Scott Porad

For years, Stewtopia has been pounding the table about The Decemberists.  I had seen them a few times, but didn’t actually get it until I saw them perform epic 20-minute story tale last summer at Sasquatch.

This morning, The Decemberists came on KEXP as I was listening on my phone (that’s sort of a weird phrase…the phone is like the new “Walkman”.  I remember when I was 6 or 7 and my cousin Mike—who was probably 13 at that time—got a Sony Walkman for his birthday or bar mitzvah or something like that.  I wanted one soooooooo bad; I tried to explain to my dad that it couldn’t be very expensive because it was so small, right?)

Anyhow, the KEXP app has a favorite feature, so I favorited The Decemberists’ song and thought I would share with you the last nine songs that I’ve favorited on my KEXP iPhone App…in chronological order:

1. Kraak & Smak – Let’s go Back
2. Houses – Soak It Up
3. Ted Leo and The Pharmacists – Little Dawn
4. Teenage Fanclub – The Concept
5. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – Can’t Hold Us
6. Delorean – Hard Working Dogs
7. Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter – Hushed by Devotion
8. Minus the Bear – Into the Mirror
9. The Decemberists – This Is Why We Fight

Question: who knows of a place where I can put this together as a playlist and I can share that playlist with all of you to listen?

What the Internet has done for music is just amazing.  Mind blowing, really.

At it’s most simple level, the Internet disintermediated (look that word up, it’s important) music creators (singers, bands, etc.) from music listeners (you and me!).  There’s more to it than that, but the bottom line is that because of disintermediation there is more music available than ever.  (You know what, on second thought, that last sentence deserves an exclamation point, so here it is: !)

Too much music, really.   There is soooooo much music out there to listen to right now.  I used to write a blog called I Need More Ears because I had exactly that problem—with only two ears, I couldn’t listen to enough music.

Just this morning, here’s what’s been presented as listening options:

• Hype Machine — basically the Billboard chart of what’s hottest on the web…I hadn’t been to HypeM for a while, but was reminded of it today because I’m wearing one of their t-shirts.  I’m listening to it right now, but it would be unfair to mention HypeM without mentioning We Are Hunted which is just as awesome.  I’m listening to HypeM Popular as I write this post.
• Chromeo — Toby came in and said to listen to this band…they’re good he said.  (I just flipped from HypeM to this band…fifteen seconds into the first track reminds me of Wham plus Beverly Hills Cop Theme Song.)
• The Lonely Forest — my friend Lynn manages this band…they just released a new record.  Real indie music.  (Cheating…I actually listened to this last night.)
• Ivete Sangalo — was mentioned in an e-mail this morning, and I haven’t even listened to her yet, but apparently she’s hugely popular…the Madonna of Brazil is what I was told.
• Rhapsody — I listen to Rhapsody at the office typically, although I haven’t yet today…seriously, once you sign up for a subscription service I don’t know if you can ever go back…while they don’t have every single song ever recorded, they sure have a lot.
• And, how could I not mention KEXP — arguably the best radio station in the world…I listened to them in the car on the way to work.  (Shameless plug: my friend Mark runs a fan site called Kexplorer.com…check it out.)

I’m not saying I like all this stuff…I’m just saying that these are just the options that have been presented before lunch on an ordinary day of the week.  How is a mere mortal like myself supposed to listen to all this music with only two ears?

An update from yesterday…

Seattle 2.0

I talked to Jennifer Cabala of Seattle 2.0 about some of my professional experience—how I got my start, on getting a successful product to market, and what I will be speaking on at Seattle 2.0’s event for technologists, Deploy 2010 on June 24th.   You can read the whole interview here.

SMASH Summit

I presented at the SMASH Summit on the keys to the success we’ve had at Cheezburger.  The slides of the presentation are below, and in summary the presentation goes like this:

• We have lots of sites
• Traffic is moving up and to the right
• There were three secrets to our success

1. Create great content — in particular, content that strikes and emotional chord
2. Create lots of it — more content means you’re more likely to resonate with someone
3. Create it for less money — the key to this is knowing what about your content people are coming for; in our case, it’s the captions, not the pictures.

Seattle Weekly

One of my passions is music, and I was interviewed by the Seattle Weekly for their weekly Reverb Questionnaire, a list of questions they pose to folks outside the music industry.  Previous participants include Michael Chabon, Michele Norris, and Janeane Garofolo, so I’m in pretty good company!

Anybody who knows me knows I love music.  Here’s some new music I’ve been enjoying lately:

• Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band (http://www.myspace.com/mtsthelensvietnamband)
• Pheonix (http://www.myspace.com/wearephoenix)
• Visqueen (http://www.myspace.com/visqueen)
• The Lonely Forest (http://www.myspace.com/thelonelyforest)
• Wakali Wa Downtown (http://www.myspace.com/wakaliwadowntown, http://bongothefilm.com)

Enjoy!