As many of you probably noticed, YouTube’s music page has been overhauled, and a key feature has been added: a recommendation engine for music videos based both on your settings, preferences and these clips that your friends are sharing.

In practice, this turns YouTube into a tool for discovery that makes me think a lot of the days in which MTV actually played music.

Such a move was long due in the face of competing services such as The Hype Machine and Pandora, and it was somehow announced just a couple of weeks ago with the release of LeanBack (a service for discovering videos based on what your friends are watching).

The advantage that the “new” YouTube Music page has got over services like The Hype Machine is that everything gains a visual dimension – we are comparing a service for discovering videos with another for finding only new audio tracks to play. I think that explains why I compared the site with “classic” MTV at the beginning. Check it for yourself here, and see if it also lets you revive some good memories.

"Baby", The First Single From Justin Bieber's "My World 2.0" Has Become The Most Viewed Music Video Ever On The Internet

Just when you thought that nobody could displace Lady Gaga from her high throne and top the successes of the internet artist par excellence, along comes Justin Bieber and grabs the distinction of having the most watched online music video ever. I guess the app for keeping Bieber out of the Internet wasn’t that effective after all.

The song that has achieved that marvelous feat is no other than “Baby” (where Justin is accompanied by rapper Ludacris). Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” now lags slightly behind. I have embedded the video below. Proceed at your own discretion.

The Way You Should Hold An iPhone 4 In Order To Avoid Antenna Problems. Either That, Or Get A Case.

Many touted the release of the iPhone 4 as one of the events of the year. It turned out they were right – the amount of press we have seen over the last month was unprecedented, but for all the wrong reasons. The iPhone 4 proved not to work if held in a certain position, and that made things tricky for right-handed people, and downright impossible for left-handed ones.

Reports began springing up incessantly until Dave Letterman himself did a parody of the whole situation, and a consumer report advised people to buy an iPhone 3GS instead. At that point, Apple swung into action fast. Earlier today they held a conference in which Steve Jobs acknowledged that the problems existed, and that customers were to receive a free case that prevents the problem of blocking the antenna from happening.

But before the announcement was made, Internet performer Jonathan Mann (known for recording and releasing one song a day) had time to write a song about the whole antenna fiasco and post the video for all to see on his site. It is named “The iPhone Antenna Song”. Will it go down in history as the official soundtrack to antennagate? Judge it for yourself:

June was very rewarding if only because I managed to cover three unsigned Uruguayan artists over the course of the month: Mal Yo, Laiojan Sebastian and Lucía Ferreira. The three of them are very promising bands and solo performers, and Laiojan Sebastian in particular was the reason I began writing about unsigned artists on MusicKO. Their inclusion on the blog was long due.

The one new artist that I added to the blog was The Divine Comedy – you can read the general introduction here, and a review of “A Secret History – The Best Of The Divine Comedy” here.

The startups that I covered during June were the social network SeeJoeRock, Mixtap.in (a site that brings mixtapes back for good), and the Tony-B Machine, a great resource for those wanting to create electronic music. I also covered TasteBuds, a site that will let you find that special other based on the music that you like.

And the entrepreneurs and startup founders that I interviewed were Majid ALSarra (from Lyreach), Caroline Bottomley (from Radar Music Videos) and Tony Bouchereau (creator of The Tony-B Machine)

Lastly, make sure to check out the most visited post of the whole month: Steve Moore, the mad drummer!

As one could have guessed from the latest figures that were released, the growth of Vevo is not stopping anytime soon. Last week saw the addition of a new channel, and one that could modify the way people experience the video platform for the better.

Named “The Next Wave presented by Schick Hydro”, the channel is basically a showcase for new talent. Unfortunately, not every kind of new artist could be featured there – only those who are signed to any of the three record companies that have partnered with YouTube (remember, Vevo is a joint venture comprising Google, Universal, Sony and investor Abu Dhabi Media Company) have a chance to be spotlighted .

The idea is clearly to give these artists that have already been signed a chance to become a new sensation to rival others like Lady Gaga (who is responsible for the bulk of visits Vevo has every month).

If anything, the inclusion of such a channel leaves the doors wide open to the addition of channels completely devoted to new artists. We’ll see – and maybe sooner than we all expect…

Vevo (a joint venture among Google and Universal, Sony and investor Abu Dhabi Media Company) launched in December 2009 as a way to bridge the distance that was still left between online music videos and “traditional” videos. Most of all, it was conceived as a brand-new way to serve ads to viewers.

Both Sony and Universal feature their content from A to Z on the video portal, whereas Warner (a company that has always been labeled as square by musicians and fans alike) might start feeding its own content, too.

That comes as no surprise. In April 2010,Vevo managed to climb to No. 4 on comScore’s list of sites ranked by unique viewers. During that month, it was estimated that one out of four individuals watching an online video was doing so on Vevo.

Look at the stats:

I have also read a study that says we watch approximately 2 minutes per video. According to these graphs, this means that each of us must have watched roughly 5 and a half hours of online videos during April.  That amounts to something like 11 minutes of videos per day.

I don’t know how accurate do these numbers sound to you. I can tell you as a fact that I have found myself landing a lot on Vevo recently when merely carrying Google searches – that didn’t happen with such a frequency before.

What do you think? Are these stats accurate? Do you spend more time watching videos at work than ever before? Or is Google’s Pacman the one and only thing you have to plead guilty to as far as your productivity went in the past months?

Do you remember MTV’s “Wanna Be A VJ” show? If you do, then I am sure you will find the latest tournament hosted by the network interesting. It revolves around the search of a DJ for its Twitter stream. This is going to be called as a TJ (“Twitter Jockey”) and 20 candidates are going to vie for the coveted prize.

The competition is obviously going to take place online, and the big finale will take the shape of a live show to be broadcast on August 8. The audience will pick the winner right there and then.

The TJ will then be online at all times, although he won’t have the same degree of exposition that VJs used to have. At any rate, the TJ will attend events and even receive a six-figure salary. Not bad for coming up with 140-word updates, wouldn’t you say?

A video that is going viral any minute now, this chap plays the drums as if there were no tomorrow. And he doesn’t miss a single beat. Amazing.

This chap goes by the name of Steve Moore, and he has already been dubbed “The Mad Drummer” for reasons that are obvious once you have seen him in action.

I bet this is his final gig with these yellow-jacketed fellows. And I am also sure we are going to see a lot more of him in the future.

Enjoy the video. The song is ZZ Top’s classic “Sharp Dressed Man”, by the way.

Facebook privacy this, Facebook privacy that… it looks like the whole world can’t find anything else to talk about. And while the topic at hand is a legit cause of concern, it seems not enough people are worried enough to change their ways and turn their backs on the site that experts claim will revolutionize the Internet like Google did in the ‘90s when it introduced AdSense.

Well, that is the impression I am left with after seeing the results of the official “Quit Facebook Day” that took just place on the 31st of May. Can you guess how many people quitted Facebook from the 400,000,000 users that the network has? A staggering 20,000. Hey, no, wait, that’s not it – 20,000 folks pledged to quit. The actual number of people who jumped ship must have been much lower. The word “flop” doesn’t get much more suitable than this.

So, did something good come out of the official “Quit Facebook Day”? Well, this music video is the closest thing I managed to find. It is a parody rap anthem by SeanieMic, and it is named… “I’m Quitting You Facebook”.

Pretty cool. If you liked it, give this previous post a try – it includes a metal hair anthem by Back Of The Class called “My Mom’s On Facebook”. Lots of fun too.

One of the most eclectic months since I started the blog, in May I covered many events like the passing of Lena Horne, the emergence of Greyson Chance and the latest instrument being developed by Roger Linn – all while providing coverage on artists I had already introduced you to. Albums reviewed included Tom Petty’s “Full Moon Fever” and “Into The Great Wide Open”, whereas I also reviewed “The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3” and Richard Thompson’s “Mirror Blue”.

What’s more, The Kinks were (finally!) added to the roll of artists featured on MusicKO

The startups I reviewed this month were SongVote, Radar Music Videos, G2, Lyreach and BuyWidget. And I managed to interview James Fontana from SongVote, and the two founders of a startup I had covered in April: Earwurm.

Finally, I am very pleased with the way the coverage of Uruguayan musicians has evolved. In addition to reviewing Sordromo’s “Salvando La Distancia” I posted a classic audio clip (Jorge Nasser beating some radio hosts that got too cheeky), and I covered a new unsigned artist: Retrocedonia. Best of all, one of the bands I collaborate with shot its first video. The band is RostbiF, and the song is “En Una Lágrima”.