Links for October 16th through October 17th:
- The Song Decoders at Pandora – NYTimes.com – Some elements that these musicologists (who, really, are musicians with day jobs) codify are technical, like beats per minute, or the presence of parallel octaves or block chords. Someone taking apart Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” documents the prevalence of harmony, chordal patterning, swung 16ths and the like. But their analysis goes beyond such objectively observable metrics. To what extent, on a scale of 1 to 5, does melody dominate the composition of “Hey Jude”? How “joyful” are the lyrics? How much does the music reflect a gospel influence? And how “busy” is Stan Getz’s solo in his recording of “These Foolish Things”? How emotional? How “motion-inducing”? On the continuum of accessible to avant-garde, where does this particular Getz recording fall?
- Keepers Of The Court: Foursquare Superusers – washingtonpost.com – The plan is to eventually have three levels of Superusers, but right now, there are only these two, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley tells us. Level 1 users are able to edit venues (including names and cross streets), mark places as "closed," and note duplicates. These new Level 2 users are able to merge venues themselves when there are duplicates. Eventually, Level 3 is likely to contain elements such as adding badges (rewards you get for certain check-in patterns), and policing other users, Crowley says.
- U.S. Resists Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger – WSJ.com – Ticketmaster is already the dominant seller of tickets to concerts, sports matches and other live events and also owns Front Line Management Inc., which represents more than 200 of the biggest names in pop, country and rock music. Live Nation owns or runs 139 concert venues, along with many related businesses, such as T-shirt makers and online fan clubs. The two companies have a combined stock-market value of $1.3 billion.
- Nielsen meets with big clients to discuss Internet measurement | Company Town | Los Angeles Times – There was a "broad agreement" of adding Internet measurement in the households that already have people meters," said Sara Erichson, Nielsen's president of Media Client Services, who ran the get-together at the Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan.
The challenge, Erichson said, is finding homes that will allow for both the people meter and the software that goes inside the computer to measure Web watching.
"Tens of billions of dollars are transacted off of these numbers; we want to make sure that by asking people to do both, you don't have fewer people saying yes," she said. "Can we do it faster without negatively impacting quality" is the issue, she added.
- YouTube – The Big Pink – "Velvet" Live On French TV – The Big Pink – "Velvet" Live On French TV
Bookmarks for October 16th through October 17th
Links for October 16th through October 17th:
The challenge, Erichson said, is finding homes that will allow for both the people meter and the software that goes inside the computer to measure Web watching.
"Tens of billions of dollars are transacted off of these numbers; we want to make sure that by asking people to do both, you don't have fewer people saying yes," she said. "Can we do it faster without negatively impacting quality" is the issue, she added.