Though Spotify has conquered much of Europe, it is still not publicly available in the US, since one label group, schoolyard bully and notoriously late-to-the-party Universal Music has not signed a licensing agreement with Spotify, though the other majors have.

However, due to my good fortune (and my friend Marc), I have been enjoying the Great Jukebox In the Sky. Don’t get me wrong: I love CDs and still love vinyl. I love to hold an album, read the liners cover to cover, and still listen primarily to full albums. I think I always will. Not only do I love CDs, but I have spent many years building a successful business with CDs as one of our primary products.

So it’s a bit sacrilegious for me to say this, but here it is anyway: Spotify is the killer app for the way I consume and enjoy music.

On my laptop, I leave Spotify’s terminal window open at all times and can search for any artist, any album and any song. Within seconds, an artist’s entire catalog appears and I can play high quality streams (320kbit/s) to my heart’s content. Albums or songs I like can be dragged to new playlists, giving me a shortcuts to any album at any time.

Now, here’s the kicker: I read about and bought a 3rd party application called Airfoil ($25 – www.rogueamoeba.com), which “highjacks” your audio source (Spotify in this case) and slings it to an Apple Airport Express ($99), which is plugged into an outlet and to the Aux input on my stereo preamp. I have a multi-stage amp/preamp already wired to speakers in different rooms, so now at home I have the largest music collection in the world all at my fingertips and playable in different rooms of my house.

There are other streaming services available, such as Mog.com, which also offers a free ad-supported version and a premium no-ad pay version for only $5 per month, Rhapsody and Lala.com, but for me, Spotify is just the ticket, thanks to high quality sound, an intuitive UI, no delays or audio skipping and an immense library of available music. For those of you not lucky enough to have dual citizenship with Sweden or a connected friend to get you in on the US beta, definitely check out Mog.com.

…Now if Spotify will just launch its US iPhone app, I’ll truly have the world of recorded music at my fingertips at all times.

(listening now while typing: Ethio-Jazz master Mulatu Astatke’s recently released “Inspiration Information 3” album. Mmmmm, good)

Manager, Business Development

Small, well-established San Francisco consultancy looking to hire experienced sales/account executive to successfully bring new business opportunities to the company. We are the nation’s premier music branding consultancy, advising Fortune 500 brands and global marketers on music strategy in their campaigns, products and marketing. Specifically we build music platforms for brands and their agencies by aligning major recording artists with relevant products and services to produce myriad branding activations such as original commissioned recordings, branded media players, podcasts, events, CDs, preloaded USB drives and MP3 players, download promotions, digital mixtapes and more. We are currently looking to fill positions in our San Francisco office.

Primary Responsibilities:
• Drive $500k to $2 million plus deals in a highly competitive market place
• Develop contacts into leads and work through the complete sales cycle, including identifying and researching new business targets, opening up communication with key stakeholders, qualifying leads, proposing new business, pricing, negotiations and closing deals.
• Identify, develop, and articulate the compelling value proposition to prospective and current customers.
• Deliver confident, high-energy presentations and proposals.
• Lead meetings with minimal guidance or supervision.
• Actively identify and address business questions demonstrating meticulous follow-up and responsiveness to customers and internal staff.
• Ensure that individual and team actions build the organization’s reputation for top quality business practices.
• Gather data from prospects or customer to properly qualify business potential and to produce reliable business forecasts.
• Keep informed of competitive activity and offerings, music industry intellectual property developments, as well as innovations in the technological and advertising arenas, in order to guide target customers in making decisions between various alternatives.
• Responsible for up-sell and cross-sell activities into existing accounts.
• Provide accurate and timely sales reports and forecast information.

Job description:
• Research/cold call/network to develop new leads.
• Build positive professional relationships with prospects and create new business opportunities.
• Work with Principals to prepare proposals and creative briefs.
• Brainstorm with Principals and Creative Team to determine best opportunities for new work.
• Keep detailed records on Salesforce of all business development activities.
• Support the VP of Business Development with research, proposal development and general administrative tasks.
• Contribute to company marketing strategy and execution efforts.
• Some travel will be required.

Qualifications:
• Demonstrated business development / sales experience
• Existing relationships with marketing executives at major consumer products companies
• Demonstrated leadership ability and experience in getting results through self-initiated activities
• Demonstrated networking skills including strong written and verbal skills
• Detailed knowledge of marketing, advertising, branding, creative and web-based services
• General knowledge of music industry licensing environment a plus
• Ability to cold call prospects and successfully convert to qualified leads
• Ability to write effective proposals for creative services
• Works well in a collaborative team environment
• Very organized and forward-thinking with ability to multi-task and prioritize competing priorities
• Personable, enthusiastic, motivated, outgoing, flexible
• Technical skills should include MS Powerpoint presentation design, basic MS Excel, and Salesforce experience; Photoshop basics a plus.

Rock River’s president Jeff Daniel made his first post on Advertising Age’s blog Songs For Soap. In this post he offers up knowledge and sound advice for artists who want their music to be used by brands. You can read the full article here.

“Μερικά επιτυχημένα cases στρατηγικής χρήσης της μουσικής στο κτίσιμο μιας μάρκας από την Rock River Music”

This is by far the best piece of press we have ever received…in Greece anyway.  Though our Greek is a bit rusty, we can tell you this is a rather technical view on the science of aural perception and the semiotics of sonic branding.  Click here to read the PDF.  Say…perhaps we should consider opening a Rock River satellite office in Mykonos

In the afternoon, a panel narrowly titled The Future of Music commenced in the largest of the conference rooms. You would have thought the panelists were going to ordain the rest of us with the answers to this question based on the number of attendees at this particular panel. Alas, that didn’t happen, but there was a particular discussion that I found very compelling, and something that I’ve pondered for a while now.

Terry McBride, the founder extraordinaire of Nettwerk Music Group, began by describing his idea of what the Future of Music would look like. Essentially, McBride was advocating/predicting a cloud-based utility-style subscription music service.

Basically, this would be a situation in which all music, and I mean ALL (would have to be in order to be effective and valuable to a consumer), exists in a could-based database from where a subscriber could access and stream any music, from any location, to any connected device. All of your devices (phone, computer, car soundsystem, etc.) would be connected to your account and to each other. You would truly be able to access any music whenever and wherever you chose. For this service, you would pay a utility-type fee for music service (or perhaps all media service including TV, on-demand video, whatever), just like you pay your water/energy bill currently.

Now, you’re right in thinking that subscription services currently exist. However, there is still a dichotomy between streaming and ownership because you are not connected everywhere. For instance, you can’t access your account on an airplane, among other places. When we reach a time when we are completely and totally connected and wired (and this is rapidly approaching), you won’t have accessibility problems. Therefore, it seems to me, ownership goes away.

Of course, there will still be your music-heads who will need a physical format, or for whom ownership is not expendable, just like you have folks who still by vinyl now. But, we are talking mass market here. So, let’s leave those folks aside.

So, let’s assume we get to this place. Who will be the players? Rhapsody is certainly trying to set itself up here. Maybe (but probably not) Napster. But, wouldn’t it make sense that Apple/iTunes is working behind the scenes on this project? I might surmise that it’s close to ready and they are just waiting for the technology to catch up with the concept. At that point, they could just flip the switch.

Anyways, that’s a little food for thought.

Beginning today, all customers who make a purchase in Banana Republic stores receive a download card good for redemption of a 9-song digital album including exclusive, never-before-heard tracks from Sara Bareilles, Dashboard Confessional, Ayo, David Garrett, Tommy Torres, David Sanchez and Esperanza Spalding.  To find the closest store to you, go here.

More from the press release…

This summer Banana Republic celebrates the inspiration of urban life with the release of City Sounds, a new digital album featuring never-before-heard tracks from the nine music artists appearing in the ‘City Stories’ national ad campaign, including exclusive first tracks from OK Go and Liz Phair’s highly-anticipated new albums, as well as songs by Sara Bareilles, Ayo, Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba, Tommy Torres and more.  The limited edition digital album, available as a gift-with-purchase only in Banana Republic stores starting May 13, reflects the diversity of these artists, ranging from acoustic soul to introspective pop, modern jazz to indie rock.

Inspired by the artists’ favorite cities worldwide, City Sounds takes listeners on a sonic journey: Paris-based R&B songstress Ayo sings of her travels through European metropolises, while Sara Bareilles and Dashboard Confessional search for love amid the bars and streets of their adopted cities.  Both acclaimed violinist David Garrett and Grammy-winning saxophonist David Sánchez find solace at dawn in the canyons of Manhattan, and Latin pop star Tommy Torres and emerging jazz bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding celebrate their beloved hometowns (San Juan and Portland, respectively).  Among the tantalizing selections are brand new songs from Liz Phair and OK Go’s highly anticipated new albums due later in 2009, only available to customers who make a purchase in Banana Republic stores during the campaign.

What do you get when you cross Def Leppard with the Sex Pistols?

That’s probably not the question LG pondered when creating their new touch screen messaging phone, the Xenon. However, when they came looking for a catchy pop/punk song to serve as the soundtrack to their viral marketing campaign, we thought Man Raze’s “Turn It Up” sounded just right.

An unholy marriage between sticky-sweet-pop-metal gods Def Lep and primitivist punk progenitors Sex Pistols simply shouldn’t work.  But vocalist/guitarist Phil Collen (Def Leppard) and drummer Paul Cook (Sex Pistols) rip out a raw blast of sing-along glory, sounding more like they’ve been holed up in a sweaty garage rather than some posh English country estate.

It’s always fun to uncover an obscure gem of a song for a project.  And it’s even better to bring legendary rock musicians into a forward-thinking online campaign, especially considering you can’t even buy Def Leppard songs on iTunes yet.  Check out the new LG Xenon and hear Man Raze “Turn It Up” here:

http://xenonbylg.com/

For those of you who have just awoken from a sound 10 year slumber, the “internets” (as our friends in the hilarious and rocking Super Adventure Club sing in “Former Ladies Of The Cold War”) has really taken off. As such, I decided to opine on Twitter and Music. As many of you have heard, Twitter was the new Facebook, which was the new Myspace, which was the new….thewell.com? So what is the new Twitter? Well, in recent weeks, we have noted two new music startups that describe themselves as “Twitter for Music.” Wait, why can’t Twitter be Twitter for Music?

1. Blip.fm: A muso friend-in-the-know turned me on to them a little while back. Users sign up and search for songs (apparently hosted on blogs…as Seeqpod’s example shows, this is dangerous territory). Selecting a song for your feed is called “Blipping,” which allows one to create a station or playlist. Other users can then follow (Twitter-style) your Blips and hear each of the songs you program, each with a short commentary by the blipper (forgive the over-alliteration). Just watching unrelated blips pop up on the home page and cherry-picking songs to hear is like voyeurism meets Jack-FM. But be careful…if you let a song finish you might be hit with an Eagles song…gross.

Blip’s data collection and ad-targeting abilities are promising: What artists are 25-29 YO Male users in the 94110 zip code blipping? Want to deliver banners touting the new Depeche Mode album to only those blipping DM or New Order?

2. Twt.fm: Started by an employee of one of the bigger (and cooler) Artist Management firms out there to help artists easily add songs to their Twitter feeds, Twt.fm is not so much a community site like Blip.fm, but a simple tool to share music on Twitter. The user searches for a song – I have had a little difficulty finding deeper or catalog songs – and similar to Blip.fm, it appears mp3s are hosted on blogs, Youtube or imeem (now remind me how imeem pays their licensing bills when others use their streams or players off of imeem’s site?).

Jimmy Eat World just used Twt.fm to help launch their new album, with pretty stellar results. Twitter accounted for over 20% of their first day album sales and the campaign also added 200K twitter followers to their existing 150K person twitter list.

So what next for Twitter and music? Likely lots of experimenting and success stories as it develops into a fan management tool. Artists who harness Twitter as a fan communication and community building platform stand to gain significantly, especially those artists in a twitter-friendly genre like Jimmy Eat World. (Is Twitter the answer for a new Celine Dion album? Probably not.) And for casual or serious music fans, these tools are yet another way to share or discover music or to simply twitter away an hour listening to old favorites, deeper cuts or guilty pleasures.

-Jeff Daniel

Global electronics manufactuer, LG, recently tapped Rock River’s network of musicians to sound design and produce music for two mobile phone campaigns. The first, LG Incite, provides the soundtrack for a night-out, to demonstrate the Incite’s versatile capabilities. The second, is a fun interactive splash page that raises awareness and money for VH1’s Save The Music Foundation.