First and foremost what not to do when taking on a big competitive market, e.g. online music discovery. Unless you have unlimited resources the absolute most important thing to do is focus on doing one thing better than everyone else. It is very easy to get lost in an arms race mentality when your competitors are unveiling new products/services all the time. Don't get caught up in trying to match each new product/service offering. Most of the time the new product/service isn't nearly as great as they hype machine says it is.

Even when it is a great service you can't realisticaly add a new service of greater value instantly and the resources you dedicate to developing a new service are usally at the expense of improving your core offering. Yes this may seem like a no brainer but trust me it is very easy to get caught up in the "we have to compete with that too" mentality. 

Next lesson, be very careful with who you partner with. Make sure they have the same goals and drive that you do. There are lots of people/companies looking to tag along but when you are a small startup you need to move as quickly and efficiently as possible. Waiting for less nimble people/companies to take action will kill your momentum. 

It doens't have to be perfect out the gate, just valuable. When you are working on a project you are passionate about it you tend to want to make things perfect before letting anyone see your baby, bad move. Get a working model/site out in the public and get people using it even if it isn't what you ultimately envision. Getting feedback early on is hugely important for creating a product/site that people will actually use. If you can't get any early adopters then you should seriously re-think what you are doing. If you do get some traction go full speed ahead, don't get distracted by trying to develop additional products/services. You need to nail your core product/service then think about expanding into other areas. 

Be willing to rethink your idea(s). It's a fine line between not listening to the naysayers and being stubbornly blind. Really only experience will guide you through that decision process but ask others whose opinions you respect what they honestly think of your business idea(s). If you have to re-think your business plan it's not the end of the world. Better to fail quickly and move on then beat a dead horse. 

If you do decide to re-think your plan then do it and don't look back. That is where I am right now and that is what I can bring to SEO Think Tank, a new plan of attack, the rational, and plan of execution. The SEO/SEM/SMM skills are no different than what the other attendees have so I can't make a case that I will rock their world with any insights there but between already knowing a bunch of the attendees and having some experience in taking on the big boys I think I can defintely add value to the conference so Shoe send me to San Digeo ;) 

Avnera says it has conquered both problems.

Modern rock superstars Radiohead have finally agreed to make their albums available for digital download. UK download service 7digital and Radiohead's former label EMI have struck a deal to make full album downloads of Radiohead classics The Bends and OK Computer available without DRM.

To this point only a handful of Radiohead songs that appeared on movie soundtracks have been legally downloadable. Outside of those tracks, which can be purchased individually through iTunes, no single tracks have been approved for sale. 

MySpace programmers have taken pains to obfuscate the location of the MP3 file music artists embed into their MySpace profiles. Until now, pirates had to use programs like Ethereal or Burp to divine where a tune was stored. But thanks to a Safari feature called the Activity Window, that cumbersome process is no longer necessary.

The vocals are in the classic electronica vain of Massive Attack and Morcheeba but again the lyrics have an underlying tone of excitement and anticipation bordering on fear. Great song!

I'm proud to say that epiTUNES is helping spread the word about Healing Notes, a non-profit organization that promotes music therapy as a means for providing emotional support and motivation to hospitalized children and there families. Healing Notes was founded under the leadership of Allison Barkley, a mother of three who experienced the therapeutic benefits of music therapy first hand when her newborn son was struggling for his life as a result of a blood disorder. After observing a dramatic improvement in the condition of another infant in the neonatal unit after several days of music therapy, Allison advocated for the use of this therapy for her son and soon saw his condition improve as well.

Healing Notes is throwing a special charity event entitled a “Night in Ipanema” that features Tita Lima and guests performing. The event takes place Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at the NTC Promenade McMillin Companies Event Center in San Diego, California. For those interested in attending please check out Healing Notes as well as Tita Lima's profile to get more details and preview the evening's musical performances.

Lead singer Danielle Gorre proves that is a very bad idea indeed to judge a book by its cover. The petite singer's powerful vocal chords seem to defy physics. To say she can belt out a tune would be a gross understatement. On Saturday night covering the classic James Brown song Cold Sweat, Danielle's powerful set of pipes set the tone for an evening of great music.

Lead guitarists Steve Nelson's incendiary fretwork proved riveting, while the rhythm section kept a rock solid beat throughout the night. As the evening progressed the group's versatility showed itself as both Steve Nelson and rhythm guitarist Ross Hooper took over vocal duties for a pair of songs. Steve Nelson has great deep blues growl but on this evening his vocals were clearly hampered by a cold. Fortunately his lead guitar work more than made up for the vocal difficulties.

The evenings highlight moment was when Ross Hooper took over mic duties to lead the band into a rendition of the Chris Isaac classic "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing." Deep Pocket's version is always one of the high points of their set but on this evening Hooper's vocals and guitar work took the song to new heights. The crowd couldn't help but shake and groove to the lively rendition and you could clearly see that the band members were enjoying themselves.

All in all one would be hard pressed to have a better evening with a local band. Deep Pocket has evolved from a band to drop in on when looking for something to do to a band worth marking down on your calendar and making the time to catch live.