Thanks to the amazing Shazam app on iTunes, I was able to easily grab it and then grab the link from Grooveshark.

All the Music You Could Ever Want

Online music sites have the solution: they have pretty much every song out there, and most sites give you the listening experience for free, or very little cost.

Grooveshark, in particular is amazing if you haven’t yet been exposed. The library is built from user generated content from across the globe, giving it a catalog that is essentially, limitless. Searching, navigating and playing is music is as easy as navigating an iPod.

Autoplay is Genius!

The true genius in Grooveshark lies in the Autoplay feature, which was Genius before it was an Apple-feature.

You put the songs into your playlist (queue) of your choosing, hit Autoplay, and you will receive new music inserted into your queue, based on the similarities of the songs currently residing in your queue.

You can + (smile) – (frown) and <3 (heart) songs based on how good the recommendations are. The more you contribute to the system, the better it gets, and the better the Autoplay session is.

iTunes + Grooveshark = Heaven?

Okay, so if we can figure out how to mashup Grooveshark into iTunes it would be the ultimate slice of heaven, perhaps via a plugin that lets you insert songs into your playlists for any tracks you’re missing?

Ideas are a plenty, so let us know your thoughts on the perfect music mashup.

But the truth is, Limewire is being sued to all oblivion by the RIAA and has so far been able to hold off a judgement on the lawsuit and has even sent the lawsuit up to the Supreme Court.

Google Is More Efficient than Limewire

Aside from the fact that the Limewire lawsuit hasn’t been settled yet, we still have Google offering, arguably better functionality for finding free MP3s than Limewire, without any major repercussions form the RIAA.

In the video below, we can see how to find almost any MP3, ebooks, etc. all for free, all from the Google search bar.

Significant Non-infringing Uses

Google caches search results to make the user experience better and to increase their quality of service. During this caching process, everything gets included, including MP3s, videos, etc.

Google’s position has been that they are simply a ‘search engine’ with ‘significant non-infringing uses’ which has enabled them to pretty much steer clear of the majority of the lawsuits.

This is similar to what Veoh has done in regards to their battles with the MPAA.

Veoh and Google Are the Pioneers

The reason this defense is so important is the user-experience really is the key element here. The RIAA doesn’t understand how to monetize content in this web 2.0 world. People like Google and Veoh clearly do, and by being able to continue to operate, they’re generating revenue and proving a new business model for people to follow in the future.

Without these web pioneers, we’re going to be stuck trying to drill for oil instead of trying to invent solar power that’s going to change the world.

Do you think Google should try to block this content or do the means justify the ends?

Usability Does Not Equal Profitability

Pandora has done a great job of capturing music fans attention with their 1-step programmable radio station, however, I think they may have done too good of a job.

To get started on Pandora, you type in the artist you’re looking for, hit play, and you can get a steady stream of music that you’ll like for the next 12 hours.

The problem is: you never go back to the site. You simply keep the site open in another tab, and go about your day’s business. Interaction is key to capturing more pageviews, and generating more advertising revenue for your company, but Pandora’s ease of use is counter-intuitive to this model.

Press Play and Call it a Day

With Pandora’s recommendation system, the majority of content you’re going to hear leaves little room for error, so a user isn’t going to be constantly going back to the site to +/- songs, and being forced to limit the number of times a user can skip a song further deters users from interacting with the site.

There’s not enough interaction on the site to keep the user engaged. Pandora may be receiving over 200k visitors per day, but how many of them are actively interacting with the site? They may be at work, completing work, or chatting on IM or just leaving the music on while they clean the house. The point is, they’re not interacting with Pandora as a service, Pandora is just the background music.

This is a great problem to have if you’re streaming roll-through advertising and each listener can ‘hear’ your ads, but that’s not the case. Pandora has put a hard-line against audio advertising, which we may seem them going away from in the very near future.

An Engaged Viewer is Worth Eight Regular Viewers

“an engaged viewer is worth eight regular viewers” – OMD research

Comparing Grooveshark to Pandora is night-and-day. On Grooveshark there are any myriad of actions a user can take: search for a song, add a song to a playlist, view similar songs, smile songs, frown songs, share songs. All of which help to engage the user.

Pandora’s solution lies in their application. Sure, audio ads will help them meet their bottomline, but their inherent flaw is what makes them so great. It’s dead-simple to listen to great radio, but great-radio doesn’t keep people engaged and selling advertising.

Here’s What Pandora Should Do

Pandora should be actively looking to license out their radio as custom applications for portals. If users are going to be listening to Pandora radio in another tab, and browsing someone elses site, you might as well get the Pandora player on the other sites, and start bringing in the licensing royalties.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to listen to music while shopping on your favorite online retailers? You listen to radio while you’re in their brick and mortar stores, why not online?

Do you have any suggestions for Pandora as they try to further monetize their highly successful product?

I still think a majority of good content is discovered through TV and alternative mediums, music labels just need to find a way to capture this gold.

Below is the full list of presenters:

Monday, September 8, 2008

Session 1: Youth and Culture. 9:00-10:15am

* Blah Girls – Backed by Ashton Kutcher, Blah Girls is a gossip site that features a group of animated teenage girls who provide opinions on what’s going on in the world of entertainment.
* Tweegee (CB) — A hub for tweens, Tweegee offers the youth market a suite of online tools for social interaction and organization.
* Shryk (CB) — Web-based financial software for children aimed at promoting financial literacy and good saving habits.
* Hangout Industries (CB) — Blends social networking with virtual worlds by creating a 3D, online environment where 16-24 year olds can chat and share media

Session 2: Memes & News. 10:30 – 11:45am

* DotSpots (CB) — Tracks the memes spreading across the web, aggregates the content associated with them, and gives everyone Wikipedia-like control over that content.
* Angstro (CB) — Lets you set up a feed of news about your friends, instead of news by your friends.
* LiveHit (CB) — Tracks the music, videos, and entertainment sites people are clicking on right now.
* Quant the News (CB) — Creator of StockMood.com, a service that tracks the sentiments of online news stories about stocks and then measures their potential impact on the direction of those stocks’ prices

Session 3: Enterprise. 2:30 – 3:45pm

* FairSoftware (CB) — Creates virtual shares around software projects that gives each contributor a portion of any resulting revenues.
* Yammer (CB) — A web application designed for businesses and organizations that asks its users to answer the question, “What are you working on?”
* Connective Logic (CB) — Along with the company’s real-time middleware, Blueprint will make it easier for developers to design, generate code, and deploy complex multi-core software applications without requiring expertise in multi-threaded software development
* Devunity (CB) — A platform for writing code in a browser-based editor that doesn’t force developers to use a proprietary layer
* OpenTrace – Traces items through the supply chain and adds them together to show the impact of products on the environment

Session 4: Advertising & Commerce Monetization. 3:45 – 5:00pm

* Burt (CB) — Collects user data to tailor individual advertising campaigns and target users more effectively.
* Adgregate Markets (CB) — Brings the store to consumers through a fully transactional widget.
* Adrocket (CB) — Contextual text-based advertising for email; assigns keywords to each address depending on known data
* OtherInBox (CB) — Provides an easy way to contain spam and the messages you receive from online services

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Session 5: Collaboration. 9:00 – 10:15am

* Tingz (CB) — Offers a unified platform for delivering internet content across multiple devices including mobile phones and PCs
* MIXTT (CB) — A group based social network/dating site that encourages real world interaction that’s more comfortable than the 1-on-1 format of most similar sites.
* Imindi (CB) — Based on neuroscientific principles, Imindi’s Thought Engine tries to exceed human thought and help its users find new ideas, concepts, and questions on the Web
* Popego (CB) — Surfaces the most meaningful information from within your social graph based on your interests and other factors

Session 6: Finance & Statistics. 10:30 -11:45am

* PersonalRIA (CB) — Allows users to shadow a professional investment advisor’s portfolio, automatically executing trades (which most brokerage sites cannot do).
* Emerginvest (CB) — Offers commentary and analysis on Emerging Markets and tools that provide you with information on how to diversify globally.
* ExchangeP (CB) — Dubbed a “fantasy stock market,” ExhangeP’s service allows users to sign up for free and start investing in private companies.
* Me-trics (CB) — Lets you see how mood, weight, and goals correlate with other metrics, including web services like Facebook or RescueTime.
* iCharts (CB) — YouTube for interactive charts.

Session 7: Mobile. 2:15 – 3:30pm

* Mytopia (CB) — A gaming platform that lets players compete across mobile devices and social networks.
* Tonchidot (CB) — Makes the Sekai Camera, a camera system that aims to merge the virtual and real worlds by using a digital device as a viewfinder.
* Mobclix (CB) — An analytics and monetization platform for iPhone developers
* FitBit (CB) — Developing a small wireless sensor called the Fitbit Tracker, which automatically records data about a person’s activities, calories burned, sleep quality, steps, and distance throughout the day

Session 8: Language & Communication Tools. 3:45 – 5:00pm

* Alfabetic (CB) — Translates any blog or Website into another language and places ads alongside it in the new tongue.
* Postbox (CB) — Based on Mozilla technology, Postbox saves users time when looking for particular information within their email
* Swype (CB) — A new method of text input on touch screens; does away with traditional “hunt and peck” in favor of a more fluid motion
* DropBox (CB) — Provides an easy way to backup your files, share them with coworkers and friends, and synchronize them between computers

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Session 9: Rich Media. 9:00 – 10:15am

* VideoSurf (CB) — A visual video search engine that allow users to search across millions of videos for a given actor and to view summaries of videos through a series of detected keyframes
* GazoPa (CB) — An image search engine developed by Hitachi that uses visual similarities between photos to suggest matches (rather than simply relying on keywords).
* Fotonauts (CB) — A photo sharing application that turns every album instantly into a Web page.
* Bojam (CB) — Although there are a slew of online music services already on the Web, Bojam is trying to do something a bit different: it wants to connect musicians and allow them to collaborate over the Web.

Session 10: Games. 10:30 – 11:45am

* Grockit (CB) – A “Massively Multi-Player Online Learning Game”
* Akoha (CB) — A web-based social game played with trading cards aimed at spreading good deeds around the world
* Atmosphir — A platform for creating 3D interactive games by selecting blocks (such as a sand castle tower, fireball-breathing bird, or trap door) and snapping them onto a grid
* PlaYce (CB) — Makes a global playground by providing a 3D virtual world inside the browser for games and social interaction that is based on the real world

Session 11: Vertical Social Networking. 2:15 – 3:30pm

* Birdpost (CB) — A social network for birdwatchers
* Closet Couture – Fashionistas need a social network too and Closet Couture is looking to give them one by connecting them to other fashion lovers, stylists, and retailers
* Footnote – For those that are looking to create historical records of loved ones or themselves, Footnote offers a timeline-based archive
* Causecast (CB) – Causecast leverages social networking to connect nonprofits, leaders, celebrities and brands with those who want to make a difference through good causes
* Shattered Reality Interactive (CB) – A new massively multiplayer online game (think World of Warcraft) that lets the crowd guide the direction of future expansions

Session 12: Research & Recommendations. 3:45 – 5:00pm

* GoodGuide (CB) – Provides information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and companies
* GoPlanit (CB) — A one-click travel planner that assembles a customized trip itinerary with the click of a button; also supports mobile microblogging
* TrueCar (CB) – A site that allows users to assess the current market value of their automobiles in a given geographic area
* Goodrec (CB) – A mobile and online recommendation service that provides brief, to-the-point recommendations from friends and trusted sources

Don’t expect to hit virality with that one big release, it takes time, and if you follow these steps, you can mimick the success we’re now seeing with Grooveshark.

1. Be Everywhere On The Web

Greg Rollet was kind enough to mention us when talking about owning Twitter. If someone utters your name on Twitter, be there to thank them for their support, help them with their question or to learn from their gripes:

When you see these notes come out, whether they be on Twitter or on a blog, the best move is always to say something. Even if the guy is telling you how much he hates your service, you should acknowledge their objection and still thank them for their time. If you listen to someone, no matter how vile they may be, you could end up turning them into one of your biggest advocates. Never miss an opportunity to interact with your users, they’ll remember it and it’ll pay dividends for you later on.

To help you out with monitoring the web, here are a couple of services:

Google Alerts
Sends you an email whenever anyone mentions your name on the web. Sometimes emails are delayed, so if you have a big release coming out, you can ping Google Blog Search every 5 minutes. With enough creativity, Google Alerts can be modified to follow competitors as well as your own properties. I have about 15 different alerts setup and it makes it real easy to have a quick response time to any comments or posts.

TweetScan
Sends you a daily roundup email on every instance of your keyword mentioned on Twitter for that day. Tweetscan is really helpful for doing a bulk @-reply to all your fans, friends, and whiners

2. Be Prepared for Launch Day

When the fate of your entire company can rest on 1 or 2 days, it’s pretty important that your team takes the necessary steps to prepare for launch day. When planning to launch a new product or your simply launch your product for the first time, you must be prepared or it’s all over.

How many times have you seen a startup get on the frontpage of Digg only to be taken down minutes or hours later. Well what if you have this great plan in place, and despite your best efforts, your server meltdown because you couldn’t afford to buy enough resources prior to the launch. Well, what does your 404 Error Page or 500 Error Page look like?

It better be pretty, and explanatory of the situation that’s going on: “We’re sorry, we had such a great response from our fans that our servers took a nose-dive. We’re working as hard as possible to restore service and we wanted to thank you all for your support. Best, XYZ.”

The planning extends from securing every level of coverage, to hardware uptime, to the inevitable downtime or hiccups.

Startups aren’t perfect, don’t think that even because you have $20 million in the bank things are going to be any different. Look at Apple, their market cap is whatever $200 Billion, and their MobileMe launch was horrific.

In the short lifespan of a startup, you only have a few opportunities to show your face to the world. If you fumble your words and end up looking like a moron, your startup career is going to be very shortlived (although you may have a YouTube career on your hands).

Put an action plan in place, stick to it, and plan for the unexpected. You only get 1 or 2 chances to do this right. Being best means being precise executing at maximum efficiency.

3. Get the Interface Right

Speaking from personal experience, if you don’t have a product that wows people from a visual level, you don’t have a very good chance of going viral. Sure, Craigslist isn’t the sexiest site in the world and you can’t say much for Wikipedia, but there are only a handful, and a very select handful at that, of websites that are able to go viral on content alone.

Don’t get me wrong, you need the content, but if your website is sexy as hell, people will make exceptions. It’s a scientific fact that, as a whole, people make exceptions for good looking people and make assumptions about them succeeding, despite knowing nothing about them. The same probably applies to websites, so make sure you’re among the fashion elite.

When designing your website, make sure you have the help of a skilled graphic designer being involved in the process. Have them go through, clean things up, gloss them up, and make sure the site looks really polished. The difference between a clean, well designed site and a, “developer-designed,” site is night and day.

Plus, the truly key element in going viral is making a good first impression. Your goal as a startup entrepreneur is to break into the mainstream audience, and the one thing mainstream people care about is looking good. They can’t tell you a PHP from a P2P, but they can say if something looks good or not.

Using sites like Stumbleupon for advertising is where having a great visual interface really pays off. Stumbleupon costs $.05 per user, and used correctly, can net you tens of thousands of uniques each month for pennies on the dollar. Stumbleupon users will make a decision good or bad on your page based solely on the looks.

If it looks good, they thumbs up, if it looks bad, they thumbs down. Simple as that. Make sure to invest in a really really good graphic designer, otherwise, plan on building out your content to the maximum extent, spending wayyy too much money on advertising, and plan for some tough growing pains.

——-

When looking at our growth, and the reasons people have heard about our site, it’s a combination of a couple of references:

1. Word of mouth
2. Read about you on XYZ website
3. Stumbleupon

And honestly speaking, I think Stumbleupon leads us to the first and second references. People are blown away by the design, they check out the site, they write a blog, and they tell a friend. Rinse, repeat.

If you want to create a community that is best in class, and inspires others to put together “the best of website” lists, you need to be humble, always learning, and cognizant of every detail.

Any tips to share on how your site went viral?

Startups Produce a Better ROI

For startups, the biggest hurdle really is money, money and attention. Rhapsody and Napster are in the limelight all the time. They trade on public stock exchanges, Napster carries HUGE name recognition from the late 90s and eMusic has been one of the staple eTailer of music for the past decade. All of this, and iMeem is still crushing them. iMeem has no commercials on MTV, no $50 million advertising budget, no hardware support, and they were sued by all 4 major labels. Despite their best efforts to raise as little money as possible, and get sued by 4 major labels, iMeem has been able to triumph while these household names have simply fluttered.

So the question is: why is iMeem doing so well? Personally I never had heard of iMeem prior to joining the digital music revolution, and have never really seen any of their ads or widgets or really anything on any of the sites I visit. Are startups simply better at spending limited budgets and squeezing out the best returns?

Any ideas you can throw into the ring as to why iMeem is doing so well? Yes, iMeem is an internet company, but Rhapsody also points users to its Rhapsody.com site to download music (per the VH1 commercials).

When on your account page, enter one of these $5 gift codes. One per person, first-come-first-serve. If you leave a good reason in the comments, I may be able to allocate a couple more

JY4Y4MQ6RASE
A6RXGXBXEXST
QYKUBTSWM7PX
GU2XRDUARSYT
SFAQZ5BA6X4Z
Q6JZMXAZSKRK

Grooveshark is the World’s Music Library

Grooveshark is the first p2p music community to compensate everyone in the value chain. From a $.99 song purchase, $.50-$.70 is paid to the royalty holder, and the remaining $.25 is split between Grooveshark and the user supplying the song. Right now, all $.25 goes to the user to help promote the platform and get more people involved.

Grooveshark’s goal is to provide a secondary retail market for digital music. Imagine if everytime a Ford truck is resold, Ford would receive a royalty. That is essentially the concept Groovshark is looking to build a business around. Once a song is sold a first time, after it enters the Grooveshark system, it can be resold a million more times, with the copyright holder to receive compensation each time.

Take a look around the system and let us know what you think.