Meeting Russ Solomon

Spent an hour Friday in the corporate headquarters of Tower Records in West Sacramento, CA. Boxes line the hallways and offices, and employees are emailing last farewells, as the once-mighty retailer slides into bankruptcy -- and perhaps new life under new ownership.

I met Tower founder Russ Solomon (snapped the photo above) and will have a video interview with him up, perhaps Christmas week.

5 big ideas for little companies

Kevin Smokler: Pandora, and 5 Big Ideas for Little Companies.

2006: The Year of You

It's only Dec. 10, but the Sunday New York Times has a couple of end-of-the-year round-ups already:

• Music: 2006, Brought to You by You.

"User-generated content” [is] the paramount cultural buzz phrase of 2006. It’s a term that must appeal to the technocratic instincts of investors. I prefer something a little more old-fashioned: self-expression. Terminology aside, this will be remembered as the year that the old-line media mogul, the online media titan and millions of individual Web users agreed: It demands attention.

It’s on Web sites like YouTube, MySpace, Dailymotion, PureVolume, GarageBand and Metacafe. It’s homemade art independently distributed and inventively promoted. It’s borrowed art that has been warped, wrecked, mocked and sometimes improved. It’s blogs and open-source software and collaborative wikis and personal Web pages. It’s word of mouth that can reach the entire world. ...

• Media Frenzy: The Hat Trick That Didn’t Happen.

Mobile media: On its face, the beauty of mobile is that you should be able to do anything with it that you can on the Web — only while on the move. Simple, right? The problem is that, unlike the Web, cellular networks are privately owned and most things that media companies are trying to do require — at the very least — technical clearances from the cellphone operators to push material through their networks. ...

'Up in Flames'

A new music video from Ralph Buckley on Blip: Up in Flames.

A breakthrough move on Apple tunes

CNET: A breakthrough move on Apple tunes (and they used, with permission, a photo of Monique Farantzos I took and posted on Flickr).

Music companies now own part of YouTube

Thursday's NY Times:

Three of the four major music companies  —  Vivendi’s Universal Music Group,  Sony and Bertelsmann’s jointly owned Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and the Warner Music Group — each quietly negotiated to take small stakes in YouTube as part of video- and music-licensing deals they struck shortly before the sale, people involved in the talks said yesterday.

'Free Josh Wolf,' the song

Ralph Buckley has a new song titled Free Josh Wolf. Here's a live performance.

New recipe for the music industry

Wired magazine: Release a traditional 13-track cd? No thanks, says Beck. Instead, he serves up a collection of songs, remixes, and videos that fans can piece together any way they want. A Q&A.

Move over, MTV

Business Week: Move Over, MTV. A growing number of Web sites are using music videos to lure young people and steal some of MTV's market share.

The future of music and media

I spent an hour in San Francisco this afternoon on a panel at Bandwidth, a conference about the intersection of music and technology, a subject I wrote about in Darknet. Fellow panelists included Maryrose Dunton, Director of Product Management, YouTube; David Todd, VP of Content, eyespot and Sudhin Shahani, CEO, Musicane; moderator was Kevin Crouse, Product Manager, MP3.com. Not sure if the session was podcast or videotaped. About 150 people were in the audience.

We chatted about the major music labels, business models, user-generated video, independent music, mobile platforms, ecommerce and where all this is headed. Maryrose Dunton was particularly perceptive about YouTube's lynchpin role -- and responsibilities -- at the center of the personal media revolution.

Also bumped into Ted Cohen, who left EMI Music to co-found his own consultancy; author-consultant Kelli Richards; Brian Zisk of the Future of Music Coalition; Robert Kaye of MusicBrainz; attorney Colette Vogele; Morty Wiggins and Shane Tobin of Outhink, and several others. A pretty good gathering.