mflow - mp3 downloads, share with itunes & get paid!

So on Friday I received an invite to try out MFlow, the new kid on the mp3 download block.  What’s unique, I think, is that they have a community element that allows you to share your recommendations although there is the incentive that you get 20% of the mp3 price if one of your followers makes a purchase based on your recommendation.

Pretty awesome so far right?

The catalogue of artists currently stands at over one million tracks which may be dwarfed by iTunes but let’s not forget this is a beta site that hasn’t actually launched yet, is growing all the time, and already has Universal & Sony on board.

My only concern is the money aspect of the site, personally I think this will lead to people just adding other people to get followed back (a rather horrible trait found often on Twitter) to raise the potential number of people seeing their recommendations, and potentially buying tracks so they get a cut. Of course you can limit the number of people you follow, just like Twitter, it’s all under your control so perhaps I’ve no reason to be bothered about but I would be interested to know if their will be any policing from flow themselves over strange user activity (mass following/unfollowing a.k.a ‘gaming’).

According to the blog, http://mflow.posterous.com (where you can also find full details about the site’s features and the company), it won’t be long before you can hook up mflow with Facebook & Twitter and broadcast your recommendations. I’ve got no doubt at all that this will split users of all services evenly between those who see this as another way to share more about yourself (your musical taste) and those who will see it as more online noise but again I’m sure it will be part of your account options on what you wish to opt in to and what you choose to share.

As previously mentioned the current catalogue is large but still has some gaps, if you’re looking for more of the niche labels or genres then you may be a little disappointed.  Just for a comparison I took 5 tracks from www.bleep.com & 5 tracks for www.boomkat.com (from the downloads page) to see if I could find them on mflow. Mflow had 3 of the tracks picked from Bleep & had 2 of the tracks from Boomkat. These were however the new releases rather than any back catalogue type tracks.  I’m not surprised at this as a lot of these tracks are on small labels and I’m sure that with time they will be looking to have their catalogues on mflow but it’s a promising start.

From a feature point of view there are a few things I’d like to see:

• The ability to add comments to flows from people I follow. There are two reasons for this - 1. It would increase conversation about the music, 2. It would introduce me, through the comments, to people who are following the person who originally flowed. You like the comments that someone is making on a flow then you may start to follow them.
• Playlists/charts - It would be useful if I could put up a monthly chart of my favourite tracks, this could sit on my profile page and then even if people miss your flows they could go there and check out what I’m into at that time.
• From a dj/radio show/podcast point of view it would be handy to link in tracklistings for listeners to buy, of course this is dependant on the availability of tracks on the site.  Taking it a step further it would be cool to mflow link up with www.mixcloud.com so that when you’re listening to a cloudcast such as www.flytronica.com on Mixcloud you could click the tracklisting and buy a track via mflow. Currently when uploading a cloudcast to mixcloud you need to provide the artist and track information, if this could check against mflow’s database to activate a purchase link within the player that would be pretty cool, for both companies.

I’ve got a feeling that this site will become pretty massive, will be interesting to see just how it develops before it goes for a full public launch and suddenly scales up in huge numbers.  One to watch!

Introducing PIP.IO - What Google Wave Should Have Been?

The latest start up to gain my attention during the social media user rush is pip.io.

Based in Silicon Valley they are looking to be your ‘Social Operating System’, this isn’t just like aggregators out there that let you publish to Twitter or view your twitter stream within them.  pip.io provides full functionality for Twitter with it’s inbuilt Twitter client allowing you to follow/unfollow, view your lists, send DMs, view your stream, your mentions etc.

The problem with sites like this is that it’s difficult to explain fully exactly how cool the site is and I’d be here for ages explaining all of the features.  Graphically the site is beautifully designed, one feature that I like, but may be superfluous to a lot of people, is the app background which changes according to the time of day, gradually getting darker as the sun goes down and the stars come out.

You can initially add 15 friends to join you and each day you get 10 new invites, straight away this gets over the situation that a lot of us found ourselves in with Google Wave when you signed up and there was nobody to chat to.  It was like getting invited to a party where you were the only guest, the person who invited you may also be there but chances are you don’t know each other and an awkward silence ensued.

Another issue with Google Wave, which is probably a bug and may just be my account, is that it never shows anybody else online.  I have a green dot by my name to signify I’m online but rarely does it show others being online, even though we are chatting.  This has a massive effect on using the service as who wants to constantly ping their friends asking ‘Are you there?…..’?  Pip.io displays a nice green glow around your avatar if you’re online or red if you’re away or offline, even offering the ability to set custom away messages.

The homepage, or ‘ecosystem’ as pip.io like to call it, is where the main bulk of real time conversation occurs between you and your friends, these can be public or directed to individual or multiple users and enable you to share files, photos or links by clicking the relevant icon under the text box.  You also have channels to split your contacts up, useful for work contacts and your friends, as well as rooms for private chat by invitation.

One feature that has the potential for some interesting development is the ‘Global Updates’ option. Clicking on this will open up a Google Maps window and a floating window (all floating windows can be moved around and you can carry on chatting with windows open), as you move around the map the content in the floating window refreshes with user posts from that area.  As I said, this has a lot of potential, especially when pip.io goes mobile (as mentioned in the video below)

Just signed up and not sure what the hell is happening?  Fear not for there are lots of mini video tutorials explaining all the functions using Vimeo embeded movies, alternatively click here to check them out before you sign up.

You can see founders Leo Shimizu & David Chen discussing pip.io in a video interview with Robert Scoble below.

Personally this is what I wanted Google Wave to be, I’ve no doubt that Google may eventually get their act together but by then hopefully pip.io will have picked up steam and will have a thriving community using the site and building applications for the pip.io ecosystem.

Let us know what you think in the comments below

Phat Phil Cooper

‘From fourth division to premier league is how Phil likes to describe his breakthrough onto the mid 90’s house music scene. Plucked from relative obscurity, DJing at Chester’s “Sweet” House music night in the North West of England to warm up DJ to the underground stars at Cream, Liverpool by Darren Hughes, promoter and visionary extraordinaire! All this happened in 1995 and the summer of 1996 saw Phil land the first of his many years’ residencies for Cream at Amnesia, Ibiza. Here Phil was allowed to flex his broad musical styles ranging from hip hop to deep house in his marathon 8 hour sets. Many people think Jade Jagger bought hip hop to Ibiza but DJ magazine recognised Phat Phil’s hip hop credentials in ’96 and awarded him Best Hip Hop set of the Year – Phat Phil Cooper, Cream, Amnesia, Ibiza – FACT!

The mid-nineties blurred into the mid-naughties and Phil rode the tidal wave of rave with Super Club residencies at Cream, Liverpool and the Ministry of Sound, London and guested worldwide from Brighton to Brazil to Singapore to Sydney bringing his deep, jackin’, intelligent blend of house music to the masses. All the time Phil was travelling and playing he was collecting music from every corner of the world and from all corners of the dance floors. Picking up Northern Soul collections in Ibiza and obscure afro-rock 7”s in South Africa allowed Phil to expand his already over active and over flowing mind of music.  However, Phil’s freestyle outlook on DJing needed an escape, not content with playing these weird and wonderful finds in his bedroom or laying down the odd and occasional mix tape, Phil came up with the NuNorthern Soul concept, a Sunday session of music presented in comfortable surroundings with great food and wine, City Bar in Chester was the landing pad for the Sunday slouchdown and Jim Baron from Crazy P was one of the many NuNorthern Soul All-stars! The pair would spin for eight hours, playing records from front to back, full length, blended and melded together to create an audio soundscape to lazy, hazy Sunday afternoons!

As Phil moved from the UK to Ibiza to set up a record promo pool, NuNorthern Soul went with him, transferring it from an English style bar to the legendry Ibiza Base Bar was easy as people wanted to hear different beats and NuNorthern Soul provided them with exactly that. Quickly it was obvious that this idea would work well anywhere with sun, so as The Base Bar extended their business and opened Es Vive Hotel, Phil was asked to host the pool side session every Wednesday and Sunday. The Sunday sessions soon turned into pre Space sessions with the cooler, music-loving crowd rocking up for Sunday sustenance in the form of a full Sunday roast before heading down to We Love at Space. Quick to spot the synergy that NuNorthern Soul had, in stepped Mr Darren Hughes (again) and his music director, and business partner, Mark Broadbent and took the NuNorthern Soul vibe to the new roof terrace at Space every Sunday, kicking up a fuss with African and Latin beats, funk, disco, soul, hip hop and broken beat.

Phil eventually moved back to Liverpool, UK and set up the Sick Trumpet label, several 7” and 12” and a full artist album projects under his belt he set about also setting up KAT records, an edits based 12” label, releasing re-edits of classic, hard to find disco and boogie tracks with a view to keeping history alive and providing modern diggers with a new source of material. Greg Wilson, Rahaan and Al Kent are some of the contributors so far.

Also while in Liverpool, Phil hooked up with Brother’s Paddy and Kwinzola (Friends and Family) who had been running the No Fakin’ / Dusty session for 10+ years, when these meeting of minds and vinyl collections came about so did the Common Ground Collective, spawning more boundary breaking parties in Liverpool and beyond. Sick Trumpet also teamed up with Chibuku Shake Shake to throw several key parties including an event with Balearic pioneers, A Man Called Adam in a Cheshire farm and a Hip Hop / Funk fuelled party on a working Steam Train through North Wales!’

Biography courtesy of http://www.welove-music.com

Now based in London Phil has resurrected NuNorthernSoul (http://www.myspace.com/nunorthernsoul) with weekly parties at Paradise, 19 Kilburn Lane, London, W10 4AE (http://theparadise.co.uk) from 4pm-Midnight every Sunday and an ongoing podcast that you can get via http://sicktrumpet.podomatic.com (you can subscribe with iTunes here)

For this inaugural post I thought I’d trawl through Phil’s archives and give you some lovely mixes.  There a variety of styles here but all of them contain some surprises which you may not be expecting from the mix genre.

http://www.urbanfly.co.uk/mixes/Phil_Cooper-01.1.mp3

http://www.urbanfly.co.uk/mixes/Phil_Cooper-Acid_Drops.mp3

http://www.urbanfly.co.uk/mixes/Phil_Cooper-Big_Bouncers.mp3

http://www.urbanfly.co.uk/mixes/Phil_Cooper-More_Northern_Soul.mp3

http://www.urbanfly.co.uk/mixes/Phil_Cooper-Shake_Shake_It!.mp3

http://www.urbanfly.co.uk/mixes/Phil_Cooper-NORTHERN_PRESSURE.mp3

http://www.urbanfly.co.uk/mixes/Phil_Cooper-Sunset_Soul_Moody_Moments.mp3

http://www.urbanfly.co.uk/mixes/Phil_Cooper-Radio_Nonsense.mp3

http://www.urbanfly.co.uk/mixes/Phil_Cooper-Northern_Soul.mp3

You can catch up on Phil’s musical musing and other interests at http://phatphilcooper.blogspot.com/

You can also find Phil (so many links in this post!) on twitter - http://www.twitter.com/phil__cooper and on AudioBoo - http://audioboo.fm/profile/SickTrumpet