Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Every year I do a Top 10 Albums of the Year post. Here’s this year’s. This year though, my listening habits have changed thanks to exfm. While I still consider myself an ‘album listener’, I’m also very much a ‘singles listener’ now too. So it’s only appropriate to do a Top 10 Songs of the Year post. My only criteria was that these songs could not be on any of the albums I chose for top albums. In no particular order:
Nadine by Project Jenny, Project Jan http://ex.fm/song/3di
Go Outside by Cults http://ex.fm/song/10a
Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People http://ex.fm/song/2xc
Riding Coach by 1,2,3 http://ex.fm/song/1qw
Northern Mentality by Mathieu Santos http://ex.fm/song/4m3
Truth by Alexander http://ex.fm/song/4pa
Barracudas by The Devil Whale http://ex.fm/song/1ut0a
Ffunny Ffriends by Unknown Mortal Orchestra http://ex.fm/song/33l
Last Night at the Jetty by Panda Bear http://ex.fm/song/2yb
Bones - Male Bonding by http://ex.fm/song/4l4
Another year passes by, another amazing year of music. It just seems to get better every year. Here are my favorite albums of 2011.
#10
Album: Ventriloquizzing
Artist: Fujiya & Miyagi
Released: January 25, 2011
#9
Album: Code and Keys
Artist: Death Cab For Cutie
Released: April 5, 2011
Listen on Soundcloud
#8
Album: Reptillians
Artist: Starfucker
Released: June 7, 2011
Listen on Soundcloud
#7
Album: Cults
Artist: Cults
Released: June 7, 2011
Listen on Bandcamp
#6
Album: Circuital
Artist: My Morning Jacket
Released: May 31, 2011
#5
Album: In The Mountain in The Cloud
Artist: Portugal. The Man
Released: July 15, 2011
Listen on Soundcloud
#4
Album: Bloodless Coup
Artist: Bell X1
Released: April 12, 2011
Listen on Soundcloud
#3
Album: The Rip Tide
Artist: Beirut
Released: August 30, 2011
#2
Album: Eureka
Artist: Mother Mother
Released: March 15, 2011
Listen on Soundcloud
#1
Album: Actor-Caster
Artist: Generationals
Released: March 29, 2011
Listen on Bandcamp
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Most people I know don’t know about this either - http://www.spinner.com/interface. It’s pretty amazing.
Do you know about this? I didn’t.
I literally had no idea this has been happening. And it looks like it’s been happening for a while now, too. There are 17 of them in total. I watched the one with Ryan Adams the other day and he blew me away. And to think I almost missed it. There is just so…
Yesterday you had one choice for Trending on exfm – whatever was popular overall. While great, we knew we could do better. So, we did.
Starting today you can filter Trending.
Want to see what’s Trending just for the genre Rock? Mouse over the blue /OVERALL near the top of the exfm window and a drop down appears. Click on Rock and voila – trending just for Rock. Same thing applies for the other genres listed. You can also filter for Just Your Network (the people you follow) or our amazing Tastemakers, too.
It’s not just limited to the ones listed. You can manually fill in any genre. Place the cursor just after TRENDING/ and type in any genre you want. A handy feature – type two characters and it will suggest popular genres for you. Hit tab to auto-complete a suggested genre or keep hitting tab to cycle through possible genres based on that letter combo.
These new filter controls are incredibly powerful, amazingly flexible and will open up entire new worlds of music discovery. We hope you like them. Have at it.
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
I’ll add this - it amazes me how many retail stores (Best Buy, CompUSA, Sony Store, Samsung, etc) don’t have wifi working for their laptops, tablets and phones. Phone stores are even worse - they have fake phones with paper screens. I just can’t believe these companies can’t even get that right. Apple stores are amazing in so many ways but I swear it’s just having working wifi that already makes them win.
Jordan Crook reports that Sony COO Phil Molyneux unveiled Sony’s new retail strategy at a press conference this morning. Wait for it… Sony Stores! As Cook notes, the strategy is basically “follow Apple’s lead”.
But I’m confused, wasn’t this also their old retail strategy? It sure sounds like they’re basically doing the same things they were doing with the Sony Style stores but holding a press conference to say the strategy is new because it didn’t work the first time around.
The real problem — which I’m not sure either Sony or Microsoft really understand — is that simply building stores which look like Apple Stores isn’t enough. It’s the Apple products in them that make them successful.
Apple’s strategy with the stores worked because they knew they had the best products, they just had a hard time conveying that with the existing retail channels. The products quite literally sell themselves, they just needed the most efficient and effective way to get them in peoples’ hands.
At the same time, they realized there was a huge opportunity for competent human beings (who don’t work on commission) to usher users into this brave new world of computing everywhere.
It was the perfect one-two punch. That’s the Apple Store.
But if you open a Apple-like store and your products just aren’t very good, guess what happens? The opposite of success.
Think of it this way: if you opened the nicest looking store in the world that sold bags of shit, would it be successful?
Focus on the products first, not the stores.
