The Realest Playlist #1 – 50 Amazing Indie Songs & Music Vids

1. Healing & EasyListening / Powerpop / Progressive

Fang Island – “Life Coach”

2. Rock / Punk

Underground Heroes – “Faceless Revolution”

“Unamerican” Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vT4MxmY1UM&feature=related

3. Rock / New Wave / Electro

Me My Head – “Autumn”

4. Hip Hop / Soul
Toki Wright – “More Fiya”

5. Experimental/Rock
Minus the Bear – “My Time”

6. Trance / Psychedelic / Big Beat
Tame Impala – “Half Full Glass of Wine”

7. Electronica / Techno / Club
Blamma! Blamma! – “Carry Me Home”

8. Experimental / Progressive / Pop

A Public Betrayal – “Monster 2”

9. Pop/Other
Coma Cinema – “Only”

10. Americana / Folk / Folk Rock
Arrow in the Sky – Last Breath

11. Acoustic / Rock / Indie

Lissie – “In Sleep” (Live)

12. Other / Hip Hop / Turntablism

Ruckus Roboticus – “Here We Go”

13. Reggae/Rock

Rebelution – “Outta Control”

Studio Version: http://www.thesixtyone.com/#/s/3SJzWlFBeIU/

14. Pop

Katerina Graham – “Boom Kat”

15. Electro / Techno / Powerpop

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – “Garden”

16. Alternative / Pop / Rock / Electronic

Temple Scene – “Helsinki”

Temple Scene Recording “Helsinki” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRNsqNdCPWQ

17. Indie / Psychedelic / Shoegaze

Mono Stereo – “Orange is Green”

18. Spoken Word/Other

Te V Smith – “Decline of the Diaspora”

Live version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmOaf_a_CUo

19. Hip Hop

Dot – RIDIC Verse

20. Electronica / Funk / Electro

Kraak & Smaak – “Squeeze me”

21. Rock

TAB – “She Said No (I Love You)”

22. Punk Rock
The Futureheads – “I Can Do That”

23. Folk/Acoustic
Dave Peyton – “Waiting For You(part 2)”

24. Rock/Pop Rock

Shout Out Louds – “Fall Hard”

interview World Cafe XPN: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127929142

25. Alternative/Rock

ARTEFACTO – “Desespero”

26. Acousmatic / Tape music / Pop

Neon Indian – “Ephemeral Artery”

Live @SXSW: http://vimeo.com/10582992

27. Pop / Acoustic / Rock

Holiday Parade – “Never Enough”

28. Acoustic / Indie / Pop

Kina Grannis – “Strong Enough”

“Valentine “ (Official Music Video): http://www.youtube.com/user/kinagrannis#p/c/EE19FA17759D07CD

29. Pop / Soul / Latin

Ria – “Change” Live

30. Indie / Pop / Rock

Zac Clark – “Amelia”

31. House

MOWGLI – CARAIBI EP minimix

Live: http://www.youtube.com/user/DEADFISHTV#p/a/u/2/YIb8HE4e534

32. Hip Hop

Emmanuel Jackson – Rippin it

33. Pop

of Montreal – Coquet Coquette

34. Rock

Johnny Ash – “Conspiring Along the Way”

35. Healing and Easy Listening
Band of Horses – “Compliments”

36. Rock
The Suburban Sound – “The Best Day of Your Life”
Studio Version: http://www.myspace.com/thesuburbansound

Acoustic Version:

37. Noise Pop

Sleigh Bells – “Tell ‘Em”

38. Pop/Rock

Strike Four – “A Shot In the Dark”

http://www.thesixtyone.com/#/s/kglFSiKg7BT/

39. Lyrical / Minimalist

Washed Out – “Belong”

40. Rock / Indie / Experimental

Repeater – “Missing”

41. Ambient/Electronic/Visual

Juseung Stephen Lee – “Music Video”

42. Metal/Experimental/Alternative

Rememberance of Pain – “Free From Redemption”

43. Rock / Alternative / Funk

Fat City Reprise – “Cowgirl”

44. Pyschedelic / Ambient / Gospel

Speck Mountain – “Angela”

45. Pop / Soul / New Wave

The XX – “Night Time” Live

46. Synthrock / New Wave / Alternative

The Birthday Massacre – “To Die For”

47. Club / Thrash / Pop

Hooray For Earth – “Form”

48. Synth / Dance/ Electro

synthosaurus – “Futuredance” (Live)

49. Comedy / Hip Hop / Beatbox

Reggie Watts – “Fuck Shit Stack”

50. Post punk / Latin / Folk

Guitars As Guns – “Gag (Guitars aren’t Guns)”

http://guitarsasguns.bandcamp.com/

Old School Extra:

Hip Hop / Old School / Experimental

Jungle Brothers – “Brain”

Official Music Video (Edited version):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJDaprlVvk&feature=related

The Everything or Nothing Society – A Market Analysis

We are an everything or nothing society. We either want everything now, or in our minds, we might as well have nothing.

We are never happy until we have everything we want. This is an important mental factor to be aware of in our society. It can explain a lot of behavior. I believe most people forget about it, probably because they’re guilty of it themselves..even me.

But where does this mentality come from, and what harm, if any, can it do?

Sure, some people may claim that having that mindset only pushes people to do their best all the time, and strive harder for what they want, but is this really true?

The Process of Innovation – Think Social!

This is an awesome topic that I love to share with people whenever I can.

Innovation is something that can be thought of in several different ways, however there are good ways, and then there are better ones.

Innovation can be basically anything that solves a problem that has not been previously solved, or it can be something that solves a problem that was previously solved, while solving other problems at the same time(these are the better ones).

There are really two perspectives into innovating. One is purely the scientific aspect of it. The physics, the research, the testing, the technology. Then there is the practical, social side of innovating, which does not always agree with the scientific side.

The process of innovation should contain both views, almost at the same time. It is not enough to innovate and solve one problem technically, while socially creating another problem.

A quick example of this may very well be gas powered vehicles. They’ve solved a huge problem in enabling faster travel, but they’ve also caused a sort of social dilemma, because people are almost forced to use them in some fashion, and they are now proven to have negative impacts on air quality and perhaps weather.

Innovation should be approached from the view of the true designer:  the architect, who builds not only for aesthetics, but for purpose, and function. The architect builds for the social function, while utilizing the best scientific practices and innovations available. But the purpose is always foremost, for the people.

People are weird. They do not really seem to fit any set pattern as a whole. There is an infinite variation, and this must be accounted for in design.

Innovations when designed for people, tend to solve the most problems, and leave the least behind. The best innovations, the truly beautiful ones, seem to leave no problems behind, and just fit, like a puzzle piece finally being snapped into place.

When designing Beat-Play’s music search solution, I ended up solving several social problems: How do I find new music? How do I find good music? How do I not waste time searching for music?

The way I solved these problems was to think about it from the approach of the social first. The first step is always to survey what already exists. I studied the different methods of how music was found and shared now.

I found some methods that were better than others, and I looked at the best ones, and searched out the problems there. It turned out that I found some.

The best solutions available at this point for finding music are Pandora or Last.fm, where the music is suggested and played for you, allowing you time to focus on other things. This is a great innovation, but I saw flaws.

It went right back to thinking socially. Pandora finds songs based on other songs, using basically scientific data and variables to link songs together into an automated playlist.

This I knew, was the wrong way to think about it. People are not defined by any given variable. They are defined by many variables that vary all the time. Music is no different. It is a mere extension of people. There needed to be a social way for people to find music.

So my idea came to me almost rather simply. It was to use social networks, and people to create a user’s playlist, instead of a computer.

On Beat-Play you can follow friends or favorite bands, who you share a taste in music with, and who are infinitely as variable as you are; and the music those people like enough to save, will automatically get played in your radio.

This enables you to find the best new music literally as simply as a mouse click, without searching through mounds of bad music, wasting hours before finding a good song. And it keeps you updated.

Also this method does not limit a person’s playlist to one genre of music, or a certain group of artists, like Pandora does, unless the user wants these limits on.

This solution is so beautiful because it solves several other problems at the same time. When you hear music on your radio coming from your friend’s playlists, if you like it, you save it into one of your playlists, and it then gets sent to anybody following you.

For the best artists, this is an amazing way for fans to spread the music for them. It’s actually a form of free promotion and distribution in addition to being a much better way for fans to find the music. It can even be a great way for artists to gain advertising revenue by tracking plays, which could then result in the best music being free.

The more the people love and share the music for free, the more the artists will get paid, making everyone happy, and rendering piracy irrelevant!

That is what I mean by snapping in a puzzle piece. This solution fits on all sides, perfectly with it’s surroundings. This solution came by simply analyzing the environment that the innovation must exist in, which is always an incredibly social one.

If we inject this social perspective into our innovations, we can adapt what we know about the scientific, physical stuff, to coincide with the social factors, to form the ultimate solutions.

Design thinking is an extremely powerful thing, especially when approached in the right way. The formula is simple: Search out the problems, and then fix them, integrating what you know both about the social and scientific or technological environments currently present.

If you do that, you will do great things. Innovation is everyone’s responsibility. There are too many problems for us not to all try and solve them. Good luck. Think social!

Written by: Dante Cullari Founder & President Beat-Play, LLC

Anything I can do, You can do too

We are all different, but we are all the same.

It’s important to note that the only differences between people rely not so much on genes, because in that respect we are 99.99% the same, but they rely mostly upon cultural, societal, or environmental differences.

A person’s own experiences will determine very much how they feel about certain things, how they react to certain things, and how people achieve certain things.

It is this fact that leaves me to conclude that if everyone were put in my shoes, and has seen the exact same things that I’ve seen, they would feel the exact same way as I do about everything.

One could argue that everybody feels differently about different things, and not everyone makes the same choices, but remember, people’s choices are 99% based on experiences that they’ve had..the things they “know.”

If you take someone, and completely replace what they’ve already seen, and put in it’s place what someone else has been through, they will react almost exactly the same way.

The reason I know this is that there is no legitimate reason anyone can give me for this not to be true. If every single aspect of a person’s life were inherited by another person, from the start, hypothetically speaking of course, that person will make all of the same choices.

This really says something for the human potential. Think about all of the great people throughout history. The greatest ones, yes may have been smart enough to figure out what the right choices were, but the chances are that they didn’t always know, and they had to make a lot of mistakes, just like everyone else, to actually figure out what the right choices were, in order to be successful.

Also, chances are that if you would have put anyone else in the exact circumstances, they would have learned the same lessons from those mistakes, at least eventually.

The almost surprising thing is that the successful people are usually the ones faced with the worst circumstances. The human survival drive is one of the deepest drives accessible by our nature, and when needed, people will literally do anything to survive. The reason the people with the worst circumstances are usually the successful ones though is that they were the ones willing to take the risk. What else did they have to lose?

It might sound cliche but the most important step is the first one. To decide to take the risk, and never turn back. But risks can aren’t just going all in on a straight draw. They are usually calculated in this context, and the important ones are usually drawn out long enough to see which decisions to make, before they actually need to be made, or at least you have more time to think them through.

Too often people settle for mediocre when their dreams are staring them right in the face, almost as if from behind a 2-way mirror. People that need to survive break straight through that glass to see the other side, and they don’t stop until they get everything they ever wanted from life..and they deserve it.

It’s just sad that not everyone accesses that innate drive, that when used correctly, can secure a person’s dreams and future, when accompanied with patience and resilience.

Remember, if you have a dream..something you long for but have been told it’s impossible..look at those people, and smile, and say to yourself “I’m going to do that.” Anyone can do anything; and if the circumstances aren’t present right away, keep believing..trust me, somehow, if you want it enough, it will come. Anyone can change their circumstances.

My mother comes from a very poor family, who sometimes even struggled for food because of an alcoholic dad who left with all the money when she was 4. She worked throughout and after high school, in order to put her older brothers and sisters in college. Then later in her life, after getting laid off, with no college education herself, she decided to start her own business, doing public relations for pharmaceutical companies. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she hired people who did, and she had great social skills..enough to secure her first client from the beginning. Now her company is worth millions, and there she sits, the head of a successful 12 year old public relations firm, run entirely by women, from their homes, and she was able to buy her mother her first house.

If anybody taught me a lesson about circumstances and possibilities, it was her.

We are all different, but we are all the same, and we are powerful.

Written by: Dante Cullari Founder & President Beat-Play, LLC

Don’t Just Change, Grow

This is a subject I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while. The difference is simple.

There always seems to be two sides to the story: Stay the Same, or Change.

What I find extremely frustrating is that these two choices usually end up with similar results. The current methods might not be the best, so people opt for change, but change is too vague of a word to guarantee positive results.

If I have a choice, I don’t just want to change the methods, I want to evolve them.

Opting for change could actually mean negative progress. At least if you opt for staying the same you are assured it won’t get any worse.

The difference between growth and change is incredibly big. It’s like the difference between a 40 year old man and a 12 year old boy.

The 40 year old man made some mistakes in his past, but he eventually learned from them and moved forward. The 12 year old boy continues to make mistakes based on his lack of experience at any one given method of achieving.

Change is like putting yourself, or your company, or your country, through puberty in hyperdrive. It can cause unnecessary mistakes.

Instead, I believe it’s necessary to approach things from the 40 year old man view, which ideally is “this is what I know and what I do well, and I’m going to stick to it, and for what I don’t know and what I’m not good at, I will hire the person who is.”

Change can be a dirty word. Growth is way better than change. It implies keeping the things that you do well, while building on top of that to tackle areas that you missed.

Growth is what everybody needs. It is truly progress. Everything else, including loose definitions of change, is standing still or going in reverse.

I believe it’s important to be clear and specific any time a change is needed.

When considering a “change” its always incredibly more safe to specifically define your goals as growth, and continue to proceed accordingly.

I really believe that growth should be demanded all the time, and in all instances that would apply. I think that even though it is a seemingly small difference on the surface, the results would be surprisingly positive overall.

When faced with the option to change or stay the same, don’t forget about the hidden option to grow. This is the definition of a brighter future.

Who do I talk to to swap change for growth permanently in the english language? Hopefully there’s enough you’s out there. Thanks for listening.

Written by: Dante Cullari Founder & President Beat-Play, LLC

What’s a Web Addiction? Is that Really Bad??

If you spend more than 6 hours daily online then you are addicted to the internet, according to studies done in China. Opinions vary greatly on the subject. Some people don’t even believe you can be addicted to the web, or that it is really a bad thing.

It seems to me that a lot of the Chinese studies on the topic may be pretty biased, due to their beliefs about the web and web restrictions. However the fear of web addiction has made it’s way over to this side of the world too..but why?

I think the biggest contributor to this kind of thinking in the US and Canada has to do with people believing that getting out and enjoying some old fashion fresh air is a much better way to spend one’s time than cooped up in a room on the computer.

For some reason when people talk about this, they always seem to paint the picture of some overweight guy in a dark windowless basement hacking away at his computer with a hot pocket and a Slurpee next to him, like you could turn into him if you spend too many Saturday nights surfing. This is their worst fear.

To the contrary, the web can help you educate yourself about better eating habits, exercises, sports, and other things that can contribute to a healthier life.

It’s pretty sad when people (mostly of the older persuasion) misjudge, and underestimate the amazingness of surfing the web.

Sure playing a saturday pickup game is great, and going to a BBQ is a great way to socialize, but honestly, when you consider all of the possible knowledge to be gained on the internet, not to mention all of the real interaction you can have, it doesn’t make sense to limit yourself only to your surrounding area.

The web has the ability to open people up to the world. It’s like watching a Planet Earth Documentary. It can show you things you would have never in a million years dreamt about, and it can teach you about them. It’s the ultimate when it comes to expanding one’s horizons.

Sure not everybody uses the web to gain useful knowledge. Some people are addicted to things like online poker, or buying things on ebay, but the potential for the amazing growth of knowledge, and at such high speeds, far over-shadows any negative that could potentially prevent it from occuring.

The internet doesn’t shut you out from the world, it simply brings the world to you..pretty much all of it. It takes you places you can’t go in real life. A great example would be touring the Pyramids and the Sphinx with infinite resolution on Photosynth. It’s literally the next best thing to actually being there. The detail is amazing!

I think as the web ages, and innovation rates increase, we will start to see a change in the mindset of people who believe the web does not enhance our lives. For me, there’s never too much. I’d like to see the progress made when everything we do in some way is tied to this vastly powerful matrix of information.

I think it’s time we stop focusing on how technology makes people lazy, and start realizing that tremendous amounts of work can get done by simply sitting on the couch with a laptop. Of course, going to the gym every once in a while doesn’t hurt either..

Written by: Dante Cullari, Founder & President Beat-Play, LLC

Kids Ruling the World? Open Wide for the Jumbo Jet..

Sounds like not much would get done..but it could be more fun. In today’s smart phone social culture, information is more readily available than ever before. As of now, no one really knows the full repercussions of this on our society, but some signs have already begun to pop up.

Probably the most obvious is Mark Zuckerberg who is now 25 going on 26, and was only 20 when he started Facebook in 2004. 6 years later his website has over 350 million members and even old lame people are forced to jump on. Why is this? Because Mark came up with a better way to use the web as a tool to communicate than was previously in place. In my opinion, this could have only come from a younger person.

Being born in 1984, the exact year 29 year old Steve Jobs and Apple Computers launched their most famous product ever, the Macintosh, Mark Zuckerberg had grown up with computers. He was even programming in middle school; something which a decade before would have been reserved for only the most experienced hardware and tech nerds, and something which may not have happened if it wasn’t for people like Jobs and Woz.

For my father(58), to have seen the transformation from black & white photos and TV to all of the ridiculous gadgets made available today, like 3d printing and color multi-touch phones, just to have had email would have been sufficient. Email works soo much better than what he was used to growing up, that imagining better is made much harder, and seemingly useless in his eyes.

The bar with the younger generation is being set way higher, and we can expect this trend to continue exponentially. Another point to make is the rate at which change and innovation in business online can occur. Computers and the internet make everything amazingly easier to edit, update, change, delete, recover, and so on. This new medium has the potential to implement changes on a society scale much faster than was ever possible in the past, and increase our societal advancements exponentially as well, to follow along with the trend of doubling microchip capacity every 1-2 years.

Another reason for the breakthrough successes of many younger entrepreneurs may very well be their “naive” outlooks on the world. They seem misaligned with reality’s crushing sting and unfazed by thoughts of the many hopeless boundaries awaiting. However they’re amazingly successful..how could this be? Check out this excerpt from an AOL Small Business Blog titled A Teen Millionaire’s Three Principles to Success

“I’ve been fortunate enough to make my first million before graduating from high school and buy my own house at 20. At 21, I’ve now put away enough in savings and other investments that I could practically retire today . . . if I wanted to. But of course, that’s the last thing on earth I’d want to do. I just enjoy it all too much. Not to say the money isn’t important, but frankly, it’s not why I do what I do. I do it because I love it.” – Cameron Johnson

I can hear the passion in his voice just reading his words. Is this naive, or relevant? Actually, the answer to this question is a bit peculiar.

We are in the middle of a strange paradigm shift where the technology created by the older generation has effected society so much, that most of the problems that they faced in the past can be solved by this new technology. This doesn’t mean however, that the problems have been solved, because the older generation has somewhat failed, or has been slower to realize, that this is possible. Now though, It does mean that many members of the younger generation are beginning to realize these solutions that the internet and computers provide, and we’re beginning to implement them at tremendous paces.

Here’s a great analogy:
It’s like if the inventor of the light bulb was blind, and couldn’t really see the potential for his invention, so it sat idle; until one day another thinker with sight comes along, sees the potential, and installs telephone poles to carry the light around the globe. Now with this first invention of the light bulb, any innovator after will be able to see and work much longer, increasing the productivity for these potentially younger generations, solving potentially many problems at once, that would not have been solved if the potential of the lightbulb had not been realized. It wasn’t enough just for the invention to be created, but the potential had to be reached. Younger generations will always find new applications for great inventions. Thomas Edison would have never imagined 3D Imax Movie Projectors, or LEDs.

The internet’s progress has almost been put on hold compared to how fast it could be moving, because of the failure of the older generations to realize the true potential of computers, and especially the net. The main problem right now is that all of the best innovators are mostly too young to afford to maintain a start up, and only the most savvy, or lucky ones, actually make it.

This reminds me of a story. I’ve actually had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Doug Herzog, the President of Viacom. This is the same Doug Herzog who was president of Fox a while back and decided to cancel Family Guy..a mistake which the younger generation would haunt him with until he eventually left a year later. He was also featured in an episode of South Park that wanted to show a picture of the Prophet Muhammad, but Doug decided to censor it, which earned him a place in the show.

We met to discuss my business plan for Beat-Play. (BeatPlay Beta Overview) I won’t get into that right now, but one of the first things he told me was that he really had no idea what was going on at MTV on the “ground level.” He said he was just “so far separated from it.” After explaining my model to him, he couldn’t understand how Beat-Play was any different than iTunes. He couldn’t see how a completely free website that could solve piracy, promotion, and revenue problems for independent artists all over the world, was different than paying 99 cents for mostly artists heard on the radio. Me being 19 at the time, and him being unwilling to be schooled by a “kid”, I thanked Doug for his time, and strolled out.

This was one of the first signs of this “Senior blindness” that I had encountered. The truth is, iTunes doesn’t even begin to solve the problems the music business is still plagued with, but I guess being able to download music onto a mobile device you fit in your pocket is far enough away from old 45’s and 8-tracks that it’s easier to settle for the current circumstances. It may be better than before, but that doesn’t make it good! Also, a problem that still occurs to this day is that the problems with the music industry have been around so long that it’s not even feasible for many people that they could actually be solved..probably because before the internet, they couldn’t be..

This is a great quote from Inc Magazine blog titled A Portfolio of Young Business Owners

“Only five years ago, two enterprising teens might have mowed lawns to earn spending money. Today they can start a company on the Web. That’s how it worked for the co-founders of Switchpod, Weina Scott and Jake Fisher. And, oh yeah, they live 1,440 miles apart–she’s in Miami, and he’s in Rochester, Minnesota.”

Now wait until the younger generation reaches the full potential of the internet. Imagine how many other problems will be solved by more efficient organizational structure embedded into our societies.

Dare I say this is the first time in history that the younger generation may actually know better than the ones before it. Well..isn’t that what you would hope for? Things have changed..now it’s just up to people to realize it.

Written by: Dante Cullari, Founder & President Beat-Play, LLC

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