Music Discovery Services
Last week, I blogged about how I use Twitter to connect with entertainment content. This week I wanted to follow up with a post on web tools you can use in conjunction with Twitter to share content or discover it - that’s still coming, I promise. I’ve just been too busy this week to even play with some of the newest tools I am now hearing about, and share some more entertainment Twitter trends.
I do have something to share though in the meantime. Before this blog got going this month, I was just testing myself to get more familiar with blogging on a regular basis. And I wrote a little ancedote about how I use Last.fm to find new music I’ve never heard before - I got inspired when I came across a new musician. Here is the post ...
I found this incredible Argentinean musician - Federico Aubele. It’s hard to describe his music - its somewhere between traditional spanish music, soul, trip-hop, and jazz. He has his own description of his music here on Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/music/Federico+Aubele
Last.fm is just one of many music discovery engines ; the service recommended Federico to me based on my previous listening habits in my media player (I use both iTunes and MediaMonkey). Last.fm also looks at the listening habits of other Last.fm users I’ve chosen to be “my friends” on their social networking platform.
Maybe you use another music discovery service. I know Dan Scheinman here at the Cisco Media Solutions Group, will argue in favor of Pandora as being the best music discovery service. I’m sure there are more that I haven’t tried yet - suggest one. What’s your favorite way for finding new music?
There is something I think often gets overlooked when it comes to music discovery services. Music discovery engines are great because they can inform artists about their audience. Every time someone like me stumbles upon their music on Last.fm - the artist themselves can determine out exactly who did find it and something about what the fan liked. The Last.fm fan information is free for both the musician and the fans by going to the “listeners” tab of any artist profile on Last.fm.
By looking at the listening information, Federico or his promotion team can now go out and directly message the fans, and get them more involved. When I went to look at who was listening to Federico Aubele on Last.fm - I noticed he had listeners from Canada, the U.S., Hungary, and Mexico, and countless other countries. This is quite a breakthrough for musicians who want to find a global audience. Musicians used to have to send out countless CDs across the globe, wait, and hope the music got played. And even if their music did get some airplay and interest - there were very few methods for example, a musician in the U.S. to find out if they were a hit in let’s say, Spain, unless they were a “really big hit”.
Posted by Chuck Fishman at 11:08PM PST
Zane Jan 8, 2009
I am so glade that Last.fm has lasted as long as it has.When I first discovered this little jewel I was afraid it was not to be for long.I have found countless NEW music that otherwise I would have never came across. It is great for my ears but horrible to my pocket book.