stellargirl returns

if you're feeling sinister...

I should first mention, as I have already several times on Twitter, that this Belle & Sebastian radio station I made on Pandora is absolutely, categorically one of the most amazing stations ever! For all you Belle & Sebastian fans out there, I have even better news! This Saturday, May 10th, National Mechanics and Philebrity are hosting the 4th Annual Belle & Sebastian Dance Party. If you're looking to see other people, sleep the clock around, or wait for the moon to rise... this is the place to be! If you can't make it to this, well then you're just a baby!

Since you'll be in the neighborhood, it might also be a good time to head over to Independents Hall for the Battlestar Galactica Party, brought to you by Geekadelphia, The Hacktory and of course Indy Hall. I hear there will be Cyclon raider cookies and Battlestar shaped cake brought to you by the sweetest girl in town, Whipped Bakeshop. RSVP on Facebook.

adding an album has never been easier!

Hey wow. It looks like Typepad made an update to their album typelist functionality and that makes me pretty happy! I've bitched about the limited functionality previously, specifically how sometimes the wrong album title/art will come up when you try to add a new album to the list. Typepad was super responsive, commenting on this very blog with a suggestion: adding the ASIN# directly from Amazon. It is a bit of a hack, for sure, but it did the job ok. Mostly I was pleased with their customer service and responsiveness.. thanks Typepad!

But NOW, now things have gotten sort of interesting. When you go to add an album, you get a keyword search box - awesome!

Type in your album / artist name... and voila! All kinds of results! I tested this out with Prefuse 73 and was presented with an array of options:

And as you can see, I added Preparations to my Listening to... list. That was easy and fun. Yay.

If you're looking for a new mellow pandora station, I've been listening to my Badass DJs station all week... it's really mellow, but has enough electronic beats to keep me focused at work. Try it out.

listen to this: sharon jones & the dap-kings

I first read about Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings on Perez Hilton sometime last year. Perez, a longtime fan of Amy Winehouse (thankfully taking her to task for her general crackheaded-ness), revealed that the Dap-Kings were the real sound behind the jazzy Miss Winehouse.

I listened to a hot track on Perez's site (he does have pretty darn good taste in music), and meant to follow up, but no big suprise, got distracted. Fast forward to present day. Current musical inspiration is all Pandora all the time (please Pandora, don't ever go away) -- the PERFECT way to dig right into a song or a sound...

Sharon Jones Radio did not disappoint. If you're feeling funky today, take a listen.

The world just got a little bit brighter. Thanks Miss Jones.

more new music: enon

I realize that the moment I said that I was going to blog a lot more this month, I crawled under a rock. Not enough time to give you a proper blog post, but I do want to share with you my Stereolab radio station on Pandora. It's been delivering delicious synth-pop to my ears all week. Stereolab is one of my all time favorite bands, and the music pandora is serving up according to the Music Genome Project has been super fantastic. Today's favorite is any of the music from Enon's Lost Marbles and Exploded Evidence. Take a listen.

the return of last.fm

According to last.fm, these are my top artists of October 2005:

1. My Morning Jacket
2. Billy Bragg & Wilco
3. Guided by Voices
4. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
5. Hem
6. Stereolab
7. Kings of Convenience
8. Cat Stevens
9. Prefuse 73
10. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

I may have written about last.fm in a pandora related post last year, about my reasons for leaving it... (mostly job related). But now I AM BACK! And I get to have the best of both worlds, pandora + last.fm (and I am LOVING running pandora through pandorajam).

While I obviously still LOVE pandora, it's cool to have all of my music toys playing nice together so I still get to hear tons of new music and also have some data about what I am listening to. Somehow, seeing it all logged and analyzed makes it all worth it! And it's also handy for referring new music to others.

Add me as your friend on last.fm today!

keep internet radio alive

I have been really remiss in writing anything about the issues facing internet radio these days.  I think I have been taking for granted the fact that I have constant access to all of my favorite music via my pandora stations.  I would hate to see it go away.  So without further ado, I give you the following eloquent and informative message from Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.

Hi, it's Tim from Pandora,

I'm writing today to ask for your help.  The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora.  The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all.  Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters.  I hope that you will consider joining us. 

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better. 

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception.  As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians.  The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential. 

I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

amy winehouse

I have been reading about Amy Winehouse nonstop on Perez Hilton for the last few months, but it wasn't until last night in the sushi restaurant by my yoga studio that I actually heard her new album.  To say she kicks complete ass would be a huge understatement.  Luckily, Pandora is awesome and I have already created a station based on her tunes.  Good stuff.

everything all the time

Recently, thanks to pandora, I have come across the musical genius that is Band of Horses. I've been a fan of both My Morning Jacket and Neil Young for a while now, so Band of Horses is really a natural extension of that genre.  Some might say they are too similar to the aforementioned musicians, but I say they are more like a balance of what you love about each one.  I won't try to sell you on BOH with ironic puns or complicated musical terms. Simply put, every single song of theirs that comes on my mellow indie station is 100% fantastic and exactly what I want to hear at that moment.  So I think that's worth bringing them to your attention, should you be looking for some new music. Here's a link to Everything All the Time on Amazon, if that's your thing.

audio ads on pandora

Recently, while listening to Pandora during work, I heard an audio ad for McDonald's Dollar Menu.  I was surprised, freaked out, annoyed, and quite frankly, a little scared that more ads were on the way.  I started feeling like the whole Pandora phenomenon was becoming too good to be true.  I visited their blog to see if there was any mention of it and noticed that there were a series of new comments regarding the ads in their upgrade post from December.  Generally, people were not too happy and felt that Pandora was better than that. Listeners could understand that there is a need for an expanded source of revenue, but that didn't mean they liked it, particularly having those audio ads coming from such a corporate behemoth like Mickey D's.

Now, y'all know that I love Pandora.  It suits my lifestyle very well since I am one of those sedentary folks who stares at a computer all day (but I still walk several miles a day!).  I also tap it into it at home quite frequently.  I'm totally hooked.  Thinking about audio ads becoming a more prevalent part of Pandora really got me thinking (briefly) that perhaps I have been giving them too much credit. 

I'm over that. They have a great new post on their blog all about the audio ads.  They give more information about the what and the why and discuss the reactions from the listeners.  They said they would try to give more of a heads-up next time when they are trying something new, but either way, their doors are open, they are listening to their listeners.  They are still totally awesome in my book (and in my ears!).

If you haven't started listening yet, start today.

noticing the obvious

There are a few web applications that I interact with on a regular basis, such as Pandora and Flickr.  This week, I have made a new discovery on each site.

Pandora: Playing Bookmarked Songs
I've been challenging myself to bookmark more songs on my Pandora profile. And I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but you can hear a sample of each song by clicking the play icon to the left of each song name.  I had it in my head that because of so many licensing issues, you can't listen to songs "on demand." Mind you, these aren't full songs, but they do give you a solid taste of what the music sounds like.  If I do bookmark a song, it's often because it stands out in the playlist, and this is a good way to revisit these songs and share them with others.

Flickr: Archives
Recently I was looking for some photos I had taken at a certain point last year.  I took a glance at my sets page to see if I could find it that way, but this particular series was not in a set.  I started clicking through each page, manually increasing the page number in the url so that I could jump back a month or so further (I know, crazy).  For some, it might be blaringly obvious to notice that Flickr contains an Archives option in the navigation.  I, however, did not ever really pay attention to it, until the other day when a friend posted her photos online via a specific archives link.  For example, here are all the photos I took in 2005.  Now, here is a detailed view of all of the photos I took in September 2005.  Here is a list view, and my personal favorite: the calendar view!  I realllllly love the calendar view.

So, just a few fun discoveries to notice and explore.  People interact with applications and software in different ways and with different purpose, so from time to time, I like to call out the things that improve my experience in hopes that others may also benefit.