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Power Lawyers: 5 Music Attorneys to Know | Hollywood Reporter

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Rdio for iOS update brings ‘Find People’ feature, design improvements to the UI | Engadget

Music streamers on Rdio for iOS are used to getting novel features quite often — but hey, as they say, the more the merrier, right? Keeping up with that tradition, Rdio announced earlier today it’s introducing a few new tidbits to the application with version 2.2. Most notably, the app will now allow users to quickly find friends and artists via a new feature dubbed — appropriately, no less — Find People. Building up on the search improvements, Rdio’s also added an option to easily discover a record label’s top musicians and albums, which is, in part, made possible by a number of UI enhancements (like a revamped navigation menu) that were also included in this release. All that sound good? Then you shall wait no more; the goods can be found at our source, or you could always download straight from your iOS device.

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Internet, Software

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Source: App Store

Play Magazines receives UI overhaul to match Music and Books apps | Engadget

It was only a matter of time before Google got around to cleaning up the clumsy 3D interface of its Play Magazines app. With both Books and Music already sporting a spiffy new design, we’re happy to report that its periodicals portal is now just as flat and user-friendly. Like its recently updated brethren, Play Magazines makes itself easily identifiable through color alone — in this case a robust purple. If you’re looking for some exciting new features, however, you’re bound to be disappointed. Play Magazines is still pretty barebones. There’s no bookmarking, highlighting, copy and pasting… basically all you can do is download an issue and read it, either as plain text or in its original layout. But hey, at least selecting which magazine to read is easier and less offensive to our aesthetic sensibilities.

Filed under: Software, Mobile, Google

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Source: Play Magazines (Google Play)

Names of Additional Settling Grooveshark Employees Released… | Digital Music News

Reposted from http://bit.ly/13MJci3 on May 23, 2013 at 01:28AM

Grooveshark attorneys say this is simply a matter of ‘narrowing and simplying’ the case by removing certain executive defendants.

Twitter Introduces Charts By Genre And Popularity For Its #Music Service | TechCrunch

We’ve confirmed with Twitter that it has rolled out a new part of its #Music service for the web, charts that we were accustomed to from the company We Are Hunted, that it acquired and now powers the service.

The charts are broken up into a few areas: the familiar genre breakdown, as well as some categories like “Superstars” and “Unearthed” that appear to be built based on current Twitter trends and trajectory of artist mentions. This is leveraging all of the data that Twitter is collecting from tweets that include links to tracks from popular and emerging artists.

As you click on each category, the tiles on the page swap out quickly, letting you surf around to find new artists and songs. The categorization was a necessity to be able to find hidden gems, as the original breakdown of Popular and Emerging changed so rapidly:

These are the types of charts that will get artists themselves more engaged on Twitter, as well as catch the attention of record labels who want to know what people are saying about the musicians that they’ve signed. Everyone in a band wants to know how well they stack up against others. In fact, some artists didn’t see the service coming at all, and were pleased with all of the new attention they were getting.

The service, which is still finding its footing, is still in the mode of getting musicians to participate by getting on Twitter and engaging with their fans. That engagement gives them a better shot of shooting up the charts and being found. With the addition of charts, which music listeners are also familiar with, people will be able to go deeper in finding songs that fit the genre that they like the most. Rather than waiting for Twitter to pair you with matches that it’s taking a guess on, the power is now in your hands.

If you’re an Rdio or Spotify user, then the entire #Music experience is seamless, but if you’re only buying music from iTunes, you’re not getting to hear full tracks within the app. It’s going to take a while for #Music to grip, as are a lot of Twitter’s “discovery tools.” As the company onboards more people who aren’t interested in tweeting, just browsing, they will benefit from sites like #Music being broken out. For those who are actively tweeting, it’s kind of neat to imagine that your support through tweets could shoot a band or artist up the “charts.”

These charts aren’t available for the Twitter #Music iOS app but are available to everyone on the web today.

With downloads dwindling, music publishers throw a roadblock into Apple’s iRadio plans (Greg Sandoval/The Verge) | Techmeme

Greg Sandoval / The Verge:
With downloads dwindling, music publishers throw a roadblock into Apple’s iRadio plans  — Streaming services, such as Pandora and Spotify, aren’t as profitable for music publishers.  They want to change that.  — For years, when it came to driving negotiations with internet music services over licensing …

RAIN is in Brussels today for our first full-day European event | RAIN

Today is the second-annual (and first full-day) RAIN Summit Europe, at the Hotel BLOOM! in Brussels.

As something of a departure from the typical RAIN Summit format, today’s agenda features five discussion panels interspersed with an equal number of “feature presentations” by a single speaker (and that doesn’t even include RAIN publisher Kurt Hanson’s address on the global Internet radio industry).

Follow along (or catch up later, if you’re not in Europe!) on Twitter via the hashtag #RAINSummit.

The day begins at 9am (that’s 2am here at RAIN’s Chicago office in the Central time zone) with the “Identifying Online Audio’s Sales Proposition” panel, following a quick greeting and introduction. At 10am, the day’s first presentation, from SBS Discovery Media’s Simon Gooch on his company’s Radio Play initiative. As per tradition, we’ll close the event with the RAIN Reader Cocktail party at 5pm.

[See the day’s full agenda of panels, presentations, and speakers on the RAIN Summit Europe webpage here.]

The event’s “presenting sponsors” are a2x by Triton Digital and adswizz. Limited space is still available — register with Amiando or Eventbrite.  

Look for coverage of RAIN Summit Europe soon.

Ibiza | Lefsetz Letter

Reposted from http://bit.ly/13Jx51U on May 22, 2013 at 06:10PM

That’s where I am. For the IMS (International Music Summit), the kingpins of dance music, EDM or as Shelly Finkel informed us, ECM, “Electronic Music Culture,” which is what they call it at Live Nation. Which is going deep. They just bought Insomniac. They don’t want to be left out. Is EDM the future? Interesting […]

YouTube network Fullscreen adds NBCUniversal and HBO veteran Tim Mohn as new SVP of Engineering | PandoDaily

As much as an idea, timing, and luck all play into the success of startups, any experienced investor or entrepreneur will confirm that it is first and foremost about the team. That’s why it’s a fairly big deal that YouTube content network Fullscreen has added former NBCUniversal/Comcast VP of Technology and HBO GO app co-creator Tim Mohn as its new SVP of Engineering.

Fullscreen has established itself as a dominant force in online video, with its 5,000-plus YouTube channels generating over 2 billion monthly video views and reaching over 100 million subscribers after just two and a half years in business. But as much as content is a critical piece of the puzzle, marrying that content with cutting edge technology will be the key to longevity and differentiation in this highly competitive space. Mohn is a veteran of the new media technology space and should help accelerate the company’s efforts in this regard.

As companies like Fullscreen work to define the future of video entertainment, technology will play a critical role in content creation, distribution, audience acquisition, monetization, and a variety of other areas. And while YouTube provides basic tools to its enterprise partners, there’s an arms race among the category leaders to create custom tools which offer an advantage in each of these critical functions. A great example of this is ZEFR’s content rights management platform which filled a massive hole in the market and has established it as one of the more promising companies in the YouTube ecosystem, let alone in LA.

The YouTube space has been heating up in recent years, with the Google-owned video platform committing several hundred million dollars in financing to the creation and marketing of premium video content through its Partner Program. The initiative recently saw its first successful exit through the sale of AwesomenessTV to Dreamworks Interactive in April for $33 million plus performance incentives. Other leading content networks include generalist Maker Studios and gaming-focused Machinima, among others.

Fullscreen has raised undisclosed amount of funding from backers including SV Angel and Lowercase Capital. The company also recently added CAA veteran Larry Shapiro as its new Head of Talent last month, moving previous Head of Talent Sami Kreigstein to VP of Talent Integration.

Michael Carney

Michael Carney has spent his career exploring the world of early stage technology as an investor and entrepreneur and has participated in building companies in multiple countries within North and South America and Asia. Ultimately, he is an enthusiast of all things shiny and electronic and is inspired by those who build businesses and regularly tackle difficult problems. You can follow Michael on Twitter @mcarney.

A new iOS game looks to kickstart neuroscience education | PandoDaily

No one’s even surprised anymore when you mention that US students are behind other countries in math and science. Is this the new normal? Sure, there are promising signs: President Obama’s 2014 budget does increase STEM education funding by 6.4% to $3.1 billion. And last month, the National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association teamed up to draft a new set of science standards in hopes of bringing American students back to the top. But is more money and more standards really the answer, when three decades of standardized tests and billions of dollars have yielded such lackluster results?

That’s why companies like Minneapolis’ Adventium Labs, a consulting and research firm, are looking to fill in the gaps. Although the prototype for their educational iOS game iNeuron was developed with a grant from the National Institute of Health, the company is now using Kickstarter to raise funds to commercialize the product for teachers across the country. It’s looking to raise $25,000 to revamp a rough but endearing prototype it started building before the iPad even existed. Developed in partnership with neuroscience researchers from the University of Minnesota, iNeuron teaches the basics of neuroscience by having students connect different kinds of synapses in various ways to complete various brain functions. It looks like one part educational portal, one part a puzzle game; Encarta meets Candy Crush.

Because the game is only in prototype, I wasn’t able to play it myself. However it drew rave reviews from the 311 pubilc high school students and 5 teachers who tested it, says the project’s technology lead Martin Michalowski. Michalowski. who has a PhD in computer science, says he knew he was onto something when ”Kids would keep playing even after the class was over.” To ensure that students were learning the material, the team employed educational evaluators who found that in some cases, students learned more with iNeuron than they did when taught by individuals specifically trained to teach neuroscience.

Which brings up to a good point: Why neuroscience? Why not chemistry or history or some other mainstay of American education? “Neuroscience is at the center of a lot of topics high school students need to learn,” Michalowski says, including math, biology, and psychology. He isn’t alone in thinking this: Neuroscience is included in the Next Generation Science Standards that 26 states are looking to implement by 2015. And that’s one of the keys to marketing this to teachers. Sure, there are a lot of  challenges of reforming education from the bottom-up. But in this case, Adventium Labs has created a tool that addresses a brand new need for teachers where few solutions already exist.

So if Adventium already has this awesome game, what do they need $25,000 in Kickstarter cash for? Right now, iNeuron is not a standalone project, and its deployment requires Michalowski to put in a lot of time to meet with teachers beforehand and hang out nearby while the kids play in case something breaks. Furthermore, Michalowski doesn’t have much experience building commercial-grade software. “It’s pretty close but it’s not something I’m comfortable putting on the App Store.” Dammit, Jim, he’s a doctor, not an app developer. And finally, the Kickstarter will help his team acquire customers for his product, a practice that’s very much in vogue lately.

Michalowski says iNeuron is only the beginning, and that Adventium Labs is spinning out the team that worked on it into a separate organization called Andamio Games. But the funding model used here is hardly ideal. Thanks to sequestration, NIH funding is expected to fall by $1.71 billion, making grants even harder to come by. And of course Kickstarter funds are hardly guaranteed. When Andamio builds its next educational app, Michalowski may look to raise venture funding then make money by selling and licensing its games.

If Michalowski is successful in commercializing iNeuron, he will have done so by combining government-funding, private innovation, and crowdfunding. And while that might not sound like an easy or repeatable model for others to follow, it reflects the whatever-it-takes approach many are using to reinvent education.

David Holmes

David Holmes is the head of social media and experimental journalism for PandoDaily. He is also the co-founder of Explainer Music, a production company specializing in journalistic music videos. His work has appeared at FastCompany.com, ProPublica, the Guardian, the Daily Dot, NewYorker.com, and Grist.

You can follow David on Twitter @holmesdm

HubSpot Offers $30,000 To Anyone Who Helps Them Hire A Software Developer | BusinessInsider

HubSpot, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that’s rapidly grown from 300 employees to 500 employees is looking for more software engineers and designers.

So it’s offering an irresistible carrot to the world: Anyone who refers a friend who lands the job will be paid a whopping $30,000 finder’s fee.

This triples the referral bonus HubSpot had in place before which was $10,000.

“Referral bonuses are not relegated to HubSpot employees; anyone can participate,” says HubSpot’s Hannah Fleishman in a blog post.

Obviously, some rules apply. For instance, you can’t recommend yourself. And the bonus is limited to software developers and designers, not just any old job. The offer expires in six months. And the person who is referred for the job and gets it has to stay for at least 120 days. 

HubSpot probably won’t have a problem getting folks to apply. The company, which makes marketing software, is known as a great place to work that takes its culture seriously. Its perks range from tuition reimbursement to playing musical desks every quarter.

An MIT professor has even been shadowing the company for seven months to write a case study about the culture there, marketing fellow Dan Lyons tells us.

SEE ALSO: AWESOME PLACES TO WORK: These Startups Have Better Perks Than Free Food Or Beers On Tap

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The Steve Jobs Emails That Show How To Win A Hard-Nosed Negotiation (AAPL) | BusinessInsider

The U.S. government’s price-fixing lawsuit against Apple goes to trial next month in New York. Ahead of its court date, the U.S. released emails that purport to show Apple was the “ringleader” in a scheme to set artificially high e-book prices with some of the largest American publishers, which have already settled the case.

The emails have mostly been viewed in the context of the lawsuit, but they also provide an extraordinary view of high-stakes negotiations between the leaders of two powerful firms, Apple and News Corp. They start far apart, but over the course of five days, Apple’s then-CEO Steve Jobs successfully pulls the son of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch over to his side.

Jobs was a famously hard-nosed negotiator who won these kinds of battles all the time. Before book publishers, there was the movie industry. And before that, music record labels. But most of those negotiations were hidden from view. What follows are the emails released last week along with some context; spelling and grammar have been preserved from the originals. 

*  *  *

News Corp.’s opening move

It was a Friday morning, January 22, 2010. Apple was preparing to release its newest product, a long-rumored tablet computer, the following week. Part of the iPad’s appeal was supposed to be the vast array of media that could be consumed on it, but one of the largest American publishers, HarperCollins, was holding out from signing a deal to sell its ebooks in Apple’s iTunes store.

Those were the stakes as Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of iTunes and the App Store, visited executives of HarperCollins and its parent company, News Corp. The substance of that meeting was conveyed in an email sent to Cue later that day by Brian Murray, the CEO of HarperCollins. It detailed the publisher’s opening bid in the negotiation, with five days remaining until the iPad’s unveiling.

Eddy,

Thanks for coming in again this morning. We’ve talked over the proposal and I want to make sure that you have a summary of the deal that HarperCollins would be willing to do in your timeframe.

1. Pricing: We need flexibility to price on a title by title basis outside the prescribed tiers in the contract. We will use our best efforts to meet the tiers we discussed.

2. MFN [“most favored nation” status]: In the event that HarperCollins and Apple disagree on a consumer price for a title, HarperCollins needs the ability to make that title available through other agents who support the higher price.

3. Commissions: We need a lower commission on new releases for the economics to work for us and our authors. We believe a 30% commission will lead to more authors asking for ebooks to be delayed a result that will not work for Apple or HarperCollins.

4. The new release window: We need to have flexibility on the agency window. We believe this window should be 6 months rather than 12 months in the event that one or more large retailers do not move to an agency model.

Leslie will be sending Kevin a contract that reflects these points in the event you wish to move forward on these terms.

Thanks
Brian

Those terms were never going to fly with Apple, which had successfully signed deals with HarperCollins’s rivals, like Penguin (a division of Pearson) and Simon & Schuster (part of Viacom). Those deals would allow Apple to set prices for new ebooks at $12.99—three dollars higher than the typical rate at that time on Amazon—and take a 30% cut of each sale.

But HarperCollins wanted the freedom to set its own prices and worried that $12.99 per ebook would hurt its sales on the new iPad as well as the Kindle. It also didn’t want to give up 30%. To back up its position, James Murdoch, a high-ranking News Corp. executive, forwarded Murray’s email to Apple’s then-CEO Steve Jobs, and included the following note. It was still Friday.

Steve,

Thanks for your call earlier today, and for the time last week.

I spoke to Brian Murray and Jon Miller [then the head of digital media at News Corp.]—and Brian is sending a note to Eddy today. I thin I have a handle on this now. In short—we we would like to be able to get something done with Apple—but there are legitimate concerns.

The economics are simple enough. [Amazon] Kindle pays us a wholesale price of $13 and sells it for 9.99. An author gets $4.20 on the sale of a hardcover and $3.30 on the sale of the ebook on the Kindle.

[A portion of this email was redacted by the court.]

Basically—the entire hypothetical benefit of a book without raw materials and distribution cost accrues to Apple, not to the publisher or to the creator of the work.

The other big issue is one of holdbacks. If we can’t agree on the fair price for a book, your team’s proposal restricts us from making that book available elsewhere, even at a higher price. This is just a bridge too far for us.

Also, we are worried about setting prices to high—lots of ebooks are $9.99. A new release window with a lower commission (say 10[%]) for the first six months would enable us to proce much more kenly for Apple customers. We’d like to da that.

More on this below in Brian’s note to Eddy. We outline a deal we can do.

Feel free to call or write anytime over the weekend to discuss if you like.

I am in the UK (so eight hours ahead of CA). My home number is [redacted]. I check the email regularly.

Steve, make no mistake that across the board (TV, Studios, Books, and Newspapers) we would much rather be working with apple than not. But we, and our partners who produce, write, edit, and otherwise make all this with us, have views on fair pricing, and care a lot about our future flexibility. I hope we can figure out a way, if not now and in time for this launch of yours, then maybe in the future.

Best,
JRM

Jobs digs in

Jobs wasn’t willing to compromise. He sent this reply to Murdoch the same day, arguing that Amazon’s pricing wasn’t sustainable and would train people to think that ebooks were cheap. Jobs also reminded Murdoch of Apple’s vast reach—“over 120 million customers with credit cards on file.” You need us more than we need you, he seemed to be saying.

James,

A few thoughts to consider (I’d appreciate it if we can keep this between you and me):

1. The current business model of companies like Amazon distributing ebooks below cost or without making a reasonable profit isn’t sustainable for long. As ebooks become a larger business, distributors will need to make at least a small profit, and you will want this too so that they invest in the future of the business with infrastructure, marketing, etc.

2. All the major publishers tell us that Amazon’s $9.99 price for new releases is eroding the value perception of their products in customer’s minds, and they do not want this practice to continue for new releases.

3. Apple is proposing to give the cost benefits of a book without raw materials, distribution, remaindering, cost of capital, bad debt, etc., to the customer, not Apple. This is why a new release would be priced at $12.99, say, instead of $16.99 or even higher. Apple doesn’t want to make more than the slim profit margin it makes distributing music, movies, etc.

4. $9 per new release should represent a gross margin neutral business model for the publishers. We are not asking them to make any less money. As for the artists, giving them the same amount of royalty as they make today, leaving the publisher with the same profits, is as easy as sending them all a letter telling them that you are paying them a higher percentage for ebooks. They won’t be sad.

5. Analysts estimate that Amazon has sold more than one million Kindles in 18+ months (Amazon has never said). We will sell more of our new devices than all of the Kindles ever sold during the first few weeks they are on sale. If you stick with just Amazon, Sony, etc., you will likely be sitting on the sidelines of the mainstream ebook revolution.

6. Customers will demand an end-to-end solution, meaning an online bookstore that carries the books, handles the transactions with their credit cards, and delivers the books seamlessly to their device. So far, there are only two companies who have demonstrated online stores with significant transaction volume—Apple and Amazon. Apple’s iTunes Store and App Store have over 120 million customers with credit cards on file and have downloaded over 12 billion products. This is the type of online assets that will be required to scale the ebook business into something that matters to the publishers.

So, yes, getting around $9 per new release is less than the $12.50 or so that Amazon is currently paying. But the current situation is not sustainable and not a strong foundation upon which to build an ebook business.

[A portion of this email was redacted by the court.]

Apple is the only other company currently capable of making a serious impact, and we have 4 of the 6 big publishers signed up already. Once we open things up for the second tier of publishers, we will have plenty of books to offer. We’d love to have HC among them.

Thanks for listening.

Steve

Murdoch starts to bend

Murdoch’s reply came the following afternoon, Saturday, January 23. Jobs had made clear that Apple wouldn’t budge. Murdoch was about to indicate that HarperCollins would. He proposed two possible compromises, then noted that News Corp. and Apple were negotiating on a number of fronts. “Is it worth considering in the round, over the next few months or weeks, whether or not some of these loose ends can be tidied up?” Murdoch wrote. The iPad announcement was four days away.

Steve,

I think the crux of this is our flexibility to offer product elsewhere at price-points you don’t like.

If we could offer to you that a certain percentage of releases (>50%) would be available within your pricing structure (< or = 14.99), does that give you enough comfort?

I think we are worried more about the absolute holdback of product elsewhere, and our ceding of pricing to Apple, than we are about the actual haggle over what the price will be.

I haven’t shared this with HC directly—so this is only hypothetical. But if you were willing to accept that a supplier can exploit other avenues (at prices not disadvantageous to you), with a guarantee of substantial volume through Apple—maybe I could work with HC to get to some common ground.

Please let me know.

A different question: we have four areas of discussion (related to our product) between our teams right now: Books, US Video, Int’l Video, and newspapers. All at different stages of maturity, these discussions are all centered, for us, around the desire to make our product widely available, and to make yours and our products more attractive for our customers. It seems though that we in each one we largely encounter a “take it or leave it” set of terms, and predictably we’ve so far failed to really strike the kind of partnerships that could move things forward.

Is it worth considering in the round, over the next few months or weeks, whether or not some of these loose ends can be tidied up? It’s clear that Apple is already becoming an attractive platform for so many of our customers—all over the world. As a creative company at our core, NWS [News Corp.] should be more engaged with Apple, and I think Apple could be more engaged with NWS, globally, than either of us are today.

Best,
JRM

Jobs goes in for the kill

With Murdoch indicating that HarperCollins was willing to compromise, Jobs pressed harder. “As I see it, HC has the following choices,” he wrote in a reply to Murdoch the following morning, Sunday, January 24. Jobs outlined three stark choices. Accept our terms, he was saying, or good luck with Amazon. “Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any other alternatives,” Jobs wrote, almost daring Murdoch to spurn Apple. “Do you?”

James,

Our proposal does set the upper limit for ebook retail pricing based on the hardcover price of each book. The reason we are doing this is that, with our experience selling a lot of content online, we simply don’t think the ebook market can be successful with pricing higher than $12.99 or $14.99. Heck, Amazon is selling these books at $9.99, and who knows, maybe they are right and we will fail even at $12.99. But we’re willing to try at the prices we’ve proposed. We are not willing to try at higher prices because we are pretty sure we’ll all fail.

As I see it, HC has the following choices:

1. Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99.

2. Keep going with Amazon at $9.99. You will make a bit more money in the short term, but in the medium term Amazon will tell you they will be paying you 70% of $9.99. They have shareholders too.

3. Hold back your books from Amazon. Without a way for customers to buy your ebooks, they will steal them. This will be the start of piracy and once started there will be no stopping it. Trust me, I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any other alternatives. Do you?

Regards,
Steve

On Tuesday, a day before the iPad announcement, HarperCollins agreed to Apple’s terms. The publisher’s ebooks were included in the iBookstore unveiled on January 27 along with new tablet, more than 100 million of which have now been sold.

Read and download the emails as released by the U.S. government here. Talking head images designed by Ritchie King with AP photos.

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This Photo Slideshow Company Has The Best Meeting Rooms We’ve Ever Seen | BusinessInsider

Animoto, which makes a video slideshow creation app, is based in New York City, with an additional office in San Francisco.

The company creates compelling video skins for photo slideshows. That means they take your photos and put them into a cool video format with some added music. It’s quick and very, very easy to use.

When the company celebrated its fifth birthday this past January, it logged more than 6 million registered users and 30 million videos created. More recently, it launched an enhanced version of its platform geared towards professional photographers.

We stopped by their New York office to see how they do what they do.

At the office you open a nondescript door which leads you into Animoto’s spacious main area with loads of natural light. There is a relaxed and friendly feel.

And you quickly see the faces behind that feel. Animoto is all about telling stories visually. They also believe in using employees’ existing skills and passions … all the portraits were taken by one of the company’s developers.

Developer Justin Camerer (left), was originally from St. Louis, and has been with Animoto for two years.

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Zach Sobiech Soaring High at #1 with “Clouds” | The Daily Rind

Reposted from http://bit.ly/195horF on May 22, 2013 at 05:03PM

It’s been two days since Zach Sobiech succumbed to the Osteosarcoma that plagued his body for the past four years, but it’s now clear that his inspiring attitude and music are not to suffer the same fate. Thanks to the support of all those who connected with his uplifting tunes and …