favorite10.com blog

Stickers! Get yer f10 stickers here!

Fraser, much like 6 year old girls, loves stickers. So he ordered a bunch of them for f10. So if you want a bunch of free stickers (to plaster on your bike, car, toll booths, bathrooms, pets, whatever), send us an email at info@favorite10.com and we’ll send you some in the mail.

In site related news, we launched “whiteboards”, which is just another way for you guys to communicate with us and each other. Think message boards in college, not the waste of wall space in your office where you write down all the things you don’t really want to do.

It’s all public so be careful what you say. Currently the owner of the whiteboard can delete any messages they want. In the future, we’ll allow you to mark messages as private. So if you really want to tell a friend about those awesome George Michael tickets you got (meet up with Fraser in San Francisco!) , you can do so without being publicly shamed.

We also want to thank everyone who takes the time to drop us an email when they can’t find an album in our database. Slowly but surely, we’ll add every album out there, obscurity be damned. As always, send us any feedback you have on any aspect of the site.

Posted in Site News, music | 1 Comment »

Radiohead lets you nude up for $5.94

Radiohead is working with iTunes to allow people to download each of the 5 “stems” that make up Nude (vocals, string fx, guitar, drum, and bass) and to remix their own song. While Trent Reznor beat them to the punch with remix.nin.com, RH will certainly get a ton of publicity for putting the tools for the creation of music in the hands of the people. (Of course, Apple hopes that part of those tools include their GarageBand software.) If history has taught us anything, it’s the person with the better marketing machine that gets all the credit.

In any case, you get to play producer/DJ and mix up your own tracks. I have no musical ability whatsoever but I just spent the better part of the evening playing around with the components. Since I have never used GarageBand before and I have…uh… no rhythm, I decided to just mix Thom Yorke’s vocals with an old Pink Floyd song. (You can hear the monstrosity here before the powers that be take it down for copyright infringement — which they did.) Now, I realize it’s no good, but it certainly was fun to mess around with. Imagine if you actually knew what you were doing.

If you listen to the five stems and you turn each on one by one, it’s incredibly interesting how simple the song is. And it’s also amazing how when you combine all the parts, what a beautiful song it becomes. It certainly makes you appreciate the talent of the people behind not just RH but all the other great bands out there. That being said, just because it’s well produced, doesn’t mean it’s any good.

On the flip side, the peril of user created content is that it’s usually crap. (See any of the amateur created commercials in the last couple Super Bowls? Awful.) The record company argument has always been: “hey look, there’s a ton of good music out there but there’s also a ton of shitty music. We filter it for you.” When you have everyone and their grandmother remixing songs, how are you supposed to know which of the 398,444 remixes that inevitably going to flood the radiohead remix site is any good? Voting? I have my doubts. A remix buried in the avalanche of uploads might be the best but hardly ever see the light of day because no one linked it from anywhere. Radiohead is quick to point out that it’s not a contest with prizes and that the public chooses the top remixes but it’d be really cool if the band chose a winner as well.

Even if the overwhelming percentage of remixes will be bad, I’m excited to hear the good remixes that will come out of this little experiment. (Kinda like this one. And this one from our buddy Foeweel.)

Posted in business, music | 2 Comments »

Don’t worry, R.E.M. didn’t sell out

When Windows95 came out (yes kids, way back in 1995), there was a minor kerfuffle that Stipe and Company turned down Bill Gates and the Microsoft Marketing Machine who wanted to use “It’s the End of the Word As We Know It” for their commercials. Of course, The Rolling Stones, who never saw a penny they didn’t like, swooped and in readily provided “Start Me Up” for the folks in Redmond. Even though it mattered nothing at all to me monetarily, I felt strangely proud that the music I loved wasn’t going to be degraded by Microsoft and their crappy operating system.

Anyway, fast forward to 2008, R.E.M. is struggling to stay a relevant band, the advance reviews on Accelerate are lukewarm, and to my horror, I hear “I am I am superman/ and I can do anything…” on a Toyota Sequoia commercial. It’s one of those awful commercials that show people having a blast doing something no one ever does except in commercials (and you too can have this much fun if you buy a huge Sequoia!) and I just figure another idealistic notion from my youth has gone down the crapper. I curse Michael Stipe and move on to cursing whatever college basketball game was on.

Well, it turns out that R.E.M. didn’t write the song, they only made it popular. So, while they are most associated with the song, it actually belongs to some band called the Clique. Never heard of them? Yeah, that’s probably why you shouldn’t be angry about them selling to Toyota. They probably desperately need the money. So fear not, fellow R.E.M. fans, they still have their integrity intact, if not their songwriting skills.

Posted in business, music | 6 Comments »

The changing landscape for music lovers

The music industry has been in crisis mode for some time. Music sales have dropped nearly 40% this decade, traditional radio offers only a handful of formats, and music lovers scrounge to find the best way to find new music. Thankfully, we are beginning to see some ingenuity as artists are taking matters into their own hands. Led by Radiohead’s game changing release of “In Rainbows” with their “pay what you want” format, bands are creatively releasing music to the public on their own terms. Nine Inch Nails recently released 9 tracks for free off his 36 song epic instrumental with very little advanced warning. The remainder of the album could be had for $5.

The next step in the chain comes now with the Raconteurs. Recently finishing up their sophomore release in early March, they went to the record company and asked how quickly could the album be released in every format available. They wanted vinyl, cd, and digital to be offered and not through a silly “Walmart Only” arrangement but rather everywhere (indie record store, big retailers, iTunes, or even their website). The response was 3 weeks. So yesterday, the Raconteurs announced the release of “Consolers of the Lonely” next Tuesday (March 25th). No pomp & circumstance or huge build up with months of anticipation in hopes of generating that big top spot of 1st week sales. They’d rather get the music out there and let word of mouth take over.

You might say that Radiohead, Trent Reznor & Jack White have the credentials and ability to do this type of thing and you’re right. But if the blueprint proves fruitful, we can only hope that getting more music quickly and easily becomes the norm. Look for “Consolers of the Lonely” to grace the lists of Favorite 10 shortly.

[Editor’s Note: This entry was written by stevemc. If you have something to say and want to post it on the blog, email us at info@favorite10.com.]

Posted in music | 2 Comments »

Photo upload and R.E.M.

To get some housekeeping items out of the way, we’ve added a couple new features to the site. The first is photo upload, which you will find in your account page. The second feature is a link to the lists that an album appears on from within the search results page. This makes it easier to find which people are including a specific album in their lists. So check them out and let us know what you think.

OK, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk a little bit about music. I recently got a copy of R.E.M.’s new album Accelerate. Even though I had no expectations for it, I found it to be a completely unremarkable album. Maybe it needs time to grow on me but there’s nothing here that stands out. Even Monster, which isn’t a great album, is remarkable in the sense that they took a hard left turn after Automatic for the People.

Is Accelerate better than Reveal and Around the Sun? Sure, but that’s like asking if white bread is better than hot garbage. (Reveal, in particular, is an abomination and should be stricken from the record whenever talking about R.E.M.) It’s not as if I’m one of those people who always claim a band was better back in the day. I actually keep buying and loving Rush albums. But R.E.M. hasn’t really been the same since they signed their huge deal with Warner.

I don’t know what Michael Stipe has been doing with his time and money, but maybe he should get his head out of his ass and stop writing lyrics like: “Death is pretty final/ I’m collecting vinyl / I’m gonna dj /at the end of the world! / ’cause if Heaven does exists / with a kickin’ playlist / I don’t wanna miss it /at the end of the world!” Man, that’s embarrassing. I don’t think I’ve hated an R.E.M. song this much since All The Way to Reno.

If I’m completely off base on this, someone let me know.

Posted in Site News, music | 4 Comments »

Welcome Friends and Friends of Friends and Strangers

It’s hard to believe it’s been two months since we released f10 to a small group of people. Well, we got a bunch of feedback, kept improving the site, and now we think it’s time to open it up to the rest of the world. The latest functionality we just released — friends — means it’s time for us to add more of our friends and ask our friends to add theirs. We’ve also opened up the site to the googlebot (all hail google) so we might get people in here with no ties whatsoever to anyone here. Hey, maybe that means someone actually won’t have Radiohead in their lists… It’s like a cult of Thom Yorke in here.

To all the new people: we hope you dig the site and please send us any feedback you have. We’re gonna keep fixing things up but we’d love to know what you like and don’t like.

I promise the blog entries will come more frequently — especially since I love talking about music. I currently have the new Kathleen Edwards album Asking for Flowers on constant rotation.  It’s her best album to date as she keeps getting better with each one. Whether you classify her as alt-country, roots rock, folk rock, or Canadian girl who got lost somewhere between North Carolina and Tomorrow the Green Grass rock, her new album is beautiful and I highly encourage you to check it out for a change of pace. Here’s an excellent review of the album. (Another take.)

For those of you not into that type of music, the new Okkervil River album The Stage Names might be more up your alley. It’s good to know that there are still great bands making great rock music without any discernible singles ready for radio play.

Posted in Development, Site News, music | No Comments »

Welcome to favorite10 - Part 2

Welcome all you new users to f10. Thanks for stopping by. After the initial rollout, we got a lot of great feedback from the first test group. There were some minor tweaks but the overwhelming majority of complaints we got was about the search function. We’ve made some changes to the search and hopefully it’s easier to find the albums you want now. But please give us feedback if you find anything you’d like changed.

We also started a process for knocking out duplicates in the database. It’s like whack-a-mole but we’ll be weeding them out every week. If you see any duplicates that are driving you nuts, you can email us at feedback@favorite10.com.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be adding friends functionality so that you can add friends and see all the lists your friends made. Right now, everyone on the site is connected somehow with Fraser and me so every list is a friend’s list. We’ll also be adding comment notification so you will be alerted whenever someone comments on your list.

Thanks for checking out f10 (again) and don’t let us down with your lists. For the new folks, you can check out the FAQ if you have more questions — or drop us a line with any feedback.

Finally, if you haven’t checked out Vampire Weekend yet, you might want to give them a try. Stevemc was the first to rave about them and the album is damn good. Probably the best out-of-nowhere debut I’ve heard since Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Posted in Development, Site News | 4 Comments »

Welcome to favorite10.com

Thanks for checking out the site. Chances are you are one of our close friends who we’ve invited to help us kick the tires a little bit on the new site. Or perhaps you’ve stumbled upon this site somehow — either way, welcome. (Oh and if you’re one of our friends who are reading this post entry at a later date and wondering why you weren’t invited to check it out, don’t be offended, we just value your opinion a little less…)

Anyway, favorite10.com was started because of the arguments that music lovers have all the time about what the best album of all time is. One of my favorite things is looking at people’s top 10 lists and discovering new music. The only problem is that if you look at someone’s list and they have terrible crap like Good Charlotte on there, you can pretty much write off the rest of their albums. (As a matter of fact, you probably should just walk away.) That’s why we think f10 is going to be so cool — if you see a list with one of your favorite albums on it, you might want to check out some of the other albums on that list. And if 1,000 people have that same album on their lists, then you know you have a pretty good chance of liking that album.

There’s a lot going on with the site that we’re still working on but we want your feedback on this early beta version. (Check out the FAQ) There are three lists that we are launching with: favorite albums of all time, of 2007, and of the moment. It’s a blank slate folks. Your favorite albums will have an immediate impact on the overall top 100. So please take some time to put together your f10 lists. It took me about 10 minutes to put mine together — and about 3 hours to edit the version that’s on the site — and I’m sure there will be changes still.

Don’t forget, other users can rate and comment on your list, so please don’t embarrass yourself even though you really really want to put that Jewel album on your there. Below is a couple of known issues we’ll be fixing asap but any other feedback you might have or bugs that you stumble upon, please drop us an email at feedback@favorite10.com.

Thanks,

Vin

Known issues and features in development:

• Duplicate albums - there are a lot of duplicate items in the database because of reissues, imports, etc. Try to pick the one that looks more correct (usually by release date) for now.
• Friends - we’ll soon have the ability to upload user photos and add friends.
• Email alerts - get an alert anytime someone comments on your list.

Posted in Development, Site News | 1 Comment »