Webware

There's no lack of music instruction online. Sites like iVideoSongs and Internet-connected applications such as Garage Band, can tailor music instruction right down to the specific genre, song, and instrument of your choice. The trouble is, they don't actually show you how to make a great recording.

If you're more interested in how to use side-chain audio compression in Logic, than how to how to play "Stairway to Heaven," WinkSound.com is worth a look. The site design is a little rough, but the video tutorials are helpful and clearly organized into relevant topics (Garage Band, Beat Making, Ableton Live).

Nearly all of WinkSound's video content is user-generated, with much of it collected from sites such as YouTube. It's also worth noting that there's a definite emphasis on electronic, pop, and hip-hop music production, although you'll also find generally applicable video tutorials on subjects like recording acoustic drum sets or best practices for mixing in ProTools.

If you're new to using recording software, WinkSound isn't going to replace the value of a well-written manual, but it's a handy resource for peeking into other people's studios and cribbing a few techniques.

WinkSound puts some of the latest and greatest tutorials on the front page, in a giant video and image wall.

(Credit: CNET)

Burst Media, a company that provides advertising services to Web publishers, announced the results of a survey Thursday, which asked 4,000 Web users how online privacy impacts their Internet experience. It found that privacy is a major concern for 80.1 percent of respondents who claim they want their personal information kept private.

Although privacy is a major concern for all age groups, only 67.3 percent of respondents aged 18 to 24 years worry about privacy, while 85.7 percent of those aged 55 years and older are concerned about their privacy online. Of those surveyed, 62.5 percent also said that it's "likely" that a Web site they visit is collecting their personal information and transmitting it to third parties.

$99 Music Videos Network, a joint venture of Next New Networks and Verizon, launched Thursday in the hope that it can transform the way music videos are distributed. According to the company, each Thursday it will debut one music video and a "making of" clip and make them available through YouTube and iTunes. Eventually, the company hopes to partner new artists and independent filmmakers to create videos on just $99 (thus the name). The first music video available on the site is "The Sun Song" from La Strada.

Portero, an online company that sells pre-owned authentic luxury-brand accessories like watches, handbags, and jewelry, announced that it has raised $6.6 million in a round of funding that was led by LFE Capital. The company said it plans to use the funding to expand its presence online and become a more well-known source for authentic luxury goods.

Domain registrar, GoDaddy, announced Thursday that its business is growing at a rapid rate and unlike many online firms, it's expanding its office space and hiring more employees. According to the company, it has already set company records for new customers and orders and plans to hire more employees to match customer demand. In fact, the company has already hired more than 100 people so far this year. GoDaddy plans to expand its customer care division, as well as its legal, accounting, marketing, and development departments.

Universal Music Group has licensed its music videos to Kiwibox, a social-media site for teens that relaunched in August after quietly existing since the late '90s.

Under the terms of the agreement, Universal's music videos will begin being distributed on the "KiwiboxTV" video portal before the end of the year. Universal's labels and artists will receive a cut of ad revenue in compensation.

"Music remains one of the most important outlets of teen expression, and Kiwibox has long been a leader in promoting artists to its rapidly expanding community, " CEO Lin Daisaid in a statement. "This (Universal) partnership validates our long-standing relationship with the music industry and commitment to providing valuable content for teens."

Kiwibox's slant is that it encourages members to create videos, articles, and other content for the site; the best creations are featured in an online "magazine."

Universal appears to have embraced a wide distribution strategy when it comes to social media. Its catalog is already available on a number of social networks and youth-focused sites, including Imeem, and its U.K. arm sponsored an original series on AOL's Bebo. The company has taken a stake in social site Buzznet, and joined other major labels in backing MySpace Music.

This post was updated to clarify the size of Imeem compared to Last.fm.

Music videos from Universal Music Group's artists are now available on social music site Last.fm, the companies announced Tuesday.

That will make ad-supported videos from artists like the Killers, Jay-Z, Snow Patrol, and Amy Winehouse available on Last.fm, which already had a partnership to stream Universal's music catalog.

It's the first time Last.fm is bringing music videos to its site, which began offering original video programming last month.

"We want to offer a video library that rivals our unparalleled music catalog, as we work towards Last.fm becoming the only place you need to go to for all music-related content," co-founder Martin Stiksel said in a statement, "and this deal marks the first step towards that goal." Rival Imeem, a start-up that focuses more on playlist creation than music discovery and which pulls in either comparable or greater traffic than Last.fm depending on which metrics source is used, has also been inking video deals, and the far bigger MySpace offers music videos on its MySpaceTV player.

However, the Universal Music announcement comes just a week after Warner Music Group, another major label, pulled its catalog from Last.fm's music service. CBS Interactive, which acquired Last.fm last year, said that a new contract is under negotiation.

Disclosure: CNET Networks, parent of CNET News.com, is set to become part of Last.fm parent company CBS in an acquisition expected to close in the third quarter.

At the many advertising conferences dotting Internet Week New York this week, speakers and panelists have been exhorting the ad industry to start thinking more creatively when it comes to tackling digital media--even creating elaborate branded series in lieu of traditional commercials.

They weren't the only ones who got that memo. Record label Universal Music Group's Universal Music U.K. announced Monday that it's partnered with social network Bebo to broadcast a series called The Secret World of Sam King: one part video blog, one part Choose Your Own Adventure, and one part Universal advertorial. It's being produced by Globe Productions, a division of Universal.

The premise of the new series is that Sam King, an extremely low-level fictional employee of Universal Music, decides to found his own record label in the company mail room. Along the way, he encounters real-life Universal artists, and viewers will be able to submit opinions, send in material, and suggest which bands Sam should scout.

The show will also be fueled by product placement, with handset manufacturer Sony Ericsson signing on as the inaugural brand sponsor. Apparently this will lead to the protagonist "winding his boss up with mobile phone-related pranks."

Bebo and Universal have not provided a concrete debut date.

Universal's concept of a "brand show" is a bit similar to Back On Topps, a series created by former Disney exec Michael Eisner's video start-up Vuguru, as a promotion for the trading card company (which Eisner himself owns). That series, premiering this week, also pits fictional company employees against the celebrities affiliated with it--in Topps' case, famous athletes.

For Bebo, which has its biggest audience in the U.K., and parent company AOL, its 42 million members get video content that will (ideally) be enjoyable and will keep them around. It'll also be cross-promoted across other AOL video brands. For Universal, creating an (ideally) hip show geared toward Bebo's young users could help recapture the attention of a generation that's turned away from the major labels and in the direction of BitTorrent.

Actor Will Smith--or rather, his entertainment company, Overbrook Entertainment--is one of the investors behind a $2 million funding round for PluggedIn Media, a new site for watching high-definition and broadcast-quality music videos online, PaidContent.org reported Tuesday evening.

Who would've thought this guy would go on to become a Web 2.0 investor? Carlton Banks would be proud.

(Credit: NBC)

PluggedIn (wonder how much they paid for that domain?) reportedly has about 10,000 music videos in its catalog, thanks to contracts with Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Group, and Universal Music Group. The videos are accompanied by artist profiles and some community features.

The site is powered by Move Networks, the high-definition content delivery network that pulled in $46 million earlier this week from Benchmark Capital, Cisco Systems, Comcast, and a number of others. The company already handles video delivery for ESPN, ABC, Discovery, and Fox.

The "involvement" of Will Smith, however, is likely to be what comes to mind with PluggedIn. In addition to tearing up the box office over the past decade and a half with everything from Men In Black to I Am Legend, Smith also has an impressive number of hit rap singles under his belt, which makes him slightly more legit than rapper-turned-DanceJam-executive M.C. Hammer.

That, unfortunately, doesn't change one big problem I see with PluggedIn. Quality specifications aside, I already have a hub for watching music videos online. It's called YouTube. MySpaceTV and MTV.com are also big players in the space.

MTV Networks announced Tuesday that it will distribute its video content across the Web through deals with a number of social-media sites and video portals: GoFish, Veoh, MeeVee, and Imeem. Through this initiative, users of the video sites will be able to view both short- and long-form content provided by MTV Network as well as embed them on blogs and social-networking sites.

The partnerships will start to go live over the next few weeks; representatives from Imeem, for example, said that MTV Networks video content will appear on the social network, which focuses on ad-supported streaming media, in February.

Jon Stewart: He's back from the writers' strike and invading the series of tubes.

(Credit: MTV Networks)

MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, operates a total of 145 television channels and 300 Web sites across the world, but is best known for pop culture-oriented brands like MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and Spike TV.

Tuesday's partnership announcements add to existing Web syndication deals with AOL, Bebo, Fancast, Joost, and MSN. Additionally, some MTV Networks programs already have extensive content available on their own sites; last year, the Comedy Central programs The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and later South Park became fully available on the Web in a library of ad-supported clips.

The company's decision to syndicate its content to select partner sites across the Web comes at a time when many other big media players are choosing to do the same thing. NBC and News Corp. joined forces to create Hulu, which has both a central portal as well as syndication partners. Rival CBS, meanwhile, has amassed its own set of video syndication outlets.

For all these content creators, it's a way to make sure that their video can circulate online with advertising support. MTV Networks' parent company, Viacom, still has a $1 billion lawsuit standing against the Google-owned YouTube for allegedly facilitating the distribution of pirated video. And two of MTV Networks' new syndication outlets, Veoh and Dailymotion, are partners in the antipiracy coalition announced in October designed to combat infringing content--a coalition from which Google is notably absent.

Yesterday MyStrands, the music discovery service/social network launched MyStrands.TV, a new offering that serves up music videos related to your tastes. If you've ever used Last.fm, the idea is similar--just type in an artist name and you'll get a playlist full of their videos, along with several recommendations for similar artists or genres. The service keeps track of which videos you've watched, and shows you a listing of members who have added that artist to their own playlists. There's also a social element with user pages full of custom band picks you can share with friends, and other MyStrands users.

What makes MyStrands.tv jump out is its simplicity. The focus is entirely on the videos, and the UI is pleasingly intuitive. You can tweak little things like whether or not you want just your artist to play, or for MyStrands to pick from other artists to surprise you. There are also simple StumbleUpon-like navigation controls to give whatever video you're watching the thumbs up or thumbs down, which will affect future recommendations.

The service supports itself with ads, which lay unobtrusively on the side of the page. They're contextual based on the artists and songs on the page, so if you like what you hear, there are links to buy the album on Amazon.com. The videos come from YouTube, so clicking on any of them will take you to the video's page on the service.

Altogether MyStrands.tv is a dead-simple way to explore music videos and get introduced to new bands. Although since it's video-only, you're missing out on some of the goodness that comes your way with the less popular indie bands that find their way into services like Pandora and Last.fm.

Related: MogTV (review)

Like K-Fed? Well, if you did, MyStrands.TV could tell you some other artists you'd like, too.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

(Credit: MXPlay)

Today, MXPlay--the digital-music player that focuses on customizing and enhancing your playback sound, while also letting you mash up streaming audio with Web videos (covered previously)--launched a Windows-only add-on for the Mozilla Firefox browser. Called MXPlay Web, the Firefox add-on part is a simple orange MXPlay button that sits in your toolbar. Whenever you navigate to a Web page that includes MP3 files, the button transforms into a musical note. Click that note, and you can "play" that Web page in a pop-up music player.

After you select "Play this page," MXPlay Web will list all of the available MP3 songs on that Web page. You can then mark any of your favorites and save them to a personal playlist. Unfortunately, once you create that playlist, MXPlay Web somewhat randomly puts them into an order that you cannot change manually.

Just like the full app, MXPlay Web lets you customize the sound of the music using the same unique graphic interface. Drag and drop the head icon (the listener) and each of your available speakers to a specific location on the screen, which affects sound levels and direction. A blue circle in the upper left lets you control the size of your virtual room, and the bars in the upper right offer three levels of reverb. ... Read more