2007 Yahoo! Intern Podcast on Internet Music

DOREEN BLOCH:

Hello, and welcome to the second and last intern podcast of summer 2007. Today we’re going to be talking to five interns and I will be moderating. My name is Doreen Bloch. I am an intern who works in the Corporate Communications for Yodel Anecdotal. I am a sophomore at Berkeley and today we’re going to be talking all about music and its relationship with the online world; how young people are getting involved in music, downloading music, all about the world of music. So why don’t we go ahead and introduce ourselves. Go ahead.

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

My name is Emilia Varshavsky, I’m a tech writer intern for the IT Department. I will be a senior at the University of California Davis studying English and International Relations. I’m from San Jose and I think the last album I got was Girl Talk’s "Night Ripper."

RICH YUEH:

My name is Rich. I’m an intern in Mobile Advertising. I am a junior, or I will be a junior at Purdue University studying Computer Technology. And I am from St. Louis, Missouri. The last album I bought was a album called, "Promo Only," which is a compilation of radio singles meant for DJs.

JEN VARGAS:

I am Jen Vargas, I’m a UED intern in Maps and Local. I’m 20 years old from Bayonne, New Jersey, and I am a student at Cornell, going into my junior year, majoring in Information Science. And the last album I bought was a really long time ago, probably Hanson or Spice Girls or something like that.

AJ ARORA:

Hi. My name is AJ Arora. I’m interning with the Yahoo Developer Network. I’m 21 years old. I go to Purdue University where I’ll be a senior next year. I’m originally from New York, Queens, New York and I grew up mostly near a small town in Indianapolis. And I think the last album I bought was a spare copy of Sublime the self-titled album, by Sublime.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Hi, my name is Brian Krausz. I’m interning for Yahoo Real Estate. I’m 19. I’m a Carnegie Mellon University Computer-Science major, class of 2010. I hail from Seldon, New York and the last album I bought was probably a Blink 182 album well over six years ago.

DOREEN BLOCH:

Why don’t we talk about how you guys consume music and maybe also talk about any trends that you personally see in colleges in terms of music consumption among your peers.

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

Well, I’m probably the biggest radio addict ever, mostly because I have a thing with winning concert tickets on radio stations. I’ll listen for hours on end, I don’t care. So that’s, that’s my biggest thing. Online I listen to it a lot too, through independent stations and even Yahoo Launch a lot of the times, I’ll listen to that.

RICH YUEH:

One of the big trends that I notice is streaming radio. Either DJs will have their own broadcast or HD Radio will stream it on their Websites and it’s a lot like radio, but sometimes without commercials and, you know, it’s a good chance to hear new music legally and, you know, stay in touch with what’s new.

DOREEN BLOCH:

So you have some DJ’ing experience?

RICH YUEH:

Yeah.

DOREEN BLOCH:

Do you want to elaborate on it?

RICH YUEH:

Well, the last album that I bought was titled "Promo Only," and every month this company makes CDS of hit radio singles before they hit the radio. And DJs can buy these albums and play it at parties or on the radio. And I’m a party DJ so it’s really nice to be able to play new songs before they come out and then really get the crowd moving.

So it’s a fun way to listen to new music and then promote the artists that you like.

JEN VARGAS:

Most of my music is either on Last.FM or on my iTunes. It’s been there forever, so I don’t really download a lot of new music. I don’t really like a lot of new music. I stick to the oldies. Last.FM I’ve only gotten into since I got here, because I didn’t bring my external hard drive where all my music’s stored. So I’ve been just streaming Internet radio mostly.

AJ ARORA:

Well, I was actually a, I worked at a radio station for about five years. So I do listen to a lot on Last.FM and actually the most popular streaming station I use is Pandora and I think it’s just, like, you know, really intuitive. It always keeps, you know, kind of new stuff that you may not have heard before, as, as well as some of the old stuff that you really like.

And we really like, you know, a lot of the college kids now are really starting to use plug ins to Last.FM, you know, with whatever music player they use, iTunes or WinAmp or whatever, however they download it.

And, yeah, that being said, I think Purdue especially tends to be pretty keen on, I guess, illegal downloading and they just play it through their own personal music players because I think we’re, there’s a newspaper article recently that we’re the number one highest piracy school, and we’re pretty proud of that, actually, in both movies and in music.

So, see, and people just kind of play it through there and they like to be able to connect to their friends by plugging it into Last.FM or maybe iLike on their Facebook profiles and stuff.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

I’ve become just very recently since I got here, a huge fan of Internet radio, just because my work laptop, I didn’t feel like copying my music over. I use Yahoo Music service, I believe it’s called Launch, something like that.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Oh. I use Launchcast. So, I mean, with, I just became so busy that I really didn’t want to have to maintain my own music collection anymore anyway, so my music was getting obscenely out of date.

In terms of Carnegie Mellon, I think there’s probably a significant amount of illegal downloading, but we’ve never actually been targeted by the RIAA as far as I know, which means either there isn’t a lot of downloading or we’re good enough not to get caught. One of the two, but I definitely see a trend towards Internet radio. It seems to be, you know, a compromise between legality and, you know, ease of obtaining your music. Lack of cost.

DOREEN BLOCH:

In terms of independent Web sites, I don’t know really anything about them, but if you guys do have some favorites, maybe you could share them and also tell me what features of those sites you like best and what sort of allows you to explore other people’s music.

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

Okay. Well, the biggest one that I use is Purevolume.com. The thing I like about that one is the artists upload their own music and a lot of times it appeals to either ones that aren’t signed yet or that are just newly signed. But there are also big artists, like Fallout Boys on it, you can even find Ashlee Simpson.

And the biggest thing I use it for is at school I book and promote concerts and just finding bands that are more like, "college bands," that are up and coming. That’s where you’re going to find their music. And sometimes they even let you download it so you can get music from there completely legally and it’s my favorite one.

I think the biggest thing that I’ve been using the Internet for with it is just finding these bands, because a lot of times, you’re not going to hear them on the radio. And I know at Davis and at other schools, people really want to hear, like, the new, upcoming things. And it’s not on commercial radio. So you have to go out and look for it on your own and independent Web sites bring in independent music, bring independent listeners and that’s the kind of scene that people at Davis really want to try to start. And other universities I know have the same thing.

DOREEN BLOCH:

Why don’t we talk about iPods? Is it a huge trend at your school like it is at Berkeley or people, it’s funny, there--we have, like, a ton of people that stand in the main plaza to hand out flyers. And so there’s this new tactic of, you know, plug in your headphones and look really angry and no one will bother you. So…

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t own an iPod. I’ve actually, I lost mine a month ago and I’ve been completely lost without it. And it’s given me an excuse not to work out anymore because I can’t listen to music. Wonderful.

It’s just the iPod’s the thing. There’s no such thing as an iPod killer and I don’t think there really can be.

JEN VARGAS:

iPods are everywhere. It--these are, exactly what you said with the flyers. My school’s exactly like that and that’s why I can’t stand iPods. I have one just to hold my music, but I don’t use it outside because I think it’s so antisocial. But everyone has one.

DOREEN BLOCH:

What about the iPhone? Does anybody know anybody who’s gotten one?

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

AJ.

DOREEN BLOCH:

Oh, you have one, that’s right.

AJ ARORA:

It’s sitting right here, but yeah, actually, I haven’t even really started using the iPod features on the iPhone much yet because the ear buds that come with it don’t fit in my ears, so, so we’ll have to see. It’s pretty sweet and I think, one of the things with the iPod is it really did change the way that, that we kind of consumer our music, you know? The only real way that anybody is going to pay for their music is through iTunes. People don’t really want to pay any other way.

I mean, all the schools, pretty much every major school like ours, like at Purdue, have all tried to create, you know, free subscription services, you know, you get to go, you can listen to whatever song you want for free, but they all have DRM. And people don’t want that; digital rights management. And, I mean, students just don’t want to have to deal with music that’s crippled in any sort of way.

At first it sounds really cool that you can listen to whatever song you want. But then when they try to put it on their iPod or when they try to listen to it and they’re maybe not connected to the Internet with their computers, that they can’t really, the masses can’t figure out what’s wrong with this stuff, you know?

And now iTunes is changing the, changing the game by offering DRM-free music in the old school ways, you know, with just MP3s that you can burn whenever you want, put on whatever device you want and do all that sort of stuff.

We at Purdue, being the big technological school we have, we create, you know, this incredible network where we can get whatever albums we want, we can, you know, go through the entire Doors collection and download that in less than a second, you know?

So I mean, why not?

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

You guys actually invented the, the file sharing network that Carnegie Mellon now uses.

AJ ARORA:

Really?

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Yeah.

AJ ARORA:

Does not surprise me in the least.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Claim to fame.

AJ ARORA:

It’s great.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

In slight defense of DRM, I think it’s definitely come a long way. It used to be, it used to be that there would be this huge hoopla that you have to go through to try and get any music. I mean, the problem obviously still is that it’s so much easier to get music illegally than it is to get it legally, and there’s so much more freedom and it’s simpler.

I think that gap is definitely shrinking a lot. I mean, one of the big, one of the big, as an example of where it’s still there and it’s still a gap, there, through various means I had the opportunity to get a free Zune.

And I think, I think eventually, people will start figuring it out. I mean, music companies are starting to give in, you know? This happened years ago, you know, with them starting to give cheaper music and I feel like they’ll eventually realize that they’re fighting a losing battle and it’s either, you know, adapt with the times or, you know, die out, because there’s really no other option.

DOREEN BLOCH:

What do you think it is about music and music files that students just don’t want to pay for it?

JEN VARGAS:

I think the fact that we’ve been exposed to the option of having free music that now asking us to pay for it is just completely absurd. I mean, if it’s there and you can get it for free with a pretty low likelihood of getting caught, then it’s not really a huge incentive to go and buy it.

RICH YUEH:

I think another thing is ease of access, like, in terms of Net Flix or Blockbuster Total Access, instead of going to the store, picking out a movie and renting it and driving back, you can have movies shipped to you and all you do is ship ‘em back.

So in the same case with music, whether it’s legal or illegal, you just click and download and it’s just like that.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Instant gratification.

RICH YUEH:

Yeah.

DOREEN BLOCH:

Let’s talk about you guys making music and perhaps putting it online, sharing it with others. Does anybody have experience with that? Maybe the DJ over here? Rich?

RICH YUEH:

Yeah, a variety of experience with that. I started out just making basic mixes, so transfer from one song to another and then either create, like, an hour-long play list for parties or just something short that I wanted to try. And I’ve now moved into blends which is layering the vocals of one track over the instrumental of another track, so these are pretty easy to make.

DOREEN BLOCH:

We briefly touched on the RIAA crackdown at various schools. Are you personally fearful of some repercussions of illegal downloading, maybe? Are your friends? And do you think this is the right course for them to take?

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

I remember back when the RIAA first started doing their crackdowns that they would, you know, target the 13-year olds with, you know, whose families can barely afford, you know, to send them to school and feed them and all these ridiculous things and all the people who were the hard-core, you know, illegal file sharers weren’t doing any of, you know, weren’t getting caught, had nothing to fear.

The people who are serious enough about file sharing don’t get caught. And I think it’s, they’re trying to deter people and it’s probably doing a decent job of deterring the public, but the people who are very, very into it and trade thousands upon thousands of song are still, I believe, have very little fear.

Because, I mean the RIAA isn’t, isn’t as technologically savvy as your average college computer science nerd.

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

At Davis, it was also a problem that nobody talked about RIAA, was Student Judicial Affairs. If you’re in the dorms, you get caught for downloading, you can get kicked out of school, and that definitely happened my freshman year to some people.

I’m personally too paranoid about getting viruses in my computer that I also know happen to people, and I’m not tech savvy enough to download things and figure it out. So mostly I stick to listening, which is why I don’t like my iTunes, ‘cause it’s everything I’ve had from my own CDs that I’ve uploaded. Nothing new ‘cause I don’t, too scared to find it.

RICH YUEH:

I think a lot of it has to do with the long tail of users as well. Like, certainly you’ll have, you know, a certain number of power shares that need to be targeted by the RIAA, but they have their own rights to pursue that kind of action. But then, you know, the majority of users,don’t really necessitate the need for attention from the RIAA.

JEN VARGAS:

So I have a lot of friends who, their parents finance their iTunes purchases just so that they don’t download. And sure, that’s great because it’s encouraging people to buy music, but at the same time, those people whose parents are paying for it are the ones who barely download anyway.

DOREEN BLOCH:

AJ, did you have something to say?

AJ ARORA:

Yeah. I think it’s definitely, like, like I said, you know, at our school, like, I think Purdue was number one in piracy. And the way they measured that was by suits from the RIAA and the MPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America and so, I mean, when it happened, we had all these suits come in, you know, everyone was reading all these articles of these kids, you know.

One girl said she only downloaded one thing, you know, one time, and then she gets this big, big penalty. And they, they all offered them, you know, like, like at first they, they’d come up with big numbers just to kind of scare people, you know, like a, you know five grand a song or something and these people have like 2,000 songs, you know, of course, I mean, it’s ridiculous numbers. But they all offer, you know, like, settlements for a thousand or two.

And but still, I mean, that’s a chunk of change. I think it developed a lot of chatter. People kind of, like, were worried and they stopped kind of downloading, especially the non tech savvy people. But then, you know, it settled down and everybody has a geek friend, you know, so the geek friend will always come over and show them, "No, you use this way. Here’s what we’re all doing, you know? You’re going to be fine."

And the real issue is, you know, people begin to become spiteful, they’re going to look for more and more ways to beat the RIAA and, you know, the government’s just going to be constantly playing this game of catch up. And I really don’t think that’s, I mean, in a, I think everybody in our kind of demographic agrees that that’s not, you know, the right way to do it. They become hateful of the government entirely, you know?

DOREEN BLOCH:

What do you think about other sort of money-making strategies for the music industry? I know there was a lot of talk about for example Fergie talking about the Candies shoe brand in her songs, and is that a good way to make up for the fact that they’re not making money off of the, off of the legal downloading? Or another way to go about it would be to put ads, like, at the beginning of songs or at the end of songs.

Is that something that you would be okay with?

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

No.

DOREEN BLOCH:

No.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

It’s happened far too much in movies already. I mean, every movie you turn on, I mean, I Robot existed solely for the sake of product placements, apparently.

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

Transformers.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Transformers had the X-Box 360 come to life and attack people. It’s just, it’s getting too much. And if you take it from the historic view that, you know, this is art and it shouldn’t be touched, then that’s one avenue. But then it also detracts from the song because everyone picks up on these. And you know, I don’t even think the advertising is a particularly good thing.

I don’t want to go buy, you know, buy Converse shoes because I saw Will Smith take them out of a box. I mean, I think it’s just, it’s just making people bitter that, you know, I’m in this movie or I’m really involved in this song and you’re just sticking a product placement. It’s snapping me back to reality and who needs that?

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

I mean, I know in the 80s, I forgot who it was but there was a rap group that had a song called, "My Adidas."

DOREEN BLOCH:

Right.

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

I don’t think it started off as, like, a marketing thing, but obviously that’s what it became. Who knew what Manola Blaniks were before Sex and the City started? And now I don’t want to hear Fergie singing about shoes, unless that’s what her song’s about, for her own personal reasons. I don’t need her selling me shoes on the radio.

AJ ARORA:

If you look at these people that are actually able to make money by promoting items in their songs, they’re not hurting for money anyway. They’re getting plenty of licensing deals with ads and all that sort of stuff. And honestly, those big names, they’re not making their money. They were never making their money from their CDs anyway, they were making it all from, yeah, things like that. From advertisements and from of course performing live.

It’s the, it’s really the record labels then and it’s, they’re the ones that are talking to the RIAA. I mean, that’s why you don’t see too many artists constantly whining like they did at first back in the Napster days, you know?

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

Metallica.

AJ ARORA:

It’s really hurting the record labels and we, you know, as listeners, we don’t really care about them. We care about the artists to begin with. So the issue is that the whole model is changing. And the way we consume our music is changing and I think that they need to either realize that they can’t, you know, sue us or try to impede us, ‘cause we’re going to get our music however we have to do it.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Everything you do on the Internet nowadays is free. I mean, the idea of going to a Website and paying for a service is entire--is completely old hat. And I think music is definitely heading in the same direction.

DOREEN BLOCH:

How do you use the Internet as a vehicle to discover new music?

JEN VARGAS:

Well, in Ithaca, we have all of maybe five radio stations, three of which are NPR. So Internet is crucial in finding new music. If you don’t hear from your friends, then you have to resort to the Internet to find it.

AJ ARORA:

First you look at the students, ‘cause they tend to be the early adopters, ‘cause they’re just the ones that are crazy about music and they’re the ones with time on their hands.

So I think there’s, yeah, like you said, there’s probably about, you know, just a really, a handful that we really go to. First there’s always been the granddaddy which was Amazon. Everyone just goes, sees their artists on Amazon. They’ll see, you know, their discography, they’ll see, you know, what their new album is and when it’s going to launch. And then they’ll see similar artists, you know, it’s always been great at that and there’s such a huge community around it that you know you’re getting good data.

And then second of all, we actually just listened to the music and that’s usually on, on Pandora or Last.FM these days or I Like, I guess, now.

The other one now that’s really starting to come up is of course our social networks and MySpace and Facebook. You see somebody you like, you know, someone that you think, "Wow, that dude has really good taste in music," see all the songs and artists that they really like, and then you go check out those artists as well.

DOREEN BLOCH:

Has anybody had experience joining a music fan site of any sort or just in general, bonding with people solely for the purpose of music?

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

Well, I do that, ‘cause it’s my job. Like, when I’m booking shows for school, it’s not who I want to see, because sometimes who I want to see nobody else wants to see. I have to find what other people want to see. And a lot of times it’s, like, looking whatever on Facebook at their lists and calculating I want to bring this band, type it into search, how many people list that as their favorite band?

Three people in the entire school list it as their favorite band, maybe it’s not worth it.

DOREEN BLOCH:

So, MTV used to be, maybe still is, the big thing in terms of discovering music, seeing, you know, checking in with artists. Does MTV still have as big a role for young people and for college students? And especially, what are the role of music videos now?

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

I think now MTV is way more about their reality shows. I mean, the only reason I watch it ever is The Hills, but that’s me.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

My friends and I if we want to share music that we discover, I’m IM'ed YouTube links to their music videos quite often. I don’t know, I like, you know, the video behind a story, like, there are certain songs that just have good stories behind them that I like actually watching the video to. I wish I could remember the names of any of them right now, but--

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

The Okay Go video was pretty awesome.

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

That was amazing.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Everyone loved--

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

That, yeah.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

--that spread through the Internet like wildfire. It was amazing.

DOREEN BLOCH:

You want to explain? That was the one--

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Oh, it was, there was a video, Okay Go where they set up, I think, like, eight treadmills going in opposite directions and did this whole thing, one scene with a camera pointing the whole time of them just doing this whole choreographed, I’ll call it a dance, but it’s not really dance, around the treadmills. It was really incredibly awesome. It was definitely worth looking at.

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

Definitely.

AJ ARORA:

I think there’s a big, I mean, there’s a big chance for it to become big now with all this big permeation, all the social networks that’s going on, but the only issue with that, like the barrier to entry there is the fact that we are, we’ve become, our attention has been, like, so, you know, we’re too attention deficit now. I mean, we have to be doing, the whole point of us listening to music is the fact that we can listen to it and it enhances everything else we do.

When we’re listening to music, we’re listening to our iPods, we’re working out, we’re doing other stuff. When we’re on our computers, we’re listening to our streaming radio, but we’re not just sitting there staring at a screen. And to sit there and watch a video that goes to that music, it’s got to be a really good video, you know.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

There’s the occasional need for down time, you know, just browsing random videos is useful for just unwinding.

AJ ARORA:

Right.

DOREEN BLOCH:

I have to say, that’s the one thing that I use Yahoo! Music a lot for because they have a ton of just free videos that you can watch.

So there’s been, there’s a lot of talk always on the Internet about openness and do you think that Apple needs to open up the iPod and sort of remove this wall that they’ve created for only iTunes music to work with it? Do you think that that’s a necessary step?

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

They have so close to a monopoly on music right now that it would probably be business suicide. But it would be really cool to see.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

DRM in and of itself, I mean, we’ve, we haven’t talked about, you know, the fact that DRM isn’t really capable of working because just based on the fact that you’re hearing the audio, you could re-record that. I mean, I know people who used to before there became automated solutions, would just download DRM-protected songs, burn them to a CD and re-import them.

AJ ARORA:

Right.

AJ ARORA:

But the masses aren’t going to do that. You know, it’s only a few, few geeks there…

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

Yeah, but there are plenty of software programs out there that’ll do that automatically, hit three buttons. Everyone has a geek friend, you know?

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

I need more, I think.

DOREEN BLOCH:

So I guess that concludes, again, our second and final intern podcast of Summer 2007. Thank you so much you guys for joining me. Very vibrant discussion. Yeah, I guess that’s it. Thanks.

EMILIA VARSHAVSKY:

Thank you.

BRIAN KRAUSZ:

No problem.

AJ ARORA:

Thanks.