Are you a Last.fm addict? Does Pandora suck? Do you want to be in charge of your music discovery or should Charts do the job for you?

Music Discovery is a hot topic. Here’s a selection of some recent interesting articles:

Slacker vs Pandora -Bob Lefsetz - Fine music lovers as Lefsetz hit a wall with Pandora’s “dummy” recommendations. Slacker fine-tuning features seem a better fit for this sophisticated audience. Nice read!

Why The Music Industry Still Needs Taste-Makers – Creative Deconstruction - We’re all drinking the KoolAid of social media and machine learning filtering systems. But the average user still needs human/human-like taste-makers to tell him/her what’s worth listening to. The author has a point and the article deserves a bookmark!

The Future of Music is Filtered – Jaggernaut Brew An overview of all the possible ways to filter and manipulate the discovery (human-brand-social-machine learning). Food for thoughts.

Music Explaura: Exploration and Discovery in Action – Information Retrieval Gupf Explaura ia a fascinating promise…but I beleive both Creative Deconstruction and Jaggernaut Brew are right when they point to the need for “branded” /human filters (the taste-makers)

Recommendation Systems: Where Are We Now, Where Do We Need to Go? For a more scientific analysis of the status of the industry

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New Companies who are working on it from a different angle

-WeAreHunted – Social Music Discovery

We Are Hunted Presents the 99 Most Popular Songs on Twitter – ReadWriteWeb

Forget Billboard. We Are Hunted Charts The Music People Are Listening To On The Web – TechCrunch

-Twitter -140 chars Media Discovery and Marketing Platform

TWEET CHILD O’ MINE How Twitter Is Changing Music – Billboard Interesting post reporting on the effect on music sales of being discovered via Twitter

5 Twitter Tips For Bands From Co-Founder Biz Stone – Billboard Nothing too revolutionary, but shows the interest of the company in positioning itself as a media discovery and marketing platform

10 Ways to Share Music on Twitter – Mashable

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Companies who are specialized at creating music recommendations, recently in the news

Mufin the sound driven music recommendation engine announced new features including an iTunes plug-in and full video playlist functions on the mufin site. More on their blog

EchoNest recently chosen by Spotify

BREAKING NEWS

A week dense of social networks ‘ announcements

FACEBOOK COLONIZATION

April 28th is a date to remember. Facebook launched the Open Stream API: it’s the start of the Facebook experience extending beyond the Facebook walls. Now any developer can create new applications incorporating the real-time stream.

One of the first apps to take advantage of this new API is Seesmic Desktop.

Another example is a demo of Silverlight+ Facebook Stream, that has wowed the lucky Techcrunch viewers: Microsoft Shows Off The Power Of Facebook’s New APIs

For a technical review of the Open Stream API, check Nick O’Neill’s post at AllFacebook.com

More on the business implications thanks to NYT Brad Stone Tinker Away. Facebook Says

For a less enthusiastic review, Marshall KirckPatrick Despite New Openness, Facebook Remains Fundamentally Closed

MYSPACE AND PLAYLIST

MySpace has a new CEO, former Facebook executive and Playlist CEO, Owen Van Natta. WSJ.com: Taking Helm at MySpace

Playlist names former MTV veteran as new CEO: MTV Vet Sykes New Project Playlist CEO

TRENDS

MUSIC SPONSORSHIP SPENDING

Music Sponsorship Spending at an all time High in 2009

AD SPENDING IS OFFICIALLY NOT RECESSION-PROOF

TechCrunch: The Online Ad Recession Is Officially Here: First Quarterly Decline In Revenues

MORE TWITTERS, MORE QUITTERS?

Nielsen shocked the Twittersphere this week by reporting that Twitter shows that some come but never come back, yet the small community is indeed very influential.

See also Pete Cashmore at Mashable: 60% of Twitter users quit within the first month.

GOING UP, DOWN AND UNDER

UP- HULU AND VEVO: The Gold Race to monetize music videos is on. Wired’s editor,Eliot Van Buskirk, reports on the Next Music Battle: Hulu vs Vevo

UP-HULU AND DISNEY: Hulu is becoming the preferred distribution channel for the big media companies. It just got major buy-in from  Disney that is now an investor, joining News Corp and NB.

Who should worry more? YouTube or Apple?

UP AND THUMBS UP-COLDPLAY,JOSH FREESE &DE LA SOUL

More artists experimenting with innovative models

-Coldplay will give away a free nine-track live album, LeftRightLeftRightLeft, at every gig this year. MusicAlly

-Legendary Hip-Hop Trio De La Soul works with Nike for a new Music Release. AdAge

-Josh Freese is getting ready to release self-release a solo album and has been attracting some attention because of the unorthodox pricing model he is employing.

UP AND THUMBS UP-SLACKER,SPOTIFY,PEOPLE MUSIC STORE&THINKINDIE:

More success stories for a few new music start-ups

-Slacker Radio hits the 1million downloads on the BlackBerry. Billboard.biz Q&A: Slacker CEO Dennis Mudd

-Spotify continues to recruit music fans at a rate 40,000 users/day. MusicAlly: Spotify has more than 1mln users in the UK

-People Music Store has signed a deal with UMG. Good job! Hypebot

-ThinkIndie.com launched today as the music download destination for  Coalition Of Independent Music Stores’ (CIMS) indie music retail outlets. Hypebot

DOWN

-France Reintroduces 3 Strikes Bill. UK Says No. Hypebot.

-Artist advocacy group The Future Of Music Coalition has released a new report “Same Old  Song” confirming that indie music is not getting its fair share of airplay on broadcast radio. Hypebot

DOWN AND THEN UP – SEEQPOD

Seeqpod CEO announces imminent acquisition. Wired

SOCIAL MEDIA

-TopSpin Ian Rogers has an amazing post on how musicians are experimenting with Twitter as a music platform and direct marketing channel

-Top 10 Twitter Tools For Musicians. Hypebot

-7 SEO Tips for Musicians. Hypebot

-Provocative advices from Eric Herbert. Forget MySpace: How To Build The Ultimate Website To Interact with Your Fans

OPINIONS AND MUST READS

Is A&R Still Necessary in Today’s Music Industry? Jim Markunas at MusicThinkTank

Resnikoff’s Parting Shot: The DIY Utopia… From the editor of DigitalMusicNews

Is MySpace becoming Windows of Online Music? Matt Rosoff

Music Is Not Like Water Fingertip

Your Facebook Profile Makes Marketers’ Dreams Come True Wired

100 Days of Data TopSping

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