On the day of the show, many of us Y! Music writers will be out there covering the event. I’ll report on who’s winning, who’s losing, and the surprises viewers may have in store. Chris Willman will write his always-provocative review of the show, including his impression of the performances and acceptance speeches. Popular Y! Music bloggers Lyndsey Parker and Billy Johnson, Jr. will be among the other Yahoo! Music regulars weighing in with snappy, up-to-the-minute coverage.

It will need to be snappy, too, because Adele’s sweep of this year’s awards is a foregone conclusion. The 23-year-old British singer is expected to win in all six of the categories in which she’s nominated. That would allow her to tie Beyonce’s record for the most wins in one night by a female artist, as well as Eric Clapton’s record for most wins in one night by a British artist.

Stay tuned to Yahoo! Music for even more up-to-the-minute, insider info on everything Grammys. And for even more details on the big night here on Yodel, check out our other Grammys-related Yodel post here.

-Paul Grein, Yahoo! Music

Photo: Columbia Records

Predict Your Favorites to Win with Grammy’s Pickem Game

The Yahoo! Music team is gearing up for another exciting Grammy Awards this year. Set to air this Sunday, the 54th Annual Grammy Awards will be hosted by LL Cool J and feature performances by Chris Brown, Rihanna, Bruce Springsteen, Tony Bennett, and Carrie Underwood, plus a first-ever dance music segment and more.

Adele will also perform, marking her first, much-anticipated return to the stage since she had vocal surgery. In fact, the Yahoo! Music experts are expecting Adele to sweep the awards with wins for Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Pop Solo Performance, Song of the Year, and more.

Want to organize an office competition about who will win? You can print out your own home voting ballot. For more Grammys-related fun, you can also play the Grammys Pickem Game on Yahoo! Music.

Stay with Yahoo! Music all weekend for tons of updates and interviews, and come back on Monday for a recap all the Grammy winners, performance highlights, hot red-carpet looks, and more!

Photo: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

With a history of showcasing today’s best artists in a timely and unique manner, it’s only fitting that Yahoo! Music, one of the most popular music sites, hosted highly praised recording artist Feist at Village Records in Los Angeles last month for a private performance with fans. The performance, produced for the Starbucks Digital Network in partnership with Yahoo!, is available NOW on Yahoo! Music. Feist played tracks from her latest album “Metals” (on sale now); some for the first time to a U.S. audience.

Launched last fall, the Starbucks Digital Network in partnership with Yahoo! provides Starbucks customers a premium digital experience in nearly 6,800 U.S Starbucks stores, with hand-picked news, entertainment and lifestyle content for free. Developed for screens big and small, customers with Wi-Fi enabled laptops, tablets or smartphones can visit the network while enjoying their favorite beverage at Starbucks.

Executive Editor for Yahoo! Music Dave DiMartino noted; “We here at Yahoo! Music have been longtime fans of Feist and, like many, have been eagerly awaiting her new album–which added to the thrill of seeing her perform much of that material live, to a small audience in the intimate environment of LA’s Village Recorder studios.”

Check out the performance at: http://concert.music.yahoo.com/Programs/sdn/feist

When news and big events happen in the world, hundreds of millions of people turn to Yahoo! as the place to be informed and entertained. And on October 15, people across the globe will turn to Yahoo! as the ONLY place where they can see these incredible artists coming together for a great cause. The live concert will be available at http://clintonconcert.yahoo.com

Yahoo!’s impact at the event is huge.  We use knowledge discovery and data mining every day to make the Yahoo! experience deeply personal and relevant for our users and advertisers alike. For example, as we described earlier this month, we use these principles to personalize the Yahoo! homepage with 45,000 different variations of our “Today Module” every five minutes. If you’re interested in learning more about why data is so important to Yahoo!, check out this video interview with some of our leading scientists that recently appeared on Forbes.com too.

We have some of our best researchers and top talent joining scientists from Stanford, Rutgers and Princeton, as well as the research labs of other leaders in the field, to share insight and case studies around such things as social media analytics, Internet ad systems, behavioral analytics and Hadoop.

We have Yahoo! researchers flying in from across the globe, presenting a total of seventeen papers, two tutorials, and of course, the KDD Cup!

This year’s KDD cup competition centered on Yahoo! Music, which has amassed billions of user ratings for a variety of musical pieces.  The competition challenged scientists to work with the raw ratings that encode information on how songs are grouped, which hidden patterns link various albums, which artists complement each other, and which songs users would like to listen to. Check out the details here: external KDD Cup Website.

Here’s a photo of Here’s a photo of one of the winning teams (Team Commendo) claiming their prize on Sunday.

We’re proud to have such a great team of professionals representing Yahoo! and driving scientific leadership across the industry.

Our partner, Yahoo! Japan, has launched a series of charity auctions to support organizations like the Japanese Red Cross Society in the ongoing relief efforts. It is a global charity auction that is open to all Yahoo! users, and can be viewed in English, French, Italian and Russian. Many Japanese celebrities, musicians, and athletes have confirmed their participation. In addition, Yahoo! Japan has partnered with omg!, Yahoo! Music, and Yahoo! Sports to invite Hollywood celebrities and athletes to provide auction items. Already, pop music trendsetter, Britney Spears has committed to auctioning an outfit she wore for a Japanese candy commercial, and actors Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon and James Franco are contributing autographed T-shirts.

Yahoo! Japan continues to be dedicated to providing news, communication tools and evacuation support for people affected by the disaster. Yahoo! Japan has also found important ways to help accelerate recovery efforts by leveraging its key destinations to get more information and details distributed. For example, Yahoo! Japan Healthcare provides a list of hospitals and medical clinics in affected areas that are still accepting new patients. Yahoo! Japan Kids has also launched a special page to support affected children; it includes information for parents to help children cope, as well as an area for children to post encouraging thoughts to support children in impacted areas.

The Yahoo! Japan Foundation has also set up a donation program to raise funds for the Japanese Red Cross Society. As of March 25^th, the foundation has raised ¥1.38B JPY (≈$16.4M USD) from 868,000 users, and has plans to match up to ¥100M JPY (≈$12.3M USD). For more on how you can help, visit the Yahoo! News donation page for a wide variety of non-profit organizations.

It is humbling and inspiring to see how our global audience and employees have shown their continued compassion and concern for everyone in Japan. The power of our users, combined with the Internet, have created positive, lasting effects throughout the world and truly shows How Good Grows on Yahoo!.

-Yahoo! Japan Foundation

The numbers say it all – country music is amongst America’s most popular music genres.  The genre grew more than 55% in 2009 and there are more than twice as many country music radio stations in the U.S. than any other music format. Country music concerts continue to successfully sell out and even here on Yahoo!, web searches for “country music songs” have been on the rise since 2007. When comparing 2010 searches to 2009 searches – searches in 2010 were 89% higher for “country music songs.” (FYI, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood are the most searched country music stars on Yahoo!).

We couldn’t ignore those numbers anymore, nor could we put our love for country music on the backburner any longer. Today we proudly announce the launch of Ram Country on Yahoo! Music, in partnership with Ram Truck.

Spotlighting a range of artists from A-level to emerging talent, Ram Country will serve as the ultimate internet hub for country music and its hottest stars. Features of the new site include:

• Original blogs and articles on country artists and country music news
• Photo galleries of country artists
• Exclusive video programs: Performances and lifestyle  stories such as:
  • Going Home: A docu-reality segment in which country artists are captured in their hometowns.
  • The Studio: Featured artists will perform three songs (including their most current hit) and then sit down for an interview.
  • Music With A View:  The featured artist will perform a scaled down, acoustic version of their current single in natural settings.
  • Country Covers:  The featured artist will cover either a classic country song or a contemporary hit by another current artist, as well as his or her own current single.
  • Another Side Of…: A reality segment in which what it’s like to live a day in the life of the artist is captured, giving fans another look into the lifestyle and what that artist loves to do in their spare time.

Yahoo! Music is one of the most trafficked music websites and Yahoo! attracts more than 32.5 million country music fans each month (according to comScore).With the Ram Truck integration, we are demonstrating the best of what online marketing can offer: relevant and entertaining branded programming at mass scale; and what Yahoo! Music can offer: a great mix of licensed content, original video content, editorial voice and large scale. While Yahoo! has seen success in original branded music programs before, such as the Nissan Live Sets concert series and PepsiSmash!, Ram Country is Yahoo! Music’s first genre-specific program.

And with the industry numbers looking the way they do, it’s clear that this is one very worthy genre.

- Jeff Bronikowski, Head of Yahoo! Music

Lady Gaga is up for 13 Moonman trophies, while Eminem has eight nods. Late night Goddess Chelsea Handler is hosting, and Kanye will return, one year after interrupting Taylor Swift’s best female video acceptance speech.

Yahoo!’s comprehensive reporting will include several insider perspectives. Editors from Music and Shine will man the red carpet for celebrity arrival interviews. OMG will host the fashion photo galleries. Music’s Managing Editor Lyndsey Parker will be enjoying the show from inside of the Nokia Theater, rubbing elbows with the stars, and Tweeting via the Yahoo_Music account. Yahoo! FP Entertainment Editor Lawrence Yee and Entertainment Blogs’s M.E. Courtney Reimer will host a live VMA Chat. We’ll be talking to the winners and nominees in the press room. Plus, expect VMA recaps from Day Time In No Time personality Nikki Boyer and Yahoo! News’s Pamela Woon.

Consider Yahoo! your one stop shop for VMA coverage.
If not is not impressive enough, two lucky Yahoo! users will be attending the celebrated event. Eva Sanchez of Ventura, California and Chanel Oliver of Hartsdale, New York are the winners of our Party Like A Rock Star! Sweepstakes.

Below, see some of our pre-coverage.

Yahoo! Music
Demand A Recount! These Videos Got Shafted At The 2010 VMAs
We Got Your Crazy: The Wackiest VMA Moments Ever
Listen All Y’all, It’s A Sabotage: These Classic Videos Bizarrely Never Won VMA Trophies

omg!
Most Memorable MTV VMA Moments

BAD VMA Fashions Looks

– Billy Johnson, Jr., Yahoo! Music editor

Measuring the Unmeasurable

Key Scientific Challenges, Entry #3: Microeconomics and Social Systems

On January 27 we announced the kick-off of our 2010 Key Scientific Challenges Program.  To highlight the scientific challenge areas included in the program, we launched a series of guest blog posts earlier this month on Yodel Anecdotal. Read our previous post on privacy and security, “Data, Data Everywhere, but How to Keep it Safe.”

Another big challenge are Yahoo!’s research scientists are continually examining is microeconomics and social systems. In this entry, Sharad Goel from Yahoo! Labs shares some thoughts on how Yahoo! is tackling the new opportunities for research into the social sciences that the Web is making possible and why it’s a fascinating field.

What do your friends really know about you? How much do they influence your decisions? How often do we stray from the cultural herd? How do groups organize to solve complex problems?

Answers to such fundamental questions about social behavior have often eluded us. With microscopes we peered into the intangibly small building blocks of life, and with telescopes we found our place in an unimaginably expansive universe. But without the tools to faithfully document human activity—a challenge that by comparison seems so palpable—we had no way to investigate the inner workings of our own communities. Now with an explosion of information on every aspect of our everyday existence—from what we buy, to where we travel, to whom we know—we can measure what until quite recently was thought unmeasurable. In the Microeconomics and Social Systems Group at Yahoo! Labs, we are using this proliferation of data to explore how societies function. It’s a fascinating area of study that is just beginning to shed light on new layers of human behavior, making it a perfect fit for the Key Scientific Challenges Program.

In a recent study that’s garnered some attention, for example, we asked, “How eccentric are people?” Looking at consumer preferences across movies, music, and web browsing, we came to the surprising conclusion that ordinary people have pretty extraordinary tastes. In particular, we found that typical Netflix and Yahoo! Music users regularly watch movies and listen to songs that are not even available in the largest brick-and-mortar retailers. This result not only challenges stereotypes about people blindly following the herd, but also highlights the importance of offering consumers broad selection. That is, specialty products may dramatically boost user satisfaction by providing buyers the convenience of “one-stop shopping” for both their mainstream and niche interests.

In other work, we used web search queries to forecast the commercial success of movies, songs, and video games. Weeks, sometime even months, before a movie opens or a video game is released, one can find traces of pent up consumer demand in the search query logs. We found that these telltale signs of early interest are remarkably good predictors of future success. The catch? Although the search logs do reflect user intent, more mundane indicators, such as production budgets and reviewer ratings, perform equally well at forecasting sales. Thus, the benefit of web search as a prediction tool may have less to do with its superiority over other methods than with its generality, low cost, and real-time nature.

At a time when we are drowning in data, at Yahoo! Labs we’re asking a simple question: what can you do with it? The answer is limited only by our imaginations.

• Rock on, iPhone: There’s just something about radio — that element of surprise, that anticipation of what’s coming next, that man-I-haven’t-heard-that-song-in-years sensation. That’s the promise of our new Yahoo! Music iPhone app. Powered by CBS Radio, it lets you browse through 300+ stations within more than 20 genres (from Bollywood to Goth to Naughty Comedy), skip up to six tracks an hour, find local stations via GPS, share stations with friends, and buy music you like via iTunes. Never get stuck listening to Muzak again. Read more here, then download the app.
• Cirrus, cumulus, Flickr: The fact that Flickr has democratized photography and turned many hacks into professionals is not lost on Getty Images, the legendary stock photo agency. So back in March, we debuted the Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com, allowing mere mortals to license their work for commercial use. Today, Getty has introduced “photo clouds,” a new way to navigate groups of related photos within the Collection. You can join the community and create your own cloud around topics like “winter,” “out of Africa,” “bizarre photos,” and “fishy.” (Note the spiffy massage music that soothes as you explore). But wait! There’s also a screensaver, desktop widget, and a new Facebook app that lets you create a photo cloud to reflect your status mood. Brings new meaning to cloud computing. More here.
• Go commando with Colbert: If you’re addicted to Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, you probably know Stephen Colbert has been broadcasting from Iraq this week in support of troops stationed there. But he’s also leading an effort to make sure the children of said troops are getting what they need from a public school education. He’s teamed up with DonorsChoose.org to raise funds for military-serving schools, pitting the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard against each other. You can help by making a donation or spread the word by sporting a Colbert Avatar, with critical accessories like an eagle, bear, Colbert Nation hat, Che Colbert T-shirt, fireplace, and a desk. More here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Musical revival: Blowing its doors off their hinges, Yahoo! Music has fully embraced the open web with launch of its new Artist Pages. You’ll find downloads from iTunes; albums from Amazon; streams from Pandora, Last.fm and Rhapsody; music videos from YouTube and Yahoo!; photos from Flickr; and tickets from Ticketmaster – for more than 500,000 artists. And you call the shots on whatever modules you want to see. Eventually artists will be able to publish directly into their pages and developers will beef up our modules gallery. Music to our ears. More here.
• Instant iGratification: No need to get all twitchy when you leave your desk — Yahoo! Messenger is now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Released into the wild this week, the free Yahoo! Messenger app can now be found in the iTunes App Store. It’s got a lot of the same bells and whistles — photo sharing, stealth mode, status messages, archiving, emoticons. More here. What?! You don’t have an iPhone? Lucky for you Yahoo! Messenger works with other phones, too — check the roster here.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

We’ve been evolving our approach to music for the last year or so. We found that our subscription music offering required a huge amount of resources for a relatively small user base, leading to our partnership with Rhapsody. And new royalty rates made us to rethink our streaming radio service, which is now run by CBS. Through all of these tough decisions as the industry evolved, the biggest constant has been our core music offering, which connects music fans to their favorite musicians. We said, “Why compete with everyone, fighting on all fronts, if we can just move up a layer and be a resource to our users?”

So now we can be all things to all music people with a little help from our industry friends. The new Yahoo! Music Artist Pages now bring together downloads from iTunes, albums from Amazon; streams from Pandora, Last.fm and Rhapsody; music videos from YouTube; and tickets from Ticketmaster – for more than 500,000 artists. We also include photos from Flickr as well as our own Yahoo! music videos. You can customize your Artist Pages to include your favorite content modules. Previously a closed service with proprietary licensed content, this is the first major effort by any online music site to truly open itself up to third-party services.

And we’ll soon open up our site to developers so that any music service can build an application to host in our gallery. And eventually artists will be able to directly publish content to our site – so fans can keep tabs on their latest blog posts, photos, music videos, live recordings, etc.

The ultimate goal is help you discover, experience, and consume your favorite music online as easily as possible. So go out there and enjoy the music.

Michael Spiegelman
Head of Yahoo! Music

• Calendar gets cooler: Back in October, we brought you a Yahoo! Calendar revival. This week, it got a little louder. You can now search your calendar events and notepad by keyword, as well as print your calendar in a special print format for day/week/month/event for better readability. If you’re a list-maker, you can now create to-do lists by topic (i.e., “kids,” “work,” “groceries”) and share them with others. Not a to-do fan? Just drag the column shut to banish it. And finally, new right-click functionality lets you make quicker work of adding, editing, printing, and viewing events. Head to the suggestion board if you want to help steer future enhancements. Haven’t switched from Classic yet? What’s the holdup?
• Finer FoxyTunes: The popular music toolbar we acquired a year ago this week just got a refresh. The FoxyTunes team unleashed no fewer than 20 enhancements in their latest Firefox plugin release. They include a new switch menu that lets you multitasking music listeners jump between media players (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody, etc.) along with a bevy of smarter, simpler improvements for menus, buttons, and an overall streamlined design. More here.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

After two years of exclusive Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music performances with A-list acts from the Foo Fighters to Kelly Clarkson to Buddy Guy, this October — for the first time — Yahoo! Music took this show of ours on the road to meet up with a little band called Coldplay.

Three thousand miles from the Los Angeles stage that was home for nearly 50 prior shows, we renewed our appreciation for roadies by traveling to New York City, taking over Hammerstein Ballroom, and playing host to one of the biggest bands in the world. Now, you can take a Nissan Live Sets show out of LA, but rest assured, we added all the usual ingredients our viewers love to this historic venue: 300 of the band’s biggest fans (including Jay-Z and Beyonce), a candid audience Q&A, and a rockin’ playlist of fan favorites and brand new tracks.

The result was not only one of the most electrifying, contagiously head-bobbing concert events we’ve ever produced, but also a major milestone for the program. For the first time in Nissan Live Sets history, Coldplay’s global super-stardom gave us the opportunity to launch this exclusive, once-in-a-lifetime performance on Yahoo! Music in 12 different countries –- simultaneously.

Even though only 300 lucky fans got to catch this in person, pretty much the whole world can view the entire performance today on Yahoo! Music. If you need a teaser, check out a couple of the highlights below.

Enjoy –- and viva la Coldplay!!!!