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Songs to see at Sxsw, 2023

Go for the music, stay for the personalities

Balming Tiger at SXSW 2023 (banner)

I got married a week before SXSW. We took a proper mini-moon on an island off of Mexico, Isla Holbox, but ended the trip at SXSW. When I told people the grand finale to our wedding vacation was at South by, some thought it was hilarious, others were a bit confused, and one person said I had to include it here, someone I respect very much.

I’ve never experienced such a heartfelt sense of community than at my wedding. People from distant parts of my partner and I’s life came together and started relationships of their own. Something I’ve always dreamed about. Creating new communities is as important as maintaining old ones, and SXSW has become a complex, interconnected community of new and old.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes up a community. As much as I know one of the most important roles is a curator of content (like myself), someone who brings new people (and old friends) together is even more important. There’s no greater gift you can give someone than introducing them to someone you know – other than giving them your time and attention.

Brian Zisk, founder of SF MusicTech Summit, has been that person bringing people together at least for me and the dozens of people he’s introduced me to. He also gave me one of the most sincere compliments about Silence Nogood. One where you know they were actually listening. Thank you, Zisk, and everyone I met through him over the years.

As important as the personalities were at SXSW, the music is still the main show. I took the 1,084 artists from SXSW’s Official playlist and cut it down to about 10%, which is a little higher than last year.

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The Music Tectonics Conference

What's hot in music tech: AI, blockchain, and podcasts

I first heard about the term “music is like fire” from the Music Tectonics Podcast. It comes from “music is like water,” where music is treated as a commodity because of music streaming services. In other words, it’s cheap and you can get it anywhere. As opposed to music being like fire, spreading onto smart speakers, into social media, and everywhere else in our lives.

Dmitri Vietze, host of the Music Tectonics Podcast, printed up 18 trading cards with themes similar to “music being like fire,” which could be collected at the first-ever Music Tectonics Conference. The trading cards were a fun way of getting to know others at the conference, as well as a helpful way to know what’s going on in the music industry. The next best ways were the panels. Two of which, my favorite and least favorite panel, got me thinking about how AI, blockchain, and podcasts relate to music, specifically music curation.

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Great Talks in Music Podcasts: Spotify & Discovery

Where Spotify is now, where they want to be, and how to get there

I find at least one insightful thing a day in a podcast. I wanted to put together a dozen or so music podcasts that have been particularly memorable, but I noticed my top picks had two themes in common: they’re all interviews with current and former employees of Spotify and have to do with music discovery.

Spotify’s VP, Paul Vogel, recently stated that music discovery is one of Spotify’s main focuses. As Vogel describes, “When you own discovery, you own so much of the ecosystem; you own demand generation. Over time, you end up owning gross margin when you own discovery and demand generation.” In other words, the first music service to make music discovery a viable business will be the leader in music streaming.

The four podcast episodes below helped me verbalize my thoughts on how music editorial and curation will help Spotify get there. This article only scratches the surface of the future of music, so I plan to start a series that will highlight other podcast episodes with great conversations around music. Let’s call it “Great Talks in Music Podcasts.”

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The Collective 100+ Best Music Documentaries

And where to watch them online

Scott Vener, better known as brokemogul, asked Twitter for the best music documentaries. He got over 150 responses and I’ve got 110 music docs listed here. Some were mockumentaries, some were films, one was Dissect, and a lot more were music doc gems worth collecting.

I thought it would be a great idea to collect them all, find where you can watch them online, and put them in some sort of order. However, it took way too damn long, so I didn’t include artwork for most, didn’t spend too much time on formatting the post either.

Below are the categories in which I sorted the music docs. I’ve also labeled whether they’re available for Free, Subscribe, or Rent. And what type of services, such as Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, or Hulu. So “command/ctrl-f” to find whatever you prefer.

Free: mostly YouTube or some shady site (watch out for pop-ups). And I think a few others require library cards. Just get one.
Subscribe: mostly Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix. I believe all offer free trials, so binge.
Rent: most of the music docs are “rentable.” Prices usually range from $2 – $8.

Researching all 110+ music docs made me realize how many more need to be put on this list, let alone made.

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What’s the Music Streaming Service for Playlisters

Plus the next step in how we playlist, featuring our best soul songs

Back in 2014 Trent Reznor put out a video envisioning Beats Music, now Apple Music, as the game changer in deciding what song comes next. It sure as hell inspired me and helped to get where music discovery is today, but Spotify is leading that now, most famously with RapCaviar.

Tuma Basa – creator of RapCaviar, now at YouTube Music – recently talked at DJ Jazzy Jeff’s Playlist Retreat about how we need to recognize curation as a form of art. Too many music services are hung up on breaking the next big thing. Let the playlisters, djs, and other curators figure that out. Figure out the curators first.

SoundCloud has been my pick for playlisting music ever since they introduced the feature, but they’ve been losing listeners, so I thought it was about time to spread my efforts elsewhere. Spotify’s doing it right when it comes to their product and promotion. They’ve got all the major label music and seem to be winning with playlisting & discovery. But it turns out half the music I love isn’t on Spotify, so it’s gonna have to take more than just that to replace SoundCloud, if at all.

YouTube Music doesn’t have every song SoundCloud has, but I’m sure they have much more. They haven’t quite established themselves yet, but with Lyor Cohen, Tuma Basa, and all the other talent I’ll follow when I find them, my (subscription) money is on YouTube Music. And Spotify too for now.

Apple Music has the same problem as Spotify with catalog, but their potential is in live with retail stores in the most highly trafficked places around the world. Initiatives like “Today at Apple” that are bringing people together around creativity & entrepreneurship can be the game changer Apple Music needs to differentiate themselves from Spotify & YouTube Music. Especially if they utilize a platform like Beats 1 to democratize the global spotlight for all kinds of artists, including playlisters, online and off.

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TH3RD BRAIN | Accelerator

with a "Nothing but NoMBe" playlist

Last month I gave a quick tip to musicians pitching blogs. To treat it as much of an art as they did their music. But most need some help and it can be a bitch to find someone who knows how.

Two years ago I found out about Jake Udell and his TH3RD BRAIN artist management at SF MusicTech. What intrigued me was that he managed Zhu. I’m as impressed with Zhu’s rollout of NightDay as the actual music. Since then the team has signed Gallant and most recently NoMBe with their new Accelerator program. When you see a management group develop multiple artists so well that it makes their name as reputable as their artists, you want to send people their way.

TH3RD BRAIN’s Accelerator program opens the doors for musicians and their management to learn from experts of the emerging music industry. Treating the program like a traditional accelerator found in startups might sound like a gimmick at first, but their approach sounds promising, which you can take a glipse at.

I do think they should expose a lot more of what they do there. Opening the doors to TH3RD BRAIN’s knowledge and expertise to everyone could help out a lot of musicians. Because, trust me, they need it. More importantly for TH3RD BRAIN, it will attract the artists they want next. As much as they’ve channelled some of the best so far, it never guarantees what’s next.

— In other words, Jake needs to bring back his podcast

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[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/231487361" params="color=000000&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="20" iframe="true" /]

Advice to Musicians Pitching Bloggers

featuring Roman Kouder's great music (with a decent pitch)

I get a good amount of pitches from artists and I’m not the best about responding. I barely read what they have to write (pro tip: keep it short), mainly because they all say the same shit. It’s flattering they’ve found me, but get to know me first. I promise I’ve got good music. And if I don’t, then who gives a shit about me anyways.

The best advice I can give to artists about pitching bloggers is to treat your promoting as an art as much as you do your music. I know you want to spread the net wide, and fast, but you don’t compromise your music to get more fans, so don’t with your relationships to the people that are here to help (sometimes, when they like your music).

This is not to call out Roman Kouder, but his typical marketing strategy clouded his great music. I liked a few of his tracks before, but thanks to Darren of Tipsy Tortoise, I listened to a song on Roman Kouder’s SoundCloud page and kept liking each song after.

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[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/211866299" params="color=000000&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="20" iframe="true" /]

Will SoundCloud Allow Remixes Once Again

And Figgy Goes Live!

While prepping for Figgy’s live debut, I went through his entire catalogue on SoundCloud, come to find half of it missing. SoundCloud has been more stringent on allowing sampled and remixed tracks recently, giving the major labels access to directly pull songs and even accounts from their service – Figgy was close to getting banned.

SoundCloud more recently introduced its Go premium service that includes offline, ad-free listening and a deal with the major labels that’ll increase their catalogue to compete with Spotify (it’s still in the works). What’s under the radar is that this deal may stop take downs for sampled and remixed songs and instead become a source of income for the labels – not that anyone gives a shit.

What we should give a shit about is producers will be able to keep their remixed and sampled songs on SoundCloud, probably at the cost of an ad. But at least we’ll get to use them for playlists. Until then, we’ve had Goldroom fill the void.

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[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/141331068" params="color=000000&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="20" iframe="true" /]

How to Playlist Music

or my daily music routine

As much as musicians don’t like to be classified under one sound, their songs have similarities that are best expressed in easily digestible playlists. We’ve focused on playlisting for the past 6 months, yet we’re still trying to figure out what works best.

There doesn’t seem to be any guide out there, so thanks to SF MusicTech we got off our ass and did it ourself. Or at least the start of something.

This article doesn’t focus so much on the art of playlisting, but rather how best to research and set up your playlists. We use SoundCloud as the platform, but it can be easily applied anywhere else.

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SF MusicTech 2014

Educate yourself music peoples

The SF MusicTech Summit is exactly what it sounds like. A gathering of people in the music industry that focus on tech, or vice versa. What I’ve learned from going for the past few years is the more boring a panel sounds the more interesting they usually turn out to be, and vice versa.

It’s all on the moderators and how well they can steer the conversation to the crucial topics of the moment. Equally as important is if the panelists make up an equal representation of the different viewpoints and how well they can express their side through stories and experiences (in a timely manner). And there just happens to be one panel that especially did that.

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[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/150967879" params="color=000000&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="20" iframe="true" /]