Now Playing on Alan Cross’ iTunes…

by Greg Nisbet

So, what does the guy with one of Canada’s best music jobs listen to for that extra kick on his morning run? Mediazoic private beta listeners recently had the opportunity to find out, when Alan Cross started streaming the very same I Need Energy playlist that has propelled him along trails in places as varied as the walls of Angkor Wat and the streets of Toronto.

Most of our beta listeners are music biz folks, and since Alan’s station went up, we’ve heard some pretty interesting opinions from all over the Canadian music landscape. The first question that started coming in when word started getting out was “how did you manage to snag a guy as busy as Alan?”. As it happens, the first spark came when I heard an internet radio interview Alan did in which he used a phrase that immediately compelled me to contact him. He talked in the interview about the “days of the trusted DJ”, in which a music lover’s primary sources of music discovery had typically been a pretty small number of sources, and that with the explosion in the availability of music on the Internet, we were in an era where these trusted curators would become even more important in the music discovery process. Given the number of people over the years that I’d heard name-check Alan as one of their primary sources of such discovery, I was pretty sure he’d see our system as a no-brainer. As for being too busy, even Barack Obama could run the Mediazoic software – once installed, just hit play on your iTunes, press our little ‘Connect’ button, and you’re broadcasting to the world. For one of Canada’s most “trusted DJs”, and his listeners, what was not to love?

Even among our little bevy of occasionally jaded professionals, it seems that the chance to access the private music geek behind Alan’s public persona is what many of our listeners have found most valuable. Not surprisingly, Alan’s stream contains everything from the commercial to the obscure, but the full range might surprise even the most dedicated listener of Explore Music or The Ongoing History of New Music. Because our system precisely measures how many times each track has been listened to, we’ve also gotten some interesting insights into what type of music on Alan’s stream has really engaged people. My personal favourites:

- Butyric Acid, an obscure piece of political activism from San Francisco collective Consolidated
- Highly Suspicious, an odd but melodically compelling blend of flaming falsetto and militaristic seriousness from My Morning Jacket
- A delightfully disturbed extended version of the Ministry classic Jesus Built My Hot Rod

While it’s been fascinating to see what people have loved (mostly everything), we also have a pretty good idea of what has frightened them away. Though Alan’s playlist has received almost universal acclaim, no set of music could ever appeal to everyone, nor should it try. One of the more colourful feature requests to emerge from Alan’s participation has been for the development of a ‘WTF’ button, to be used as a kind of “Dude, what were you thinking” when the listener regards a particular track as spoiling an otherwise awesome playlist.

What does Alan say? Well, feel free to ask him if you know him, but the official line is that the techie in him has been impressed with “the rock solid stability of the system” and the music geek in him has already suggested numerous potential applications across a variety of platforms. One thing is for sure, if you want to build the ultimate system for music lovers, you need great ideas from people who live and breathe music. On that basis alone, Alan can’t help but point us in the right direction.

We’re still working through some issues that currently prevent us from making the service available to everyone who’d like to use it, but if you’d like to get in on the action, hear Alan’s stream, and chip in your thoughts on how to make Mediazoic the best music curation and sharing system on the planet, enter the code byrnes-sent-me on this page and we’ll hook you up.

Greg Nisbet is a storyteller, music lover, and social entrepreneur who has worked in jobs as varied as busker, actor, safari guide, private school owner, and mergers and acquisitions broker. He is the founder of an Internet media start-up called Mediazoic. He also enjoys sharing his ideas on the use of technology and social media in presentations, workshops, and carefully chosen consulting contracts.