Each Monday, Mashable highlights an exclusive new video or song. Check out all our Music Monday picks . Playing for Change is out with a new video Monday that gives the global treatment to the classic Rolling Stones song, “Gimme Shelter.” If you’re not familiar with Playing for Change , it’s a band and foundation created by Mark Johnson, who spent four years traveling and filming musicians from around the world (local and street musicians alike). In 2008, he released a cover of the song “Stand By Me.” That video has garnered close to 30 million YouTube views, and it helped lead to a PBS documentary and CD series. The Playing for Change band was also born (and will soon be playing at Jazz Fest in New Orleans), as well as The Playing for Change Foundation, which seeks to support music education. The video above is from the band’s upcoming album, PFC 2: Songs Around The World . “There are many songs that can touch deep into the human heart, and sometimes we need songs that sincerely express the urgency of our situation as a planet,” says Johnson. “We have far too many starving children, warring nations and divided people. ‘Gimme Shelter’ is a song with such a purpose and can inspire us without preaching.” As a rule, Playing for Change makes an effort to go into a variety of global communities to find performers to contribute to its albums and accompanying videos. Johnson gave us the rundown on some of the musicians in this video. Check that out their stories below while you watch the video. The video starts with two musicians playing Delta Blues with a steel guitar (Italy) and a washboard (New Orleans)
Each Monday, Mashable highlights an exclusive new video or song. Check out all our Music Monday picks . If American Psycho ‘s Patrick Bateman were to direct a music video, well, then you would have the new vid for UNKLE and Nick Cave’s collaboration, “Money and Run.” Never you fear, the above video — directed by Tom Haines — isn’t wholly X-rated (it’s more like the edited-for-TV version of American Psycho than the director’s cut), it’s just straight-up ominous and disturbing
Starting at the end of 2011, the Great Schism of the Android mobile operating system — between Android version 2 for phones, and Android version 3 for tablets — will finally end. The rollout of Ice Cream Sandwich will signal the start of something new. At Google I/O this year, the company announced that Ice Cream Sandwich was coming and that it would end the 2.X/3.X split between tablets and phones. News about Google Music buried many of Google’s Android announcements. We’ve clarified a few points about Ice Cream Sandwich with a Google rep. Here’s exactly why this OS will be one of the most significant launches from Google this year. One OS for All Gadgets Honeycomb originally launched as Google’s operating system for tablets. Formally dubbed Android 3.0, it represented a break from the 2.X line of OSes (Donut, Eclair, Froyo and Gingerbread) that were built with mobile phones in mind. Even before Honeycomb made its debut, the myriad variations in the 2.X line had caused many complaints, and fragmentation had become a well-worn buzzword on the lips of Android critics. In July 2010, only 2% of Android users were running the most recent version of the OS, while almost 20% of devices were running the obsolete Android 1.5. And as of March 2011, after the launch of the 3.X Honeycomb line, a full seven variants of Android were in use on the 310 types of Android devices.
YouTube is launching a new top 100 chart for music videos that mixes official music videos with user-uploaded and viral videos, resulting in a list where the likes of Lady Gaga and Rebecca Black mingle freely. YouTube announced the chart on its blog , noting that it will be published weekly, and it will archive charts for anyone interested in tracking trends (you know, like how Justin Bieber has had a stranglehold on web culture for approximately two years). The chart is located on the YouTube Music page , and as of right now there’s no real surprises when it comes to content — most of it is Gaga, Bieber and other pop stars. Rebecca Black’s “Friday” is at number eight. What do you think of YouTube’s new chart? Would you check it regularly to see what music is currently hot on YouTube? More About: justin bieber , Lady Gaga , music , Rebecca Black , video , youtube For more Media coverage: Follow Mashable Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Media channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad
About $5.3 million in unclaimed royalties are floating around, just out of the grasp of deserving artists. RootMusic, maker of the Facebook app BandPage, teamed with performance rights non-profit SoundExchange to put that money in the right hands. Musicians garner royalties whenever their music is streamed on the Internet or played on digital satellite radio or cable music channels. SoundExchange , an organization enlisted by Congress to distribute digital performance royalties, collects those royalties and distributes them to bands. However, bands have to be registered with SoundExchange in order to get the cash. Unfortunately, some of those bands are unaware of the money they’re making and don’t register. To right that wrong, RootMusic gave SoundExchange a list of artists who have used its Facebook app, BandPage, so that the organization could connect with any artists with unclaimed royalties.
You may not have been able to score a ticket for LCD Soundsystem’s final show at Madison Square Gardens this Saturday, but thanks to the magic of crowdsourcing, your YouTube or Vimeo video could be in attendance. Today, Pitchfork alerts that Lance Bangs, director of the band’s final show, has posted a call on his website for “footage of clouds and sky shot from airplane windows,” which could be used during the musical finale. We’ve reached out to Bangs to see if we can learn more about how this footage will be used, but, in the meantime we’re intrigued
If you’re a die-hard Michael Jackson fan just itching to exercise your artistic license, you’re in luck. Sony Music, along with Jackson’s estate, will soon be launching the “Behind The Mask” video project, which asks fans to contribute to a new music video for the song. The project kicks off on March 7, at which time fans should head on over to a dedicated website . There, folks can select a move, lyric or crowd reaction to incorporate into the vid, or even use their webcams to contribute their own dance moves. The director, Dennis Liu, will then pick the best clips and integrate them into the final video, which will be released during the first week in April.
Pandora has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, setting the music-recommendation service on the path toward an initial public offering. Rumors of an IPO had been intensifying over the past month, with the company said to be looking to raise $100 million in an offering. Pandora did not disclose the size of its offering in its filing , but it did reveal detailed financials. For the nine months ended October 31, 2010, the company reports revenue of $90 million, with the bulk of it ($77.8 million) coming from advertising and the rest from subscriptions. The company is essentially at break even, with a loss of just $0.3 million in that same period. Pandora also now has more than 80 million registered users, with the average listener tuning into the service for more than 10 hours per month. The majority of that activity now takes place on mobile devices, with the company also saying that the “number of listener hours on mobile devices has surpassed listener hours on traditional computers and we expect that this trend will continue and is likely to accelerate.” More recently, the company has been working to embed its service in more places, including autos and Internet-connected televisions . The filing comes as the market for tech offerings continues to heat up, with Demand Media successfully completing its $150 million IPO last month, with other big deals including Kayak and Skype likely to take place later this year
During last night’s Social Media Week festivities, Spin media announced a partnership with music discovery startup Shuffler.fm that will make visiting its online print properties a much more aural experience. As a refresher, we wrote about Shuffler back in August, detailing how the service acts as “Pandora for music blogs.” Basically, it lets you navigate through music blogs of varying genres, whilst also listening to whatever music is featured on those blogs. Now, Spin has this listening-while-reading functionality built right in. If you head over to Spin.com right now, you’ll see the option to “Shuffle SPIN.com!” Clicking on this option will allow you to listen to music featured on the site , while also reading content — you’re no longer forced to sit on a page in which a stream is embedded. You can also skip through songs you don’t particularly want to hear, and share jams via Facebook and Twitter. According to Spin , the company is now the exclusive worldwide sales partner for Shuffler.fm, and will also be including these listening tools in other Spin properties, such as Hipster Runoff , The Couch Sessions and Pretty Amazing . “ Shuffler is a great service for Spin to partner with as it allows for music discovery through the filter of the world’s best blogs. It’s a great way to find new music, while also discovering new sites with an interesting point of view,” says Mike Albanese, Spin Media Digital Publisher. Photo courtesy of Flickr, Aidan Wojtas More About: music , shuffler.fm , spin , web apps For more Media coverage: Follow Mashable Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Media channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad
Is that a ghost? No… It’s just your cubicle mate Fred, and his pasty, pasty skin.