Category Archives: Music

A few days ago, the NY Times released this video (that refuses to embed), which was actually captured on the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. It’s a nice moment, because it reminds us that there are enough of us out there to help conquer hate – and we can use the Beatles to do it.

In the video, Pastor Terry Jones is espousing incorrect and offensive rhetoric about Muslims in Times Square. People around him argue, but in the end it’s one guy who raises his voice in “All You Need is Love” who shuts down the speaker. Amazingly, the entire square joins in, singing the Beatles.

I thought it was a wonderful thought for today, the day before Christmas and smack in the middle of the Holiday Season.

No matter what you celebrate, I hope it’s wonderful!

All You Need is Love

This last weekend, the San Francisco Giants played their hardest and entered into the World Series running.

Monster Products loves the Giants so much, they created limited edition Inspiration Orange headphones and gave them to the players.

As you can see (left) Gregor Blanco, Angel Pagan and Joaquin Aris couldn’t leave the locker room without tweeting a picture of them in the locker room!

One of the hottest songs to hit the airwaves over the past few weeks is not something you think would become mainstream. “Gangnam Style“, a song with a rocking beat by the South Korean artist, Psy, has become such a sensation, it’s even been performed by Psy himself on the Today Show during their Toyota concert series. After more than 215 million views on YouTube, this pop sensation has definitely opened itself up to a myriad of spoofs and parodies, including this Chatroulette version and the creative wedding version.

Being here in the tech capital of the world, I suppose it was only a matter of time that it would become a huge hit…and the community definitely did not disappoint.

Organized by Refer.ly co-founder, Danielle Morrill, the startup community put together their own version of “Gangnam Style” and today it was released to the world for everyone to see. It’s a mish-mash of footage from both people who videoed themselves doing the dance and also when Mrs. Morrill’s camera crew went around town collecting footage. But just who in the tech world would best portray the indomitable spirit of Psy? There are obviously a few good choices, but in the startup parody, it actually was a bunch of different people just having fun doing the horse-riding dance and everything else.

One of the hottest songs this summer is not one you would typically think would be this big. It’s amazing that the song people can’t get out of their heads isn’t the ones that are played frequently and practically non-stop (I’m looking at you Gotye), but rather the ones that are remixed over, and over, and over again. This summer, that one re-dubbed song happened to be “Call Me Maybe“, sung by the pop sensation, Carly Rae Jepsen.

Soon after its release, the Internet was abuzz with dozens of remakes of the pop song and included college athletes, Sesame Street, regular individuals, President Obama, and many others. Just doing a search on YouTube will reveal over a couple thousand video remakes of the song. So it was only a matter of time before someone here in the tech community, and in Silicon Valley, no less.

Last night at the launch party for the new African charity, THRIVEgulu, the sensational startup band named feedbomb took the stage to perform a brand new song. In case you don’t know about feedbomb, it’s composed of past and present members of Facebook, including lead singer Randi Zuckerberg, Chris Pan, Andy Barton, Eric Zamore, Robert Johnson, Mike Vernal, Eric Giovanola, Sean Chaffin, and Chris Struhar, the group puts on one hell of a performance singing covers of the best songs of the past few years, and even some familiar oldies. So while at the THRIVEgulu event, their second song just happened to be a brand new one and one that was written by Owen Thomas, the West Coast editor at Business Insider, and it was called, “Fund Me Maybe“.

If the music video killed the radio star, then what kills music videos? Probably online media. We all know that MTV doesn’t have real music television anymore–it’s mostly made up of reality shows and nonsensical programming. So how exactly are musicians and artists going to try and get their name out to the masses and be heard? Well you could try and go with Pandora or even Spotify, but most likely you’re going to need some sort of label backing you in order to be considered to be placed. And another thing you might need to worry about is just how are you going to make sure that your music is shared with the rest of the world–traditional means of distribution just doesn’t have that much widespread appeal or reach anymore…well not compared to leveraging social media.

And that’s where a brand new startup is gearing up to help artists from all genres get noticed and build a better engaged community. Tracks.by is a young company created by two former UStream TV employees who helped offer services to some of their most prominent VIPs, including musical artists. Founders Mazy Kazerooni and Matt Schlicht saw that there was a need for a service to emerge that would help musicians leverage the new forms of communication and get the attention of their fans, without necessarily going through their record labels. In essence, Tracks.by is probably geared towards cutting through the middleman and connecting directly with those most passionate and interested in helping to spread the word about the artist’s work.