Things have gotten colder around here lately, winter is creeping into Los Angeles and with it a new year is on the horizon. A new year that will bring a historic change in the White House and unknown changes to the economy, and hopefully some major changes in the music we listen to. I am fast at work building a new company that I have every hope to be part of that change, and for that reason the cold seems strangely inviting to me.  The shorter days and longer nights have got me listening to a new breed songs for the oncoming winter, as I sit at my desk and work through nightfall, the following playlist has served as my soundtrack. I hope you enjoy it.

Photo from The Big Picture

It’s high time I quit the cool and give you some funny, so here it is. This episode of Embed Cred is bringing the laughs, and to start it off is a clever video from CollegeHumor.com, kinda of chessy but super funny. If you haven’t been paying attention (they’ve been at it awhile now) College Humor are putting out hilarious web content daily. This one is extra funny…

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The deluge of music applications that seem to constantly become available online can often times be mind numbing. If the shear number of these apps weren’t confusing enough, for the most part these apps are only making music discovery more fractured and less valuable. It’s rare then to find a company such as SoundCloud with an application that has a practical purpose, and offers a useful and valuable service.

SoundCloud has created a clever music sharing and distribution platform, that will most likely change the way those of us who work in music, collaborate and share audio files. I can also easily see the service becoming a powerful platform for consumers to casually share music files with each other.

SoundCloud: The Tour from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

Now I don’t think SoundCloud are solving the moneitization problem here, in fact they are providing an easy way to distribute unpaid music between folks, but the fact is that this ship has sailed. Ownership of music has become a commodity equation. While possessing music still matters, the purchase of that posession does not. SoundCloud understands that, and they have built an application to allow people to share music in a sensible and intuitive way.

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I am trying to make a ritual of adding new sites to my blog roll regularly, one reason being my promiscuous reading habits with new sites means I need to keep a running record of where I am wasting time, but also because they are all rad and should be clicked on. I’ll try to make a habit of this just like Embed Cred, and for that matter lets call this one Roll Call.

The first site to make my seldom noticed but well respected blog roll is Favtape, the answer to Muxtape’s unfortunate demise, and a welcome step up in features. Using the Seeqpod API, Favtape manages to pull off the amazing feat of being an easily navigated and fully stocked music streaming destination. Check out my favorite favtape, the iTunes 100 chart. (I’m from the music business, I am addicted to charts. Sorry.)

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I have been helping out Woodshed Films a.k.a the Moon Conspiracy as of late with the online roll out for their new film One Track Mind. Its a unique surf film that explores the world of competitive surfing, which believe it or not has been largely ignored by the surf film genre. Director Chris Malloy put together the best and most awarded ASP surfers and world champs, and looked into what drove these guys to compete around the world.

The big news to report is we are premiering One Track Mind for the first time to the public on Facebook Film. It will be the first film ever premiered on the Facebook platform. I am quite stoked to be unveiling the movie here, I hope it’s the first in a long line of groundbreaking films to premiere on Facebook. Check out the trailer below:

One Track Mind from Woodshed Films on Vimeo.

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This week’s installment of Embed Cred has some awesomeness in store, with a lead off video illustrating the process in which vinyl records are made, more specifically Weezer’s Red Album. I am still waiting for the new Troublemaker video that I worked on a month or so ago to come out, so I figured this video will fill in the Weezer quotient while we wait.

Weezer Vinyl Manufacturing from Roberto Lepe on Vimeo.

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Last year when I was determined to collect every good dance remix of every popular song that came out, without fail the Stuart Price a.k.a. Jacques Lu Cont a.k.a. Thin White Duke remixes would always kill it. The Killers must have had the same opinion as they asked Price to helm the boards on their new track “Human”. It appropriately sounds like a big dance track, complete with the signature swell of Jacques Lu Cont’s most epic works. It’s a great track, immediately likable, although I preferred the vulnerability and americana warble of Brandon Flowers vocals on Sam’s Town, which I thought was a brilliant album despite the fact that most others vilified it.

I am not sure if Stuart Price has produced this entire album, in fact I am not sure if I would like an album of songs that sound like a remix minus the remix, but at least its exciting that The Killers are back with a new set of songs and this time around it looks like they got their sights on the dance floor. And who wouldn’t want to dance with dudes dressed like this?

The Killers - Human (new single from Day&Age)

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This is hilarious, Ben Walker has the Twitter phenomenon explained perfectly in this surprisingly catchy and well crafted song. If you pay close enough attention you can catch some expertly placed allusions to a few Twitter mainstay personas in there.

If you detect them too leave your guesses in the comments and I will see if mine match yours.

Today I have found myself working at the New York Public Library, and I can’t express how spectacular this place is. Working in a historic and grandiose building such as this one, makes it seem like even the small stuff I am working on is in the guise of some greater cause. Let’s hope that turns out to be true, but nonetheless it’s a humbling place and a reminder of the amount of history that has built this city.

So in the midst of my awestruck appreciation for working amongst the great halls of the New York Public Library’s Central Branch, I remembered the below video I had seen before I left for New York. It made me think about how much might be being lost in today’s digital world.

I wonder if someone is cataloging and organizing the rapid flow of music that is being uploaded and distributed online everyday. Is the Smithsonian filling up hard drives of songs posted daily throughout the blogosphere? Man I hope so, otherwise much of our modern music recordings are at risk of dying an intangible death. I hope someone somewhere has taken the same trouble and pains to save and collect our present day digital music library, as this man took to archive the vinyl LP’s of the past.

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

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The more you look the more there is to find, sweet video is abound on these here inter-nets. So I have decided to post up my favorite video’s that I stumble across every week or so. I’ll call it “Embed Cred” because if my taste serves me right, your friends will probably think you’re cool if you embed these yourself.

In this first video by St. Vincent she is not only drop dead gorgeous and talented she is also a boy scout troop leader! Swoon.

St. Vincent “Jesus Saves, I Spend” from Marc Ritzema on Vimeo.

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