I recently did some online marketing last year for one of my licensing clients and, in the process, was surprised how few large go-to music sites existed. There are a few, but apparently it is a long tail indeed.

Of the sites I found the most useful--and successful--from a marketing point of view were, I realized, helpful in other ways as well: for music supervision purposes, research and also for the sheer pleasure of discovering new music. And further, while I suspect the general music supervision population at large visit the sites as much as I, I wonder if the sites themselves understand the full usefulness to the music industry and for others looking to filter the best music.

I use All Music Guide (AMG) on a regular basis, most recently in search of a recognizable but affordable eighties-era song that could be cleared quickly at an affordable license fee for a feature length film. (I'll save the Kafka-esque adventure of clearing such a major label/major publisher owned piece of music for another post.)

One of the most wonderful aspects of AMG's bountiful and more or less accurate information is its list of similar artists, bands that influenced any given act and in turn, what artists the band has influenced. I was able to find a multitude of tracks I might use, confirm a track's popularity via AMG's charting information and make note of its writers so I could continue on to the monolithic and clunky BMI and ASCAP sites to find publishing contact information.

AMG, however, hosts the suckiest music player in the entire world, buffering endlessly or offering a few musical coughs after repeatedly clicking on the play icon until the angle, or force, or positive thinking is just right. Further, it's a shame the site won't link songwriter credits to BMI, ASCAP, etc. In fact, IMDB, the penultimate site for film and TV information, has an extended pay for service that offers additional detailed information, although I've found it to be often incomplete and not particularly useful for my needs. Lastly, in my Perfect Music Resource World, I fantasize iTunes and AMG partnering to create the ultimate and seamless resource for music supervisors, music marketers, and music fans. Sigh.

I had high hopes for Podshow, a podcast aggregator and also one of only two sites offering large catalogue of podsafe music and videos. Podshow has apparently, overnight, transmorgified into a site with the meaningless name of Mevio. Mevio's homepage is now a confusing, dark, and noisy video arcade organized under the vague headings of "Cool Episodes", "Hot Shows" and "Hot Tracks", which I think loosely translated means Stuff, Some Other Stuff and More Stuff. Mevio's music page is no better; in fact, it's pretty much identical.

But the site does have a Top Ten Podsafe Track Chart and the (still in beta at least three years since launch) Podsafe Music Network page, which allows artists to upload music to offer music podcasters for free. I think this is an important resource to further the cause of podcast played music and potentially a new way to re-start the concept of charting and airplay rotation radio once provided. It's a shame the concept isn't given the priority, or the push, considering Mevio's apparent desire to focus its attention on the Lots o' Video Stuff business model.

The site that gets it pretty much right: Last.fm. It provides one of the best music filters I've seen, and the music player works, although the page reload when changing tracks is annoying. The listener count in particular is interesting and like AMG, Last.fm provides a similar artists list, a boon for both fans and music supervisors. It also links to iTunes, which is nice--I often switch between these two sites, searching on Last.fm and switching to iTunes for more complete catalogue accessibility. The site is clean too and well organized, something a lot of sites just can't figure out.

Ultimately, these sites have the potential to hold more sway along the way and perhaps even take over where the printed pages of Rolling Stone and the power of commercial radio has faded. A long way to go perhaps but the concepts are there and seeded.

About five years ago I found an email in my inbox, out of the blue, from Thomas Dolby. Not his management firm, not an assistant, just Thomas himself. After many years in the tech world, including the creation of ringtone technology used in pretty much every cell phone to this day, Thomas had decided to get back in the world of music.

Later, I came to know Thomas' preference for working with people closely and pulling together a small team, something I myself prefer. He found me via a referral through someone who I had worked with previous, and after a few emails we met at a restaurant outside of San Francisco. Since then, it's been a sheer delight to work with him, and in addition to being one of the most modest, non-ego driven musicians I have ever met, he's also extremely bright and delightful.

Since our meeting, we've licensed "She Blinded Me With Science" many times--for a shampoo commercial, a Nip/Tuck episode, and even a dancing hamster, to name a few--as well as his penned "New Toy" for Target, bringing in Lene Lovich herself to re-record her original version, and "Hyperactive". From that, Thomas began touring and released a CD and DVD retrospective of his work, The Sole Inhabitant, which combined the great video artistry of Johnny Dekam and Thomas's unique and exquisite live musical performance and storytelling. Live at SxSW followed shortly thereafter, the result of a venture to Austin in a Zune sponsored tour bus, despite the entire Mac laptop toting crew it carried.

Thomas is always full of surprises--from the people he knows from his musical career and through his work as Music Director for the yearly TED Conferences, to coming up with PR concepts I wish I had thought of first--and he often brings new collaborations to his music as well. Technically, creatively, and most important talent-wise, his ability to come up with hooks, moods and mixes are elegant, oftentimes beautiful, and always stand up to repeated listens.

So again I was happily surprised when a re-mix of the Radiohead song "Nude"--a track that the band released in stems to offer for re-mixing to musicians large and small--arrived in my inbox recently. Thomas thought, why not, and the result is the same elegant touch he uses for his own work. It's a very un-showoff-ish piece, delicate and ethereal, and the result I think is lovely.

You can listen to it here,

And you can read Thomas's own writings about it here.

A great, lasting and memorable soundtrack is like art and porn; you know it when you see/hear it. And like a great song, it's not something one can always set out to do, it's inspired in a meld of chemistry to create one entity where before it came in the pieces of individual songs. Further, it must strike directly at the heart, which ultimately differentiates between a Good versus a Great film soundtrack.

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It's still dawning on artists that there is a world of opportunity in the music biz of today. Bands that have barely gotten through their first homemade CD release hear their music nationally broadcast on TV and film and see more than a little guitar string money for the effort. I'm heartened to report that

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The Elevator Drops are such a great band, they literally destroyed my desire to manage artists. Previous to my introduction to The 'drops, I worked with Bracket, a pop punk band out of Forestville, California, who refused to leave their van until set time and

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I've had a fleeting fascination with a product I happened onto recently. Currently in beta, and apparently trying to jump on the music licensing bandwagon LicenseQuote.com offers a calculator, enabling artists to estimate film and TV license fees for their songs.

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Publishing income has always been the money making side of the music industry, and licensing absolutely plays its part in profits. So now non traditional music companies are attempting to play the market, as well as a host of start up companies looking for free publishing and licensing income in the multitudes of unsigned artists wanting to break in on the game.

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While you can judge a CD by its cover, when the stack of music starts to pile up, I listen to all of it. Licensable music has particular characteristics and those qualities usually have to present themselves in the first two or three seconds of listening, which is how most industry people tend to select music.

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