While pondering the future of MySpace, I had briefly gone over some thoughts about Soundcloud. This year the company changed the structure of their service from one which was limited by the number of tracks you’ve uploaded, to one which counts the minutes of music. For example, before I could upload say ten tracks, and now I can upload a few hours of music.

The change is ok, except in the old system I thought it was more worth it to upload DJ mixes rather than tracks. In the new system I have no more free time on the site, and if I want to make anything freed up I have to remove the mixes, which is bad because anywhere i’ve posted them will now have broken links.

I just want to play

If this site wants any hope for surviving in the long term, I recommend they find a way to serve people like myself who don’t care about hosting my music with them, but rather enjoy the waveform player and the activity stream. In other words, they should let us set our own url for tracks for free or at a lower cost plan.

Then, in situations like now when they change their mind about how people should use the service, we can easily set the mixes that will be broken links to be played off our own servers. I would be more willing to contribute to the service as a social network in this manner too.

I can’t see this affecting the bottom line because it only generates more activity on the site, and the people who enjoy the hosting features will continue to use them.

What do you think of Soundcloud’s setup?

“I understand that this kind of music will make me successful”

“I believe that this kind of music will make me successful”

We can understand what we need to be doing to be considered a success. Understanding is fairly easy to do. But believing in what we’re doing is a whole lot harder.

Do you understand what you’re doing or do you believe in it?

Last month, Myspace CEO Owen Van Natta stepped down as CEO of the company just after nine months of being in the position. Many are speculating this could be the beginning of the end for the service, although it is still one of the most heavily visited sites on the Internet.

In the web 2.0 world, Myspace pretty much started it all as the first major social network. But in the year 2010, the system is still horribly clunky and unstable. The site is simply more of chore to keep around than anything else.

Facebook to rule them all?

At some point, there was hope that Facebook’s Pages system would be the nail in the coffin, but it seems like an ineffective way to find new fans. Facebook has one mighty power to rule them all though – that is the ability for event promoters to spam the heck out of people with invitations free of any limits.

What about that time, at bandcamp?

I have been using Bandcamp and Soundcloud for the past year or so, and while they are great services, they don’t pose much of a threat to the Myspace empire. Soundcloud has some social features like a newsfeed and commenting inside its beautiful Flash player, but its business model is based on charging users for extra storage, making it more of a hosting service more than anything else. On the plus side it is free of those annoying ads found on Myspace.

Bandcamp does not charge at the moment, but also functions similar to hosting/e-commerce platform. It recently unveiled a tagging system to help people discover similar artists to yours, but overall music discovery is not the goal of the site.

Moving forward…

So what’s next? the thing that Myspace did so well from a users point of view is it gave us instant access to the songs an artist was featuring at any point in time. The only problem is it was painful to update those songs, and the updates feed is buried in the backend.

I think that if a site comes along which combines the sleek uploading process of Bandcamp, with the existing networks of fans found in Twitter or Facebook, it could be a good candidate to replace Myspace. I’m thinking about something like Flavors.me for music.

Maybe Myspace will never need to be replaced, since it serves a function in the music world and people are used to its downsides.

What do you think is going to happen? Will Myspace manage to keep its place in the sun?

1. Stuck in the airport tweet

2. In between cities tweet

3. Airline justice tweet (aka “i’m a weenie” tweet)

4. Thank you Cleveland! tweet

5. Your source for updated airline policies tweet

6. I have a new release out tweet (multplied by 30 over a week)

7. Danger alert to other celebrity DJ tweet

8. Danger alert from celebrity DJ – duly noted tweet

I was just watching this cool video by Subcycle Labs and was trying to figure out what this kind of thing is good for. One thing is obvious these days, software that responds to touch is the wave of the future. We already knew this when the iPod Touch took hold, and more recently the iPad announcements.

In the video above, there is a lot of eye candy, but I can’t imagine it is useful for anything beyond posting to the web in video format. In the studio i’m sure the overload of colour and animation would get tiring to look at fast, and in a live performance environment the gimmick of watching the performer work with this would also likely wear off quickly. They would be very busy interacting with a machine, and not the audience.

I’m not trying to slag the person who made this – it looks sheerly brilliant. I just can’t find a place for it. Not there has to be one in the first place. He didn’t make it for me. Well enjoy this video!

I think it’s interesting how often we look at mp3s as the source of problems for the music business, but it’s worth taking a look at how CDs are the real problem. One of the things that got me thinking about it this week, is the idea of 3-D movies. More specifically, Avatar (which I still haven’t seen).

As much as they’re in trouble too, the film industry has done a great job at moving forward with new mediums. When DVDs were first released, they weren’t that easy to share. Once you figured out how to crack the copy protection, you had to compress it so that it would fit through the Internet’s pipeline. The majority of people who watch movies illegally are doing it on the backs of piraters who have done the heavy lifting for them.

Had a fantastic time seeing Mr. Scruff DJ at Wrongbar on Friday, January 15th. The event was completely sold out, which doesn’t happen that often here in Toronto for DJ shows. Scruff played a great blend of classic funk, latin and some bass heavy beats.

The place was rammed to the top, but just enough that you could maneuver around. Crowd was in good spirits, as i’m sure many people had been waiting to see the man play for a while now – he hasn’t been back to the city in a few years.

Scruff brought along his own VJ and sound engineer. The sound was extra crisp if I may say so myself. Wrongbar owner Nasty Nav told me that he thought it was one of the best nights of music in his venue since it opened a few years ago. That’s pretty awesome!

The highlight for me was getting to meet him very briefly. He told me that he’s a big fan of what Jason Palma is doing here, which is quite a well deserved compliment for the Torontonian who runs the fantastic Higher Ground Radio show amongst many other activities in the area of rare-groove music.

I have been inspired by Mr. Scruff for many years now. If I can say he’s done one thing great, he’s figured out that keeping things simple is the way to success. His visual brand is largely made out of primitive drawings that he’s done himself, and his beats sound full yet aren’t too complex as to make them inaccessible.

His DJing isn’t focused on long evolving mixes, but rather cutting it out and jumping to a new record or even a new style on a whim. Over the course of a night, not many DJs could possibly come close to covering as much ground as he does. Add it all up and you have a producer who has been maintaining a solid career for a while now. Cheers to Scruff!

I like a casual looking shoe that fits well but looks good at the same time.

I started messing with Ecco brand shoes in high school when I was looking for a pair of dress shoes that fit like runners. I loved the things so I have been buying some pairs since.

Many years ago I bought a pair of Eccos where one of the shoes in the pair wouldn’t break in. There was clearly a flaw in the design. They ended up collecting dust in the closet and it was for sure a shame. Later on in my life I spoke to an Ecco sales rep who told me that this does indeed happen from time to time. They are apparently made for a “European foot”, and as such can be picky about who they will work with.

A few years later I gave the brand another shot and it paid off. I had these great leather brown runners that fit like a Rawlings catcher’s mitt. I was “on the train again”, as they say in Vancouver’s east side.

Last month I bought a pair of chocolate brown Eccos(“Urbanity” in the colour liquorice to be exact) in a weak attempt to continue living the dream of wearing snug fitting, yet good looking feet covers. The curse has reappeared – first week of wearing them I got horrible blisters on the heels. I had to buy special reinforced bandaids to supress the burn. A normal bandaid wouldn’t cover even a fraction of the diameter that the damage was doing.

In the past few days the shoes were showing signs of breaking in. Except the one on my right foot. It has the exact same design flaw as my last bad pair of Eccos. These shoes are showing little hope, and I am going to have to try to do a return now. I will clean any salt stains that have acrued, and try to convince them that I just wore them around the house for two weeks.

Last night I was supposed to play some tunes at Toi Bar on College Street here in Toronto. I kind of dropped the ball cause i changed up my setup to be more portable and also fit into small spaces like the booth at this club. I didn’t get my stuff setup early enough so when it was time to go on I had some tech problems.

When I got home I was a little angry, I even blurted out a tweet for some relief. Bottom line is sometimes we get down on ourselves about screwing up, and it gets tempting to throw in the towel. But the best thing to do is just chalk it up as a learning experience so you don’t make the same mistakes again. Shit happens to everyone, right?

Here’s one of the only tunes I got to play before we had to cut our night. Thanks to the Loco Locols for having me out! Oh and check out the flyer I made above. Jokes :)

I have been reading a crapload of articles lately on what artists should be doing in order to survive. Not only has the traditional music industry crumbled, but people are still weary about spending money, and music will be continue to be a low priority in this regard.

I personally believe that all these changes are leading us to great places, and the place I can most easily identify at this time is one where we will be rewarded for innovation and creative thinking. This transition is going to open up opportunities in all facets of art and business. 

Now, I can understand why people are re-evaluating what kind of music they are producing or DJing. They might be thinking it's time to do something more commercially viable. I think it is more important to focus your energy on striving to create something "better", rather than more profitable.

The thinking behind going after a hot sound is that if you can make it in that area, it will open doors in the styles of music that you really like making. Sadly the case is the opposite, as once you have made your fan base and everything is going well, most people have a hard time pulling a 180 on that. 

My point is that in this era, there is no need to bullshit yourself. There is always a big component of making music where you have to satisfy the needs of listeners, but some people have walked the line too far. They have taken it to the point where their success is good on paper, but in the long run have done little to change the way people think about music. Do not get me wrong - a lot of artists have done a great job of finding that middle ground, and I think that makes them some of the best out there.

If you believe you are making the music that needs to be heard, I urge you to stick with it. If you like elements of music that is popular these days, experiment with using some of those ideas in your own work. But don't lose site of your overall vision. Keep it real!

Have a great weekend everyone, and I hope to have some more good content up on the site by the end of it.