AllThingsD » Neil Young

Live Nation's New Site Wants You to Go to the Show, Then Come Back Again

Peter Kafka — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:48:53 +0000

Up until yesterday, if you visited Live Nation’s Web site, you were only there to do one thing — buy a ticket for a concert or event.

And if you end up at LiveNation.com today, you’ll probably end up doing the same thing. But the live events giant is hoping that you’ll start doing more there, as a result of a site overhaul. It’s supposed to give you a reason to stay longer, and maybe even pay a visit when you’re not going to pay for a show.

As always, it’s a lot easier for you to visit the site than for me to try to explain what it looks like.

That said, there are a couple of things you’ll want to pay attention to when you’re there: There’s a lot more video and other material produced by Live Nation itself, in cooperation with the performers it is doing business with. And there’s a lot of stuff produced by fans themselves, who are now generating content for the site without knowing it.

That second feature is what Live Nation is calling “Showbook,” and it’s quite clever. It harvests photos that fans have taken of a particular event, then posted to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., collects them in one place, and sorts them by date and show. It works as a preview for the show you’re going to see, and a reason to come back after, because you can see your pictures, and lots of pictures from people just like you.

This seems straightforward to an ignoramus like me, but Eric Garland, who heads up Live Nation’s digital team, assures me that it’s not.

Head over to the listing for Justin Bieber’s upcoming show in New York for a good example.

The idea, says Garland, who came aboard last year when Live Nation bought his BigChampagne entertainment data company, is that while all of that stuff might be of interest to your Facebook friends, Twitter pals, etc., most of them probably don’t care about it at all.

Meanwhile, there are lots of people who don’t know you, but who do love Bieber, and they’d like to see your snapshots: “We’re bringing all of those moments together in the right rooms, for the right people.”

The challenge for Garland and his group will be convincing people that they should be checking out LiveNation.com more than a couple times a year, when they want to buy a ticket. Right now the site gets around three million visitors a month.

One of the reasons music sites have struggled to get scale on the Web in general is that unlike “TV” or “sports,” most people aren’t fans of “music” — they like specific bands and specific genres.

So if they’re Bieber believers or crusty Neil Young fans or whatever, they end up on sites that cater to that narrow band. But Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino figures there’s still an open space for him to create a consumer brand that people associate with “live entertainment,” and the site overhaul is supposed to be a first step toward that.

We’ll be talking with Rapino in February at our Dive Into Media conference, so we can check up on the strategy then.

Social Games Company DeNA Names New Ngmoco CEO

Mike Isaac — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:39:08 +0000

Clive Downie, former VP of marketing at Electronic Arts, has been named CEO of mobile gaming company Ngmoco, parent company DeNA announced on Friday. Founder and former CEO Neil Young will continue to serve on DeNA’s board of directors while he moves on to his “next adventure” with co-founder Bob Stevenson.

Neil Young Still Singing the Praises of Better Quality Digital Music

Ina Fried — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 19:17:46 +0000

It seems like an uphill battle — convincing a generation of people that grew up with white earbuds and MP3 files to pay more for better sound.

But Neil Young knows a thing or two about trying to run counter to the popular culture.

Young, who discussed his quest for better-quality digital audio at this year’s D: Dive Into Media, is moving ahead with Pono, which plans to offer a combination of players and music starting early next year.

The effort, according to Rolling Stone, has the interest of both record labels and artists. Warner Music has converted its library of 8,000 albums, the magazine reports, while musician Flea raves about the improved quality: “It’s not like some vague thing that you need dogs’ ears to hear. It’s a drastic difference.”

Of course, all that uncompressed audio comes at a cost, both monetarily as well as in the time it takes to download the files and the space that the music then takes up.

It’s worth hearing Young talk about the matter. If you haven’t watched it — or haven’t watched it recently — here’s the full video of Young’s January talk at Dive Into Media.

[ See post to watch video ]

Neil Young, the Donkey and Digital Music: The Full Dive Into Media Interview (Video)

Peter Kafka — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:00:07 +0000

Neil Young has a long and storied career, but he didn’t want to talk about it when he came onstage at D: Dive Into Media last week. Instead, the musician was pushing his vision of the future: One where lots of people listen to really good-sounding music.

To be clear: Young isn’t complaining about today’s songs. He’s complaining about the way those songs are recorded and distributed.

There’s a colorful donkey input-output metaphor here, which Young uses to make his point. And he also has a plan to fix the problem.

But first he has to convince people there is a problem. And, as Walt Mossberg and I point out, lots of people have been buying (and stealing) music in the MP3 format that Young hates, and they don’t seem to be complaining about it.

Young says former Apple CEO Steve Jobs agreed with him, though. And now he’s looking for new allies. You can see the entire pitch here:

[ See post to watch video ]

Khush Tries Teaching the World to Songify Live (Video)

Peter Kafka — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:07:57 +0000

We spent a lot of time at the D: Dive Into Media conference talking about the way entertainment gets distributed. But it was also important to talk about the way it gets created. App-maker Khush’s pitch is that it lets everyone become an entertainer, via its music apps that let even the most tone-deaf mumblers create a song.

Here, co-founders Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia show off some of their creations, including Songify Live, a new app that will let you make music in real time with an iPhone, even if you’re a tone-deaf mumbler like myself.

I do sort of wish we’d kept audio warrior Neil Young onstage just a few minutes longer, so we could have captured his reaction to all of this:

[ See post to watch video ]

Neil Young's Music Rescue Mission (Video)

Ina Fried — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:19:19 +0000

Neil Young is on a quest to improve upon the MP3 file that dominates digital music.

Young isn’t opposed to the fact music is going digital, but he says the sound of today’s files isn’t good enough, with audio quality at just 5 percent of traditional recordings.

“My goal is to try to rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years,” Young said, speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday.

Isn’t this a losing battle? Walt Mossberg pressed Young.

“No,” Young insisted, saying that what is needed is just a better music-playing device — a better iPod, if you will. Who is going to produce this? Mossberg asked.

“Some rich guy,” Young said.

Young said that Internet-based sound files are the way music is discovered these days.

“I look at the Internet as the new radio,” Young said. “I look at radio as gone … Piracy is the new radio, that’s how music gets around.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Neil Young and the Sound of Music

John Paczkowski — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:42:47 +0000

You know what the biggest problem with music today is?

Sound quality.

That’s Neil Young’s take on the issue, anyway. For years, the musician has been obsessed with improving the way modern music sounds, sonically speaking.

In an interview with Walt Mossberg and Peter Kafka at our D: Dive Into Media conference, Young, the perennial music purist, said that while modern music formats like MP3 are convenient, they sound lousy.

“My goal is to try and rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years,” Young said. “We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s degrading our music, not improving it.”

While modern digital encoding schemes might sound clear on our iPods and smartphones, they only feature a small percentage of the musical data present in a master recording, and Young is on a crusade to correct that.

“It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art,” Young said. “The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.”

Young proposed that fans stage a grassroots movement to demand higher-quality audio. “Occupy audio!” he urged.

So what’s the solution? New hardware capable of playing audio files that preserve more of the data present in original recordings, said Young.

Ah. But who’s going to produce that?

Said Young, “Some rich guy.”

And evidently there once was some rich guy working on just such a device.

The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

“Steve Jobs as a pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous,” Young said. “But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you’ve got to believe that if he’d lived long enough, he would have done what I’m trying to do.”

Also a topic of conversation during today’s interview: The recording industry, and whether the record label has outlived its usefulness. Young contended it hasn’t.

“What I like about record companies is that they present and nurture artists,” he said. “That doesn’t exist on iTunes, it doesn’t exist on Amazon. That’s what a record company does, and that’s why I like my record company. People look at record companies like they’re obsolete, but there’s a lot of soul in there — a lot of people who care about music, and that’s very important.”

Then why is it the case that some artists complain so much about the economics of the industry?

Said Young, “Those artists should go by themselves. They have a choice of what they can do. Artists who want to go it alone should just do that.”

Finally, Young discussed piracy, which he doesn’t view as the threat that some other musicians do.

“Piracy is the new radio,” said Young. “That’s how music gets around.”

Listen Up! Neil Young Joins Dive Into Media Next Week.

Peter Kafka — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:50:20 +0000

We’re a week away from the D: Dive Into Media Conference, which is going to feature a wide-ranging group of industry leaders who are going to have some very different takes on the way media and technology are colliding.

In light of this month’s SOPA/PIPA debate, for instance, it ought to be very interesting to compare and contrast what Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman and YouTube head Salar Kamangar have to say about copyright and piracy. (Not that they were on the same page to begin with.)

But in addition to executives who help distribute media for a living, we also wanted to make sure we heard from content makers at Dive. We’ll have several, but none more famous than Neil Young.

One of the nice things about having a music icon join you onstage is that you don’t need to spend much time introducing him (though it’s easy enough to get the official and unofficial takes; and, courtesy of Kamangar’s YouTube, plenty of audiovisual reminders, which you can see at the bottom of this post).

That’s going to give us more time to have a freewheeling conversation: The man has a 40-plus-year career and is still making music and movies today, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. One digital topic I imagine we’ll certainly touch on: His long-running campaign to fix the way modern music sounds – not the songs themselves, but the way they’re recorded and distributed.

That isn’t the easiest sell, when lots of people seem content to listen to super-compressed iTunes files bleeding out of tiny, tinny, laptop speakers. But perhaps things are changing a bit: Dr. Dre and company sure have sold a lot of sort-of high-end Beats headphones in recent years.

Dive kicks off on the evening of Jan. 30, and we’ll have complete coverage here. If you want to join us in person in Laguna Niguel, Calif., grab a seat.

Ngmoco Hires COO From Current TV Ahead of Major Growth Spurt

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:00:13 +0000

Ngmoco has hired Joanna Drake Earl to be its second in command, as the game company grows and begins to fully execute its vision of being a mobile entertainment network.

Earl will be the company’s chief operating officer and will begin Sept. 6, after wrapping up her job as chief strategy officer and COO at Current TV, the cable station started by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt.

In her new job, she’ll be leading day-to-day operations at Ngmoco, and will work closely with the company’s CEO and founder, Neil Young.

The appointment comes ahead of a major growth spurt for the San Francisco company, which was purchased by Japanese-based DeNA late last year. It anticipates adding another 100 staffers to its base of approximately 200 employees over the next four months.

Since being purchased by DeNA, Ngmoco has been busy building a very large mobile game network called Mobage (pronounced mo-bah-gay), which launched on Android devices in all English-speaking countries in July.

While today Mobage consists mostly of a game network that connects players around the world, it aspires to be a much broader entertainment network for next-generation devices, something that has been mainly Young’s vision up until now.

That’s where Earl will be able to step in, having coming from the TV industry. “The more I spoke with Neil and saw where they were headed, there’s a lot of similarities,” Earl said. “I was the first executive to join Al Gore and Joel Hyatt to build a new kind of media company — one that was focused on inviting the audience to collaborate.”

She added that the vision for Ngmoco and Mobage in building a worldwide brand is equally large.

“It’s the scaling of Mobage on Android now, and soon iOS, and then beyond, while also going into more territories. The ambition is big, and there’s a lot to do. Neil is in demand while we are in its start-up phase. He’s asked me to come in and be a No. 2, to take off an operational burden. I’m comfortable doing that.”

DeNA Launches Social Game Network on Android Worldwide

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:14:46 +0000

Looking to build a very large mobile game network, Japan-based DeNA has launched Mobage (pronounced mo-bah-gay), a new platform for Android devices in all English-speaking countries around the world.

In Japan, DeNA is known for its mobile-only social network called Mobage-town, which runs on lower-end feature phones and makes money selling virtual goods within its network of games.

With this launch, which was carried out through its acquisition of San Francisco-based Ngmoco, DeNA will now expand into the U.S. and transition the company from operating a feature-phone platform to a smartphone platform.

The idea behind the platform is that it will give players with common interests from around the world a place to meet up to play games — similar to Facebook, where you play games with friends from anywhere.

“Mobage’s release outside of Japan marks the next step in our company’s global expansion,” said Neil Young, Ngmoco’s CEO and DeNA’s Executive Officer. “We’re tremendously excited about the potential for the platform, both as a great way for players to experience the very best games and for developers to access a global audience easily and effectively.”

The launch of Mobage, which is available now for download on Android Market, has been expected since DeNA purchased Ngmoco for $400 million late last year.

Out of the gate it will have about 20 games, including Zombie Farm from the Playforge, Pocket God by Bolt Creative, Haypi Kingdom from Haypi Co., Pocket Frogs by NimbleBit, Paper Toss by Backflip Studios, Touch Hockey from FlipSide5 and Zoo World by RockYou.

In addition, DeNA claims to have more than 100 game titles in development.

For developers, it offers an advertising network and a way for users to purchase virtual currency within the free-to-play games.

In Japan, Mobage already has more than 30 million players.

OpenFeint, another mobile social network that was purchased by Japanese-based Gree, already claims to have 100 million users worldwide.

Here’s a video with Young, who, back in January, described his very ambitious goals for Mobage, which included having the potential to be as meaningful to today’s generation as MTV was to the rock ’n’ roll era.

[ See post to watch video ]

Weekend Update 01.23.10–The Bated-Breath Edition

Drake Martinet — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:26:59 +0000

We’ve all seen it, that spiro-graphed, color-splotched invitation to Apple’s Jan. 27 event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Weekend Update isn’t on the inside, but we hear rumors that Jobs will storm the stage dressed as Moses, carrying the new tablet, which will be made of stone, under his robes. Apparently, that’s where it’s been hiding all along. Either that, or Weekend Update is going a little nuts from “tablet fatigue.”

Before we got to rumors, plans and all important educated guesses, AllThingsD spent the week doing reporting about real companies with products you can actually buy.

Walt’s column wasn’t exactly its normal, gadgety self this week. Maybe he’s saving his strength. Instead of the newest thing that won’t be leaving your pocket, he covered a service that claims to help you remember everything. Evernote, with its adorable little elephant logo, aims to be a sort of digital filing cabinet in the cloud, allowing you to save information, images, notes and just about anything else that can be digitized. Walt had good things to say all around, even if the available apps didn’t give every device the same functionality. Weekend Update liked the auto text-recognition feature that makes pictures of text searchable. We’ll never carry a business card home again. Neither rain nor snow nor tablet rumors can keep Walt from his appointed rounds at Mossberg’s Mailbox, and this week he grabbed a couple questions about e-readers, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer 8 and the right laptop for the young and litigious. Walt cleared up the myth that e-books can’t highlight text (even if they don’t do it in color yet), and then moved on to a question about what IE8 refers to as “accelerators.” Before tying up the mailbag strings for anther week, he also gave counsel to a future counselor. He recommended a moderately priced Windows 7 laptop or a Macbook for the incoming law student, though he suggested it would be a good idea to check with the school and current students for specific needs. Weekend Update thinks that last bit is extra good advice. Katie was busy this week testing the latest Bluetooth earpiece from Aliph’s Jawbone line. The Jawbone Icon is the first earpiece to run with a software package that allows the addition of apps just for the earpiece. Overall Katie thought the Icon represented a step forward for Bluetooth earpieces but hopes for upgrades to the app suite will bring more robust features. Oh yeah, and she was glad that they finally got rid of those tricky hidden control buttons.

At MediaMemo, Peter gave us the continued saga of e-magazines and the world’s slowest moving electronic construction project. It looks like the Time Inc. e-mag prototypes won’t be part of Wednesday’s Apple (AAPL) event even though there was a lot of hullabaloo over the company’s Sports Illustrated prototype. Condé Nast, on the other hand, has declared its GQ mag-as-app tests a success. No word yet on who will be three-quarters naked on the first 10-inch screen edition. Completing the out-with-the-print, in-with-the-electronic trifecta was Peter’s post about the New York Times pay-wall announcement. The Times claims it will erect a metered wall in 2011, which seems like an awfully long time in the shifting sands of the Web. Outside partners may be playing a factor, and some speculate that the 2011 date is just a declaration that New York Times Company (NYT) will be waiting-and-seeing. Peter doesn’t see what that would accomplish and cites experts who assert that a year isn’t an unreasonable amount of time to build a complex pay wall with necessary features.

Digital Daily was on the ball this week with John’s signature hard-hitting hilarity. His early report proved correct when sources suggested that the EU’s approval of the pending Oracle (ORCL)-Sun (JAVA) acquisition was nigh. Not to leave the tablet news out in the cold, John asked some important questions about a future tablet’s data consumption habits, and thinks it might end up in a class of its own. A big, beautiful screen means big, beautiful images and video, which mean gloriously huge file sizes. Hooray for Wi-Fi. To round out the week, John covered a story about Google (GOOG) co-founders Larry and Sergey planning to sell about $5.5 billion in stock over five years. We’re not sure whether the proper term is “cashing out” or “cashing in,” but they are going to be doing a lot of one or the other. The stock sale will remove them as a two-man majority voting block, but their remaining 47 percent will assure that their velvety duet will continue to ring clearly at board meetings.

Boomtown led off with some viral video for the ages. Jimmy Fallon one-upped the “pants on the ground” video by performing the sarcastic ballad as Neil Young. We’re not sure the audience caught that it was Jimmy right way, in part, because Young was making the TV rounds about that time, and in part, because Fallon does a surprisingly good Neal impression. Kara asked her readers to vote on the new tablet’s name, making “iPad” her own prediction. Kara has an eerie way of getting this stuff right so Weekend Update is gonna go ahead and get that tattoo this weekend. Kara finished the week with a quick post about her trip to Sundance and all the geektastic happenings there. Kara’s Winnebago, which we call “Operation Rolling Thunder,” was crammed full of wife, kids, mom, dog, and maybe a few stowaway Bay Area indie filmmakers who tied themselves to the undercarriage. Read the post; there’s never a dull moment on a Swisher expedition.

AllTingsD is back on Monday with some great new stuff to feed that techie habit. And don’t forget to set your homepages here Tuesday (as if they weren’t already) to see live photos and blogging from Apple’s big unveiling. We’ll see you there, and will be sure to let you know if Jobs does, in fact, part the Bay in his walk from Marin to San Francisco that morning.

Viral Video: Pants May Be on the Ground–But Web Views Are Way Up!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:02:32 +0000

The bizarre but catchy “Pants on the Ground” rap song performance by Atlanta’s Larry Platt, delivered with verve during an audition for the “American Idol” television competition, now has two million views on YouTube and has spurred a plethora of comic knockoffs.

You can see the original below, as well as Jimmy Fallon’s version, in which he channels Neil Young. Surprisingly, it’s pretty decent.

Here are the videos:

Apple to Sony, Nintendo: Game Over, Man

John Paczkowski — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:47:56 +0000

“Don’t let the haters tell you [the iPhone] sucks compared to the [Nintendo] DS or the [Sony] PSP. It doesn’t. It’s good. It’s clear that the quality of iPhone games is eclipsing its console counterparts, and that’s even more acute when you compare it against the prior generation.”

That’s what ngmoco co-founder and Electronic Arts (ERTS) alum Neil Young said of Apple’s iconic handset at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, and it’s worth reflecting on a bit in light of a new report from Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi that claims the iPhone OS will soon create pricing and customer migration pressure for traditional gaming platforms.

Noting that some 665-760 million games may have been downloaded from the Apple (AAPL) App Store during the last 12 months, Sacconaghi estimates that the installed base for the iPhone and iPod touch platform could amount to about one third of the total handheld gaming installed base by 2012.

“We believe that gaming embodies the power of Apple’s App store: it has dramatically lowered the entry barriers for both developers and gamers alike, resulting in an unparalleled number of available games at affordable prices, which is creating lock-in and enhanced interest in Apple’s high-margin iPhone (and iPod Touch) platforms,” Sacconaghi writes.

Continuing, the analyst adds: “By most measures, gaming has been the killer App Store category, accounting for an estimated 40% of all downloads. Most importantly, we believe that gaming is providing yet another incremental, differentiated reason for consumers to purchase iPhones and iPod Touches, and creates powerful lock-in to the App Store platform and Apple products on a go forward basis.”

The upshot of all this is bad news for traditional gaming console developers–particularly those who have dismissed it as a novelty. “Most gaming developers today view the iPhone and other smart phones as an incremental opportunity, which targets the casual gamer but not the dedicating gaming enthusiast,” Sacconaghi explains. “Over time, however, we believe that the combination of evolutionary improvements in iPhone/iPod gaming functionality, the convenience of the App Store download model, the App’s Store leading title selection and lower price points could cause some migration among gaming enthusiasts to the Apple platform and/or pressure traditional gaming incumbents’ hardware and software pricing.”

And this is clearly what Apple (AAPL) is aiming for. Consider these recent remarks from Phil Schiller, the company’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing: “People are starting to see what a great gaming device this is. When you think about the companies that came before us…when you played those other systems, they seemed so cool, but now when you look at them, they don’t stack up against the iPod touch….No Multi-Touch user experience, Games are expensive, No App Store, No iPod, Expensive Games ($25-$40) and uncomfortable retail buying experience. [There are] 607 games for PSP and 3,680 games for Nintendo DS. [But there are ] 21,178 Game and Entertainment Titles at App Store.”

PS3, Xbox, Wii and…iPhone?

John Paczkowski — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:38:45 +0000

“Our love affair with the iPhone began by simply touching it. This was rapidly becoming the most important device I had ever owned, it was an all-encompassing, complete device. And I knew that that device was going to enable incredible things for gaming.”

That breathless and swooning introduction aside, ngmoco co-founder Neil Young’s keynote address at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today was noteworthy in that it really heralds the arrival of the iPhone as a gaming platform. The GDC is the largest annual gathering of professional videogame developers, so the fact that Young, an Electronic Arts (ERTS) alum turned iPhone developer, delivered his remarks from a stage that will soon host Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima says a lot about the esteem in which game developers hold the device–dismissive comments from Sony (SNE) be damned.

Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone is still in its early stages as a gaming platform and make no mistake, it is a viable gaming platform, said Young. And he should know; ngmoco–the developer of popular iPhone game titles like Rolando, Dropship, and Topple–just closed a $10 million second-round of funding after only nine months in business.

“Don’t let the haters tell you it sucks compared to the [Nintendo] DS or the [Sony] PSP,” Young said of the iPhone. “It doesn’t. It’s good. It’s clear that the quality of iPhone games is eclipsing its console counterparts, and that’s even more acute when you compare it against the prior generation.” Why?

Unlike its console rivals, the iPhone is always connected, users always carry it, it offers unique features that can’t be found anywhere else–a touchscreen, an accelerometer, connectivity. In this way, said Young, the iPhone is similar to the Nintendo DS. When that device first launched, many thought it would be beaten into whimpering submission by the far more robust PSP. But that never happened. “Nintendo was able to win that battle by combining great software with hardware that it understood very well,” Young said. “If Nintendo made the iPhone, what would they focus on? I think they would build games that could only be on the iPhone. The designs would be progressive, discontinuous, and would have the user and the user’s context always in mind. They would have great underlying game design with native device functionality at the core.”

His point: Graphics and sound alone don’t necessarily make a great app. As Nintendo has shown us with the DS and the Wii, gaming is all about the platform. And Apple has clearly created one to be reckoned with.