A few months ago I posted on our release of the beta version of our new Homepage and Music Videos section. Today I’m excited to announce that we’ve exited beta and have made the new site available to everyone who visits music.yahoo.com.

WOO-HOO!!!

As I mentioned in July, this is the first significant change that we’ve made to our site since 2001. Since then, a lot has changed on the Internet, but our music website has remained the same, almost attaining the kind of affectionate status you reserve for an old sweatshirt that is incredibly comfortable but makes your Significant Other cringe every time they see it.

When we started this project many months ago, we had little idea of what the site would look like when done, but we had some pretty clear ideas about where we wanted to go. We’d spent some time talking to people who use our site and assessing opinions through surveys to determine where we wanted to take the site. I dug up some of my old documentation to remember what the heck I was thinking when we started this project, and thought I’d share what we wanted to do and how the end product stacked up:

Editorial Voice: A while back, my colleague Todd Beaupre did a great presentation on the need for more editorial voice on our site. The challenge is that while people who use our site love getting context to better understand the music they hear and the videos they watch and often appreciate the recommendations of our editorial staff on what’s new and worth a listen, we cater to 25 million people each month and finding an editorial voice that appeals to everyone and turns off no one is pretty impossible. So we decided to create several editorial channels and let our users pick from among them.

We ended up developing two editorial placements on our new Homepage: one is the large module in the upper left-hand side of the page that showcases our best picks of videos, music, photos and lyrics. The other is our Music Blogs module, found at the bottom of the page, that lets our bloggers communicate their favorite music, playlists, great (or truly horrifying) moments in entertainment and everything else you need to know about the wide world of music. The bloggers are really an exceptional group, including our own Dave DiMartino and Lyndsey Parker; bloggers from some great publications and sites like MOJO, Arthur, NME, URB, Spin and JamBase; and other fine folks from outside of Yahoo! who are sharing their playlists and observations about the music scene. One great find here is a blog that we recently kicked off on hearing that Led Zeppelin is getting back together. Our Executive Editor Dave DiMartino will be posting some great, exclusive stuff in the coming days. The best part of the blogs feature is that we put our users in control of what they see: if you click through to our main blogs page you can select which blogs you want to see, and screen out the ones you don’t like.

I have to say that since we released our site in beta, the blogs have become one of the most popular areas of the new site, as well as one of my personal favorites.

Personalization: Ever since we created LAUNCHcast Radio back in the dawn of (Internet) time, our team has spent a lot of time investing in better ways to get you the music you like and not waste your time with music you don’t dig. We’ve now taken the same technology that powers LAUNCHcast and Yahoo! Music Unlimited (YMU) recommendations and brought it to our site. The middle of our new Homepage page has a section with Videos, Songs, Albums and Artists, all personalized to your tastes. You’ll also see a similar module on the new main music videos page that’s focused on music video content.

If you haven’t started rating music, click on ‘Improve My Recommendations’ and start telling us what you like. The music you rate will also influence your personal radio station and your YMU recommendations.

Live Music: My love for music got re-awakened four and a half years ago at the Coachella Music Festival in 2003, so I have a deep appreciation for live music. We’ve partnered with Yahoo!’s Upcoming service to bring you information about music events around the country, anything from large concerts to shows at your local neighborhood bar. Check out the module on the lower left-hand side of the Homepage for a snapshot of concerts, and click on ‘View more concerts’ for a longer list of shows. The events on Upcoming are submitted by users such as yourselves, so please click on the ‘Get Started’ button on the button of the module to tell us about concerts we’ve missed.

Video Playlisting and Stations: One thing a lot of users told us during our research is that they wanted to more easily queue up a bunch of music videos and play through them. We created two ways of doing this: one is video playlisting, and the other is our music video stations. Video playlists are accessible through the My Music bar on the right-hand side and allow users to set up a list of videos and play through them. Music Video Stations are available from the main Music Videos page (click on the ‘Videos’ tab in the navigation bar) and are programmed by our editorial team to reflect the best music videos from different genres, eras and our original programs.

Sharing Tools: Music is an inherently social experience, so we’ve taken some first steps to let you share your musical tastes with others. If you click on the link for a music video, you’ll come to a page that will show you the embed code for the video.

If you copy and paste that code into any HTML page, the video will appear in an embedded player. This can be used to include your favorite music videos on any website or personal page. One note is that not all of the record labels have given us rights to have embed codes for their music videos, so there may be some videos that we don’t let you share. We are working on trying to get rights for all of our videos as fast as we can.

This embed code functionality is just the first step in making the music experience on our site more social. I recognize that this is an area where we’ve really lagged in the past couple of years, but we’re committed to changing that. In the next several months, you’ll see us add a lot more features to make the idea of music community on our site a lot stronger, culminating in what I think are some very innovative ideas in this area. So if you’re looking for more social tools and sharing functionality, stick with us and I promise you won’t be disappointed!

Music Playback: One thing we didn’t plan for in the beginning of this experience but incorporated along the way is better playback of songs. If you click on any play button for a song (but not a video) on the new Homepage, we’ll play back the song in a very slick new audio player that slides out on the left-hand side of the page. If you’re looking for some selections, try the Charts module on the left-hand side of the page and select ‘Songs’ from the drop-down, or click on the Songs tab in the recommendations module in the middle of the page. Most users will get 30-second samples, but YMU subscribers will hear full-length tracks, just like in the Yahoo! Music Jukebox. This is a little gift to our subscribers, and a taste of more to come next year.

User Suggestions: During the time when we were out in beta, many users gave us feedback on what they liked and didn’t like about the new site. While many users were very positive, some told us things they wanted to see improved. There were three main comments:

• My Videos: users wanted easier access to the videos they’ve rated so they can play their favorite stuff. We added a link to ‘Videos I’ve Rated’ in the navigation bar, under the main ‘Videos’ link, to provider easier access to this content.
• My Radio: some users have had trouble finding their personal radio station. There are two ways to access it in the new site: hover over the ‘Radio’ link in the nav and click on ‘Play My Station’, or look on the Homepage (or any of the pages with the new design, like blogs, concerts, charts or the music videos section) and you can see a link to play your personal station on the right-hand side of the page. If you don’t have a station, just start rating some music and one will be created for you.
• Videos by Genre: our old site had a link in the videos nav to videos organized by genre. We’ve moved that navigation to the main Music Videos page with a navigational system that we think is easier to browse. We’re looking at some ways to make this more visible to help out those of you who are looking for quicker access to this feature.

Well, I think I’ve said enough about the new pages. I hope you all are happy with the new Homepage and Music Videos experience. We’ll be updating the features as we go along so stay tuned for more improvements in the coming months. We also recognize that some major areas of our site, like the Artist section and the Radio section, have not yet been redesigned. Tackling these pages is next on our list, so look for improvements early next year.

And PLEASE feel free to give us your thoughts and opinions on what you like and what you don’t like. We really do read that stuff and use it to make decisions. Just click on the ‘feedback’ link in the footer and send us your comments.

Enjoy!

Michael Spiegelman
Product Guy
Yahoo! Music

As Jim mentioned back in July, we created a Music Videos application on Facebook that makes it easy to find and share videos with your Facebook friends.

A few weeks later we teamed up with RockYou, one of the most popular developers of Facebook applications, to launch a new version that is integrated with some of their cool apps like Super Wall.

Now, we’re bringing the best music videos on the planet to two more places where music lovers hang out (read: everywhere), Piczo and Bebo.

Like Ian said, it’s about convenience, and more importantly: context. What that really means is that we all discover music every day as we walk through life (both offline and on) so putting up walled gardens and surrounding them with armies is just silly. When you express yourself through music, anyone that digs your taste should be able to hit play and see if you’re onto something, and vice versa. We don’t get a lot of mail asking us to make it harder to find, share, and buy music, or that we keep it bottled up behind a yahoo.com address. Thanks to emerging web standards, those barriers are fading too.

So, wherever you’re spending your time online, you can bet we’ll be there slinging music, and more importantly, giving you the tools to do it yourself. Because, like Michael said, everyone deserves music.

Mark Collier
BD Guy
Yahoo! Entertainment

In the physical record business when you sell 500,000 albums you go “Gold”. Sell a million and you go “Platinum”. But in the age of the Internet less albums are earning these titles every year. What are going to go on the walls of the studios and above the mantles of the pool houses? Thankfully, Yahoo! Music has the answer:

We’re pleased to announce the Purple Award, a heavy, sexy pair of purple headphones given to superstars which manage to achieve 10 MILLION plays on Yahoo! Music. These plays could be from any of our fabulous digital music offerings, Music Videos, LAUNCHcast Radio, or Yahoo! Music Unlimited, or any of our original programs such as Live Sets, SMASH, Who’s Next?, and Get Your Freak On.

But we’re not just giving these away, we’re setting high standards and using a third party to verify the numbers. Since the onset of SoundScan (the music sales charts) and BDS (the song tracking service that makes up the Billboard charts), the music industry has become much more about the real instead of the old-school smoke and mirrors way of trying to fool/hype music fans into believing something is hot when it really isn’t. Even in this new generation of the music industry, other web sites count plays even if you only heard a couple seconds of a song/video before stopping it or navigating to another page. It’s no coincidence that many of the top artists on some social networking sites are scantily clad women as people are going to their pages to look at their pictures instead of listening to their music. We feel it’s imperative to only count a “play” as a song or video that’s been heard/watched for at least 60 seconds. That way we know for sure you’ve heard the core of the song. Anytime you skip a song or video before the one-minute mark, we don’t count it as a play and it doesn’t count towards the 10 million needed to receive a Purple Award. Also, we’re using BDS to count the plays, so all plays are validated by a third party. All on the up and up, baby.

But let’s get on to the part you’re all waiting for, the winners! We’re announcing ten winners from the last year to kick off the award, and will then be announcing winners as they hit the 10 million mark. So here’s our initial batch of Purple:

Akon f/Eminem, “Smack That”

Beyonce’, “Irreplaceable”

Ciara f/Chamillionaire, “Get Up”

Ciara, “Promise”

Evanescence, “Call Me When You’re Sober”

Fergie, “London Bridge”

Justin Timberlake, “SexyBack”

Justin Timberlake, “What Goes Around…Comes Around”

Nelly Furtado, “Say It Right”

Shakira f/Wyclef Jean, “Hips Don’t Lie” 

All the best,
John Lenac
Yahoo! Music

This one’s for all the haters that blogged about my hip hop speak in the Sansa Connect post a few months back…

“Yo, son, you’re a beast on the mic. Why don’t you put down that broom and take it to the stage?”

“Man, I been hustlin’ in this small town for ten years, ain’t nobody ever given me a shot.”

“Dude, have you seen Yahoo! Music LyricMakers? They’re giving some lucky ghostwriter-in-waiting the chance to pen Ne-Yo’s next joint.”

“Word?”

“Straight up, son. Get over there and get yours.”

“Aight. Hold this broom. I have to get over to Yahoo! Music.”

Yahoo! Music, McDonald’s, Ne-Yo. Ne-Yo makes the beats, you write the lyrics, Ne-Yo records the song.

When you think lyrics, think Yahoo! Music.

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

A monumental shift in the music industry has been happening in the last few years. Yesterday’s announcement by Billboard to integrate the radio and video spins on Yahoo! Music into the Billboard Hot 100 chart marks the beginning of a new era. As of next week, the combined radio and video spins from Yahoo! Music and AOL will define 5% of the Hot 100 chart. For many years, only FM spins and CD sales numbers made up the chart. In 2005, Billboard started to include digital downloads as well. With next week’s changes, digital downloads will affect the Hot 100 chart more, increasing to 40% while physical CD single sales decrease to less than 1% (FM airplay makes up the remaining 55%). This means that for many songs/videos you hear/watch, your musical experience is four times more important on the biggest chart in the music industry than all of the CDs sold in the US (four times more because our spins are so much greater than AOL’s, we’ll have 4% of the chart in many cases).

This chart integration formally recognizes what’s been happening for years; people like you are discovering bands and consuming your favorite music online and through Internet-connected players. Think of the music industry as the line between a music fan and an artist. That line used to be very long and now is just two points: you and the artist. Sites like ours connect you directly to them. When an artist sends us a song or video for you to watch and experience their art without having an “in” in the music industry, you can now help get their song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart by watching their video or rating their song high so that it plays more in your customized LAUNCHcast station or more in stations you see on the station guide. This is a massive change in the business and affects how the power paradigm has been shifting, giving music fans more direct power. Now that there are thousands of radio and video outlets across the web and monsters like us music fanatics at Yahoo! Music (we play 4 BILLION music videos each year), ALL artists and ALL labels can get their music played and see the passion of their fans directly result in a spot on the most-coveted chart in the biz.

Thanks and keep watching/listening.

John Lenac
Yahoo! Music

Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” was #1 on both Yahoo! Music and Billboard’s Hot 100 the first week of this updated chart:

Continuing the torrential pace of new software, we have released a playlist page, a new player for thirty-second samples, and the ability to play subscription tracks in the browser. All of this software is somewhat beta.

Until a few weeks ago, when you opened a playlist created in Yahoo! Music Jukebox in the browser you were likely to get a nearly-blank white page that looked like an error message. No more. You will now see a full-featured module which includes the ability to play tracks and to comment on playlists. You can browse playlists by creator and you can browse playlists which a person has commented on, so there is a content-focused social network.

Play buttons will give you full songs if you are a Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscriber, and 30-second samples otherwise. The player is now rendered in the page rather than in a pop-up window.

Here are some playlists to help you get started:

• The Big Takeover by Ian Rogers is, I think, about exploring fresh releases, and has tunes from Dizzee Rascal, Pharoahe Monch, Bad Brains, and Betty Davis.
• My Acid Soul playlist is instrumental soul jams.
• Ilianna Car Songs by Adam Brett is music for his baby daughter. This is a fun theme, and if you have another playlist like it you might want to leave a note on Adam’s playlist.
• International Lounge Music by Steve Raymond is a playable version of a text-only playlist published in Food and Wine magazine.
• Ode to Rubber playlist by the great Robert of the Radish. See also his personal blog entry about this playlist.
• Over In About An Hour: Volume 8 (dishwashing music) by Johnny O’Brien.  See also his personal blog entry about this playlist.
  

We hope you’ll dig it.

Release notes

• There isn’t yet a convenient way to look up a playlist URL or to your find your own playlists in the browser. If you have Yahoo! Music Jukebox you can open it up, navigating to a playlist, copy the link to the clipboard, then go to a browser and open that link. In the browser you can submit a comment on a playlist, then click on the link to your playlists in the posted comment.
• Yahoo! Music Unlimited playback only works in Internet Explorer on Windows. In Firefox you can either use the IETab plugin or wait for our own plugin to be ready.
• Many alpha users had to upgrade or rebuild their Windows DRM setup.
• Sample playback works on the Mac if you have Flip4Mac installed. We could only deliver subscription tracks if Windows DRM was supported, which it isn’t, so this is blocked on the same old same old. About Linux support, we’ll do samples if we can find a reliable way to do WMA in the browser.
• The new player is only used in the playlist pages for now. We will hook it up to the rest of the new pages soon.

Howdy folks,

Another week, another launch of new features here at Yahoo! Music. This time, we’ve revamped our Music Videos Section. If you go to the new Yahoo! Music beta site and click on Videos you can see the brand spanking-new pages, fresh off the presses.

Some of the highlights include:

• Featured Videos, bringing you the newest, hottest videos courtesy of John Lenac and his crack team of music programmers.
• Personalized Video Recommendations, based on your tastes. A whole section devoted to the music videos we think you’ll enjoy the most. Looking at mine right now: Groove Armada, Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx, Moby…right on algorithm!
• Video Charts, showing what you all have played the most each week, every week.
• Video Stations, giving y’all a way to play great videos in your favorite genres with one click of the mouse.
• Video Playlists, my personal favorite. The new playlist builder tool (accessible from the My Music bar on the right-hand side of the pages) lets you easily build and edit your own video playlists.

Please check it out, and let us know what you think! We’re here to build great stuff for you, our users, so your feedback is always welcome. Positive feedback is even more welcome!

Cheers, and happy Video watching!

Michael Spiegelman
Yahoo! Music

Howdy folks,

Many of you may have noticed that our beloved Yahoo! Music site, though rich in content, has become a bit outdated in look and feel. Ok, I’ll admit it: the site looks like something out of 2001. That’s because we haven’t changed it much since, well, 2001.

We’ve finally decided to change that. Today we’re launching our new Homepage in beta, with a new feature set that we hope you’ll love as much as we do. Some of the new goodies include:

• What’s New Today: the top module on the page will bring you the best picks from our editorial team, served up twice daily. Ranging from the popular to the brand new and from beloved to the bizarre, we’ll be showcasing the most interesting stuff the Music world has to offer.
• Personalization: If you’re like me and the editorial selections will seldom appeal to your off-beat tastes (ok, Lyndsey has promised to feature the new Chemical Brothers album this week! It’s pretty great, I highly recommend it), never fear! One of the most exciting features in my opinion is the new Personalized Recommendations module, which will provide recommendations of music videos, songs, albums and artists to check out, all based on your ratings. If you haven’t rated any music with us, now would be a great time to start.
• Charts: Everyone wants to know what’s popular, right? We’ve expanded our charts to include songs and albums, in addition to videos. If you click on ‘View All Charts’, you can drill down and see charts by genre, so you can dig in and check out the most popular indie rock songs, jazz albums or blues videos (yes, we really do have blues videos. Who knew?!)
• Blogs: We’re marching boldly into 2006 by embracing this whole blogging thing. I think it might be big. Seriously, I’m very excited that our editorial team has pulled together some great writers who will be taking on different beats, talking about everything from the week’s best new releases to the hip-hop scene to music from your favorite reality TV shows. We’re going to be adding more bloggers in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
• Concerts: Ok, this is one of my personal favorites. We’ve done a mashup with Upcoming, a user-generated events site that Yahoo! owns, to bring you listings of concerts happening in your local area. The Concerts page also includes a handy map. If you know a show is happening but can’t find it, just go to upcoming.yahoo.com and add it.
• My Radio: This is a preview of things to come, but we’ll be giving you persistent access to your personalized radio station throughout the new pages. This is something we’ll be rolling out across the rest of the site.

This re-launch of our new homepage is only the first step in our efforts to bring our site up to date and provide you with a much better user experience. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be revamping our entire site, adding new features, changing the look & feel, improving performance and adding fresh content. We hope you like it. If you want to make sure you see the brand new Homepage, just go to music.yahoo.com/beta. Please check it out and click on the ‘feedback’ link on the page to send us your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

One more thing: I want to publicly thank our very talented design, development and QA teams who make this all possible. It’s really a pleasure to work with smart, creative, energetic and passionate people. You guys really make it all possible. Thank you.

Go check it out!

Cheers,
Michael Spiegelman
Yahoo! Music

A big “thank you” to all concerned music lovers and LAUNCHcast Radio fans who supported the Internet Radio Day of Silence, contacted their Congressional representatives and rallied to save internet radio.

On Friday at a House Energy and Commerce Committee roundtable hosted by Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA) and attended by seven additional Members of Congress, SoundExchange announced an offer to cap the $500 per channel minimum fee exacted on Webcasters at $50,000 annually through 2010, for the full length of the term. DiMA, the trade organization that represents Yahoo! Music and other webcasters, has accepted the offer. With the minimum fee issue off the table, we are hopeful that we can negotiate a fair royalty rate with SoundExchange that will support a sustainable business environment for Internet radio.

We hope there will be more good news to come shortly.

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music

Put down that watermelon for a second, I’ve got a small Yahoo! Music Jukebox update for you. Jukebox version 2.2 is now available. The big deal in this release is a completely overhauled online interface for Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Right away you may notice a new front page for Unlimited that should load a lot faster, larger images on artist pages, and an overall palette that’s a little easier on the eyes. This interface has been re-done almost from scratch to be quicker and more reliable.

Download Yahoo! Music Jukebox 2.2

Beneath the shiny new surface, though, are some helpful additions in the right-click menu within Unlimited that hopefully make life easier for music lovers:

Auto–Play: Turn this on and turn off the hassle of constantly having to add music to yourqueue. When the list of music in “Now Playing” is over, we’ll keep playing music from Yahoo! Music Unlimited similar to what you were listening to. It’s great for parties, like the July 4th bash you should be at right now (in the U.S. at least). You or your friends can add a few tracks you specifically want to hear, and let us handle the rest.

Recent Searches: We remember the last 20 searches that you’ve done in Unlimited.

Find Other Versions: Navigate to a song page. If it’s not quite the right performance of the song that you were looking for, right-click and select “Find Other Versions” and we’ll automatically search for similar songs and hopefully get you to what you’re looking for.

Under the hood, we’ve also made some performance tweaks. The greatest hits among those are:

• We’ve improved handling of album art lookups for local MP3 tracks
• Fixed a memory leak that would spring when YMJ was playing for a very long time (Goes well with Auto-Play)
• Jukebox 2.2 should now install and run on 64-bit Vista systems (fingers crossed)
• My personal favorite long-term nagging issue: When the player is maximized the close gadget X is now clickable all the way up to the upper right corner of the screen. That’s usability progress!
• Over 100 other various quality fixes

We hope you enjoy these latest enhancements and encourage your continued feedback on these products. Now get back to that barbecue. It’s time to flip those burgers.

Mick O
Yahoo! Music