape 2008 - Part 1 [Flickr]

2008-12-14T13:55:42-08:00

Bombtune posted a photo:

This is my artwork for my Bombtape 2008.

Best of 2007 Artwork (FinalLarge) [Flickr]

2008-09-19T20:19:35-07:00

Bombtune posted a photo:

This is my artwork for my Best of 2007.

Beats, Rhymes, and PiecesR [Flickr]

2008-09-19T20:17:59-07:00

Bombtune posted a photo:

This is my cover art for my Best of 2006.