by Ryan Barkan

Tracy Morgan & Stevie Wonder (picture via Hipster Runoff)

Super Bowl XLIV (44) took place Sunday night in Florida between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. The Saints semi-upset the Colts to win the big game for the first time in the franchise's history. This post is a special edition of the long lost "Week In Music Licensing" post and as such, that's the last you will hear about the game. Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire, many videos and more below...

Continue reading "music & commercials of Super Bowl XLIV (Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire, The Who, Mini Kiss, The Heavy & more) "

Every day we get millions of search queries about music. You want to know more about your favorite artists, find that new album or iconic song or figure out the name of that tune stuck in your head. In fact, according to Insights for Search, two of the top 10 queries in the U.S. are music-related. But often, if your answer is in a song, it can take a while to get there. We call this "time to result" -- and we're always looking for ways to reduce it.

Today, we're rolling out a search feature that does just that by enabling you to search and more easily discover millions of songs, all via a simple Google web search. If you're searching for music, "time to result" is really "time to music." Now, when you enter a music-related query -- like the name of a song, artist or album -- your search results will include links to an audio preview of those songs provided by our music search partners MySpace (which just acquired iLike) or Lala. When you click the result you'll be able to listen to an audio preview of the song directly from one of those partners. For example, if I search for [21st century breakdown], the first results provide links to songs from Green Day's new album. MySpace and Lala also provide links to purchase the full song. [Google Blog]

Continue reading "Google launches Music Search"

Joe Biden (by Gizmodo)

"There's no question America looks like it'll be an exciting and interesting place under Barack Obama.

But it's starting to look a little scary for the online world.

Joe Biden is already cause for serious alarm, but now, will Google get an amazing foothold in the new White House?

And might RIAA boss Mitch Bainwol become Obama's CTO?

It's OK. Relax. We were just kidding about Bainwol. He voted for McCain, although you can bet he and other corporate entertainment cartel minions such as the MPAA's Dan Glickman are sleeping outside Obama's door, metaphorically speaking.

But could either Do No evil Google boss Eric Schmidt, who "conveniently endorsed Obama," or another Google employee, Vint Cerf, be named? - wonders CNet News." [p2pnet]

Love it or hate it, licensing songs seems to be the new reality for "indie" bands (or any bands) looking to make money and gain exposure. As an avid music fan and Senior Director of Advertising & Video Games at Primary Wave Music Publishing, Ryan Barkan makes sure to stay on top of news related to artists getting their songs in ads, on TV, in movies, in video games and just about anywhere else a band would get paid to put a song. As someone who never pays attention to any of that, I thought the site could use a weekly column to identify who sold out this week help fill in what I'm missing (think M.I.A. in the Pineapple Express commercial, Nick & Norah, Santogold shilling Bud Light, Chairlift & CSS for Apple, etc..). For that...please welcome Ryan (who also goes by the blog and photographer name "Fresh Bread")....

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by Ryan Barkan

Microsoft's Halo 3 video game commercial was so amazing that it won the Grand Prix (i.e. best of show) at this past year's Cannes Advertising Awards, in June, in the "Film" ad category. The spot, titled "Believe", was created by San Francisco advertising agency T.A.G. and featured the dramatically delicate "Raindrop Prelude No 15" by Chopin against a violent and disturbing war scene.

Another huge 2008 release for Microsoft is the upcoming sequel to the game Gears of War, creatively called....wait for it...Gears Of War 2 (available November 7th exclusively on Xbox360). What works once should work again right? T.A.G. thought so and took the same approach with the music as they did with the "Believe" spot, juxtaposing the hard war visuals against a beautiful song, but this time with a more contemporary artist, Devotchka. The beautiful song they used by the Colorado band is called "How It Ends" and the trailer will debut on network television this Sunday, November 2, during NFL Sunday Night Football. You can also watch it right now. The video for that, and of the full version of "Believe", are below.

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Other Notable Licensing News:

The Walmart-exclusive AC/DC edition of Rock Band is out November 2nd and now MTV/Harmonix have announced a Beatles video game that will be based on the "Rock Band" engine, but not branded "Rock Band". "The Best Of The Who" edition of Rock Band was released in July as DLC (downloadable content).

Hypebeast has the info on a new line of Miles Davis-inspired T-shirts by urban boutique and shoe company, Supreme.

Flaming Lips, the B-52's, BB King and others were commissioned by NBC to create their own interpretation of the network's classic "Chime In"...

You may not know that the notes to NBC's famous chimes are G, E, and C, but chances are you'd recognize the Peacock jingle in an instant. With that in mind, executives at the network decided to have some fun with their famous chimes and launched a national campaign calling for a 21st century reinvention of the 75-year-old television staple. [Hollywood Insider]

What do Friendly Fires, The Duke Spirit, The Submarines, The Black Keys, Black Kids, The Virgins, and Robyn have in common? They've all had songs featured in an episode of Gossip Girl this month.

What about Lykke Li, Passion Pit and The Kooks? Well, as you may have read earlier, they'll all be appearing in future episodes of Gossip Girl/OC-creator Josh Schwartz's new "music-themed scripted web series" Rockville, CA.

I really dig the new spot for the Google Android Phone. The commercial features a song by The Black Angels called "Black Grease" - not sure if it'll convince me to switch from the iPhone but it's a nice placement nonetheless. Video below...

Continue reading "It's Not Selling Out Anymore -- This Week in Music Licensing"

Would you still watch a video like this if there was an ad embedded in it? Would you still post a video like this if Google put an ad into it?

Now Google believes it finally has found the formula to cash in on YouTube’s potential as a magnet for online video advertising and keep its audience loyal at the same time.

The company said late Tuesday that after months of testing various video advertising models, it was ready to introduce a new type of video ad, which it said was unobtrusive and kept users in control of what they saw.

The ads, which appear 15 seconds after a user begins watching a video clip, take the form of an overlay on the bottom fifth of the screen, not unlike the tickers that display headlines during television news programs.

A user can ignore the overlay, which will disappear after about 10 seconds, or close it. But if the user clicks on it, the video they were watching will stop and a video ad will begin playing. Once the ad is over, or if a user clicks on a box to close it, the original video will resume playing from the point where it was stopped. [NY Times]

For like a year the search feature of this site (located in the column to the right) has sucked really bad, so I recently changed it over to a search using Google. If you were previously afraid to even bother searching, try again now. Maybe one day something better will come along, but until then I think this works pretty well. Let me know if not. Thanks!