A VC - Latest Comments in Community Powered Playlists

Re: Community Powered Playlists

Mike Butorin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:37:41 -0000

Great idea. Made me think of using hashtags + twitter search + playTwitter + my service Song.ly, or just incorporate Twitter search into Song.ly as it already allows for hashtags. Thanks Fred!

@butorin

Re: Community Powered Playlists

J Herskowitz — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:12:00 -0000

Some more thoughts on how to use hashtags to empower collaborative playlists.... http://globallistic.blogspo...

Re: Community Powered Playlists

J Herskowitz — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:48:59 -0000

Fred, I've been playing around with a mashup of a users playdata (from Last.fm, iLike, Hype, Imeem, Lala, Pandora, etc) that goes and finds free-range MP3s for all it can find, then publishes those links to Twitter as a users' passively programmed "station". As Dave mentions in the comments, I think there could be something interesting where a user could retweet these with a hashtag that would enable collaborative playlists. Would love to know what you think. More thoughts here: http://globallistic.blogspo...

Re: Community Powered Playlists

fredwilson — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:31:10 -0000

Finally got around to looking at this

Its nice to see that this was built on dan kantor¹s delicious playtagger
code

It would be great if this got into the powertwitter extension

The bookmarklet is not ideal

Re: Community Powered Playlists

davidporter — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:27:15 -0000

Excellent! Thanks Fred

Re: Community Powered Playlists

fredwilson — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:59:22 -0000

I didn¹t know it existed

I put it up on fredwilson.vc yesterday when I discovered it

Re: Community Powered Playlists

davidporter — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:12:46 -0000

Btw, why weren't you able to embed the Flash player for your mix?

Re: Community Powered Playlists

davidporter — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:06:40 -0000

I've added both to our product schedule (Pivotal Tracker, which rocks).

Re: Community Powered Playlists

kidmercury — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:57:36 -0000

regarding deflation and dollar crash, if you mean falling stock market, rising unemployment, and rising cost of living, yes, that is what i think will happen. what i wonder is how bad it is going to be, at this point i think it is going to be very bad, permanently world changing bad (but because it is permanently world changing it will be good in a way too....lots of crap getting cleared out of the way). i expect things to get so bad that some type of world government, or a greater role of world govt agencies like the UN, will be proposed as the solution to the financial crisis. this is the conventional conspiratorial view.

well, it seems like bad dollar might be bad for you and your peeps if there is no way to liquidate (i.e. m&a opportunities weaken, IPO opptys not existent) and if you are stuck holding dollars and illiquid ownership in companies that do business in dollars and have not hedged themselves against dollar devaluation. whoever is stuck holding dollars is going to foot the bill for this govt spending binge. if you guys are holding lots of dollars, that means you :)

of course if you can diversify against dollar risk than of course you are good to go, or at least as much as one can be when the world around them is crap. in fact i think this depression will be inflationary in terms of dollars but deflationary when priced in gold -- meaning gold owners will be the big winners and will actually gain wealth.

not in gold!??!?! this is the worst news i've heard, worse than your not getting GNR. i previously said my song "proud to be a conspiracy theorist" was the most important message i delivered to the VC community, although now i have to take it back, getting into gold takes the cake (although my song is an important message, let's not forget that :) ). even deflationists like gold.

problem with gold is that it requires admitting things are bad. it is like taking out a life insurance policy or writing a will, perhaps a good thing to do but makes you think about terrible things. a friend of mine who is a trader but a permanent "good news only" person has trouble getting into gold for this reason (i persuaded him to get into silver, which should be pretty effective too in preserving wealth).

Re: Community Powered Playlists

fredwilson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:15:38 -0000

Why don¹t you start with (1) and a dropbox and see where that goes?

Re: Community Powered Playlists

fredwilson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:13:29 -0000

That is the single most suggested track

I guess I¹ll have to add it

I don¹t think the scream is primal though

Re: Community Powered Playlists

davidporter — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:02:30 -0000

Hi Fred - I do think this is a great idea, as mentioned on my tweet the other day. A few more thoughts here.

We could allow a DJ to either (1) invite X friends to collaborate on a mix (so any one member of that group could add to or edit the mix) or (2) simply turn the controls fully "public" so that anyone could go in and collaborate. To prevent abuse and ensure we follow copyright precedent, I think #1 is the right approach. I've added this to our product schedule.

It might also be useful for us to offer an 8tracks DropBox (like that of SoundCloud) so a DJ's fans/followers could make a song "request" by uploading to our servers. I don't think we'd want to integrate Twitter into 8tracks beyond what we've done already, but I would love to hear your or others' ideas on this (and in general)!

Re: Community Powered Playlists

Doug Redding — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:06:13 -0000

Wanted to send you an @reply on twitter but realized you have to be following me for that to work. Wanted to suggest you add "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who to your Primal Scream playlist. I tried to drop it for you but it's an iTunes .m4p file. Bummer.

Re: Community Powered Playlists

fredwilson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:07:15 -0000

I agree about the coming end of the nation/state. It¹s the natural end game
of globalization and the internet. But when its going to happen is a tricky
problem in forecasting.

Do you think deflation and the dollar crash can happen together?

And finally, why is a bad dollar particularly bad for VCs?

I¹m a kook at heart too, but not in gold yet

Re: Community Powered Playlists

haynes_dave — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:22:27 -0000

I think Spotify will be one of the nicest solutions got building collaborative playlists. It's quick easy and legal. Though of course not yet available in the US.

Re: Community Powered Playlists

Paolo — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:56:18 -0000

Yes, exactly. I've recorded a screencast to give you an idea on how it works...

Re: Community Powered Playlists

Dave — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:34:19 -0000

Also, after adding the playtwitter bookmarklet, follow @playtweets http://twitter.com/playTweets to get a sense for how it could work. Pretty cool.

Re: Community Powered Playlists

kidmercury — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:59:14 -0000

lol, no way boss, you can fool the others but i didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. you have common sense and are too honest with yourself to believe the guy in the cave story when presented with facts, and given my annoying and persisting presence in your crib and the growing popularity of 9/11 truth, we know you got the facts. i know you gotta pretend you believe the government's theory, it's probably a lot harder for you than for me because the peeps you roll with definitely cannot handle the truth, and so you have even more peer pressure. it is easier for me as i am further from the federal reserve system and am still under 30 years old (less time on earth = more malleable mind), so i sympathize a bit with the situation you and your peeps are in. or at least as much as i can.

the key way to measure to what extent a person is a kook though is by their investment portfolio. after all talk is talk, but where you put your money speaks volumes about real beliefs. and when people really realize the conspiracy is true is when they feel it financially, and when they realize the truth is the only way out.

first signs of the current doom were in 2006, but they were very easily ignored. louder rumblings in 2007, but still not affecting serious money; manageable inflation hurts the poor the most. 2008 was the big whopper of financial asset destruction, and so the media had to give it attention. slowly but surely, the truth is getting harder to ignore.

anyway i hope you have turned the kook knob up a little bit in money matters. check gold's recent jump. Then check the yearly chart for 2008. Then the weekly chart going back to 2006, then the monthly chart going back to 2002.....

once you go gold, you go kook. wish i had a chart showing the percentage of gold bugs that are kooks. very highly correlated.

i just wrote an article on my blog talking about the pound paving the way for the dollar. i hope you and your peeps have at least considered "the dollar is doomed" argument, as i think you guys have the most to lose in such a scenario. i don't see any VCs really talking about it which suggests the problem is only going to get bigger as the fundamentals are getting worse and the market is not pricing this in (so a bigger correction is coming).

i'm going to be blogging more about how the demise of the dollar paves the way for the world beyond the nation-state. too radical, i know. i agree we need to see more evidence. though i personally have seen enough evidence of gold as safe haven, and once folks start pricing their assets in terms of gold and/or baskets of currencies, and then developing standards for doing so, we'll see the need for a whole new set of standards and governing bodies to emerge. problem is we can't get there until we can talk about it.

anyway i see it as an opportunity. if you ever want to talk about dollar doom feel free to contact me through my blog or though my "normal" business site (which is linked to from my blog) where i pretend like 9/11 was pulled off by a guy in a cave and go by my real name and everything. or post on your blog and crowdsource the dollar doom problem (is the dollar really doomed and if so how to deal with it). you know i'll chime in the conversations while keeping the place safe!

Re: Community Powered Playlists

dperry1ma — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:31:28 -0000

If you're looking for podcasts, Podcast.com creates automated playlists from groups of feeds in any directory, subdirectory or personal collection. Our "freshest feeds" are an automated playlist of podcasts within a group sequenced by publish date.

Users can create their own playlists (with any sequencing) in RSS and publish them, but the group feed out of any grouping they want to create is automatic.

Like this; http://fresh.podcast.com/14...

Duncan Perry
CEO
Podcast.com
Treedia Labs

Re: Community Powered Playlists

jakemintz — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:17:29 -0000

I agree that the labels are losing their importance as a way of building awareness of and distributing new music. Music blogs have done a lot to make more music accessible. Companies like TopSpin will shake up the label/distributor legacies even more.

But, there are still some pieces missing from how I would like to consume music in the digital age. Although I can learn about and purchase music online, that is where it ends. I don’t think music is as enjoyable as a solo experience. I like to share music and see shows with friends. To be perfectly honest I am new to the ways that the internet enables sharing music between people (and I mean knowledge not free files), but I am experimenting with new tools like Tumblr. For the most part, this is still learning about music from strangers and I miss the days of music discovery being between friends. My favorite way to learn about new music is still the mix CD, at school there is a group of us that make mix CDs in bulk to share with the group. It has been a great way to learn about new music, enjoy new music with friends and occasionally go to a show together. Tumblr and these other tools are great, but unless all my friends get on board (and I doubt they will), it won’t facilitate the full music experience for me. Making new music friends online is great, but that has not resulted in seeing any new shows (which is my favorite way to enjoy music).

In my opinion, what the digital age lacks is the element of interaction and the element of sharing with friends. In a post-Napster world digital rights are so tightly controlled that we cannot consume music the same ways that we used to. This is starting to change with creative licensing by companies like lala and 8tracks. Hopefully things will keep moving in this direction. I can’t buy music that I haven’t heard about (or go to a show which is a substantial part of artist’s revenue), and I won’t hear about music that is under lockdown.

What I like about this conversation (thanks Fred) is that we are discussing ways of interacting with and sharing music. As long as people keep innovating along these lines, everything about music (at least from a fan perspective) will get better and better.

Re: Community Powered Playlists

fredwilson — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:31:39 -0000

What we all want to recreate is those magical moments in high school and college when we'd spend hours with friends and the turntable playing records and talking about them. But we want to do it at scale across the web with friends, new and old. I'm with you. That's what we need to do.

Re: Community Powered Playlists

fredwilson — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:29:04 -0000

I have to check it out

Thanks for the reminder

Re: Community Powered Playlists

fredwilson — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:25:22 -0000

I don't even have to listen to it. when I get a chance, it will be added

You've got that kind of credibility with me (except on the 9/11 truth stuff, when the pope agrees with you I get really suspect)

fred

Re: Community Powered Playlists

fredwilson — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:15:40 -0000

Do you have to be a spotify user to play the mixes?

Re: Community Powered Playlists

Dave — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:07:11 -0000

Have you checked out Lucas Gonze's PlayTwitter? http://is.gd/esKh The Twitter community could build your playlist on the fly by tweeting MP3 urls with a hashtag like #primalscream. Then use Twitter Search and Lucas' playTwitter Firefox plugin to play it all back. This would work even better if we could filter Twitter by clicking hot hashtags.