To summarize: SPIN wants to remove the 80-word mini reviews from the publication and convert those all to Tweets, and using a staff of 12 writers they hope to plow through 1500 albums this year; ambitious.  What is the reasoning for the shift in medium?  The new editor, Christopher Weingarten, seems to think that no one reads these mini reviews and they are better served to post micro reviews to start arguments among fans; please change “ambitious” to “lazy”.

For the visual, what I did above is show you the difference between a 140-character Tweet and an 80-word paragraph.  Staggering just how big the difference is when it is presented right in front of you.  Also keep in mind, Avid Reader, the Tweet is going to contain artist and album title information along with those two or three words to describe the piece of music itself.  Is there no bigger, or smaller in this case, slap in the face to a musician that spent quality time on an album than to see that someone ripped it apart on Twitter?  At least with the old format the author was given a chance to sign their name to the piece.  For the Tweets there will be the generic @SPINReviews so you don’t even know who to address your nasty hate mail to.

The magazine is also going from a monthly publication to a bimonthly as well as going back to original larger size magazine, which I can dig.  This will give them a chance to “focus on the photography and larger album reviews” — in other words: more pictures of kids wearing sideways hats and reviews of bands called We Bite the Heads off Chipmunks then Dance in the Night.  The Twitter appeal is to give the lesser quality albums almost no press time from a major publication.  True, a majority of the new generation have no idea what a magazine is or what an album review is, but those of us that still do, not to mention the people making the records, like to read what some folks have to say.  I don’t think many writers went to an expensive school to study how to craft the best Tweet.  No, many of us went to school to improve on our long hand and use words, not gibberish.  Even NPR doesn’t like it, not that you were shocked by this knowledge.

I’ve been asked to review music by some small time folks that may not see the inside of those magazines and they all appreciate the words when they are written and posted on the Internet.  Pretty soon you won’t tell people you’re on the cover of a Rolling Stone but you did get Tweeted, which does not make for a good song.

Last month I stumbled upon the Holy Grail of websites and one that suits my musical needs.  Setlist.fm is run by people that have one thing in common: they want to know what was played and not much else.  The rules are pretty easy for uploading a setlist and they all format the same.  The database is easy to search and you can see statistics of different bands over the course of their careers.

I created a profile and began tagging shows that I have attended or adding ones that had not been created.  Some shows that I couldn’t remember what was played, I was glad to see someone else had created the event and posted a setlist that I could view.

Since I have graduated to the level of ‘arena rock’ concerts, small bands now playing huge venues, I don’t have the option to rush the stage and take memorabilia as often.  Thankfully with Setlist.fm a lot of the hassle has been done for you, this means you have to hope someone either recorded the show or brought a pen and paper to write down what was played and any other notes.

If you are a true music nerd like myself; you will love this website and realize that your days of scrolling on poorly kept fansites are over.  I’m still going to rush the stage when I can but now I can rest easy that someone else might have taken care of business.

VEVO is a partnership between the Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and the Abu Dhabi Media Company. Artists working within any of these music companies have their music videos exclusively featured on VEVO. Other companies including EMI Music, ABKCO, Beggars Group, Big Machine Records, Concord Music Group, Hollywood Records, Lyric Street Records, Walt Disney Records, and CBS Interactive Music Group, among many more, almost use VEVO to distribute their videos.

Basically, it seems like VEVO is a way for these big music companies to get their music out without it “just” being on Youtube. It is their way of making sure that their music and video gets onto the Web in a controlled manner, without some random person posting it. This is something I’m actually completely okay with too, because the videos are of high, or what they call “premium” quality, without any extra hassle on Youtube. In fact, VEVO reduces the chance that I’ll stumble upon a fake video and waste time looking for the artist’s legitimate music video.

Youtube is great, but it can be overwhelming if you’re not interested in the comedies and other videos that people have posted. If you look for videos directly through VEVO, instead of Youtube, you can guarantee that you will be getting only top quality music videos. You can even make a playlist of these videos, just like on Youtube. It’s like your own personal MTV channel, or at least what MTV was like in the past. In addition to that, I especially like the layout of VEVO, and actually find it more appealing than Youtube, especially when trying to find an artist by genre.

Thus, if you are purely interested in watching new music videos streamed in high quality, VEVO is superb and more apt to help you find what you are seeking.

Musicovery is a music bank, organized in a way that you might not have seen before. Are you familiar with political compasses? They tell you just how far left or right you fall on the economic scale, but also whether you tend to fall on the libertarian side or the authoritarian side. What’s this got to do with music? On Musicovery, you “pick” your music by moving the cursor on two distinctive “musical” compasses. On the y-scale on one is tempo (how fast or slow the beat of the song is), while on its respective x-scale is the “danceability” of the song. The other compass is based on mood. Place your cursor either on the dark or positive side (on the horizontal axis) and either the energetic or calm side (on the vertical axis). Seems cool, right? But that’s not all.

You can also select from which decade(s) and genres you would like to hear. Sick of the 90s music? Choose the 60s. Musicovery has music from twenty different genres, from jazz to latino to pop to folk music. If there’s a certain type you don’t like, you can quickly uncheck its box. Conversely, if you specifically like only one genre, you can choose to uncheck all genres with a single click, then select your favorite genre with another click.

When you first pick a song, or rather, define a type of song to which you might want to listen, a network of other songs you might like appears on the screen. Unfortunately, the ability to select these other songs and play them directly is restricted to premium account members. Premium account members also get to experience the Web site without ads and in Hi-Fi quality. What’s the charge? Premium account members pay $4 per month, not bad for what Musicovery has to offer.

Even if you don’t want to pay for premium, Musicovery.com is worth a visit. You’ll enjoy the unique style of its presentation of music.

You can use Top10Songs.com to compare lists from each year since 2004. You also can check out a specific month or even a specific week! Last week, Lady Antebellum‘s “Need You Now,” Train‘s “Hey, Soul Sister,” and Taio Cruz‘s “Break Your Heart” topped the charts, whereas in 2005, during the same week, we saw Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl,” Will Smith‘s “Switch,” and the Black Eyed Peas‘ “Don’t Phunk With My Heart.” The only artist that appears on both the lists is the Blacked Eyed Peas, with “Imma Be” at number 6 this week.

The Top 10 list that I find the most intriguing is “Top 10 Songs to Date”, which pulls information from July 2004 to today to calculate the most-purchased songs over the past six years. Black Eyed Peas‘ fairly recent hit “I Gotta Feeling” is first. In fact, the Black Eyed Peas also take 4th and 6th with “Boom Boom Pow” and “My Humps,” respectively.

It makes me wonder if the Black Eyed Peas simply have very good marketing, because if you think about it, they haven’t been making the Top 10 lists in many other areas (though I suppose, in the end, retails is where it counts). The group did win three Grammys this year but had won only three Grammys total prior to that (in 2005, 2006, and 2007). How do they do it? (And does it bother anyone else that none of the songs follow regular English conventions? Maybe that’s their secret!)

*I’m always a bit skeptical about Top 10 lists because music is such a subjective topic. To clarify, these Top 10 lists are based on the top weekly downloads. In other words, it is calculated based on weekly sales, taken from online song retailers. These are not the same songs that were the most-requested on the radio during a certain month.

Being sick of the same old stuff, I discovered thesixtyone and started on my musical adventure. The interface of the site just recently changed, so I still am getting used to it, but it is actually pretty fun to use. All you really need when you are using this website is the album or the band, and then you have a few menus that pull out when you hover over areas that allow you to navigate. These toolbars allow you to skip the song, save the song to a playlist, “heart” the song, and more. There are a few things about this interface that I do not enjoy, such as how last time you could simply “save” songs while now you have to save them to playlists that have a maximum capacity of 10 songs. Another odd thing about this interface is that you cannot look at a list of songs to chose from; while you can search for a particular artist, you cannot see a list of the top X songs or so and choose from there.

The cool thing about thesixtyone is that it is a place for new artists, and then it is the listeners who decide what’s good. The more hearts and saves a song gets, the more popular it becomes, and the more well known the artist becomes. They claim to be “nurturing a growing ecosystem where talented folks can sell songs and merchandise directly to their fans.” On thesixtyone artists can make at least $7 per album and are paid every 30 days– that’s  a lot of money in comparison to the standard $1-2 per album.

They’re named after Highway 61– “The road by which people left their homes to take their music to the world.”

First, your public library is a good start.  Going through their music to find new albums, or just stuff that is new to you, is a great place to discover things.  You can skim a few magazines like Rolling Stone or Spin, but if you can get a hold of Paste, or other independent magazines you’ll get a better sampling of music.

I mentioned radio, which isn’t always bad, they just frontload a lot of over-hyped junk at times.  Try NPR online. You may not like talk radio, however, they do showcase a lot of up and coming bands that would otherwise not get any other radio play.

Find a critic that shares the same taste in music as you and keep up with what they review.  Even music blogs aren’t bad, but you have to be careful of heavy bias.  I like using Allmusic.com to get information about a band and see what influenced them.  The site is pretty easy to navigate and easy to get lost in for hours.

Finally, a local record store is a good place also.  I always give album advice to people when I go out: yes, I am that guy.  While you’re there pick up a compilation to hear some new stuff you might not have found before.  I stay away from tribute albums, since I want original material.

I hope this helps, and if you have suggestions, let me know.

Alison Blackman, Publisher/Writer-AdviceSisters Publications :

When I was a pre-teen, I attended an unusual Summer camp in New York called Camp Trywoodie.  The owners were friends of many creative people, including Pete Seeger.  I didn’t know who the skinny man with the banjo was (at least I didn’t know he was famous) but I’d sit right at his knee, and listen to him play and sing.   Not surprisingly, of all the songs I learned  (and sang with the other kids at the top of my lungs) from Mr. Seeger “We Shall Overcome” is the one that brings me right back to the smell of grass and earth, and sunshine…and Pete Seeger.

Naomi Starsiak:

In 2000, at the age of 17, I took a trip to San Francisco. When we got to the rental car I was surprised to see it had a CD player – I had only brought cassettes. Later that day while I was in a second-hand shop I noticed a Doris Day CD at the counter for only $1.00.

Any time I put that CD on I can see the whiter than white sands of the beach, hear the sounds of the cable cars and remember the smell of Chinatown in the evening.

Mark Pappas:

Music is definitely transportive for me, easily taking me to a place or time from my past. One song that seemed to have that ability the first time I heard it was Alphaville’s Forever Young. A bit cheesy, yes, and vintage ’80s one-hit-wonder pop for sure, but it always brings me fond memories with a melancholic twist. I first remember the song being played like clockwork at the end of each high school year during the Senior Slide Show. I attended a small, private school and the 10th, 11th and 12th grade classes would gather right before finals and view a photographic essay that focused on the graduating class. It was an exciting yet sad time, something I realized more and more as I approached my own graduation in 1989 (that in and of itself is depressing). We were quickly growing up and this world that we had inhabited for the past 3-6 years (the school was k-12, so many of us had been together since junior high or longer), that we all thought was the center of the universe, was quickly vanishing, along with so many first loves, friendships and rivalries. The song “Forever Young” definitely evokes vivid memories of that time, when I first realized that growing up and all of the great things that come with that – freedom in its varied shapes and forms being the most obvious for me – also meant that we were stepping away from our youth as well. I knew at the time that was a sad but inevitable reality, and that song seemed to amplify those feelings. It wasn’t till later in life that I came to grips with the idea that sad music can make you feel good; I hadn’t yet discovered Tom Waits while in high school, LOL.

As a self proclaimed music aficionado, I am a bit embarrassed that this is the song I would offer up (I could go on for too long about a hundred other songs), but this one always hits home for me. It’s almost voyeuristic in that it always depresses me, but I can’t not listen, and I savor the pain that comes with it. As the song says, “Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip. The music’s for the sad men.“

Suzanne Sherman Propp:

I have a very strong memory of hearing a song called “My Grandfather’s Clock” when I was about 3 years old; the song was played on one of those record players that came in a little suitcase (with a hinged top and a handle for easy carrying).  It was winter and I was living in a rental house with my parents on a spit of land called “Saugatuck Shores” in Westport, CT. I remember finding great comfort in the song; I remember simultaneously being made to feel uneasy by the cold winter winds and the sound of the sail hooks (cleats?) banging against the masts and the seagulls screaming along the Long Island Sound.  Now, 44 years later, I’ve recorded my own version of “My Grandfather’s Clock” and I get many, many comments from people who loved that song.  I’m so glad I recorded it.

Note: You can buy Suzanne’s version of “My Grandfather’s Clock” on iTunes.

Tim Patterson:

Beatles – Sgt. Pepper album. My older brother told me he got a chance to listen to it at school in the library with headphones on the day it came out. We bought it a few days later and listened to it nonstop for days.

Rolling Stones – “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” – I was about 10 when this came out and was really interested in being a cartoonist. I used to sit and draw cartoons and listen to this song.

Paul Revere and the  Raiders – “Let Me” – I was a young drummer when this came out – and I thought the middle part of the song had one of the coolest drum parts ever. I used to try and play it along with the record.

We always think of the “good old times”. But what is interesting is that the songs of the days gone past carry those memories forward to the present and wake up our inner souls every time we hear them.

These same feelings were evident in the responses I received as I interviewed people from around the globe:

Patti Wood, The  Body Language Expert:

In junior high,  I remember standing up against the wall at a big school dance feeling so lonely and humiliated because no one asked me to dance to “Color my World.” For four years whenever I heard that song I longed to dance to it and finally I was able to in my senior year of high school and I now have a fantastic memory of dancing to it with my high school crush, a college boy, at a church dance!

FP, “The Unstoppable Champion“:

“Hold your Head Up” became my theme song for a lot of reasons but most notably it was the first song that came on the radio right after my first sexual experience. My boyfriend couldn’t have been more  COLD had he been left in the Freezer over night. It seemed he had gone from warm, loving and “oh so sweet” to a dispassionate and unaffectionate statue. I could feel the tears forming behind my eyes and I began to feel ashamed for what I had done. My self esteem was taking a beating here and I didn’t know what to do. Well Argent’s song came on.. “HOLD YOUR HEAD UP” and it was exactly what I need to mobilize myself, get dressed and walk out like it meant nothing to me. Of course I broke down later but now when I hear this song I remember my tears fondly. It brings me right back to that moment in time, but I don’t want to cry. I remember that no matter what, I am unstoppable!

Elisse Goldstein-Clark, of the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre in West Virginia

“You’re So Beautiful” by Pat McGuire: This song, sung by Pat McGuire in Marty O’Brien’s Pub on 2nd Ave. in NYC on Thursday nights after 9/11 is the song my husband and I fell in love to. This is OUR SONG- and probably the song for a Lot of NYC couples of that time… When we play his albums “Love Songs For Astronauts” and “Big Brown Sofa” we are both literally transported back to the fall and winter of 2001 and a totally crazy time & place, for better and for worse… We met in an elevator while both working for FEMA as disaster response workers in NYC (Oct 22, 2001), and Thursday nights spent listening to Pat McGuire at Marty O’Brien’s, doing some serious drinking, and dancing up a storm in the tiny bar with cop and firemen friends was what kept us sane…

Genma Stringer Holmes, of  Genma Speaks:

My sons heard me humming the chorus to Maxwell’s song, “Pretty Wings” and both commented how I seem to “drift” every time I hear the song.  My oldest sent me the lyrics a weeks ago and my heart skipped a beat. I sent the words to a former lover that stills holds a special place in my heart along with the video. The song speaks to me so powerfully.

Maxwell sings about being in love and not valuing the relationship or the person at that time of the relationship.  The wings are allowed to fly away but the love is still there and in order to find real love with each other they needed to be apart.  I think I will always love him but it was one of those relationships that literally drove me to the brink of insanity.

My favorite lines, in bold font, speaks to how crazy I was to love someone so powerful and so out of my league to begin with.  I am smart but I was dumb and young to be so madly in love and to think I was not going to get hurt or hurt him. Talk about passionate craziness.  It has been a few years since our final goodbye and I am still in counseling! (smile) Yes, we are friends and I wish him the best in life even with our crazy history.

Almost every adult in the world has stories of someone that touched his/her heart.  And I would venture to say that every love affair has a song or two that rekindles the memories.

The first part shares responses in which music made a person remember the loss of someone dear to him or her:

The first story comes from Cynthia Colby:

A song that triggers a memory even after so much time, is ‘Fire and Rain‘ by James Taylor.

David Ferguson and I became friends in high school when I tutored him in math. He was the first person I knew who came out and told us all that he was gay. He suffered a major backlash from other students back in 1969 – and I was one of the few friends who stuck by him. I had my own problems with an abusive stepfather and uncaring mother, so we shared comfort as well as a friendship. We used to go driving up and down the Niagara Parkway on Sundays in his parents’ car – me driving! – having a wonderful time playing a game we invented. I still remember the fiasco of his fondue party when we switched the bowls under the meat and cheese fondue and broke his mother’s special dish!
When David and I graduated he moved to a new apartment in the big city of Toronto, and I was going to visit him for the first time. The day before I was to leave, I received a phone call from a friend, Kathy, who told me to sit down then told me that David was dead. Apparently he had fallen off his apartment balcony changing a light bulb – I can’t remember how far up it was, but high enough. I was still crying by the time she drove down to my house. This was around 1973.
David was a wonderful friend and a brilliant artist. He created oil paintings that moved people so much, he had teachers buying them throughout his high school years. I wish to God that he had had more time on this earth to share his talents and his dear friendship.
To this day, every time I hear ‘Fire and Rain’ I hear his name instead of ‘Suzanne’ – ‘David the plans they made put an end to you’ – and I take a moment and have a short cry. In fact I am in tears now as I write.
It’s a good memory of a dear friend who should not be forgotten – and won’t be in my heart as long as I hear this song.

The second tale is just as moving and it is summarized in one sentence from Rémy Reveyoso, Chief Publicist of OSO Imaging:

If I hear Bill Withers’ “Ain’t no sunshine,” I remember my mother’s funeral and I cry.

The third tale that comes from someone who suffered loss and is moved by a tune is Rhondalynn Korolak,  Managing Director of  imagineering unlimited:

For me that song would be “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler.  I can’t even hear it now, without tearing up.  My mother was murdered about 17 years ago and I dedicated it to her at her funeral.  Many will know the song because it was on the soundtrack for the movie Beaches – which is a well known chick flick.  Sometimes a song can say what we need to say, much better than we can ourselves.

The last story of loss comes from Rick Robinson, author and attorney:

“Keep Me in Your Heart for a While” by Warren Zevon.  Zevon recorded that song as he was dying of cancer.  My dad died of the same about the same time.  I play that song and think about dad…and yes smile.

Songs evoke memories and feelings.  They may be more moving than any other single artistic expression.  This week we will share the wide range of things people think about when they hear music.