I am so glad that David Cook won American Idol. David Archuleta gives me the creeps and the rockers have consistently gotten the short end of the stick in the “pop” competition (Bo Bice, Chris Daughtry, etc.). I think Archuleta had a better night in terms of performances, but he is such a giggly wuss and highly unimaginative stage presence that I just wanted to punch him. The 12 year old girls (and boys) can have him. He can hang with Sanjaya in the mall until he is a creepy 30 year old.

David Cook - while not the greatest rock singer or performer ever - was real and cool. He played the guitar well enough (a great addition to the competition this year), at times sang great and had some intensity on stage. I liked him a lot.
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I’m listening to the new Mudcrutch album featuring Tom Petty and digging it big-time. Not all of the songs are gems, but it has a great Tom Petty feel - more on the fun, rhythmic side vs the weird drug induced side (Don’t Come Around Here No More - anyone?). Lots of blue grass feel, guitars and pure Americana. This will definitely be in my play list this summer.

The other album that I am digging is the new Jason Mraz “We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things”. Although I was disappointed with Jason’s sophmore effort (Mr. A-Z), I love this disc. It is fun, sharp and touching. Jason has regained his form with a really polished effort that is end to end a great listen.
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Clive Davis is an icon in music and is being demoted at BMG (one of the big four music publishing groups). Inside and outside the building, the label announced that Davis would be shifting into a creative role, while Barry Weiss assumes top stripes at BMG.

So, what does this mean? Nothing to those outside the business really. Clive is responsible for identifying and launching hundreds of major artists. The music business is in turmoil so I expect to see more shifting of the deck chairs on the deck of the Titanics that are the major labels.

Jill Sobule wrote the moderate hit “I Kissed a Girl”. She also has been on two major labels that have dumped her and on two Indies that have gone under. Now she is going to the web and her fans to finance her next CD. I find this story interesting not from the stand point of that she is doing it and how she is doing it but what she is giving in exchange for donations. She has set a goal to raise $75,000 to cover recording, production and promotions costs for the CDs. As of March 10, she has reached $80,782 - congrats! A chunk of change, but relatively modest. The cool thing is that by “investing” in the CD you get stuff in exchange:

She has 12 levels total ranging from “Friend” for $5 to “Plutonium” for $10,000. Here are some examples of what you get:
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Yahoo! and Rhapsody announced today that Rhapsody will be taking over the music subscription service business from Yahoo!. I think this is a big win for both Rhapsody and Yahoo! as Rhapsody is the best subscription service available and Yahoo! has been unable to keep up and turn a profit. Rhapsody’s technical foundation and user interface is well in front of anything else on the market including Zune, Napster and Yahoo!

The digital music space is a notoriously small margin business. If you look at the revenue from the sale of a single song - $.99 on iTunes - the actual cost to iTunes for that song is $.78 or so on average. This cost includes royalties to artists, songwriters, producers, record labels, etc. This means the sale of a song has a COGS of 79%. That’s a hard cost without including the cost of building and distributing the software, writing the copy, getting all of the info about the song from AMG or Muze or whoever.
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The Consumer Electronics Show was very good to Rhapsody. I chatted with some folks who were there and heard that a lot of people were very interested in the Rhapsody DNA functionality and how Rhapsody has integrated into TiVo, Denon, Sansa and Sonos. Rhapsody is packaging these as “Music as a service” playing off of the “software as a service” trend.

As part of this move - lots of new partnerships and devices were announced including:
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The Rhapsody compatible devices are starting to come fast and furious now! iRiver Clix, updated Sansa, TiVo and now Haier America (I’ve never heard of them either) is rolling out the Ibiza. The nicest feature of this player (other than the much larger harddrive than flash players) is that they actually connect to Rhapsody.com via WiFi. This is a much nicer integration than a simple drag the Rhapsody playlist or channel onto your MP3 player.

Here’s a shot of the device:
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Rhapsody announced in October that the music service will be available to TiVO subscribers through their DVRs. This is like taking all of the 800 poorly programmed stations on channels 900 - 999 and replacing them with a library of 6,000,000+ full songs, 750,000+ albums, 100’s of good channels and playlists that you choose. This is great for both Rhapsody who gets the service in front of millions of TiVO owners and TiVO who adds a really great option to their DVR.

Here’s a screenshot of the TiVo menu with Rhapsody:. Notice how it is built seamlessly into the TiVo interface.
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We’ll chalk this one up to glass half-full. Led Zeppelin in now on Rhapsody but only as a catalog to buy, not stream. It’s nice to see the entire catalog and there are some live interview clips, but unfortunately, we can’t stream them. I don’t see Led Zeppelin at all on Napster (other than some lame tribute bands) so score another one for the Rhapsody label relationships.

Not to fear! You can stream Led Zeppelin on Rhapsody via the Classic Rock music channels (located on the channel guide tab) AND the Led Zeppelin artist channel (located in the upper right side of the Led Zeppelin artist page). If you have Zep albums on your harddrive, make sure you have imported them into your Rhapsody library (file > add media to my library) and rock on!

I was looking at a buying guide in the Seattle P-I called “Make a Geek Smile” (I consider myself less of a geek, more of a connoisseur of fine technology) by Scott Taves and as an aside, he had this to say about Rhapsody when reviewing the iPod Touch.

“It’s a shame about touch’s relationship issues. Paired with an online music service like Rhapsody, we’d have near perfection. I started using Rhapsody’s To Go subscription ($14.99 per month, rhapsody.com) free several months ago as part of the review process for the iRiver Clix media player. When it came time for the complimentary period to end, I gladly shelled out for a paid subscription. It’s exceptionally easy to use and the music selection is vast. What I usually end up doing is looking for a specific song or album. With one click you can add it to your library where it’s a simple drag and drop to transfer it to any media player you’ve registered.
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