Photo by Owart on Flickr

I’ll be honest with you, the difference between throwing a “meetup” and throwing a party is, when you’re throwing a party you spend money and when you’re throwing a “meetup” you trick a huge group of people into sharing the cost. Maybe it’s cheap, maybe it’s clever, but when you’re a startup and the recession is official, it’s what you do.

Which is why Topspin ain’t goin’ out like Qtrax at last year’s MIDEM and is instead hosting a “meetup” at a bar frequented by “rockers” according to our friends who know the city well. We’ll be at Bar Amstel in Cannes, France on January 17th from 7-10pm, and already have confirmed attendance from a veritable who’s who of digital media, a group of people who can (for the most part, thankfully) afford to buy their own drinks, even with today’s exchange rate. If you can come, please RSVP on Facebook so we can get an accurate count, and alert you with any changes.

So if you’re attending MidemNet this year, your attendance is required at Bar Amstel at 7pm on the 17th. The place isn’t huge and they don’t (yet) know we’re coming (despite multiple phone calls and messages in broken French by Mr. Steve Patch), so don’t be late. Dust off that mullet wig (or hurry up and grow/cut a mullet) and come on down.

Oh and if you’re attending the conference, you can come see us showcase a bit of Topspin at the panel, Connecting artists & fans - A showcase of services or spend some special 1:1 time with me in Sunday’s mentoring sessions (I promise to try to refrain from El Duce references).

See you there,
ian c rogers
Topspin

ps - don’t forget our CES meetup is Wednesday night in Vegas, and we are representing on a panel at both CES and the Billboard Digital Media Live conference. see you next week!

Happy New Year from all of us at Topspin!

Unlike many, we think 2009 is going to be a great year for music, the artists who make it, and the fans who love it. Looking forward to kicking ass in the new year with you and yours.

Below is a quick review of some of the top stories from the Topspin blog this year. If you’d like to keep up with us in 2009, please visit our Web site and subscribe to receive email updates in the upper right of the page. And if you have a moment, please vote for Topspin as the “Best New Startup of 2008″ in this year’s Crunchies (voting ends Jan 5th, vote early and often!).

• Arcade Fire Documentary, Miroir Noir, Available as HD Download
• CD Quality Digital Downloads and Beyond
• Spinnerette’s Ghetto Love
• The Fireman’s Electric Arguments
• GRAMMY Northwest MusicTech Summit Keynote
• White Denim Expode [sic]
• David Byrne and Brian Eno Release Everything That Happens Will Happen Today On The Topspin Platform
• Unveiling Topspin

Thanks again for a great year.

See you at CES and MIDEM,
ian c rogers
Topspin

Happy holidays!

Last night, as I was staring at Twitterrific on my desktop, I saw @TechCrunch open the voting for The Crunchies, a set of awards for startup and innovators hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOM, VentureBeat, and Silicon Alley Insider. I headed over to cast my votes and found Topspin nominated in the “Best New Startup of 2008″ category! Thanks to everyone for nominating us. Much appreciated.

If you don’t mind, head on over to The Crunchies voting page now and cast a vote for Topspin. The rules say you can vote once every 24 hours so vote early and often, as they say.

Thanks again,
ian c rogers
Topspin

Last Wednesday morning, as I stepped out of my car in the rain and dragged my luggage toward LAX’s terminal one, I switched my iPod from the car to my headphones so I could finish listening to Sound Opinions’ “Best of 2008″ podcast. As I was weaving my way through the parked cars, Chicago Sun-Times’ music critic Jim DeRogatis announced his #2 favorite album of the year: David Byrne and Brian Eno’s self-released (using Topspin’s technology) “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”. Even though we had nothing to do with the album being so damn good and ultimately making the list, it is an important record in Topspin’s short history and hearing the first verse of the title track play on the podcast after it was chosen made me proud and (I admit truthfully at the risk of sounding like a sap) brought a little tear to my eye. I left Yahoo! Music to join this great team at Topspin in April and since we’ve released albums by Byrne/Eno, Paul McCartney, Lou Reed, and a documentary video by Arcade Fire. Not to mention great music from some of my personal favorite new artists: White Denim, Imaad Wasif, Spinnerette, and many others. And wait til you see what we have coming next year. It’s a dream come true. Thank you to Topspin’s amazing team, unbelievable board, killer, idealistic bands, and their truly music-loving fans. As Ozzy liked to say, “I love you all!” I am a very lucky person to have the good fortune of being affiliated with you all.

Sound Opinions weren’t the only ones to rank Everything That Happens highly this year. The album is making more year-end lists than I could list here, including Rolling Stone, Pitchfork (also Strange Overtones made the “best songs” list and Byrne/Eno was #2 on the “best reunion” list in the readers poll), Uncut, NPR Listeners, and more. The Fireman made the AMG list, and The Guardian put White Denim in their top 50 of ‘08, too. Congrats to you all. It’s truly an honor.

Since Topspin is an office full of nerds of music as well as tech, we decided to take a swing at our own “best of 2008″ list. Everyone submitted their picks and Sir Thomas Grogan counted the ballots. Here is the list of winners according to Topspin employees:

Top Albums of 2008, voted for by Topspin Employees

1. Feed the Animals - Girl Talk
2. Meanderthal - Torche
3. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - David Byrne & Brian Eno
4. Dear Science – TV on the Radio
5. Oracular Spectacular – MGMT
6. Santogold - Santogold
7. For Emma, Forever Ago- Bon Iver
8. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
9. 808s and Heartbreak – Kanye West
10. Only By The Night – Kings of Leon
11. Narrow Stairs – Death Cab for Cutie
12. Nude With Boots – The Melvins
13. Evil Urges - My Morning Jacket

Top Songs of 2008, voted for by Topspin Employees

1. Cath - Death Cab For Cutie
2. Electric Feel – MGMT
3. Lights Out - Santogold
4. California Girls – Magnetic Fields
5. Across the Shields – Torche
6. Lights and Music – Cut Copy
7. I Will Possess Your Heart - Death Cab For Cutie
8. Sex on Fire – Kings of Leon
9. Stupid Now – Bob Mould
10. Time To Pretend – MGMT

If I had more time I would have added pretty cover art and links to download some MP3s, but, well, time isn’t something I have enough of these days and I trust you can find your way over to Hype Machine to sample some of the things you haven’t yet heard.

We decided to go one step further in helping you with your (very) last minute holiday shopping, we asked the good people of Topspin to share one album they think everyone should hear, something they would give when giving the gift of music. Here’s what came back:

Adam Bates - Glassjaw, Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence
Peter Brambl - The Velvet Underground, Loaded
Gary Brotman - David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
Tara Brown - Rage Against The Machine, Rage Against The Machine
Jim Bumgardner - Portishead, Live: Roseland NYC
Daniel Ceballos - Dan Deacon, Spiderman of The Rings
Bjorn Croce - I Am Kloot, Natural History
Justin Davis - Funkadelic, The Electric Spanking of War Babies
Mike Davis - The Aquabats, The Aquabats Vs. The Floating Eye of Death
Kyle Evans - Neutral Milk Hotel, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Richard Goetz - John Coltrane, A Love Supreme
Peter Gotcher - Graham Parker, Squeezing Out Sparks
Thomas Grogan - The Allman Brothers Band, At Fillmore East
Jason Kadlec - The Meters, Funkify Your Life
Timon Karnezos - Roxy Music, The Best of Roxy Music
Jim Kaufman - The Jam, All Mod Cons
James Lamberti - The Who, Quadrophenia
Chris Levine - Smashing Pumpkins, Gish
Ameet Mehta - DJ Shadow, Endtroducing…
Bob Moczydlowsky - Wire, Pink Flag
Brad Pankop - Hum, You’d Prefer An Astronaut
Steve Patch - Can, Future Days
Phoebe Price - Thievery Corporation, The Richest Man In Babylon
Shamal Ranasinghe - The Greyboy All-Stars, A Town Called Earth
Tim Read - Miles Davis, Four & More
Ian Rogers - Willie Nelson, Spirit
Will Sargent - A Girl Called Eddy, A Girl Called Eddy
Rich Schiavi - Minutemen, Double Nickles on The Dime
Valerie Syme - Stevie Wonder, Musiquarium
Christopher Ward - Akron/Family, Akron/Family
Estelle Weyl - The Beatles, Abbey Road
Ty White - Kaddisfly, Set Sail The Prairie

Damn, that’s a good list from a great bunch of people. Music is the best and y’all are family. Thanks. I salute you. Thanks for a great year, and here’s to the one to come.

ian c rogers
Topspin

It’s with great pleasure we point you to an innovative project from Arcade Fire, Miroir Noir, a 70-minute documentary from what Rolling Stone dubbed one of “the best live bands playing right now,” and whose shows are “a religious experience”. If you’ve never seen them live (I missed ‘em), now’s your chance.

Not only can you now see them immediately via a DRM-free digital download without waiting for a DVD to come in the mail, and not only is the quality of the video better than what you would get from an online video store like iTunes, the quality is actually BETTER THAN DVD (1280×720 to DVD’s 720×480 — MOAR pixels == better resolution). As far as we know, this is the first time an artist has done a direct-to-fan digital movie release, and as far as we know it’s the first one to be done in better than DVD quality. Please correct us if we’re wrong about that. If we’re not, h0tn355.

Head on over to Miroir-Noir.com now to grab one of the digital-only versions relatively cheaply, or go for one of the “get a DVD in the mail” versions, including a limited edition in a numbered box. Support Arcade Fire in their first release since the seminal Neon Bible in March 2007.

I want to offer a sincere apology to the fans who tried to download and had problems in the first five or so hours the site was live. We had some issues with our CDN (content delivery network), due to the extraordinarily large file size, that took us a few hours to remedy. All is smooth sailing now though, so long as your Internet connection and hard drive can handle downloading a 2.4GB file.

Enjoy, and thank you to Arcade Fire for inviting us to be a part of something historic and important!

ian c rogers
Topspin

Don’t ask me how but I recently came into a pair of Dr. Dre’s signature headphones, the $300+/pair “Beats By Dre” (actually made by Monster). I was skeptical at first but I have to be honest, I really love these headphones. Incredibly comfortable, excellent noise-canceling, astounding dynamic range, cool looking, excellently packaged — audiophiles, put these on your holiday list this year.

My first test run with the Beats By Dre headphones was listening to a 256kbps Led Zeppelin MP3 I’d bought from Amazon. “These things sound like shit,” I thought. But then I realized it wasn’t the headphones that sounded terrible, it was the MP3. The headphones were actually so good I was hearing the artifacts in the MP3. So I flipped over to The Fireman Apple Lossless files I had on my iPod and — um, wow — was blown away. Next I tried the FLAC files that came with David Byrne and Brian Eno’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, using Songbird (FLAC files won’t play on your iPod). This too sounded absolutely amazing. Now I’ve never been Mr. Audio Quality and nor do I think The Masses (TM) will ever prioritize fidelity over convenience, as Fredric Dannen pointed out consumers have chosen convenience over quality since the move to LP from 78. Personally I’ve been happy with MP3s since 1997. I listen to music constantly on computers, iPods, and throughout my house via Control 4. But with these headphones I was suddenly longing for CD quality audio instead of MP3.

Apparently I’m not the only one. With both The Fireman (Paul McCartney and Youth) and David Byrne and Brian Eno records, lossless files were offered at no additional charge (with David Byrne FLAC was offered, and with The Fireman you could choose either FLAC or Apple Lossless format). But due to their large file size and the fact that a lot of folks have no idea what to do with these files, you had to ask to receive them. Still, 12% of all David Byrne and Brian Eno fans took the FLAC option, and 21% of those purchasing The Fireman record direct from TheFiremanMusic.com took one of the lossless options. Those aren’t really apples-to-apples comparisons so I wouldn’t make much out of the difference between the two releases (the lossless choices were much more obvious on The Fireman record and the album was available via iTunes and elsewhere while for David Byrne and Brian Eno EverythingThatHappens.com was the sole place to purchase the album for the first 60 days), but I’m surprised and somewhat encouraged to see such a large number of consumers interested in the lossless formats.

Of course we aren’t anywhere near the first to offer FLAC files for purchase, the live show community in particular has been doing it for many years. But I haven’t seen any numbers on what percentage of consumers were interested in lossless when offered the choice, so I asked the managers of both of these artists if they minded our sharing the number (thanks to both of them for being so open to sharing). I hope you find it interesting/encouraging, too.

These quality-seekers are a small group, but a vocal group that really appreciates the love. We saw a decent influx of traffic to TheFireManMusic.com last week driven by stories like this Slashdot one about the album being available in DRM-free lossless formats. The Slashdot crowd isn’t an easy one to please, so it was heart-warming to read comments like these:

“You can purchase just the digital files, or if you purchase a physical CD or vinyl copy, you are also given access to the digital download. Not only that, but the download is available in 320-kbps MP3, Apple Lossless, or even FLAC format. If you’re interested in trying before you buy, you can listen to the entire album in a Flash player on the main page of the site. It’s so nice to see a big musician who gets it. Bravo, Sir Paul!“

“Just purchased the MP3 version. It is, as claimed, mpga 320K, DRM-free. In addition to the tracks, you get cover artwork and liner notes as jpgs.
The range of purchase options is very interesting. $8.99 for MP3 files and artwork, $12.99 for a CD, $29.99 for a direct metal mastered double vinyl record, and $79.99 for a DVD containing 24bit 96Khz tracks, and a second DVD containing multi-track session files for a selection of the album tracks.
The purchasing experience was flawless: create an account, give a credit card (with optional choice of saving the number or not; I chose not), get a zipfile of the downloads. Not a wasted keystroke or mouse click.
This really is the way I want to purchase my music. Two big thumbs up from the consumer angle. Lots of choices, low prices, immediate downloads, supports the artists.
The perfect shopping experience.“

Offering both FLAC (won’t play on the iPod) and Apple Lossless (less standard, but plays on the iPod) is interesting, too. Takers of lossless files were split 50/50 on this, half taking each. Unfortunately that means there isn’t a clear winner and we’ll probably need to keep offering a variety of files to have a complete offering.

Note our “standard” MP3 format at Topspin is 320kbps, which also sounds damn fine in these fancy headphones, better than what you get from the big digital retailers. It’s also worth noting that in many cases artists may want to charge more for the higher quality audio. White Denim did this with their (excellent) release, for example, and that’s a-ok by us.

Steve Albini, the analog-loving musician and recording engineer whose 1987 CD compilation of classic Big Black EPs was disparagingly titled The Rich Man’s 8-Track Tape, advocates going beyond CD quality 16-bit and into 24-bit audio. In fact, you can buy Shellac’s latest record as 24-bit wav files from Touch And Go’s site (and have been able to since the album’s release more than a year ago). That’s some next level shit. I’m looking forward to an artist who wants to do 24-bit FLAC or even a 5.1 mix for their fans, even though the hardware to take advantage of it is few and far between…

Oh I almost forgot, I have one suggestion to improve the Beats By Dre headphones: they should play The Chronic out of the box, without needing to be connected to anything. How much extra cost/work can it be to put The Chronic in there on a little chip? Whatever the cost, it’d be worth it.

With everybody sayin,
ian c rogers
Topspin

Congrats to our friends in Spinnerette for their first independent digital release, the amazing Ghetto Love EP, featuring four songs and a video by acclaimed director Liam Lynch for $5. For those who didn’t see our earlier Spinnerette post, Spinnerette is Brody and Tony from The Distillers, along with a cast of characters including producer Alain Johannes. Buy the EP on SpinneretteMusic.com.

Here’s the video, please stick this on your blog, MySpace page, whateva:

If you add the video to your site, please take a screen shot and upload it to this Flickr pool.

Also released this week is the new album from Wendy and Lisa. You might remember Wendy and Lisa from Prince’s Revolution or more recently from the soundtrack to the TV show Heroes, but their new album stands on its own. Listen to the album and purchase the colored vinyl here!

Also launching this week, new music from former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf de Maur, and the re-release of Seven Mary Three’s long out-of-print debut album, Churn.

Congrats on the self-sufficiency!

ian c rogers
Topspin

This week’s Holiday Gift Guide (the second of four) is all about helping you become a better designer and online marketer. You’ll find resources for understanding revenue optimization, reporting, analytics, conversion, usability and information design. We’ve also thrown in a few general resources to broaden your horizons.

As with last week’s Gift Guide, this is by no means intended to be a comprehensive list, but rather a sampling of Topspin favorites. Please chime in with suggestions of your own.

• Beautiful Evidence - by Edward Tufte
• Google Conversion University
• Google Analytics
• Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics – by Brian Clifton
• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day - by Avinash Kaushik
• Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads - by Lance Loveday & Sandra Niehaus
• Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions – by Tim Ash
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition - by Steve Krug
• WEB Design: E-Commerce (Icons) – by Julius Wiedemann
• Taschen’s 1000 Favorite Websites - by Julius Wiedemann
• Things I have learned in my life so far - by Stefan Sagmeister

Gary Brotman

Topspin

Hello,

Yes we’re watching the layoff news and we’re not growing at the pace we once were ourselves, but we do have a few key positions to fill still, including our VP Engineering. If you know someone with VP-level engineering management skills who loves music and would be motivated by building a software toolset to help artists run successful businesses, please have them reach out to us. On the flipside, if you *don’t* have these skills (or skills matching one of the other jobs on our Jobs page), please *don’t* email us. No offense, but we’re very busy building software and would like to keep the signal-to-noise ratio at a manageable level. Thanks!

VP Engineering, Topspin

Topspin is a media technology company helping artists and their partners build successful businesses and brand awareness by providing the software, services and infrastructure through a turn key marketing platform. We create the tools to manage content, connect with fans and generate demand for music while providing deep visibility and analytics that are actionable throughout the system. What ProTools did for music production, Topspin is dedicated to doing for music marketing.

You can read more about our company on our blog, in this Billboard article, and get a bit of a sense of what we stand for in this TechCrunch article. Our chairman and co-founder is ProTools-founder Peter Gotcher and we are backed financially by Redpoint and Foundry Group. I am the CEO and my background includes a stint at Nullsoft and Grand Royal, as well as the GM of Yahoo! Music.

We are currently on the hunt for an inspired and experienced VP of Engineering to lead the majority of our employees, our incredibly talented engineering team of twenty-five. The right candidate is a former VP of Engineering with a history of passionate leadership, knowledge of engineering process and a track record of delivering robust software against aggressive timelines. They have experience building simple, elegant and powerful Web applications as well as possessing a passion for music, either as a performer or a fan.

Experience in ecommerce, CRM, digital media delivery, analytics, scalable services and/or marketing based systems is desirable. Responsibilities include the management and oversight of the developers, network operations/IT, data services, QA and program managers in a 24×7x365 high availability environment. Technologies include RoR, MySQL, Java and python.

If this describes you, please reach out to us ASAP.

ian c rogers
Topspin

The David Byrne and Brian Eno record marches on.

After being available exclusively at EverythingThatHappens.com for sixty days (powered by Topspin), David Byrne and Brian Eno’s “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today” found its way to iTunes, Amazon (on sale for $5!), etc and is available on CD at your local store as well.

The album has reached a new generation of Byrne and Eno fans through college radio: last week it found its way to the coveted #1 spot on the CMJ AAA charts, and #3 on the CMJ Radio 200. The word continues to spread as other radio stations (e.g.- Seattle’s KEXP, New York’s WNEW) have embedded the streaming media widget on their site, enabling their fans to stream the entire album for free and embed the widget on their own sites. If you have seen the widget around the net, snap a screenshot and add it to the ever-growing Flickr pool.

Also worth mentioning, White Denim has received 5-star reviews from The Times and Observer Music Monthly, and made it to the “Best of 2008″ list from The Guardian. Haven’t heard them yet? Check out their appearance on “From the Basement.”