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It’s so refreshing to know that iTunes has some competition at last. The competition comes in the form of ‘Spotify’, a music streaming service that’s ridiculously easy to use and addictive to boot…

For

Well, you can search and listen to tracks all the way through (as if you had actually bought them), not the iTunes 15 second tease

A great way to discover music for free

You can share playlists very easily through a URL which impregnates mates collections in yours

Spotify have also signed a deal with 7digital meaning you can also purchase tracks for as low as 50p and albums for £3

Exceptionally user friendly and up and running in minutes

Against

Not as comprehensive as iTunes, but still 6million tunes with over 10,000 being added everyday

Ad’s will interrupt your aural pleasure inbetween Johnny Cash and Johnny Rotten, but for a fee of £9.99 you can avoid hearing Iggy Pop sell you swiftcover car insurance

You can’t take the tunes with you – but with mass broadband (& WiMax coming soon) – ill there even be a need in the future?

It’s a shame the Microsoft ‘Zune’ never made it across the Atlantic, as their iTune equivalent ‘The Zune Marketplace’ – took it a stage further. Mixing social networking with music – and functionality that enabled you to delve into the roots and influences behind each track and artist…

iTunes latest widget is ironically called ‘Genius’ and functions as if Stevie Wonder was virtually sifting through your record collection and categorising them. This ‘handy’ tool is about as subtle as the Microsoft Paperclip – patronising and heavy handed. I just proved a point when it placed James Brown and Barry White as category twins. Nobody can surely place the Godfather of Soul with The Walrus of Love.

For the user, Spotify is a brilliant Frankenstein’s monster, somewhere stuck between iTunes, Zune and iPlayer. Whether an ads-based/subscription model is wise in these times is debateable but with an iPhone/iTouch app on the way, it’s good to see an underdog taking on the might of apple.

Enjoy this:

http://open.spotify.com/user/jonnyclow/playlist/5ZoonCcPrgyeHpuTZDQdBk

Funny thing about me and TV program sponsorships. I only seem to notice them when they are not on TV.

Like the outdoor super-site currently festooning the junction between Old Street, Shoreditch High Street and Hackney Road heralding the forthcoming second series of the excellent Channel 4 program Skins.

Sponsored by BSM.

BSM??? The British School of Motoring. Part of the RAC. Trustworthy instructors with economical cars that have those funny little signs magnetically stuck to the roof. “Learn Your Way to Freedom” cries their web site. How does this fit with Skins?

Skins!!!!

A genius program reflecting the lives of dysfunctional 16 to 18 year olds in Bristol. With massive reference to debauched partying, heavy drinking and sustained drug abuse. Way cool. But more BDSM than BSM.

So why BSM and Skins? From a media targeting point of view it’s bang on. Late teens with a desire for freedom will, no doubt, be gagging to get behind the wheel of their first car.

Does the apparent mismatch in tone, style and content then really matter?

From a conceptual point of view it probably does. In my experience the best TV idents usually make some reference to either the program or the essence of the program they sponsor in order to “top and tail” the broadcast in a relevant way. This helps them to extend their resonance beyond their 5 second slot and almost become a “frame” for the program. By no means the main “art” but a useful and relevant part of it none the less. Cadbury did this brilliantly with Corrie. 118 118, in a more obtuse way, delivered it with Lost.

I’m buggered if I can think of how BSM are going to do it with Skins.

Which is not to say that their agency won’t achieve it. At the time of writing I have yet to see any of the executions. They might just pull it off.

Maybe they could take some inspiration from a lovely little Skins cultural influence taken from a posting in Wikipedia:

During the holiday a girl in County Durham threw a house party; it was advertised on her MySpace as an unofficial Skins, referring to the party in the first episode with the subtitle “Let’s trash the average family-sized house disco party”. 200 people turned up, causing over £20,000 worth of damage.”

Wouldn’t it be great that if the very next day, she passed her driving test.

Domino’s, the US pizza delivery company have launched a new online tracking system to cut down on the anguish that people suffer waiting for a Pizza.

A spokesman claimed it was introduced on the basis of consumer research which indicated that ordering a pizza was an exciting experience based on choice and an organaleptic feeling where the mouth begins to salivate and the guttural senses kick in – ‘must have a pizza, must have a pizza’.

The statement then went on to say that after the order, consumers were then thrown into – quote, ‘a trough of despair’ wondering where and what was happening to their pizza.

Now I quite like ‘dramatic’, but despair over a pizza?

The initiative enables the mere online request of a Farmhouse to be tracked at every stage of its journey – who took your order, is it in the oven, is it being despatched and so forth.

Blimey haven’t people got lives? What’s next, social networking with your Dominoes chef? Maybe we can track each pizza delivery boy online in a game similar to Packman. Hackers could confuse a nation by diverting random Meatfeasts and delivering them to vegetarians. Hardly Fight Club territory I know but…

Still next time I fall into a trough of anguish, I will spare a thought for all those waiting for a ‘Four Seasons’. My heart bleeds.

news source: stuff.tv podcast

It is a fact that men on their mobile cannot keep still for more than a sentence-worth of conversation. How often do we see men pacing up and down train platforms, outside pub fronts and in the corridors outside their work – wanton, looking at their shoes as they walk, kicking stones, up and down, up and down…

Yes I do it too, but what makes us men pace like lithe panthers with zoo fever?

Concentration? Shutting out the real world? That female purported myth that ‘Men can only concentrate on one thing at a time’?

Whatever the reason, there is surely an opportunity for brands to capitalise upon this little understood genetic male flaw. The opportunities are surely endless…

Imagine the subconscious messaging of floor media – for the ‘guilty’ man outside the pub. Surely rich opportunities from Interflora to Eurostar. And while we are branding the pavements of the roaming male, why not police it. Carling did it with busking zones, so why can’t brands sponsor areas that are safe for males to roam. They’ve been talking about a pedestrian fast-lane on Oxford for years, could the future see the male phone lane – a slower lane that loops in a figure of eight. As a social experiment it would be worth tracking a select sample with GPS. An array of tiny dots, unconsciously burning calories whilst dealing with everything from work calls to excuses for being late…

The latest mobile technology will soon enable us to socially network on our mobiles linked via GPS. The consequences of this technology becoming ubiquitous could be enormous from solving crime, to exposing infidelity to not being able to pull sickies from work any more.

GPS, along with free Wi-Fi means you will be hard pressed to escape from it all. The notion of an overly connected society means inevitably it will become regulated in some form. The humble beginnings of mobile free train carriages of today could develop into a national backlash against the connected society of tomorrow. GPS, mobile and Wi-Fi free zones could be nearer than we thought for the consumer who want to remain undisturbed, un-contactable and anonymous. Even in a post Orwellian state, there would still be a need to pen and contain the male roamer, even after smoking has been totally banned. ‘No mobile phone calls inside. Please use the small roaming shelter outside. Beware of the oncoming traffic’.