They did not blow much shit up in Moneyball.

The Year in Film

Let’s start with the coolest clip this week, a film called The 2011 Portfolio.

It’s a mashup of 166 films that came out in 2011, and it’s really well done. First watch, then we’ll discuss…

Cool, right? But here’s where we get disturbed by what we see:

1) A lot of these movies look like the same movie.
2) Violence, lots. Blowing shit up is just boring. Did Hitchcock need to blow up that much shit? Thought not.
3) I think I counted more blue people than black people. Seriously, there are four blue characters and I think I only saw two black actors, not counting Harold and Kumar, who are, of course, not black. WTF Hollywood? What country do you live in?

Tom Waits Satisfied

What happens when Bob Dylan’s kid shoots a video for Tom Waits? This does. Jesse Dylan directs…

The Black Keys

The Black Keys were all over TV this past weekend, and despite our tease for the SNL performance, they were better on Colbert as SNL continues to lag behind just about everybody in the live mix department…

Lonely Boy performance…

Gold on the Ceiling performance (web only)…

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Emerson College’s WERS/Boston, a non-commercial AAA station asked its audience the following question:

Besides WERS, what other sources are you listening to more for music in the past six months, if any?

Program Director Dan Moore took the answers from the 1044 respondents and put them in tag cloud form. The resulting image is remarkable.

It visualizes what most everyone in music radio knows, but doesn’t really want to talk about.

So dominant is Pandora as a “second choice” for music lovers, it may actually help focus terrestrial radio’s response.

WERS current PD Katie DiMartile (l) along with former PDs Lily Jeong and Dan Moore - both have graduated.

In the case of WERS, the two top up and coming competitors are Pandora and “none.” It’s basically either WERS or Pandora. What to do? Arguably, since WERS cannot out-Pandora Pandora, concentrating on what Pandora cannot do appears to be one strategic path.

In the case of CBS Radio, it’s more of an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” strategy as they roll out Personalized Radio powered by Last.fm.

Check this quote from the Personalized Radio press release:

“Premium content from major market brands like KROQ and WXRT, for example, is in high demand and will continue to foster growth online for many years to come. But in a world where consumers expect more and more control over their audio consumption we’re pleased to provide them with the best of both worlds.”

Makes sense, but what exactly passes for “premium content” these days? An actual announcer?

Actually, KROQ and WXRT do pass the premium content test. But what about everyone else?

Seems to me that traditional music radio still has a few killer apps left. Start with Localism and the role of curator. These are two damn good killer apps — and Pandora certainly can’t deliver on one the first. Entertainment value is another killer app — the “premium content” that the CBS release references.

Unfortunately, more and more music radio stations are ill-equipped to deliver on any of these.

Public radio, with its consumer funded model, is much more in touch with the audience and has been faring better than its commercial counterpart with its “aggregate for the ad agency” model.

The introduction of Arbitron’s Personal People Meter and the ensuing risk aversion displayed by radio programmers may well be the best things to happen to the Pandora team.

Investment in programming talent? Investment in on-air talent? Development of new shows? Take a shot on a new song? A little market research? In a PPM world, these are increasingly crazy ideas.

And it’s all music to Pandora’s ears.

-Paul Marszalek

Cher This

Crummy iPhone 3G shot of the Music Meeting. Kot, DeRogatis, and Coakely.

Sean Coakely of Songlines immediately knew he was in trouble.

For years he had hosted he annual Music Meeting — a generally boisterous session where radio and music industry types, as well as local radio listeners took part in your basic “rate-a-record.”

Play about a minute of a brand new song, rate it from 1 to 10. Try to guess who it is — you get the idea.

Previous to this year, the fun was to see the scoring differences between the listeners and the insider crowd, who tended to be more critical.

The occasional trashing of a record has made it increasingly difficult for labels to even want to participate in the Music Meeting for fear of their new song being dead on arrival at radio. But on the whole, the sessions tended to be civil with just one or two outbreaks.

Not this year.

Guest panelists were veteran music journalists and critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis, who in addition to writing, host a successful talk-about-music show called Sound Opinions on Public Radio. (Note moving forward that the show is not based in music criticism, there’s much more.)

At this year’s meeting, the sound guy rolled a new Jayhawks song. Up went placards ranging from 6 to 9. And then DeRogatis held up a 1. Kot followed suit with a lowball rating.

One could feel the air go right out of the room. Really? The Jayhawks? A ONE?

WTF? On the Jayhawks worst day they couldn’t produce a one. DeRogatis and Kot talked a bit about a low-rent Byrds, and that Gary Louris was capable of better arrangements and so on. Seriously.

Moderator Coakely was now in the position of preventing the session from devolving into a piranha-like feeding frenzy.

DeRogatis, in referencing that he teaches music criticism at Columbia College in Chicago, said that, unfortunately, “critic” has come to mean “someone who tears things down, but it’s not that.” Yet snarky tear-downs permeated the proceedings.

It got so rough that Binky Phillips, the New York musician/writer/scenester, chimed in from the crowd about the new Heavenly States song called Berlin Wall. Sung by guest vocalist Britt Daniel of Spoon, and a crowd favorite, Phillips complained from the audience about the chord changes and lack of creativity.

I’m not sure if he was serious. I’m desperately hoping that he was subversively mocking the whole Music Meeting concept. But I’m not sure he was.

With rare exception, Kot and DeRogatis panned songs, and as they did so, I began wondering about what it means to be a music critic in today’s environment. Increasingly I’ve wondered, “Are music critics obsolete?”

With all of the potential resources for checking out new music, are we not qualified to critique for ourselves?

I am, myself, a recovering critic. Like most of my fellow radio colleagues, for years I thought that my opinion mattered. I lived in a fantasy that my tastes and opinions could guide a radio station to success.

Eventually, I learned that my role was that of a curator and not a critic. The job was to find things that, based on feedback, the audience might enjoy — challenging them once in a while along the way. As I got better at this, my stations, shows, and productions all had more success.

I am now clean for more than 15 years – haven’t read a review. When All Things Considered rolls into one of their 5 minute time killers near the top of the hour, I’m gone. Do we really need a review of the new Death Cab for Cutie? No thanks. Not useful.

The fundamental problem I have with critics is not that they tear things down, but that it’s a fairly easy gig.

Critics do not have to act. They only react.

And this is not Newtonian, where the energies are equal. More energy is in the action. Less energy in the reaction.

With regard to the role of a music critic today, WXPN General Manager Roger LeMay suggested that the role was that of a conversation starter. I think that makes a lot of sense, and it may be one of the reasons Sound Opinions works. Among the best parts of the show is the audience reaction — sometimes letting the guys have it.

But there’s no place for criticism in a Music Meeting, and it’s easy to point out stations that rely on staff opinion and the critics within the organization to make musical decisions. Fact is, they under-perform.

I can think of five stations off the top of my head that under-perform because the PD or MD is in “all about me” mode. Meanwhile, the audience, with hundreds of sources at their disposal, is basically calling “bullshit” on these stations.

In today’s Music Meeting, the audience gets a seat at the table, and the PD and MD need to be more curator than critic.

There’s that saying, “Opinions are like assholes – everybody has one.”

What we need to prevent is, “In Music Meetings, opinions are like assholes – and everybody is one.”

-Paul Marszalek

The coveted Webby

The Webby Awards has announced the winners of it’s 15th annual celebration of all things good on the web.

Pandora won the Music category ahead of nominees NPR Music, Pitchfork, and the amazing  The Wilderness Downtown — the beautiful interactive website put forth by the Arcade Fire and Google Chrome. Also nominated was the increasingly popular and interesting Soundcloud — which provides TheTop22.com with its Song of the Week player.

Other music related nominees included the amazing JohnnyCashProject, which was nominated in several categories, including NetArt and Best Use of Video or Moving Image. The Wilderness Downtown won that category.

Radio and Podcasts are a combined category, and NPR took honors of two sites from the BBC, TED, and CNN.

I hired Webby Awards creator and founder Tiffany Shlain years ago to be our internet correspondent for the KFOG morning show. A hell of an entrepreneur and increasingly strong film-maker, I thought I was doing her a favor with her little internet awards party. Little did I know at the time I should have been hitching my career wagon to her!

The Webby Awards is an excellent resource for webmasters, or any content creator, for that matter, as the site not only schools us on how it should be done, but offers countless ideas that ignite brainstorming and creativity.

Check out the various categories, such as the Best Home Page winner (Lego.com), and then quitely weep about how lame your own site looks.

More than 70 categories in total, including Weird, which this year featured the very funny Awkward Family Photos and the genius recipe aggregation site What the Fuck Should I Make for Dinner.

Find at least an hour at WebbyAwards.com, and come away amazed and inspired.

In a surprise to no one, MySpace is officially for sale. Price tag: $100 million.

After buying the site for more than $550 million, NewsCorp failed to keep up with competitors and lost millions annually. With few upgrades an innovations, users drifted away.

A halfhearted re-design and relaunch last year has done little to revitalize the site. NewsCorp just took another $275 million charge against the loss of goodwill for the site. Translated: The brand is worth less — if not worthless.

Our opinion? Worth about $1 plus assumption of liabilities. Read more in Mashable.

Lollapalooza will rock Chicago’s Grant Park August 5-7, 2011.

Leading the lineup this year will be Eminem, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, and Muse.

See the complete, massive lineup for the three-day festival here.

Peter Bjorn and John go long-form with a documentary that’s worth a look…

Peter, Bjorn & John: Digging Deeper from CATJAM Studio on Vimeo.

And speaking of long-form video, you’ve probably heard about if not spent 30 minutes watching it, here’s the star-studded Beastie Boys video featuring Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, John C. Riley, Elijah Wood, Jack Black, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Ted Danson, Danny McBride, Will Arnett, Rainn Wilson, and about a dozen others injuring their careers…

In this edition of Linkage, let’s start with the happiest place on earth.

Cambridge PhD student Alex Davies analyzed frequently used words on Twitter to determine the world’s happiest country. And that country is…Germany? BTW, Tennessee is the happiest state. Davies’ Twitter Happiness Map is brilliant.

Story in All Twitter…

We’re not sure if MTV’s O Music Awards is a cool idea or if it’s an admission that the network is now musically irrelevant. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, it was Florence and the Machine’s performance on MTV’s Music Video Awards that sealed the deal for her.

The nominees are… thanks to Mashable.com

The reason the every guy loves Sarah Silverman is simple: She’s basically a guy. Foul mouth, fart jokes — a real guy’s guy. But she’s actually a girl, and also beautiful.

Sarah possesses the very rare trifecta of smart-funny-beautiful.

Just out is a viral video starring Sarah that proves that pot is alive and well on Madison Avenue. In it, Sarah is in love with the Serenading Unicorn. The short film is a viral video promoting… Juicy Fruit Gum?

Daryl Hall with Sharon Jones

Daryl Hall is no stranger to music television.

When MTV launched in 1981, Hall and Oates manager Tommy Mottola saw the future. Not only did he see the potential for the music videos a promotional tool, he saw that the nascent music network was very short on content.

Mottola began cranking out Hall and Oates videos, and they in turn, soaked up airtime.

Hall is back in music television — but this time it’s as producer, creator, host, performer, and sometimes caterer. Guests have ranged from Todd Rundgren to Fitz and the Tantrums.

Live from Daryl’s House has been a web fave — winning a Webby Award — and an increasing number of fans.

New Year’s Eve, WGN aired a special edition of the program, and it looks like there may be more.

At the NAPTE conference, Hall and WGN’s Sean Compton talked about the show, with the story covered by Diana Marszalek, writing for TVNewsCheck.com.

Check the trailer for the latest episode, featuring Guster:

More than once we’ve decried the lack of innovation and the lack of R&D at radio. But for the medium to move forward, innovation is a must.

And if you’re going to innovate, you’re going to have to tolerate failure. And that’s not something commercial radio or even many public stations have a stomach for. Fear of failure is the choke point for innovation.

This excellent short film from Honda explores failure– how it benefits the company, and how it is handled in within the corporate culture. Watch and ask, is this how my company is run?

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#2 Tim Westergren: Pandora

Pandora's Tim Westergren explains the algorithm that makes the same songs play over and over.

In April, Pandora crossed the 50 million user mark. Today, the census told us that there are 308 million people in the United States.

Let’s do the math. 300 million people divided by 50 million users… carry the one…um… do we have to show our work? Should we subtract everyone’s grandma?

Show me someone who has not used Pandora, and I’ll show you someone who really isn’t into music that much.

What’s ahead? Pandora has been advertising jobs for people who know video and have experience in artist relations. Yeah, we applied but haven’t heard back yet. They’re probably waiting ’til after the holidays to call. Keep an eye on our Facebook status!

#3 Lisa Sonkin: Columbia Records

Famously difficult to photograph, Lisa Michelson circa 1974, in third grade. If we could do math, we could figure out her age.

Columbia was the number one label in terms of AAA radio airplay this year — a fact that Lisa is sharing only with her closest friends and family– so please keep this information to yourself.

John Mayer, Train, Avett Brothers, Courtyard Hounds, Band of Horses, Broken Bells, Bruce Springsteen, John Legend and the Roots, and Bob Dylan.

We’re probably missing something. Maybe it’s that most of AAA radio totally blew it on the Court Yard Hounds album. Never too late, though!

What’s next? Adele is already #2 — and the album isn’t out ’til next year. Plus a new one from Raphael Saadiq.

#4 Everyone at WXPN

David Dye, Helen Leicht, and Roger LaMay of WXPN

Here’s the problem we had with WXPN: too many players in one place. There’s GM Roger LaMay, PD Bruce Warren, OM Dan Reed, World Cafe’s David Dye, and a very strong bench.

We could either litter the Top 22 with XPN staff, or we could combine them into a supergroup, which is what we did. And now that we’ve done that, we’re thinking they should be closer to #1.

World Cafe has hundreds of affiliates, the 11th Annual Non-Commvention May 19-21 in Wilmington, DE will have hundreds of attendees (nice plug), and XPN has hundreds of thousands of fans.

And while we hated to see the Y-Rock project take the hit it took in 2010, we congratulate them for making a go of it, and doubt it will be the last big idea they try.

Just goes to show what can happen when you take non-comm core values and combine them with aggressive entrepreneurial thinking. WXPN is writing the playbook for how to run a radio station.

#5 The Coalition of Independent Music Stores

Every year, jerks in “the media” write more stories about how record stores are going out of business.

Wrong again, “media.” So what if some of the stores need to sell a few bongs to make the rent?

Not only is Record Store Day one of the coolest days of the year, we were green with envy when Mom & Pop stores got together to do an awesome Black Friday event with plenty of exclusive vinyl.

We should all be so lucky to live in a town with one of these stores. If you don’t, visit their online site ThinkIndie.com.

#6 Daniel Glass: Glassnote

Daniel Glass

Daniel Glass makes our list for doing something no one else has ever done — he made history by breaking a French rock band.

Don’t even bother arguing Daft Punk or Air — they’re Electronica. And don’t try us with Plastic Bertrand or the Singing Nun — they’re Belgian.

But in Phoenix we had three words you never thought you’d hear together: French Rock Band.

And if you throw in Mumford & Sons and Temper Trap, you have a hot streak that hasn’t been seen since the SBK Records trifecta of Jesus Jones, Vanilla Ice, and Wilson Phillips.

#7 Jack Barton: FMQB

If you Google Jack Barton, a lot of Jack Barton's turn up -- including Jack Barton "The Original Dry Cleaner to the Stars"

When Radio and Records went belly up in 2010, Jack Barton convinced Friday Morning Quarterback to become the third proud owner of the annual Boulder AAA Summit.

Jack had literally just days to make a diving catch, and he delivered one of the best conferences in memory.

In 2011, FMQB will extend its reach into live events by partnering with Michele Clark for not one but two different Sunset Sessions.

This year’s AAA Radio Conference hits Boulder August 10-13. Learn more about it here.

See #8-#12 here.

See #13-#17 here.

And #18-22 here.

]]> http://www.thetop22.com/2010/12/the-top-22-players-in-adult-rock-for-2010-7-2/feed/ 0 http://www.thetop22.com/2010/12/the-top-22-players-in-adult-rock-for-2010-12-8/ http://www.thetop22.com/2010/12/the-top-22-players-in-adult-rock-for-2010-12-8/#comments Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:43:33 +0000 The Top 22 Editor http://www.thetop22.com/?p=6322 Our year-end recap of people and companies that broke records, innovated, moved AAA forward, or otherwise had a stellar 2010 continues as we count down from #12 to #8…

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#8 Dave Cox: MiMTiD

Dave Cox, inventor and CEO of MiMTiD

Dave Cox had a bit of a wild 2010.

The producer and owner of small indie label Blues Destiny Records became so frustrated with Rapidshare aiding and abetting the theft of his copyrighted material, he not only went after Rapidshare, but named Google and Microsoft in the lawsuit — charging that they helped too.

Ballsy.

While the suits have settled down, Dave, who also happens to be a software engineer, created a tool to help labels, movie studios, and other content creators slow down the theft.

Called MiMTiD (for “mine is mine, take it down”), it’s a search engine that crawls the web specifically looking for download sites and infringing parties. When found, it automatically serves a DMCA takedown notice — a huge benefit over manual search and serving of notices.

MiMTiD also tracks the advertisers on those sites, and anyone else that is involved.

Learn more about MiMTiD at MiMTiD.com, and hit ‘em up with more questions at 713-657-0165.

#9 Bob Boilen and NPR Music

Bob Boilen of NPR Music

It started a few years ago as a place for NPR sycophants to find out more about those little musical interludes on All Things Considered.

It gained steam as it started aggregating content from non-comm stalwarts like WFUV/New York, WXPN/Philadelphia, and KUT/Austin (don’t forget this as you give NPR credit).

In 2010, it’s fair to say that NPR Music has arrived.

NPR reported 1.6 million monthly visitors in mid-year, and the median age is 40 — 15 years younger than the NPR listener.

It’s a smart move for NPR — creating a vehicle to bring younger (yes, even at 40, they’re younger) people into the tent. For labels, it’s a godsend — a place to reach a lucrative and otherwise hard to reach audience.

#10 Jennifer Ferro: KCRW

Jennifer Ferro, GM of KCRW/Santa Monica

The longtime #2 at KCRW took over for the retired Ruth Seymour in 2010, and the questions immediately started — just how would Jennifer Ferro guide the station that insiders called K-Ruth?

KCRW is among the most complex non-comm stations in the country. To hear it from public radio experts, they do everything wrong — they have a mixed format of music and talk, their fund-raising features too many premiums, and they can be a real thorn in the side of the establishment — the NPR’s of the world.

Yet for some reason, KCRW works. The station boasts some big brands, ranging from Morning Becomes Eclectic on the music side to Warren Olney’s nationally syndicated To the Point on the news-talk side.

There may be a method to the madness.

Most public radio news outlets are little more than repeaters for nationally syndicated programming, and some music outlets may be inadvertently helping NPR become a competitor (See #9).

It’s too early to tell for certain what Ferro has up her sleeves, but early indications suggest she wants a bigger KCRW. To make that happen she’ll have to convince the staff to think bigger, stay entrepreneurial, continue to be L.A., and maybe even kill a sacred cow or two.

#11 Jill Weindorf: Concord Music Group

Jill Weindorf of Concord Music Group

With a fantastic suite of labels, a Starbucks connection, and the signings of several music legends, Concord Music Group entered 2010 as a formidable mid-major.

But the mid-year acquisition of Rounder Records took them to a whole new level. In terms of adult rock, they’re a full-blown major.

The labels include: Hear Music (Starbucks), Rounder, Concord, Concord Jazz, Telarc (Classical, Blues, Jazz), Stax, Fantasy, Pablo, Prestige, and others.

On the artist side, there’s Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Alison Krauss, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Madeleine Peyroux, and many others.

Concord is now in the position to potentially dominate genres such as folk, Americana, blues, and jazz — with 40 years worth of catalog to boot.

Out of the box in 2011 for Concord is another vet — Gregg Allman. Jill’s gonna be busy.

#12 V107.3 Cleveland

Arbitron’s Portable People Meter measurement system has been responsible for a number of casualties in radio.

Among them, almost the entire Smooth Jazz format. Sensing that the format was a PPM loser, the independent owners of WNWV, which serves Cleveland and Akron from the west, Smooth Jazz was killed in favor of AAA.

The respectable start got a jolt in November, when the station posted a 3.5 share for the month — which would make it one of the biggest debuts of an adult rocker both in market size and ratings in recent memory.

See #22-#18 here, and #17-#13 here.