• Music Services - places like iTunes and Rhapsody where you can purchase or subscribe to music
• Music Discovery - places that help you find music - these fall generally into 3 subcategories:
  • Social - wisdom of the crowds sites like last.fm, iLike. Goombah and Qloud
  • Content-based - recommendations based on the music content - Pandora, SoundFlavor, MusicIP
  • Expert based - Music recommendations from people - music blogs, irateradio.com
• Music Experience Augmentation - sites to make your music listening experience more enjoyable - music dashboards like sleevenotez or Snapp Radio
• Playlist Sharing - this includes playlisting sites like MusicMobs, fiql and Webjay
• Music Metadata - add to the data surrounding the music - MusicBrainz, All Music Guide, Gracenote

The content hasn't been fleshed out on a lot of those pages, but still it's a good start and one to watch.

Via Lucas Gonze

The content in YouTube's music top 10 is somewhat similar to that of Ultimate Chart - and Billboard for that matter. 4 of the top 5 on YouTube are also in the Ultimate Chart's top 10. That's almost certainly due to the mainstream popularity of those 4 artists: Jennifer Lopez, Katy Perry, Chris Brown and Bruno Mars. In other words, that music would be at or near the top of any pop music chart.

I like the breakdown of the YouTube 100 homepage into different genres, including ones not traditionally seen in music charts: New Age, Stage & Screen, Comedy/Spoken (that one is not actually music, but whatever). Also the events listing, powered by Songkick, is a nice touch.

YouTube is planning to archive the charts "for future exploration of original recordings, music memes, and pop hits."

While any top 10 music list featuring Rebecca Black (who is currently #8) is of questionable legitimacy, at least in terms of hipness, YouTube 100 is nevertheless a handy addition to the online music ecosystem.

"Of course, with webjay, there is a more black-and-white issue. Is the material obviously illegal or not?"

This touches on what I wrote the other day about not being able to link to Lucid 3 and other New Zealand music using WebJay. Following on from Jim's query, I'm wondering how much of popular music is available free online? For example, if I wanted to create a playlist of my favorite songs in the Billboard Top 100 this week, how many of those songs would be available to me as free links? Anyone know an estimate?

How about more 'niche' music - like for example New Zealand music? It would be really interesting to find out what is the ratio of free linkable songs (which I hereby christen with the acronym FLS) to songs you have to pay to listen to, for each genre of music. Does bluegrass for example have a higher FLS ratio than blues? The higher the FLS (Free Linkable Songs) ratio, the better.

Note: there's no way we could mention every single online music streaming service in this poll, but if we happened to miss a major service then do shout it out asap in the comments!

last.fm 32% (207 votes)
Pandora 30% (197 votes)
Yahoo Music 9% (61 votes)
iTunes Music Service 8% (52 votes)
Rhapsody 4% (27 votes)

Note that FineTune and Live365 were added late to the poll, but both have more votes currently than AOL, MSN and Zune. There's still time to cast your vote though, so please do so in the poll below:

AP points to an experimental Web video by Arcade Fire, created using advanced browser technology HTML5, as evidence that the music industry is adapting to videos on the Web. In related news, according to online analytics firm comScore, MTV is now the number 1 music destination on the Web. So it too is evolving fast.

The video features real-time graphics rendering and real-world imagery from Google Maps satellite and Street View. It includes multiple windows, 3D birds and an invitation to write a note to your younger self at the end of the video.

MTV #1 With a Bullet, Online

Meanwhile, MTV is showing that it can translate its music television dominance to the Web. FastCompany reports the latest figures from comScore, showing that MTV has moved above Vevo and MySpace Music to take the number 1 spot in the online music category.

MTV's traffic has increased 165% year-over-year, according to comScore. More than 53 million unique visitors went to MTV properties in August.

Vevo isn't far behind, with over 49 million unique visitors. Vevo is a Hulu-like alliance between Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media Company - with the videos hosted by YouTube. It's worth noting that, unlike MTV, Vevo is 100% devoted to music. Just as it does on television, MTV's online sites include reality shows and other non-music content.

However, MTV also includes more than just music videos in its music-related content. And that may be a key part of its online success. Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks' music group, told Fast Company that "MTV is much more than just music videos: It's performances, live streams, B-rolls, interviews, behind-the-scenes stuff."

Your Current Favorite Online Music Video?

So the lessons in adapting music videos to the Web include offering different and interactive experiences (a la Arcade Fire), plus extras on the Web (a la MTV).

Let us know in the comments whether you're an MTV, Vero or MySpace watcher online - and which you prefer. Also, what online music videos have you seen lately that have impressed you?

When you think of music on the Web, there are roughly three main eras:

2) Enter the iPod and iTunes, which define the current era of online music. Apple's combo of a killer devide (iPod) with an online music storage system that syncs with the device (iTunes), has come to dominate the market. You can hardly walk down a city street these days without seeing those familiar white earplugs in someone's ears. Competitors such as Microsoft (Zune) and Real Networks (Rhapsody) are in the game too, but they're a long way behind Apple and likely to remain so.

3) Perhaps the next defining period in music will be streaming music over the Internet. Already this era is underway, with startups like last.fm (recently acquired by CBS) and Pandora making their mark. Most of the big Internet and media companies have horses in this race - Yahoo Music, MSN Music and AOL Music, to name a few.

Beyond iTunes

This new generation of online music has a big focus on recommendations, personalization and social networking. There are a multitude of startups looking to become The Next Big Thing, from Fairtilizer (our review) to SeeqPod (our review) to MyStrands (who recently took $25 M in funding to enhance their personalization system). Even Apple, traditionally not big on social software, has recognized that it can't sit back on its laurels in online music - they recently announced My iTunes widgets, to enable you to share your music, movies and other media with friends.

My iTunes

So this week the Read/WriteWeb Network (R/WW, last100 and AltSearchEngines) will be exploring online music. If you have any suggestions of things to look at, please leave a comment. Also check out this week's R/WW poll: What is your favorite online music streaming service?

Just Burn a CD

As we reported last week, Yahoo was already advising its customers to circumvent its own DRM system by just burning copies of their songs onto audio CDs and then ripping them back onto their computers as DRM-free MP3s. Apparently, though, not all customers were satisfied with this solution, though given the new solution, enterprising customers could also, of course, now burn their songs to CDs and still ask for their money back from Yahoo.

Costly Precedent

Yahoo is setting a (costly) precedent here for other music services than run into similar problems.  When MSN Music shut down, it was originally going to take its licensing servers offline within a year, but because of customer complaints, it is keeping them online until the end of 2011. MSN Music is not planning on returning any money to its customers, though.

Today, YouTube is getting into the music recommendation and discovery game with an update to its music page.

This latest offering has a similar feel and, in some ways, feels like getting a bit of MTV back from the 90s, when it actually played music. Unlike sites like Pandora or HypeMachine, the big advantage here is visual - welcome back to watching a streaming feed of music videos, not just listening to songs. The new page "showcases the most viewed music videos, special promotions, curated playlists, unsigned talent and gives you the ability to create on-the-fly mixes." It also lets you simply chose a genre and go, letting the site pick the music from there. According to the blog, we can also look forward to local music listings in the near future.

To visit YouTube's redesigned music page, go to www.youtube.com/music.

MyStrands.TV is powered by MyStrands APIs and the music videos come from YouTube. Some music data is provided by Muze, Inc. I think there's a great market for this, because in our Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time, we noted that 7 of the top 10 are music videos. So music videos are something that people want to watch online and there is a need for an easy way to organize or personalize this. MyStrands.TV adds an easier, richer and simply more fun personalization layer on top of YouTube's data.

To test MyStrands.TV I typed in (what else) The Velvet Underground and I was straight away treated to an old VU track, followed by a John Cale video I'd never seen before, then the classic Sweet Jane. Excellent work by MyStrands and I can see myself tuning in a lot to this new service!

After signing up for Audiolizer, you only have to export your iTunes library and upload it to the service. We tried this out with a relatively small, 1000 song library, and Audiolizer was able to import almost all of them. Unlike Lala, however, which offers a similar service, Audiolizer does not upload and store any of your songs that are missing from its database.

This, however, is typically not a major problem, as Audiolizer is able to draw upon a very large database of songs. While Audiolizer bills itself as a streaming music service, it actually gets its music (and accompanying videos) from YouTube. For some reason, however, Audiolizer downplays this reliance on Google's popular video sharing site and the videos are not even linked to their original YouTube pages and only appear in a very small window.

One feature we would still like to see is the ability to share your playlists with friends. Audiolizer is also still working on a music suggestion feature, which should be available shortly. Even without these, however, Audiolizer is definitely a music service worth trying.

Specifically, the 5% will be streamed and on-demand music data from AOL Music and Yahoo! Music. They are also looking to include other sources, such as Rhapsody. According to Billboard, digital delivery began playing an important role in the chart's composition in February 2005 - when they factored in the sale of digital tracks, "as measured by Nielsen SoundScan from a comprehensive panel of online merchants."

Via PaidContent.org

The MOG Music Network (MMN) includes music-related news from the company's network of 1,200 music blogs plus in-house news, reviews another other features. According to MOG, its network of blogs now generates more than 20 million monthly unique visitors and its goal is to become the largest music network online.

You may know of MOG only as one of the many new "cloud"-based streaming services which are poised to overtake iTunes as the preferred way to listen to music while mobile. For low monthly fees - $10/mo. for MOG or its competitors Rdio and Rhapsody, and only $3 for the questionably legal (and now disappeared) Grooveshark - you can stream unlimited tracks to your mobile handset. No longer is disk space a concern and you have access to the majority of new releases too, as well as older albums, thanks to online catalogs of tunes numbering in the millions, regardless of which service you pick.

While the merits of each service are varied, MOG is clearly hoping to differentiate itself by being known not just as an app, but as a brand associated with music content. In fact, music related content came first in its case, not the apps.

MOG, the Network

Originally, www.mog.com was a network of music blogs on the Web prior to its launch of the music-streaming service in December 2009.

Now the MOG Music Network will serve as a digest of this content, at a separate URL from MOG.com: MOGMusicNetwork.com. In addition to the news, reviews and interviews you would expect, MMN will also deliver exclusive MP3s, explains a company blog post.

However, in checking out one of these exclusive tracks here, it didn't appear there was an easy way to download the tune - it was accessible for playing online only via a Flash-based widget. We couldn't find it in MOG's streaming service, either. Instead, the track just served as a teaser for an upcoming album, and the only way to hear it was on MMN. For dedicated music fans, that level of access may be a big selling point for the new online portal.

It may be a key selling point for advertisers, too. MOG CEO David Hyman told MediaWeek that the site aims to serve as a central hub for advertisers. "Think of this as like Glam.com is to the Glam Network," he said, referring to the women's content portal which uses the same model. Monetizing digital music has been a difficult business so far, but Hyman believes his advantage is that he's monetizing content, not the streaming itself. "This is a real network of readers," he said, "not just listeners."

There are more than 650 stores currently, with over 250,000 songs in the catalogue - most appear to be available at $0.99 per song or $8.99 per album. The site claims to be "working with" 4,500 labels, including 4AD, XL, Rough Trade, Matador, Dominio, and Ged Day's own Warp.

Other than the lack of major label music, there is another minor annoyance for those of us who don't live in the U.S. - international users will frequently run into a "we're sorry, but this release is not available in your country" message. However on the plus side, all the music available for download is DRM-free and at high quality 320Kbps.

Founder Ged Day set up People's Music Store because he felt that no one company, including his own Bleep.com, can manage music expertise at a large scale. People's Music Store is hoping to tap into the Long Tail and enable music fans to create thousands of unique music stores. In a way it's like 'MySpace meets Etsy'.

On some of the more popular stores, for example one called walpod, we can see plenty of evidence of social media:

• Profiles
• Storekeeper comments - basically a form of blog post
• Shoutbox - like Facebook's Wall
• RSS feeds
• Favoriting stores (kind of like the 'friending' concept in social networks)
• Ability to add items from other peoples stores to your own, with one click
  

However there's work to be done with the social elements on the service - for example it's not intuitive where and how to add content such as 'news' and other multimedia into one's storefront.

Overall I found the concept of setting up my own online record store to be a compelling one, despite the limited range of music currently available and the relatively minor quibbles with social media elements. And in terms of music discovery, People's Music Store does a great job of enabling music fans to find new music. In the 'alternative' music stores I browsed, I discovered several interesting new acts I hadn't heard before. So if you're a music fan, People's Music Store is worth checking out. Let us know what you think in the comments.

AltSearchEngines has listed their Top 10 Music Search Engines. There were a few I'd never heard of before, so go check it out if you're a music fan. AltSearchEngines editor Charles Knight suggests you pick your favorite artist, or song, and see which music search engine you like the best. Then go back to ASE and leave a quick comment telling them which one you liked the most and why.

Ryan Jarrett at last100 has written an interesting post about recording concerts onto USB sticks, so that concert-goers have a permanent record of the performance. Ryan says that "this is an excellent way of making money out of every live recording an artist makes — usually only one live recording is sold on through CDs/DVDs — and I think people would love to have a recording of the gig that they were actually at, rather than buy a recording through a record store of one random concert."

Read more on this at last100 and also check out their take on Universal selling DRM-free music with Google’s help.