Monthly Archives: August 2011

La Medio Siglo (Uruguayan Independent Artist)

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"Altos Con Rulos" By La Medio Siglo

It’s official: humankind is ending on the 15th of March, 2012, and the world will be left spinning like a loony balloon. Well, Facebook is going to bite the dust right there and then. Which for quite a handful of people is roughly the same thing. They won’t be able to spy on their exes, they won’t be able to insult others indirectly, they won’t be able to tag people in insalubrious pictures… they will have to learn to do without all that. Like my reclusive namesake in robes of white once wrote, “How dreary—Marbles—After playing Crown”.

Me? Since I’m a very balanced sort of fellow, and as calm as a fruit stand in New York, I won’t miss any of the things listed above. I will, however, miss befriending young bands there. My, the number of “musical” friends I’ve got easily offsets my “real life” friends. And my “real life friends” count seems to be dwindling, too. Last week, my two BFF (that’s “Best Friends Forever”, in case you don’t listen to Taylor Swift) said they were going to buy pizza, and they never came back! Sigh…

Well, I guess I’ll have to soldier on. And hold onto the remnants of the day, celebrating all these truly motivated bands I’m still getting to know through the Winklevoss twins’ main claim to fame. The most recent one is La Medio Siglo [The Half-Century], a Uruguayan unit that plays a very energetic mixture of rock and funk.

The band is made up of the communal mystique of Paul Higgs (guitar, vocals), Thomas Bate (guitar), Pablo Deferrari (bass) and Manuel Souto (drums), and its first EP has just been issued. It’s titled “Altos Con Rulos” [Tall And Curly], and it’s available for free on La Medio Siglo’s official website.

Leaving aside the title track (which is just a spirited way to start proceedings),
the EP has got four songs where teenage staples are articulated over music that is muscular and very well-written, with exciting dynamics and histrionics. I recall that the first time I chatted with Paul Higgs (the band’s guitarist and singer) my first remark upon listening to one of the cuts on the EP (which they were recording and mixing back then) was “Shit, you guys have got quite a swing!”. I actually said that aloud as I was typing the words down, and I swear I sounded as earnest as Samuel L. Jackson when he went “Snakes in the motherfuckin’ plane!”. Continue reading →

Spotify Has 1.4 Million Users In America

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It’s been four weeks now since Spotify launched in the US, and statistics are beginning to surface. Just last week I told you about these songs being shared more recurrently by users of the service. Well, now I’ve got something even yummier for you: the actual number of people who have signed up for the service.

According to All Things Digital, Spotify has captured the eardrums of no less than 1.4 million American users.

“Wait, what’s the deal?”, I hear you say. “Facebook has got more than 700 million users! That’s a tiny drop in the ocean!”

To that I can answer categorically “No, it’s not”.
Just to put things in perspective, Rhapsody has 800,000 registered users. And it took Rhapsody 10 years to get there. So, Spotify is doing things right so far. Specially when we take into account that out of these 1.4 million users, 175.000 have bought a subscription. That’s a conversion rate of approximately 12 %.

If Spotify manages to keep the momentum going, one year to this date it should have hit 20 million users. And if the conversion rate remains the same, about 3 million of these are going to be paying for the service.

Nogeno – Free Pages For Artists

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Name: Nogeno
URL: http://www.nogeno.com

Nogeno is the latest site to be released that makes having a profile page where to promote your music an absolute piece of cake. Thanks to Nogeno, just any musician can have an active presence on the Internet, and include everything from a short bio to a calendar listing his every upcoming date. And all the songs he has recorded so far, of course. He can stream these online by way of the provided player, and also sell them for good money. Any musician who uses Nogeno can start generating a direct income, without A & R men getting in the way of what is rightfully his.

A Nogeno page can be created in a breeze, there’s just nothing technical to do or handle – such is the beauty of sites like this and Onesheet. All you have to do in order to get started is sign in using your Facebook account.

And note that if you already have a Bandcamp or a MySpace profile then you can have all your data imported into Nogeno, and be up and running within minutes. In no case will you have to pay anything – Nogeno is free, and (by the looks of it) will remain like that for good.

The Most Shared Playlists On Spotify

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Now that Spotify is firmly established on American soil, it’s time to see exactly the kind of music that people are not only listening to but also sharing through it.

This infograph (from ShareMyPlaylists.com) sheds some light on that subject. It basically highlights these songs that have been featured on the largest number of Spotify playlists so far.

Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us” is on top with a whooping 7567 total shares. And the second and third place are taken by “Like A G6” (Far East Movement) and “Sexy Bitch” (David Guetta and Akon).

MPlayr – Listen To Music Charts On Your Browser

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Name: MPlayr
URL: http://www.mplayr.com

MPlayr is one of the best ways to stay abreast of what is being played on some of the most representative music charts the world over. On this site, you can tune into the US and the UK music charts, and learn what sounds are trending there. And I mean it – the site lets you do more than just read a list of songs ranking in either territory, it actually lets you listen to them online. That can be done directly on your browser. You won’t have to download anything, and you won’t have to pay anything either.

What’s more, the site has a chart devoted to iTunes. Again – you can see what’s hot in there, and listen to it straight in your browser.

Other meritorious aspects of MPlayr include letting people look up both new and old songs and have them played on the fly, and letting users create playlists they can then share with all their friends on Facebook (the one service which is used for signing in). Continue reading →

Month In Review – July 2011

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More Uruguayan artists than you could shake a stick at were featured on MusicKO this month. These included Andrea Deleón Santos, Casablancas, ELSANTOREMEDIO and Closet. The videos for “Decidir” (Andrea Deleón Santos), “Please Don’t Be Like Me” (Casablancas) and “POU” (Closet) were all listed on the blog as the month ran its course. And the download link for ELSANTOREMEDIO’s first album was made available on this post.

I also managed to cover a good range of web apps and sites for musicians/music lovers on July. In order of appearance, these were LYRICSnMUSIC, OneSheet, Jazz Cypher and Fuse Trade. And as far as interviews were concerned, I did the digital equivalent of sitting down for a chat with Anton Naumovets from PitchImprover and Chris from Jazz Cypher.

And if you’re looking for an outright chance to relieve some tension, then check Incubattle out. By jingo, these Incubus folks do know how to promote an album!