Just a slight little change this week. We’ve recently added a comment system and moderation tool from the folks at Disqus.com. If you click into a post, you will see the Disqus logo towards the bottom. This should make things more interesting on the pages of Netmix. We’re going to try it out for a few weeks and see how it helps and then post our findings.

In the meantime, any times you see something on Netmix, now you’ll be able to comment on it in an easier and more efficient way. Your participation is integral to the growth of this blog and we hope you’ll contribute something back.

Google and Facebook will be adding music to their offerings through agreements with iLike.com, Lala.com and Imeem.com. According to a NY Times blog post, next Wednesday, Google will announce a new feature of its popular search engine that will return with search results music files hosted by a iLike and Lala. If a user types in a search for Tiesto or Kaskade, the search results will provide links to pop-up music players and the user may stream the tracks directly from the search engine, without having to go to the sites themselves.

Facebook will add Lala to its Gifts shop. Many Facebook users already purchase credits to send personalized messages to friends, like birthday e-cards. User will soon be able to purchase tracks for 10-cents and share them with friends to stream or simply purchase tracks for $1 and then download.

In related news, MySpace announced that videos from recently acquired, iLike.com, will appear on throughout the Facebook platform.

For more on these stories, check the following sites:

• http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/hot-on-heels-of-google-facebook-to-take-first-step-int-music/
• http://mashable.com/2009/10/21/facebook-lala/
• http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Google-MySpace-Facebook-make-apf-2162130000.html?x=0&.v=9

On the Grind…Building!

For the past six week, some of you may have noticed a bit of a slowdown in posting to the Netmix blog. It’s not for lack of trying, I’ll tell you that much. It’s simply because I’ve been insanely busy with a couple of projects, and I have been too frazzled to sit and crank out a few posting.

I know, you say, “too busy?” Yes, too busy. In face, so busy that I missed the Electric Zoo Festival, which was something I was really looking forward to. Too busy, that in the last 30 days, I think I pulled a few 12-hour days and one 19-hour day. The latter killed me, because I didn’t leave my office until 7:30 AM, which was 19-hours after I’d gotten to the office the day before. Okay, I cheated by 1.5 hours. I took a little break to share a plate of Calimari with some friends at a local eatery. Rest assured, I jumped right back into work shortly thereafter.

What’s one to do when you’re so busy you can’t post to your own blog? I tried to enlist the help of a Wordpress plug-in, FeedWordpress, which enabled me to aggregate RSS feeds from other sites to post to Netmix, but I stopped using it for a couple of reasons.

First, while FeedWordpress did a great job of ingesting posts from other sites for display on Netmix, it took the entire post from Billboard.com’s RSS service, which included both text and photos, instead of just a summary. I can’t be sure, but it seems as if Billboard.com’s RSS is displaying the full text with images of articles, and not the text summary. For legal reason, I did not want to infringe on Billboard’s copyright by using their content without permission. Because it was an automated tool, I didn’t have the time to go in and credit each news service pinged. After adding multiple services, I realized there were so many posts, it would have just taken way too much time to go through each one to post an attribution, so I gave it the old heave-ho and deleted it.

A second and equally important reason, is because FeedWordpress was causing a harsh php scriptiong error affecting the Netmix home page load incorrectly. Each time the page loaded with php parsing error, it affected Netmix’s page view stats with our analytics program. Certainly a very serious issue.

Lastly, the content coming through these feeds was of relatively little interest to the DJ culture community. It’s all pop crap, right? Netmix has always been committed first and foremost to DJ culture and not general music news. There are a few competitors out there already that do a pretty good job of covering music news. You know, Billboard, MTV, Yahoo! Music, AOL Music and the like. Yeah, I could go head to head, but…er…no, thank you. I’m just kidding, of course. It’s just little’ol me plugging away on Netmix whenever the urge arises. I couldn’t be bothered covering what a “jackass” Kanye West was, who’s getting divorced, or whic faux pas some superstar artist committed. Not my bag, man. We’ll stick to DJ oriented stuff here.

What’s New

There’s a few new things I want to tell you about.

1. 20dot20

20dot20.com

The first is an industry networking event the guys and Habitat Music and I launched four months ago. I know—not a peep here about it on Netmix. Crazy, right? That’s what happens when you’re juggling multiple Twitter feeds (@djtonyz, @netmix, @twiijdj and @eroticdisco, blogs, my Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Orkut, Tribe.com, Ping.fm, LinkedIn, Plaxo and all the other Web 2.0 sites that are keeping me crazy busy.

Fortunately, we’ve been documenting everything over at 20dot20’s web site (http://www.2odot20.com). We’re very proud of this event, which is the buzz of the advertising music industry.

The event takes place the last Thursday of the month. We were located at 20 W. 20th, however, we just gave up the space and are moving the event to 95 Morton St. in the interim. Check the 20dot20.com Web site for event details and to sign up to the event or receive email notifications of future events. Here is the invite link: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/431022199

2. National Museum of Hip Hop

For the past four months, I’ve been assisting the organizers of the National Museum of Hip Hop with their online strategy. We’re in the process of developing their Web site, which will be tentatively located at http://www.hiphopmuseum.org. The group is planning its fund raising campaign with a a gala event on November 10 at M2 UltraLounge in New York City. Stay tuned for more details and the Web site launch in just a week or so!

3. Twiij.com

Twiij

In the spirit of UltraLight Startups, a New York City small business networking event focused on entrepreneurs bootstrapping their ideas with a few bucks and some wind at their backs, I threw $500 an idea at the wall and got Twiij.com to show for it. What’s Twiij? It’s a Twitter-based music promotion service, where anyone can Tweet their tracks to DJs following our Twitter account: @TwiijDJ. With hundreds of DJs following, you can simply fill out the form. Twiij shortens your URL using the Bit.ly API, and through an online form service creates all the hash (#) tags. Hit submit and watch your Tweet roll out in our feed, where DJs following can pick up on the new music. Think of it as the first Twitter record pool for DJs. Just go to http://www.twiij.com to Tweet your track.

4. EroticDisco

There’s been an explosion of talented female DJs around the world. You can find a few sites dedicated wholly to female DJs, like the popular SheJay.com. One day last year, I was putzing around the Web, thinking up ideas for new sites. I’d been listing to an old Vanessa Dauo album, inspired by the poetry of Erica Jong. That gave the idea for EroticDisco. I completely understand that some people think the word “erotic” followed by the word “disco,” means that it’s some kind of porno site, but that’s the furthest thing from my mind. However, I do want to focus on the fashion of female DJs, because I think that’s going to be a driver for young women who are interested in DJ culture.

EroticDisco.com Tamara Sky

My girlfriend, bless her heart, thinks that EroticDisco.com should cover ALL female DJs, no matter what they look like. Well, that’s what SheJay is for. We’re trying to be a little different and focus on the fashion, the style AND the music. It’s my editorial vision for the site to focus on stylish, attractive women who are also slamming DJs. Call it whatever you want. If you’re not feeling it, then may I suggest that you start your own Web site. There are thousands of ways to launch your own Web site nowadays, it shouldn’t be too hard. Just don’t hate the player, hate the game! We’re just trying to have a little fun in all the seriousness.

Wrap-Up

Yes, we’ve been GRINDING it out this summer! That’s for sure. If that wasn’t enough, I’ve been in the studio with DJ Ming working on some music. And, I’ve been helping my friends with their sites: TrendyMommies.com, 622Photography.com, and MelibeeGlobal.com.

I’ve also started developing our NetmixMedia.com corporate site, which is the parent org of this site, Netmix.com, and Twiij.com, DJGig.com (coming soon) and SoundsSocial (also coming soon).

This, and all the work I’m doing with Zaah Technologies at Lead User Experience Architect, which includes a bunch of sites that I can’t disclose, but they are all pretty big projects and we’re doing some fun stuff!

That’s a wrap. Stay tuned, because I’m going to be kicking it a bit more here on the blog in the next few weeks! Apologies for disappearing for a minute, but you can see why. It’s been mad hectic, for sure!

– by Tony Z.

Okay, we all know the power Twitter now wields over unfettered thought on the web. However, if you’re a company who has set up their first Twitter feed, only to find that competitors and those who either hate you or want to see you fail start posting things you might not want your mother to see, then check out two new services that will allow you to moderate Tweets before they hit your feed.

TweetRiver.com recently provided moderation services for the first Twitter conference, TWTRCON, in San Francisco. A few bloggers are already talking about the service.

From their web site:

TweetRiver delivers innovative and exciting solutions for a broad spectrum of companies and organizations. Some customers are simply trying to get a moderated Twitter stream onto their website. Some are trying to redefine how they engage customers from first-touch through customer support.

We know that each of our customers has individual needs. What solution can we deliver for you?

News & Media

• Publish a moderated news feed on your website
• Interact with an online community or fan group
• Curate tweets (or links in tweets) about news and events
• Aggregate tweets from multiple personalities into a single stream

Technology

• Notify customers and prospects of news or events
• Publish a moderated product feed on your website
• Respond to customer support issues
• Capture product, service, or company recommendations
• Power digital signage with tweets from customers or about your market

Large Enterprise

• Personalize a brand with tweets from key employees or executives
• Drive thought leadership about products or solutions
• Augment the call center with the crowd conversation
• Enable customers to collaborate via social media

Retail

• Cross-promote links and keywords from tweets to your website
• Publish buzz about new products or events
• Feature tweets from key influencers on your website
• Respond to local product and service requests

Not to be outdone, there’s a newbie on the block. TidyTweet.com promises to do the following:

• Automatic or Manual Approval of Tweets
• Custom Bad Word Filtering
• Whitelist or Blacklist Twitter Users
• Auto-rejection of Tweets from New Accounts
• Auto-rejection of Tweets with Multiple Trending Topics

TidyTweet is currently in private beta. Sign up for an account to test it out. It looks like it will be free for personal users. Business customers will have to fork over the toll.

– djtonyz

We love the folks over at MixMatchMusic.com, one of the cooler music services navigating the digital landscape. The company provides online software to mix and distribute music in a viral fashion, with built-in ways to generate and share revenue between producer/remixers and musicians collaborating in the software online. It’s a unique service, one in which you can tell a lot of love has gone into.

The company just release a remix widget, which is another unique asset to any online marketing plan. We heard they also have plans for an iPhone application, coming soon.

The company’s PR rep, Lisa Greenfield, made an appearance on today’s panel. In this video, she explains what MixMatchMusic.com is and how you can use it to generate interest to action on your music through the services online tool sets.

Mindshare: The Party flyer

Netmix.com and Zaah Technologies present Mindshare at Label Lounge, where Music Technology professionals meet New Media folks for a night of networking, music and play.

DJ Tony Z makes his return to the DJ booth to blend warm house vibes from the tech house, techno and deep house genres. DJ Madsol Desar puts a classic vibes house set together.

From 7 to 9 PM, the networking gets started with a $4 Happy Hour(s) drinks special on beer and mixed drinks.

Our Netmix gift-bag raffle takes place at 10 PM. With the purchase of a drink between 9 pm and 10 pm, get a ticket for the raffle and you’ll have a chance to win the following:

10 gift-bags will be raffled off. Each bag includes separate items donated by various partners, including New Riders, RockYourReligion.com, PhetusExclusives.com, BM Linx, Kristine W, Threadless.com, 622Photography.com, Zaah Technologies and more.

• A $50 T-Shirt Coupon Code from our friends at Threadless.com
• An 11 x 17 print of “The Colored President”: a portrait of Barak Obama by urban artist, Vic Nisoci (ArtWeCan.com). The original oil on canvas was donated to Russell Simmons Hip Hop Summit Action Network’s Hip Hop Inaugural Ball; it will be auctioned later next month.
• The new dance single, “Never,” by accomplished dance artist, Kristine W.
• A pre-release album from BM Linx entitled “Black Entertainment”
• Designing for the Social Web (Voices That Matter) by Joshua Porter (New Riders, 2 copies) – ISBN 0321534921
• SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate (Voices That Matter) by Joel Postman (New Riders, 2 copies) – ISBN: 0321580087
• Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? (Voices That Matter) by Susan M. Weinschenk (New Riders, 2 copies) – ISBN: 0321603605
• A special Netmix Podcast MP3 Data CD, containing 3 Netmix Podcast MP3’s – Subscribe to the Netmix Podcast Feed at: http://tinyurl.com/5wqm3m
• Netmix/Phetus Exclusives T-Shirts (5) from Urban Art inspired brand, PhetusExclusives.com
• A Peace Pendant from RockYourReligion (1)
• 100 Free Prints from PhotoMama.com
• 15% off of photography services from 622photography.com
• A hardcover copy of “Outliers,” the latest book by Malcolm Gladwell

BM Linx

Kristine W "Never"

cmj music marathon

‘ll be attending this year’s CMJ Festival in New York City, which takes place on October 21 through October 25th. Check out CMJ.com for more information.

I’ll also be on the panel, “Web 2.0, Music 2.0 and the Blog Factor,” which takes place on Thursday, October 23rd at 12:30 pm in Rm. 905 of NYU’s Kimmel Center on Washington Square.

8tracks

Have you ever just wanted to upload your own MP3’s to an easy to use web site, program those tracks sequentially, then send all your friends a link to listen your custom mix? Well, now you can with 8tracks, a new service providing anyone with the ability to become their own play list master and superstar online radio DJ.

Sure, you can go to iTunes and download music, but how do you share legally with friends without having to worry about the dreaded RIAA or their sinister cousin, SoundExchange, from draining your bank account with legal fees?

After all, you thought it was okay to uploaded your grandmother’s fav Frank Sinatra track to your blog so she could listen on the laptop you bought her for Christmas. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but you get the point. Sharing music is illegal and there are a few companies now trying to solve that problem.

The recent buzz has been focused on Muxtape.com, a simple service catering to the music discovery and play list creation community. Despite the cool factor, it’s a pretty rudimentary tool with few community tools and other features available to create a network around your play lists. Another major issue with Muxtape is that anyone can right-click on a track title from within the services pages and actually download the music files. That puts the service squarely in the legal grey area. Internet music strategists are watching to see how far Muxtape will get before hitting the legal wall.

Many web developers have been implementing an open source solution, the XSPF Music Player, into their clients web pages. Mostly, record labels who need a player and own their own content, which they can stream legally since they own the rights. Although a decent solution, there’s a bit of a learning curve on the technology side.

First, you have to upload your tracks to a server. Well, that’s if you have or rent server space in the first place. Although some fifteen year-old’s know how to FTP, it’s not the majority. Second, you have to edit a configuration file to point to the folder where your tracks reside, in order for the player to load files for playback. And third, you have to embed the player in your web page, social network or blog. That can be a challenge for 90 percent of the population who want to create mixes, but have no HTML skills, since you have to create the embed code yourself, instead of someone providing an embed code for you.

Of course, streaming music over the Internet without a license is a no-no. It’s surely a buzz kill when the summons shows up in your snail mailbox and you have to ask mom for $20K for to cover your lawyer costs.

8tracks Web Site

Leave it do David Porter, CEO and founder of 8tracks (http://www.8tracks.com), to figure out a way to create and share play lists legally. A former player over at Live365,, the Internet’s first successful user generated streaming radio service, David knows the ins and outs of streaming radio operations and Internet licensing parameters. Seizing the opportunity to create an elegant solution that would be easy to use while protecting users legally, he and some friends banded together to launch the service, which is coming out of its private beta on Friday, August 8.

(Before I go any further, let me disclose that I am an adviser to 8tracks for the DJ market.)

I’ve been playing with the service from its alpha to beta and now the public release. It’s a really neat and I’m sure it will be a hit. As always with bootstrapped start-ups, there are features yet to be implemented, but the basics are there and new tools will be rolled out over the next 6 months.

It’s pretty simple to use. Just register and then start creating your mix by uploading a minimum of 8 individual tracks, which is approximately 30 minutes of music. You can upload more if you like, but 8 tracks is the minimum, mainly for legal reasons and branding purposes. No one track can be over twenty minutes long and you can’t play two tracks by the same artist from the same album. Another legality, but that’s okay because your playing DJ, not record label A&R executive.

The cool thing about 8tracks is that you can also browse other users play lists and drag and drop their tracks into your mixes. This is the ultimate mash-up for online radio programming. Don’t feel like uploading today, simply search within 8tracks for music you like, create a new play list based on those selections and then publish and share your mix.

Files encoded as MP3 must be used, as other formats will not work. You can’t, for example, upload music from your iTunes library. You must convert it to MP3 first, by burning your tracks to CD then ripping them back down to your computer in MP3 format…but don’t tell anyone we told you how to do that.

Once you create your playlist, you can use your mouse to drag and drop titles in the order you want. After  you’ve done that, it’s as simple as sending out the URL provided to share your mix with your friends. They can either visit the URL you’ve sent them by email or you can publish your player to your web site, blog or social network and drive people there. That way, you can promote yourself in one place, without having to drive people somewhere else just to hear your mix.

David Porter says, “8tracks believes handcrafted music programming trumps algorithms. Think radio in the 1970s, mixtapes in the 1980s, and DJ culture of the 1990s through today. DJs share their talent in taste making, providing exposure for artists. Listeners get a unique blend of word-of-mouth sharing and radio programming — long the trusted means for music discovery — on a global scale.”

The company will most likely monetize the service with a mix of advertising and tiered services. For the time being, the goal is to get user adoption while working on a parallel track to implement the revenue model. Initially, the service has an affiliate relationship with Amazon.com, which may also be expanded to other services, like Emusic or Beatport, as the need arises. Users can purchase any track, as long as they are available through Amazon.com.

I’m working with 8tracks to create DJ-centric tools to allow professional DJs expanded capabilities. Those type of special DJ features will come down the road. For now, test out the service and let the guys at 8tracks know what you think through the prominent, red “feedback” tab provided.

Check out our first mixes on the 8tracks service:

http://8tracks.com/djtonyz/sounds-of-erotic-disco

http://8tracks.com/djtonyz/netmixcom-internet-radio

If you’re like me and are immersed in social networking and Web 2.0, then you should know what Twitter is. For those of you who don’t, I’ll try to explain it in as simple terms as possible.

Twitter allows you to “micro-blog.” That is, to create a profile on Twitter.com and the constantly feed it with your current thoughts in 140 characters or less. There are no photos, no video–it’s simply just a running text feed of your current status. Sort of like your Facebook feed, but you can port your Twitter status updates into Facebook and other social networks, while you can’t yet do the reverse with your MySpace or Facebook status updates.

With Twitter, you can follow people’s feeds and they can follow yours. I’m following a few hundred digerati, DJs and music industry professionals and have reached over 1,000 posts. Twitter has become such a phenomenon, that the site has had difficulty as of late staying online. The criticism is that they built the site using Ruby On Rails server technology, which is said to not scale as efficiently as other technologies available. Nevertheless, Twitter just raised a $15 Million round of funding and that should quiet the critics and hopefully smooth out their operations.

What’s great about Twitter is that people from all over the world are already jumping on the bandwagon, typing in the minutiae of their lives. My girlfriend, Missy, thinks Twitter is useless. That is, until a blogger in Egypt twittered that he’d been unfairly arrested. The “twitterspehere” the blogger operates in quickly came to his rescue. That changed Missy’s mind (for now). That is, until she sees me post something about her…lol.

Anyway, the point of the story. Yes…I’m getting to the point here, is that the user @aztrovoi contacted me through Twitter–all the way from Mexico. Who knew I had fans in Mexico!

Why the “@” symbol? Twitter uses the “@” symbol to allow sending direct messages to folks. So, if you want to post and address your post to me so that I see it in my “Replies” box, just put the “@” symbol in front of my user name: djtonyz. The message will go to both community and me.

The power of Web 2.0 is amazing. So many of my friends and colleagues are now following my updates through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and many other networks I’m part of. This gives me the ability to communicate what’s happening in my world everyday, and helps all my contacts stay up on my status.

Sure, it’s a lot of work constantly managing your online life. But, the means justifies the end! As I begin to build my off line DJ career again, all these tools have become necessary to promote and market oneself. You have to take advantage of them, because that’s where the people are.

As you can see from the Netmix blog updates and sidebar, I mainly use Twitter as a quick communication tool that resides somewhere between the world of an IM, an email and a blog post depending upon how you look at it. It’s the world of “micro-blogging,” a form of blogging that takes place in around 140 characters or less.

Surely, many early adopters of Twitter know about Pownce and its other competitor, Jaiku. Although Twitter is extremely popular, Pownce takes the strategy one step further by allowing file sharing and video posts.

I’ve found that on Twitter, the network I’ve built so far is mainly DJs who are early adopters and web development industry folks I like to follow whose kernels of insight I generally find useful to add to my knowledge base. I’ve been a little afraid of Pownce after getting a few invites this week from spammers, which I don’t seem to get as much of from Twitter. However, I’m willing to give Pownce a shot, mainly to distribute my mix shows to a built-in community; much like I do on Facebook. I’d like to see them add a similar Flash audio player to Pownce in the same way Facebook recently enabled which has allowed me to simply post a link to my mix on someone’s profile page, where they can play the show (hosted on my server) immediately without having to download it. That’s a pretty neat feature of Facebook, which MySpace or Bebo have yet to implement.

Pownce was co-founded by Kevin Rose, a co-founder of Digg.com, the popular bookmarking site. So, it’s got some leverage behind it. Oddly enough, when I was in San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo, Digg folk were using Twitter. That seemed to be the main form of communication. Twitter is having its fair share of issues with the Ruby On Rails framework it relies upon. Over the past week, the site has been hit with a number of outages. If that continues, look for Pownce to become quietly take the lead in the space. Twitter has got to get a hold on their issues. One of the main architects at Twitter, Blaine Cooke, recently broke with the company and word on the street is that they are going to build out the next version in PHP, which should be more stable and scalable, which depends on your viewpoint, but I’ll leave that up to the experts to figure out.

On the Powce site, you’ll find a set of Tools & Apps already being implemented to interface with other services like TypePad and even Drupal, two popular open source CMS platforms. And, you can add most of your social networks to the sidebar as well as web sites you want to promote or be associated with.

For me, Facebook is far and away a better platform to promote my DJ work. The group features are much cleaner and the simplicity of the interface is what continues to attract me to the site. I’m on another 60 or so social networks anyway, so why do I prefer Facebook over the others? It seems as if Facebook is now becoming the spot for a higher level of discourse than MySpace. On Facebook, there seem to lengthier conversations taking place, whereas on MySpace you have short bursts of promotion and it’s difficult to add friends of friends because of the lack of AJAX technology that makes clicking around in Facebook a bit more intuitive than MySpace. I think these new, micro-blogging services will bridge the gap somehow.

Jaiku’s website seems to still be in beta mode. You’re allowed only so many invites and at this point, it all has to be done by email, unlike Pownce which provides tie-in to all the major services, including Facebook and Gmail among others. The interesting take-a-way from Jaiku, is that the site allows you to add RSS feeds from a variety of services, as well as importing you blog postings via RSS, which allows for the ability to micro-blog your main blog postings. You can also set up Groups around a common theme, which should help build the community. I added DJs and Tech House to see who would join the party, which would make it easier to find and follow others.

All the services allow you micro-blog to your IM account. That’s a neat feature, but once I don’t use much at this point. I’m sure my friends don’t mind following me outside of IM, but inside IM would probably get annoying after a while. I mean…who has the time? LOL. If you have time for Twitter, then you have time for just about anything that comes down the road.

But I could be wrong and have been before. It’s just what I feel I’m getting out of it for me that counts the most.

read more | digg story

Amit Gindha from the New Tech Meetup Group in NYC sent this to me today. I was surprised to see myself on camera at the Web 2.0 Expo. Didn’t think I’d make the cut.

Okay, so the last few days have been slow on the Netmix front. Reason: I’ve been finishing up some homework for the end of the semester at NYU, where I’m taking classes towards a degree in Digital Communications and Media. Trying to consult to clients, get my DJ career back on track, go to school and be a great boyfriend to my girlfriend, Missy, certainly doesn’t leave a lot of room for much more. However, since I’m enjoying the independent freelance life and am between projects, it’s given me some downtime to think through some new ideas I’m putting in the pipeline.

First, I launched a splash page for my Product Development consulting company, NetmixMedia.com, which will also develop internal projects that I’ll cover to follow. NetmixMedia will specialize in Information Architecture, Usability and People-centered design of Web 2.0 sites and applications. I’m working with a LAMP, Flash, Flex and Ruby developers to execute exciting media projects for our clients. We just finished up a blog-a-zine project for a major media company and wrapped up a fix for a project for Pepsi Cola. The next project starts up in a few weeks and we’re fielding calls from a number of other organizations. Feel free to contact me with your RFP at info@netmixmedia.com.

Going out to Web 2.0 in San Francisco was incredibly inspiring. I also just joined a new Facebook group, Ultra Light Startups, which held its first meeting this week at the offices of Rose Ventures, a angel investment firm that operates Angelsoft, a web site that helps angel groups organize and search for new projects to invest in.

I’ve been working lately with a great group of guys who manage an offshore team and we’ve been discussing the opportunity to work together to build some cool applications for the DJ market. I’ve got a couple of things in mind that I’d love to launch in an “ultra light” kind of way and I’m looking for DJs, developers and other web savvy DJ culture oriented individuals who want to join in the fun and work together to bring this project out in a “Twitter-esque” manner. I’m already talking to some friends in San Francisco and a few here in New York. It’s exciting to have that bug again and I’m gearing up to bring the idea to market.

The domain I’ll be launching that will service the DJ market is DJGig.com. It’s not live yet. It’s in the planning stages now and there are a few hurdles to jump over before I get it up and running.

The second domain is EroticDisco.com. That’ll be a web site featuring the world’s hottest (as in looks and sex appeal) DJs. I may keep it all female or I may decide to open it up to men as well, to serve the both the ladies and the gay market. It’ll be tough because men who love to look at women won’t necessarily want to see male DJs on the home page, so it may have to have a dual entry page so we can keep things separate and cater to both audiences.

So, all you hot (looking) female and male Djs out there who want to submit photos or video, the rules will be no nudity (want to keep this clean as I can possibly keep it while pushing the envelope, of course) and the shots must be highly stylized and be in a nightlife environment. It’s about DJs and nightlife, so it has to be in that setting only. No bedrooms, no street shots. Nightclubs and lounges are the only acceptable environments.

As the blog grows, I will be producing a calendar and possibly a digital movie release for download. All entrants will have to sign agreements and once we select the top photos or videos for the calendar and digital movie release, we’ll negotiate licensing fees.

I’m just waiting on the designs from a young, talented designer from New York, Ann Li. Once those are approved, I’ll be integrating the theme into Wordpress and off we go. Stay tuned for more on this and other news.

Peace,

Tony Z.

Wired interviews Muxtape founder, Justin Ouellete, but the issue of legality is skirted around like an 8-year old running from the rubber ball in a game of playground bombardment.

I’ve tried out Muxtape, but it’s too eclectic for me. Most of the programmers (regular Joe’s and Susie’s) who are creating their Muxtapes are pretty esoteric. I haven’t yet had the chance to find a Muxtape with the latest tech house vibes, nor can I easily find one because the site doesn’t break out any genres or any other filters for that matter.

It’s great for music discovery, but if you’re not into the broad discovery category, than it may fall short for you. However, if you’re like most Muxtapers, you’ll appreciate the high level of sophistication that goes into making the most obscure mixes possible. Good luck finding what you want to listen to. You pretty much have to sit back and let it be presented to you. Sort of like that good’ol standby…the RADIO! Remember that technology? Well…it’s coming back in more ways than one.

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