Music – Mike P. Lewis

November 4, 2011

How i get stuff done

A few people asked me this week how keep track of things i need to get things done. So, let me tell you.

First, I keep an ongoing Task list. I have a big list and then i have a line in that list that i put each day of the things i want to accomplish that day. This way i can move things up and down that list. I actually have two lists – a personal list and a work list. I find that it’s helpful to keep them separate as i try to accomplish the work list when i’m at work and then when i leave, i consider my time to get those tasks done as over. Then i’m on personal time. It’s helpful to keep them separate. How do i keep these tasks? I use Google Tasks. It’s nicely tied into both my email and my calendar. Also, there’s an app (I use GooTasks) that synch with the Gmail version so i can grab tasks when i’m on the go.

Second, i have a “one-touch” policy. I’m not sure who told me about this but the idea is that you should touch things only once. If you can read, process and reply all at one time, it’s better than filing to do later. I do this with physical mail and i also try to do it with email. I’m not as good as some, but i’ve found that the more you do this, the more you get done. My business partner Toby is actually a master of this.

Third, i subscribe to the “Daily Inches” mantra of consistency. This is best expressed in the Al Pacino speech in “Any Given Sunday” (listen to it here). The idea is that if you really want to make big changes – this could be your life, your work or whatever – the best way is to make progress daily. You don’t ahve to do it all at once, but just make a little progress every day and you’ll get there. For instance, if you want to increase your arm strength in the gym, you don’t want to go on a weekend and try to lift weights for 20 hours straight. No, it’s better to work out a little bit each day for an extended period of time. Make a little progress, every day.

There it is. My three easy steps to getting things done – Lewis-style. Most of it is common sense, but thought i’d share. Tasks, one-touch, and daily inches. What is your philosophy for getting things done?

July 13, 2011

Why Turntable is Kicking Ass

I have a new love in the office and it’s called Turntable.fm. If you haven’t heard about this web application, it’s a website where you can go and play music. Except it’s not just you playing music, it’s a table where you and up to 4 other friends each rotate playing music. So, you play a song, then your friend, then another friend and then back to you (if only 3 people in the room). If you’ve in an office where music playing is public or you want to get music suggestions from friends, this is the perfect application.

There have been a million music applications built in the past 5 years, so the question is: why is turntable successful where the other ones weren’t. Here’s why:

Continue reading “Why Turntable is Kicking Ass”

October 28, 2010

The Killers have gone the way of M. Night Shyamalan

We were discussing today what the new large rock band of America is. Who is the new U2? Some made a convincing argument for Kings of Leon. I was thinking that I had hoped it would have been The Killers after their awesome debut of Hot Fuss and their severely underrated Sam’s Town. However, two crappy albums later it looks like the best is behind us for them.

It then struck me that this is exactly how I feel about M. Night Shyamalan. Let me explain:

Legendary Debut Album, Hot Fuss, and Debut Movie, The Sixth Sense
M. Night’s The Sixth Sense was a monster of a movie. Not only one of the most quotable movies of the year (“I see dead people”) but also just a great film. So good it was nominated for six academy awards, including Best Picture. Similarly, the debut album by The Killers, Hot Fuss, was a bombshell of an album. It had five songs that will be played on rock radio stations for the next 50 years in “Somebody Told Me”, “Mr. Brightside”, “All These Things That I’ve Done” and “Smile Like You Mean It”. It was #1 on the charts for 50 weeks and won the Grammy for Best Rock Album. Both the movie and album killed it. Great start to both of their careers.

Strong Underrated Second Effort in Album, Sam’s Town, and Movie, Unbreakable
The film Unbreakable was released to generally positives reviews. Some people loved it (Tarantino placed it on his top 20 list of films released since 1992) but most thought it was inferior to Sixth Sense. It grossed $250 million worldwide and has a cult following of users who are often heard clamoring for a sequel. The album Sam’s Town was a great effort. It has three great songs in “When You Were Young,” “The River is Wild,” and “Sam’s Town”. Like Unbreakable to Sixth Sense, the album was nowhere near the smash hit of Hot Fuss but went to #2 on the charts and sold 1.2 million albums.

At this point the expectations were off the charts. Both had done a legendary album/film and a really really good one. That’s 2 for 2. I couldn’t wait for what was next.

And that’s exactly when the wheels came off. After the strong start and solid followup, both the Killers and M. Night dabbled in mediocrity for a number of years. M. Night made Signs, The Village and Lady In The Water. None of these were terrible. None of them were that good either. Similarly, The Killers released Day & Age which has a catchy single in “Human.” It isn’t good but isn’t bad either.

It’s the present where both of them descend into crap. M. Night’s latest film, The Last Airbender, was a total debacle. Nobody went to see it. It received 6% on Rotten Tomatoes. Similarly, the lead singer of The Killers, Brandon Flowers, came out with a new album this year called Flamingo where the best review of it by BBC Music said, “there’s a slight feeling of blandness about the whole thing”

It’s too bad. I liked both of them. I guess we can only hope that they both regain their old form eventually.

October 10, 2010

Everything is a Remix

I just saw a great video that breaks down Led Zepplin and how many of their tracks were stolen from other tracks. While interesting, it makes the larger point which i completely agree with that “everything is a remix” today and it always has been. Taking previously created content and altering it to make something similar but also original and unique is what art’s all about.

Over the past few years, i’ve grown to love the music mashup which is when a DJ takes two or more (sometime a dozen) songs and mixes them all together to create a new song. Some of my favorites have U2+a rap song, an instrumental with Star Wars soundtrack, and 80’s classic with Jay-Z (links to all songs are below). I’ve noticed a few things: (a) that listening to these tracks is totally different than listening to the original, even though they sound extremely similar; (b) the best music mashups have a classic rock backbone and then from another tune faster lyrics on top of it.

Mashups and remixes of all kind are all over. I’m seeing it in TV shows, for instance in The O.C. where they did an episode just like the Spider Man movie or when Avatar recycles the plot from Dances With Wolves. Everyone has biases and influences so it’s rare to find something truly original. Even when copying though, you are creating something new. When Twitter launched, people thought it was just a copy of the News Feed application that was just one part of Facebook ,but it’s grown into something completely different than Facebook. I always thought a cool movie idea would be an entire movie and narrative but every lined used is from another film. Some lines are famous, and others wouldn’t be as recognizable. I think it’s a cool thought.

I’m pro-remix. I think more people should try it. Personally, I have a goal for myself over the next 12 months to actually create a music mashup of my own where i can actually use the tracks i enjoy the most to make something original. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Here are my favorite music mashups that i’ve posted on my music blog where i post one good song every weekday:

April 14, 2010

Last.fm Will Be a Charts Site

There was an announcement today from Last.fm that read:

CBS-owned (NYSE: CBS) social music discovery and radio service Last.fm announced on Tuesday that it is discontinuing the on-demand song streaming service on its website, which had been available for the past two years in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, and will no longer host music videos.

What, Last.fm didn’t like paying tons of cash to have people play music for free? That’s amazing! Of course they cancelled this. They were offering free services which grew traffic but not monetizing those users at all. Not surprisingly someone asked why their offered the freebies. The release continued to read:

The company also said a number of new digital music services will now support “scrobbling” of tracks to users’ Last.fm charts. They include Spotify, The Hype Machine, MOG, We7 and Vevo.

This is the only reason i know of that people use Last.fm. People want to know what their most popular track is and it’s interesting to see what are the most played tracks. Where does this lead? It leads to last.fm being the Neilsons or Comscore or Billboard of the future. This site will tell us what’s popular and by who. In my mind, this is the future they have. I wonder if CBS is regretting paying $280 million in cash for them.

April 12, 2010

Revisiting We Are The World

When listening again to the classic We Are The World, i couldn’t help but think what a great song it is. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and became the fastest selling American pop song single ever.

We Are The World (download here)

Some notes on the song:

Michael Jackson pretty much wrote the entire song himself. Sure, Lionel was there but it’s mostly MJ’s work.
All the musician came from the American Music Awards. All came in limousines except Bruce Springsteen who drove a pickup truck and parked it outside and paid for meter parking
There was a big sign listed above the studio with the words, “Leave your ego at the door.”
Prince bailed at the last minute because the organizer called him a creep (guess he didn’t see the sign)

ANyway, a good song to go back to and check out

January 19, 2010

Ebert’s Essays

I’m reading Roger Ebert’s great essay about Making Out Is Its Own Reward and thinking to myself, “Ebert’s writing is the best kept secret on the Internet.”

Last week I read his article Nil By Mouth where he describes how it feels to not be able to eat following his throat surgery. He offers some great observations from religious to the social. It’s an amazing essay and a must read for anyone who eats to appreciate what truly results from a meal. Hint: it’s not the food. One passage:

One day in the hospital my brother-in-law Johnny Hammel and his wife Eunice came to visit. They are two of my favorite people. They’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, and know I’m not. I mention that because they interpreted my story in terms of their faith. I described my fantasies about root beer. I could smell it, taste it, feel it. I desired it. I said I’d remembered so clearly that day with my father for the first time in 60 years.

“You never thought about it before?” Johnny asked.

“Not once.”

“Could be, when the Lord took away your drinking, he gave you back that memory.”

Whether my higher power was the Lord or Cormac McCarthy, those were the words I needed to hear. And from that time I began to replace what I had lost with what I remembered. If I think I want an orange soda right now, it is after all only a desire. People have those all the time. For that matter, when I had the chance, when was the last time I held one of those tall Nehi glass bottles? I doubt I ever had one from a can.

In this latest essay Making Out Is Its Own Reward, Ebert provides a trip back in time to a period where America’s youth was held by all parts of society to the “3 foot rule” where when you’re with a girl/guy 3 of your 4 feet had to be on the floor. He discusses the impact it had on a poor professor who was a touch more liberal, what it meant for him and his life as a teenager in the 50’s, and how that relates to kids today.

The blog from Ebert is a treasure. Some article are solely focused on movies but regardless to topic the writing is fantastic. You get the sense that he’s willing to write about anything with honesty and care. I hope it continues as can’t wait to see what he writes next

November 24, 2009

Playdar leading music innovation

I saw that playdar_logo Fred did a post on Playdar today. I couldn’t help but comment on it as i am really excited with where it is leading. I’m going to rephrase and expand on my comments here.

Those of you who aren’t familiar with Playdar, let me explain what it is. Playdar is a “Music Content Resolver.” Think a radar for music to play (play+radar = playdar). Now, i’m sure i probably just lost about 50% of my readers there. Those of you who are left, let me explain more in very general terms. Playdar allows a web page or a music service to take a song and then provide a source for that song. If the song is on your local computer it will play that file. If it is on your wife’s computer, it will play from there if it is connected. If it’s no where you specify, it will then look to the internet for the mp3 file. Basically, it will allow you to find any mp3 for any track.

As the co-founder of the music service Qloud I completely understand, respect, and fear the complexity around licensing music. And, any music service that charges users by play (Lala, Launch, etc.) is a challenging consumer experience. Something like Playdar, which allows the user to pay for content he/she doesn’t own and listen from a local (aka legal) location for the rest, could dramatically change the economic model for music services and allow more to experiment.

Even subscription services, which pay the music labels per play would benefit from something like this as many users play the same songs over and over. It might come to a point where once a user plays a track over 70 times the service just gives them the mp3 to download to caps the license fee for that track.

My hope is that many more legal options emerge around Playdar. The new music services of Spotify and MOG are just Rhapsody with more features and a better interface. It’s great to see some more innovation. Can’t wait to see what’s ahead

October 7, 2009

The Music Business and Days of Radio

I’m reading the book Free by Chris Anderson on my iPhone Kindle. It’s the only book i have on it – and i got it because it was free. It’s actually turning out to be a good read and having it on my phone allows me to read it when i normally wouldn’t read anything (subway rides, waiting in lines, etc.)

radioani In the book there’s a good passage about the music business and radio. In the late 1930’s, radio was emerging as a popular entertainment format but also one that made a mess of the old ways of paying musicians. At the time most radio broadcasts were live, and the musicians and composers were paid for a single performance but to musicians and composers payment for a single radio performance alone did not seem fair when that one performance was being received by millions of listeners. To them, if those millions were packed into one concert hall, the musicians share of the receipts would have been huge.

Broadcasters argued that it was impossible to pay licensing fees based on how many listeners tuned in b/c no one knew what that number was. But ASCAP, which had a near-monopoly on the most popular artists, made the rules and insisted on royalties of 3 to 5 percent of a station’s gross advertising revenues in exchange for the right to play music – and it threatened to raise the rate in 1940 when the contract expired. Whoa.

Understandably, radio stations were pissed and took matters into their own hands and cut live performances entirely. Recording technology was improving and more and more stations began playing these new things called “records” instead. Music labels responded by selling records stamped with “NOT LICENSED FOR RADIO BROADCAST” but in 1940 the Supreme Court decided that radio stations could play any record they had purchased.

So ASCAP convinced its most prominent members (including Bing Crosby) to stop making recordings. Let me repeat that, ASCAP convinced artists to stop making music because of how it was being distributed. Amazing.

With a shrinking pool of music to play and a crappy deal on the table by ASCAP, the broadcasters struck out and formed their own royalty agency called Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) which had much better terms. At first it was a magnet for regional musicians such as R&B or Country artists who were usually neglected by New York-based ASCAP. Because these musicians wanted exposure more than money they agreed to let radio stations play their music for free – and thus business model for charging radio stations to pay a fortune for music collapsed. ASCAP never regained the right to get large royalties.

The irony is large is amazing. Worried about a bad business model, ASCAP’s bad terms practically drove free music into the radio stations. A free inferior version of music (radio) turned out to be a great marketer for the paid version.

Similarly today, free music on the web is driving more and more people to concerts. Music consumption continues to rise but record labels are collapsing. You’d think today’s issues are unique but you only have to look back 80 years to see what we continue to repeat history.