Month: August 2006

Tony Z. heads to MAGIC Marketplace

It's been crazy hectic over the last week since my last post. I've been extremely busy working on the planning for our presence at the upcoming MAGIC Marketplace, which takes place in Las Vegas from August 28 to the 31st.

On Saturday, I'll be on Jet Blue with my homie, Fresnel aka Madsol Desar headed the show, considered one of the largest fashion retail trade shows in the country. In the spring, I walked the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center as a first-timer during the Fall show to get a feel for how business is transacted and to do a bit of networking with top brands.

Read more

ProducerLab.com's Jamie Siegel Teaches Beginners Music Production at New York Hilton

On August 27th at the New York Hilton Hotel (1135 Avenue of the Americas, btw 53rd and 54th), producer Jamie Siegel, who lists credits on productions including Smashing Pumpkins, Joss Stone, Taking Back Sunday, Lauren Hill and more, will demonstrate music production techniques geared toward's those who want to learn how to produce tracks in a home studio.

Read more

Burnlounge.com in deal with Live Nation: Reps to sell concert tix

Don't the people at Live Nation surf the web? You have to ask, have they done their homework? To leave the sale of tickets to Live Nation events to the over 20,000 Burnlounge affiliates is a sure bet to dilute your brand, cause confusion in the marketplace and leave the sale of pricey concert tickets to the less than business savvy. Then again, I guess the folks at Live Nation must have read Wired editor, Chris Anderson's recent book, "The Long Tail." They figure, better to let 20,000 kids try and sell a pair of tickets to their friends, then have us actually do our jobs and do it ourselves.

Read more

Oakey's Starry Eyed Surprise Video

Yo…this is kinda hot! I was surfing around YouTube and came across Paul Oakenfold’s Starry Eyed Surprise video recording from someone’s Tivo, I’m sure. Check it out!

Tech View: Gizmodo's video review of the Sony Mylo

Hey! Check this out. The new Sony Mylo. Pretty cool if you ask me. It's a wireless device based on the PlayStation portable look and feel, that allows you to navigate the web with a version of the popular Opera web browser. It's got Google IM anlong with AIM and you can listen to music, play video and even talk over Skype using headphones and a built-in mic. It's definitely going to be hot on college campuses, where wireless connectivity is ubiquitous. I'd love to have one of these.

The only thing it isn't, is a mobile phone. But, you can use Skype to fill in the gap. I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know how it actually rings if you have it in your pocket.

It's not an iPod killer, because it doesn't have the memory capacity to challenge the 30 or 60 GB iPod, but it's a step in the right direction for people who don't listen to as much music or video, or are comfortable swapping out media more than usual. The coolest thing is the fact that you can Skype on it, which gives you a unique way to communicate with others for free (as long as the other person has Skype). As we move into a wireless world, ala Sprint's decision to build a nationwide Wi-Max network, devices such as the Mylo are a logical next step in the right direction.

I almost forget, you can share music across the wireless network with other Mylo users, but you can't download from one Mylo to another. Basically, that means you an access a playlist on another Mylo from your own Mylo and it will stream over the wireless connection to your device. We do that all the time in the office here at StarStyle, but using the iTunes feature that allows you to share music across the network as sort of an impromptu radio, but its programmed by your colleague. 

Check out the Gizmodo video review from YouTube below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koQFjKwVFB0

Party Trac: Sun Jam on Utila Island in Honduras

sun jam utilaMy brother, Bill, was surfing the web the other day and passed along a URL for Sun Jam, a Honduran party that has grown from a few friends 10-years ago to maximum capacity of 1,500 over today. The event takes place each year on a 3-acre island called Water Cay, about 6 miles from the town of Utila on Utila Island in Honduras Bay.

A visit to the promoter's web site gives you a rundown of this year's party, which took place on August 5th. Yeah, I'm a little late to the game on this one, but I wanted to let my peeps know about it and follow it for next year. Better late than never! Geez, my bro, the one with 4 kids (one on his way to college) beat me to the game here. You'd think I'd be up on this stuff, but hey, I'm running the music section of a major pop culture web site! Who has the time to party in Honduras? I guess Bill does!

The site features photos from past events (where are this years photos guys?), a Flash audio player streaming top tracks from the event, information on DJs from Central Amercia along with more on the town itself and some of the things you can do while you're partying your ass off. The town of Utila is well known for its dive shops and water sports.

You can only get to Water Cray by ferry from Utila Island, so make sure you plan your trip accordingly. Contact the promoters for more details on next year's event. 

So, check it out next year! Maybe we'll see you there.

Go to http://sunjamutila.com.

DJ Phenix releases Rebirth of the Phenix

It's been so hectic for past few weeks, I'm just now catching up with a bunch of stuff that I've wanted to post. I got a chance to kick back today and relax, which got the creative writing juices flowing.

First, I want to apologize to DJ Phenix, because a few weeks ago the Queens native reached out to let me know about his new EP, Rebirth of the Phenix on East Gate Records. I've wanted to post, but I needed to sit down and really take a listen to his new music to give it it's proper attention. Today, I had the chance to do just that.

Read more

Beatport launches version 3.0

Beatport 3.0 HomepageLeading dance music download web site, Beatport.com, launched version 3.0 "Fully Loaded" of its online music store serving DJs and dance music enthusiasts who download legal music files in MP3 and WAV formats. Since its inception, the company has become the leading resource for DJs, having secured tracks from over 2700 record label partners around the world.

Because of its strict adherence to offering downloadable files in the popular and widely supported MP3 format, which allow digital music to be played back across most digital music players and computers, major labels have not participated in th'e service. This is due to the major's adoption of proprietary DRM technologies, such as Microsoft's Windows Media, Apples AAC or Sony's A-Trac formats. In order to find major label remixes, DJs generally have to rip the remixed versions of popular dance tracks that appear on the Billboard Club Play chart from CD's or record the vinyl onto a computer using special software to eliminate analog noise. In some cases, DJs must turn to p2p networks to find the remixes their audience are asking for. If the remixes are available on iTunes, most DJs can't play them with the various DJ software products that exist today due to a percieved lack of support for the Apple format in the DJ software community.

One would think that by offering MP3 files for download, labels that participate in the Beatport service would be heavily impacted by files sharing. An argument can be made that because dance music releases appear daily from thousands of record labels around the world, it's harder to find hot dance tracks on p2p networks until well after their release on Beatport. In a way, dance music's minority status in the music marketplace helps by making it more difficult to find obscure tracks. Most dance music fans don't know the names of songs and p2p networks do not provide sound samples, but Beatport does, and in the wildly popular Adobe Flash format allowing for easier playback.

The other advantage Beatport enjoys is most people who post tracks to p2p services rip them from mix compilations, so the files are generally not the full song. Usually, if you try to download a popular track from a p2p network, it has a segment of the last record played in the mix over the first few seconds of the song you want. There are many dance music productions that have beautiful intro's leading into the main part of the song that are lost when the song is blended into another on a mix compilation. Losing those intro's makes a service like Beatport infinitely more valuable because you can find the entire song and you can play it across most devices.

According to a Beatport press release, "The upgrades in Beatport 3.0 are varied and substantial. Major improvements have been made to the navigation and the search engine allowing faster and more detailed access to the content library. Key new features include a section called My Beatport which allows a user to subscribe to their favorite artist, label, or genre. Once subscribed, the system notifies the user when one of their subscriptions has new music. Other shopping improvements include new community driven features such as Users Also Bought and Email to a Friend. Several new payment options have been added to better serve the international market."

The company says, " a premium design change for version 3.0 is the much-improved landing pages designed to better showcase the genres, artists and labels and their related content. Continued improvements have been made to the navigation adding several powerful filtering tools to improve shopping speed delivering measurable improvements to both our customers and label partners."

Version 3 "Fully Loaded" is also integrated with Native Instrument's Traktor DJ software , allowing DJs to purchase music directly from Beaport through the Traktor DJ interface bypassing the use of a web browser to login and download music files to the desktop.

Traktor DJ mimics the traditional DJ experience, giving DJs the ability to mix MP3 files using their desktop or laptop computer as one would using traditional turntables. With Traktor DJ, a DJ can add a variety of audio effects to a DJ session, mix DJ sets to MP3 for podcast or live web casts and even emulate scratching by plugging into the Final Scratch DJ software and hardware system in conjunction with traditional turntables.