Viral Music List.com – Learn How Viral Your Favorite Music Really Is

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Emilio Pérez Miguel

Name: Viral Music List
URL: http://www.viralmusiclist.com

There are two types of music listeners: those who revel in exclusivity (and consume nothing but songs by obscure bands), and the ones who get their kicks only by listening to what lots and lots of people listen to.

If you fall in the former category and live in Uruguay (like I do) you buy compilations of underground/indie/emerging bands from America and Britain, and then drive all your friends off the bend by harping on Okkervil River, Bear In Heaven and The Antlers.

And if the latter group is where you belong, then you turn to a service like Viral Music Lists for approbation.

What this site does is to let you know which songs have gone viral. You can do that by picking one of the three main categories (“Tracks”, “Albums” and “Artists”) and then setting down the time range that applies (the provided options are ”24 Hours”, “7 Days” and “All Time”). And you can also launch an artist-specific search, and see how these musicians you love are doing in terms of online popularity. Continue reading →

Feature: Musicians Around The World, Part 1: Florencia Cano

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Emilio Pérez Miguel

The Musicians Around The World feature is devoted to chronicling the lives of both Uruguayan who are traveling abroad, and foreign performers who come to Uruguay in order to promote and develop their art.

In the first part of this feature, I had the chance to speak with young Uruguayan singer/composer Florencia Cano. She is going to travel through the US shortly with some friends, and she will take advantage of the time she spends there to try and promote her music in what is undoubtedly the biggest market in the world.

Florencia Cano

Q: First of all thank you so much for your time. I’d like to ask you to introduce yourself to all the readers of MusicKO.

A: Thank you for the chance to do this. My name is Florencia Cano, and I was born in Montevideo (Uruguay). I love singing, and I come from a musicians’ family. My father is a jazz musician, and my mother was part of many different rock bands in the ‘60s. I was always attracted to music, but it was only when I became 20 that I realized how much I liked it, how much I enjoyed singing.

At first I sang pop songs, and the band I was in sort of leaned towards country… it was something that sort of happened whenever we were rehearsing and playing. And that wasn’t really something I enjoyed. Then, I began studying operatic singing. That’s what I really like. It’s what I enjoy signing best. I love fusing it with pop. And since I’m a soprano, I like to take my voice as high as possible, make it explode in high notes and then contrast it with lower passages. I like to take my potential further all the time. I am devoting my life to singing.

Q: I understand that you are developing a style of your very own, that your music is not something that could be labeled in a univocal way. Rather, it could be labeled in multiple ways at once. Can you tell everybody about what you are doing? If possible, could you define it?

A: The thing is, I love music on the whole. I listen to lots of different genres, I appreciate mostly every style that you could listen to. I love tango, and I love rock. I love opera. I’m also fond of Jazz. And I believe I began doing things in a certain way, and that way changed as time went by, simply because I’m in a search process. I like to combine lots of things.

Q: But if you had to pinpoint just a couple of genres, what would they be?

A: Well, nowadays I have a couple of compositions that are a bit reminiscent of Ani DiFranco and Jewel… songs I perform only with my acoustic guitar. These are songs I really enjoy playing, but mostly from a personal point of view. They bring me a lot of calm. They are songs that I like to keep to myself. What I want to share with others are the more operatic numbers, the ones where I combine rock with operatic singing. These are the songs I decorate the most – I love decorating things, making them sparkle… There’s nothing I love best than giving a single song lots and lots of different ambiences.

People have told me that the songs I write are a bit like movies. I begin dealing with something specific, but I end up creating a whole world. My characters are the kind everybody ends up relating to.

Q: So, as a composer you have that gift which someone like Joni Mitchell had of narrating what is personal in a universally-relatable way. Is that the right way to put it?

A: Yes, I like that concept, I like to think we are one and all the same. We all have the very same feelings at some point or other in our lives. That is why there are songs that everybody loves, no matter where they are or which language they speak. Continue reading →

LyricsGaps – Learn Languages By Listening To Songs

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Emilio Pérez Miguel

Name: LyricsGaps
URL: http://www.lyricsgaps.com

“Music is the doctor of my soul”. That’s what the Doobie Brothers once sang. And it’s something that is more or less carved in stone. Yet, music can take on other professional roles. Preeminently among them is the role of teacher. I mean, just look at the number of people who have learned English by listening to songs. OK, maybe the word “learn” is too much. Nobody becomes a fountain of knowledge by listening to songs by contemporary musicians. But there’s no denying that he will build up a more than respectable vocabulary, and revise his existing word lists that much easier.

Well, he certainly will as long as he has a site like this one at hand. LyricsGaps lets anybody pick up new words by listening to music. The idea is that people choose a language from the many that are offered (including English, Spanish, Italian and French) and pick new vocabulary up by completing blanks in the lyrics of songs in such languages. Continue reading →

If Napster Had Never Existed…

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Emilio Pérez Miguel

…things would have been a bed of roses for the music industry. Well, that is what most major labels think. They presented a graph in the recent litigation against LimeWire that drove the point home.

Napster Killed The Radio Star...

This is open to endless debate and speculation, of course. Did sales fall by the wayside because music was being pirated, or because the music that many artists were pumping out was substandard? Speak your mind in the “Comments” box below – let it all out…

How To Use Social Media To Become Famous

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Emilio Pérez Miguel

If used correctly, social media can break you into the music industry not only faster but also far more notoriously. Rebecca Black is the latest example of Internet stardom, and when you know the full facts and how much money it actually took her to get the video for “Friday” together ($ 4000 – her mother paid for it) then the one conclusion to be reached is that just anybody can do it.

And Rebecca Black is also a perfectly illustrative example if only because she has fallen prey to the derision that always besets such artists, with her “hit” quickly becoming the most-hated song on the Internet (it has almost 2 million “dislikes”, as opposed to 250,000 “likes”)

So, how could these pitfalls be avoided? How can a social presence be established and nurtured in the healthiest way of all?

I think that a basic analysis would let us agree on the following points:

1) Make sure you are picking the right social site.

Should you go for MySpace or Facebook in order to begin promoting your art? Up until now, MySpace used to be the social site of choice for musicians. Yet, the network has recently withstood one blow after the other – its userbase has been dwindling (owing in no small part to the proliferation of platforms like Bandcamp and ReverbNation), and key staff has been rotating to the point it’s downright difficult to keep track of all comings and goings. The coup d’ grace came last week, as owner Rupert Murdoch announced that he was putting the site for sale (and for a pittance of its real value at that).

When pressed to make a choice, Internet artists like Lady Gaga have always gone for Facebook. Just compare Gaga’s 1.5 million friends on MySpace to the more than 31 million “likes” she has on Facebook. And Gaga actually makes extensive use of her Twitter account, just like Justin Bieber does. Doing cross over content is an integral part of the game, and micro-sharing platforms like Twitter are always used in tandem with social networking sites to truly connect with audiences.

2) Know how to market your music intelligently.

Upload tracks for your fans to listen at no cost. If you are an unknown, not many would be willing to pay for the privilege of listening to your songs. By letting them listen to what you do for free, you will be giving people the impression that all you really want to do is spread your message, regardless of monetary considerations. And that’s all the encouragement many would need to try your music out. Continue reading →

Casablancas (Uruguayan Independent Artist)

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Emilio Pérez Miguel

Casablancas are Martin Rela (vocals & rhythm guitar), Syd J. Gerones (lead guitar & backing vocals), Nacho Lorenzelli (bass guitar), Freddy Suarez (keyboards) and Seba Moro (drums & percussion).

It’s a little known fact, but it’s absolutely true. H.G Wells (one of the founding fathers of science fiction) did spend some time in Uruguay. He was in the country during the summer of 1879 – 1880, in the seaside town of La Pedrera. Accounts of his stay there are unanimous, if only because the population of La Pedrera back then consisted only of 8 people, 3 dogs and 1 dalek.

We reportedly know that Wells used to wake at 7 in the morning every single day, walk through the beach until dusk and then come back to his little cabin. He did that the whole summer.

Then, on the final day of his stay there he clenched his fist, pointed it to the balmy sky and screamed at the top of his lungs, “SHIT, ISN’T EVER ANYTHING TO DO IN THIS COUNTRY???”.

He then had a kind of mystic experience. It is said he saw something blazing in the sky. If he had been Caetano Veloso he would have written the lyric that goes “and my eyes/go looking for flying saucers in the sky”. Instead, he dreamed up the story of the Martians landing on Earth that you can read on his seminal work “The War Of The Worlds” (1898). He turned the joyous dunes of La Pedrera into Horsell Common, and he came with a killer virus that sent the poor old Martians to kingdom come simply because he caught some scorching disease while he was in Uruguay, and he had to go to the toilet six times per day for three years afterwards.

A Tripod From "The War Of The Worlds" Raising Havoc

This history is little-known because there has always been a kind of multinational conspiracy to keep Uruguay off fictionalized works. Powers too evil and too daunting collude to keep the effervescent South American country from raising its head in the world of literature.

And in a certain sense, some things have remained the same in Uruguay ever since Wells paid us that veiled visit. There’s still people who scream at the sky out of sheer boredom, and lament their lack of prospects. They vent their frustration in different ways. Some play soccer and marry Argentinean models, some have music blogs where they write about anything that comes into their minds, and some others pick up their guitars and play good old rock and roll, paying a direct homage to the best British and American music that ever existed. Continue reading →

The Worst Pink Floyd Cover In History (Video)

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Emilio Pérez Miguel

Do you remember the gents who covered “Sweet Child O’ Mine”? Well, now they’d better begin looking over their shoulders… heavy competition is on its way. Just look at this version of “Comfortably Numb”.

As some commenter aptly put it… “Comfortably Numb? More like uncomfortably dumb”.

The Beastie Boys Release Their Latest Song On Tumblr

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Emilio Pérez Miguel

The Beastie Boys Have Turned To Tumblr To Promote Their Latest Song (“Make Some Noise”)

The Beastie Boys have chosen to release their newest song (“Make Some Noise”) online, well ahead of their next album (which is yet to be named). That’s nothing new. However, what makes this prerelease special is the service the boys have gone for.

You see, they are not sharing the song via MySpace or Facebook. They aren’t even sharing it on YouTube. Rather, the service they have chosen is no other than Tumblr.

That’s certainly big news for the microblogging platform – or is it? If you take a good look around, you will learn that the service is growing by a quarter billion impressions every week. It was only natural that some rock stars would begin taking to it to promote their art.

What do you think will happen next? Are more and more artists going to begin following suit? Or will they just stick to Facebook and MySpace for promoting ther music? Comment, people!

A Video Of Andrew Bird Playing Live

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Emilio Pérez Miguel

Born In Chicago, Andrew Bird Is An Multi Instrumentalist Who Is Better-Known For His Skills When Playing The Violin

For those of you who are not acquainted with him, this is a video of multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird doing what he does best. He doesn’t run out of steam for the entire duration of this composition (20 solid minutes).

Just for the record, I discovered Andrew when listening to My Morning Jacket’s “Z”. He handled strings and woodwinds there, and gave everything a true air of magnificence.

Having once founded and captained a band named The Bowl Of Fire, Andrew is currently a solo artist.

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