Category: Music

Amazon + Google + Zynga = Lady Gaga Superstardom

Do you remember when it was cool, modern, and edgy for recording artists to expand their reach using music videos? Compare that to what Lady Gaga is doing today. I’m impressed by how Gaga and her management team have used modern tech to make her an even bigger star. She’s promoting herself with Google Chrome and a version of Zynga’s FarmVille called GagaVille. Her new album, Born This Way, was the best thing that ever happened to Amazon’s Cloud Player service. It’s just progressive marketing and fan outreach.

Although I only like some of her music, I have a crazy amount of respect for Lady Gaga. I love the way she talks about her fans and supports the gay community. I love that she’s a fantastic role model for young people struggling with confidence and identity issues. And I love her modern multimedia onslaught! Paws up monsters!!!

Amazon Uses Lady Gaga to Extend Cloud Player Reach

In its war against Google Music Beta and Apple iCloud, Amazon has pulled out a secret weapon to give its Cloud Player an edge: Lady Gaga. It’s a move that’s even more aggressive than Amazon’s 69-cent MP3s; take one of the hottest artists in music and price her new album, Born This Way, at 99 cents. Millions of people will buy it and as an added bonus get their Amazon Cloud storage bumped to 20GB.

Certainly only a fraction of people that buy Born This Way for 99 cents will take advantage of Amazon Cloud Player. Still, the company will surely get some new customers out of the deal. Through this promotion, it will get more customers that regularly buy its MP3s, use Cloud Player, and buy other Amazon goods. Most importantly, it strikes a blow to Google’s recently launched Music Beta service and Apple’s upcoming iCloud service.

Did any of you buy Born This Way today? If you’re new to Amazon MP3s, what did you think of the buying experience? What do you think of the promotion in general? Brilliant or risky?

Comcast Blocking The Pirate Bay: A Sign of Things to Come?

Updated: According to TorrentFreak Internet service providers Comcast, Rogers, and Optus have started blocking The Pirate Bay. The site is used by millions of people to acquire pirated movies, television shows, and music tracks. Honestly, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened sooner and that more ISPs haven’t blocked the site. Sure, people will cite free speech and net neutrality, but telecommunications companies tend to act first and deal with the consequences later.

Any of you use Comcast? Is your access to The Pirate Blocked? If so, are you going to change providers? For those of you not on Comcast, would you change ISPs if you didn’t have access to The Pirate Bay?

Update: Apparently this might be a problem with The Pirate Bay and not ISPs. Phew!

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GagaVille and Words with Gaga Coming to Facebook

Lady Gaga is teaming up with Zynga to expand her reach through the use of social gaming. Coming soon are GagaVille and Words with Gaga. I’m pretty sure you can figure out what those games are. In case you can’t, here are some wise words from VentureBeat’s “Dancing” Dean Takahashi:

On May 17, Zynga will launch GagaVille, a neighboring farm in Zynga’s FarmVille game. This will be a Gaga-inspired farm inside the game which will showcase Lady Gaga’s style and themes from her albums and videos. It will have things like crystals, unicorns and sheep on motorcycles. Users will get exclusive access in FarmVille to songs from Gaga’s Born This Way album before it is released on May 23.

In Zynga’s Words With Friends mobile game, there will be a Words With Gaga contest. If a player plays the special Gaga word of the day, they will be entered to win tickets to a concert on Lady Gaga’s next tour, plus a signed copy of Born This Way. Users will be picked randomly from May 17 to May 26 in the U.S.

Confession: I like Lady Gaga. Her music is catchy, she seems to genuinely love her fans, and I love the work she does with the gay community. I also think she’s hot in that “crazy girl” way. Most of you know that I love word games like Scrabble, WordFeud, and Words with Friends. With that in mind, I’m sure as hell going to play Words with Gaga. Who’s coming with me?!?

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Amazon’s 69-Cent MP3 Gambit — Pure Genius?

When Amazon first announced that it would start selling popular MP3 singles for 69 cents, I was mildly interested. A lot of the same songs cost $1.29 on iTunes and Amazon offers the benefit of streaming through its Cloud Player. I’ve returned to the 200+ list of 69-cent songs several times in the last week…and usually find something new to buy. It’s…just…so…cheap!

Selling cheap MP3 singles helps Amazon on multiple levels. Obviously it helps the company combat Apple’s dominance in the digital music space. It also encourages consumers to use Cloud Player, which will aid Amazon’s upcoming Android products. The move also gets people (like me) to check for new 69-cent songs on a regular basis and if someone is on Amazon’s site then there’s always a chance that they’ll buy something in addition to or other than a cheap MP3.

Have you checked out Amazon’s MP3 cheapies? If so, what do you think of the selection? What do you think of the move in general? Is it a stroke of genius? Or will it fail to take market share away from Apple and/or bolster the company’s Android plans?

Today’s Poll: Do You Like Sony Qriocity?

Not that you can currently use it on your PlayStation 3 at the moment (thanks to external intrusions), but I wanted to get your opinions on Sony’s Qriocity service. A unified approach to streaming music, movies, and television sounds great on paper, but there are separate services that do each of these things so well. I know that a lot of you are big on Netflix and some of you use Hulu. Some of you dig Pandora, while a few of you are Slacker or Last FM peeps. Do you think Qriocity can take the place of those services? Or is it just not good enough?

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Weird Al Gets Approval From Lady Gaga

Musical parody genius “Weird” Al Yankovic has gotten approval to poke fun at Lady Gaga after seemingly being spurned by the pop star. It turns out that Gaga’s manager was giving Yankovic the runaround. The manager told Yankovic that Lady Gaga did not approve of the parody “Perform This Way”, which is based on the hit “Born This Way” (which is clearly a Madonna rip-off). According to E!, the manager has confessed to never playing the song for Lada Gaga. After the parody went viral on YouTube, Gaga heard the song and loved it. “Weird” Al now has her approval and “Perform This Way” will be the lead single on his upcoming album.

The lessons here are the managers are scum and that “Weird” Al rules!!!

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Cee Lo Green + iPad + NESynth = Awesome

Here’s an awesome version of Cee Lo Green’s “F**k You!” performed on an iPad using NESynth. It’s fantastic hearing a modern song in classic NES sounds. It’s also completely cool that this was done on an iPad. Check out the clip and let me know what you think (please)!

Amazon Cloud Player Beats Apple and Google to the Punch

Amazon has launched a streaming music and an online storage service called Cloud Player and Cloud Drive, respectively. Cloud Drive allows users to store music and other files in the cloud (duh). Music can be streamed to any PC or Google Android phone via Cloud Player. The free version of Cloud Drive comes with 5GB of storage. Users can purchase additional space or purchase a digital album, which bumps their total to 20GB.

This is a bold and exciting move by Amazon. While the company’s MP3 store does well, it’s still way behind Apple iTunes. Offering cloud services (not to mention generally lower prices) could help attract more customers away from Apple. Both Apple and Google are known to be readying cloud-based music-services. Amazon has beaten its competitors to the punch and there’s always something to be said for being first.

Furthermore, Cloud Player looks like another facet of Amazon’s future Android strategy. Last week I speculated that Amazon will almost definitely have Amazon-branded phones and tablets running Google Android. Can you picture an Amazon Android phone with perfect integration of Amazon’s Android Appstore and Cloud Player? Wouldn’t a phone or tablet that offered simple purchasing of Amazon goods — both digital and physical — be a potentially huge moneymaker for the company? It seems so brilliant…and scary.

Let me know what you think of Amazon’s Cloud Player and Cloud Drive (please). Are they services you’d definitely use? Or does music in the cloud not interest you?