Bonnaroo: Live on YouTube this weekend

Stock your cooler with sparkling water and hook your laptop up to a big-screen TV -- YouTube Presents is bringing you the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival all weekend, starting this Friday at 1 p.m. CT/11 a.m. PT. Tune in to youtube.com/bonnaroo to watch three days of non-stop musical performances, in partnership with DELL.



And we mean non-stop. In its eleven years of existence, Bonnaroo has transformed from a haven for jam band aficionados into one of the premiere places to experience live music. The headliners alone are massive -- perhaps you’ve heard of Radiohead, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Phish? But the sheer diversity of artists is also astonishing: over 45 artists will be participating in the webcast, and they range from hip-hop and retro soul to continent-spanning collaborations. Check out the webcast schedule, or whet your appetite with this "Bonnaroo 2012" playlist.



To celebrate the festival’s return to YouTube, we’ll also feature playlists from webcast artists including Soja, the Punch Brothers, the Debo Band and fun. throughout the weekend. And keep an eye out for an exclusive video premiere from the heavily (and justly) buzzed band Alabama Shakes tomorrow. It may just knock your socks off.

The festivities start promptly at 11am PT on Friday on youtube.com/bonnaroo -- see you there, people.

Sarah Bardeen, music community manager, recently watched “Bonnaroo 2012 - Ben Folds Shoutout."

Music Tuesday: Live music, original music channels and more

We’ve quite the week of music ahead of us on YouTube, including two live performances and a new selection of channels bringing you closer to the music you love.

Jason Mraz and Sleigh Bells live
It’s February 14 and Jason Mraz wants to be your Valentine. He’ll be dropping into YouTube’s New York HQ to perform a selection of his favorite love songs as part of the YouTube Presents series. Tune in at 1:30pm PT.

And there’s more! Brooklyn-based noise pop duo Sleigh Bells have been wowing audiences with their debut album Treats and live performances. We’ll be giving you a front row seat at their show this Friday night at Terminal 5 in NYC.  Catch them on the new Bowery Presents YouTube Channel at 7:30pm PT. And speaking of the Bowery Presents channel...

Noisey, Pitchfork and Bowery come to YouTube
In October, we told you even more great folks were coming to YouTube, and we’ve already seen new channels from areas like action sports, education and autos. Over the next months we’ll be introducing you to the new kids on the YouTube music block and highlighting our favorite shows. To get you started, check-out three new channels entering the world this week, bringing you exclusive performances, behind-the-scenes interviews, news and entertainment.

Vice’s Noisey YouTube Channel lets music fans watch live music, follow the bands they love, and discover the artists who are on the rise — all with that unmistakable Vice feeling. We’re already digging the acerbic reviews from Record Store Dude.

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Since 2008,  Pitchfork.tv, has produced award-winning video, documenting independent music as it happened. Beginning February 17, they bring a host of new shows exclusively on their YouTube channel, including Pitchfork Weekly, +1 and Sixty Seconds Left, featuring 1-minute snapshots of artists doing crazy things.


Along with live broadcasts from Bowery’s iconic venues, the new Bowery Presents YouTube Channel will be be a hub for music films and intimate acoustic performances from the industry's leading and emerging artists.

 
If you like any of these channels, subscribe so you can get all their new videos and updates on your homepage, and see even more tunes on the YouTube music page.

Tim Partridge, music marketing manager, recently watched “Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance WIth Somebody.”

Music Tuesday: Nada Surf, Sundance and more

This week on YouTube Music we’ve premiered Ryan Adam’s new video, enjoyed an exclusive playlist of Tiesto’s favorite tracks, and had, in the words of one YouTube commenter, our “brains tickled” by Matthew Dear’s In The Middle. Check back each day to discover more great music, including...

Nada Surf: live and playlisting!
Nada Surf are celebrating 20 years of work together, from the days of Popular, to the innovative covers, and even an early example of crowdsourcing music videos through a YouTube competition in 2008. They’ll be blowing the candles on their cake, and playing their new album live from the Bowery Ballroom this evening at 7pm PT. To get you in the mood, the guys have selected some of their favorite music videos, including tunes from The Wrens, Softback and Sea Wolf. Check out their playlist, then head over to the Nada Surf Channel to watch the show!



Sundance 2012
Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival has long been a major force in the world of independent cinema, and with the expansion of its music program has truly become the place to be in January. For our Sundance 2012 playlist, we combined videos from some of the artists performing live, with some of our favorite songs featured in the films on show. Strap on your snow boots and enjoy tracks from Public Enemy, Flying Lotus, The Charlatans and more.



Elizabeth Harper - Class Actress
Finally, earlier this month we featured Azari & iii’s video for “Reckless (With Your Love)”, which throws back to old school 90s house music. Tweaking sounds from the past has been a recurring theme with emerging talent and our pick for this week is Class Actress - “Bienvenue” - you’re sure to experience that 80’s feeling!



Tim Partridge, YouTube music manager, recently watched "Girls - 'Honey Bunny' Official Video."

Music Tuesday: Power to the People, YouTube Slam and more

From the streets of Jerusalem to the bedrooms of America, this week on Music Tuesday we’re celebrating some of the musicians who are beginning their careers, making their names and finding an audience on YouTube.

YouTube stars rock Jerusalem
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of John Lennon’s “Power of the People,” last year a group of musicians on YouTube came together on the ancient streets of Jerusalem to create a new version of the song. Having performed together at an event earlier that day, Maria Aragon, 2CELLOS, Cobus and Marina Maximillian Blumin rendezvoused at the Iraqi Market and before long a large crowd had gathered to join the party. We’re excited to debut the final video today. Enjoy!



Five people, one guitar
This week’s standout music video success was undoubtedly Walk of the Earth’s five-people-play-one-guitar cover of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” With 25 million views and counting, it’s also provided a boost for the original song.



YouTube Slam
Do you think you could spot the next Bieber or Adele? YouTube Slam lets you compare and vote on the best bedroom balladeers, and each week crowns a new star. Check out a playlist of the current Top 10 below, and then head over to YouTube Slam to have your say on next week’s competition.



Tim Partridge, YouTube Music Manager, recently watched “Stereo Express - Shadooroack (Official Video Clip).”

Music Tuesday: A bevy of year-end lists from tUnE-yArDs and more

In 2011, music videos were as varied as the artists who made them: we saw a string of videos featuring parties you wish you’d been at. On the indie circuit, found footage and ghostly, atmospheric imagery dominated the landscape. We also saw musicians get behind the camera and make some extraordinary self-directed music videos. This week we invited a musician who's ending up on a lot of year-end lists to share with us their year-end lists — and one from a record store for good measure.

2011: Merrill Garbus’ Picks
Merrill Garbus’ tUnE-yArDs may have been embraced by the indie community, but tUnE-yArDs isn’t your average twee indie pop. If anything, Garbus is the antidote to twee: she’s got a big, blowsy voice and she explores its range with refreshing abandon, edging into abrasive territory in a way that is curiously not abrasive. She’s also profoundly influenced by African music, and you can hear itthatin the layered chirps and coos of some songs, which draw directly from the Central African pygmy vocal tradition. Yes, heady stuff -- but Garbus also loves her dance music, and that’s why her album w h o k i l l has connected on such a visceral level with so many fans this year. (It sounds like very little else in any genre.) We were intrigued to know what music inspired her this year; her choices may surprise you.



2011: Amoeba Music’s Picks
Last but not least, California’s largest independent music store employs a small army of music nerds. In one fell swoop of collective bargaining, they agreed on their 22 (22!) favorite music videos of 2011. Nobody has their fingers in as much music as these folks; consider this a quick primer on some great music that you might have missed.



See you in 2012!

Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Favorite Albums of 2011.”

Music Tuesday: Songs of the Season and more

We have two early presents for you this week—a playlist of seasonal songs, and a retrospective from Daptone Records first fantastic 10 years. Plus don’t miss Common performing from our New York office as part of YouTube Presents.

Songs for the Season
We celebrate the holidays by showing off the best performers in the world: you. These are your videos, your songs, your unique (and sometimes hilarious) takes on how to make this season bright. We’ve got four-part harmony how-to videos, acoustic greatness, joyful animation and even a dubstep take on “Carol of the Bells.” Thanks for all you do.



Daptone Records 10 Year Anniversary
In the ten years since Daptone Records opened its creaking doors, retromania has gone from a marginal concept to one that has a book named after it. Daptone was founded on love: love for the warm, organic sound of analog recording equipment and love for the funk and soul music that America produced in the 1960s. From those twin passions emerged a label devoted to classic sounds that somehow do not seem anachronistic in our digital age -- on the contrary, they’re warmly welcomed. Artists like Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley and the Budos Band have become critical darlings and festival favorites. But the label perhaps had its biggest impact on the culture when it loaned its house band, the Dap-Kings, to Amy Winehouse for one fateful album.



Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “XMAS SWAGGER by Princess Superstar.”

Music Tuesday: Wilco, an introduction to juking, and more

What’s happening on youtube.com/music this week? We dig into two facets of Chicago’s music scene, starting with Wilco’s indie-Americana explorations and then exploring the future-forward sound of juke. And then we go even farther afield...come with us!


Wilco curation
The iconic Chicago band Wilco have just released one of the most acclaimed albums of their career -- and possibly of 2011 (time will tell) -- in The Whole Love. The hook-filled album also stretches at its sonic space, artfully scarring its easy beauty with shards of noise and the occasional extended guitar jam. And yes, they’ve made some pretty lovely videos to go along with it. We invited the band to take over the YouTube homepage today, and they flood it with music you might not ordinarily see there. Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim. The inimitable Bill Withers. They gravitate to music that endures...not unlike their own.





Chicago Juke
While Wilco reps one aspect of Chi-town (its indie-Americana side), we turned to a completely different set of musicians to explore another facet of the city’s music scene. Maybe you've heard about juking. It's a dance scene; it's a musical style. It was born in Chicago, and it takes house music and hip-hop and strips them down, cranking up the BPMs and muddying the production values so it feels as if it could have come out of any corner of the world. People get wild to it; the footwork style has become hugely inspirational to dancers around the country. Even overseas dubstep producers have been influenced by the scene in recent years. Check out our introduction to this vibrant musical subculture.





Dakha Brakha “Vesna” Speaking of going local, you can’t get much more local than Dakha Brakha -- it’s just that the locale is a bit farther afield. (The Ukraine, to be exact.) Dakha Brakha play Ukranian folk music, but they do it with such art-house panache that it feels avant-garde instead of old. In “Vesna,” the band’s most recent video, they emerge from Ukraine’s forests in full traditional garb, setting up and performing in modern-day Kiev. The video builds slowly, but by the time it ends, modern life feels as if it’s been briefly transformed.





Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Yo Yo Ma - Attaboy.”

Music Tuesday: Fresh faces, Burning Man’s musical side and more

Summer’s drawing to a close, but there’s still time to discover a new summer anthem. Perhaps it’s a tune from Cults, the indie-popsters Noisey profiled last week on youtube.com/music. Or perhaps you’ll find your summer song in one of this week’s featured playlists.



Fresh Faces: August

Every month, we feature a handful of newly-signed music partners on YouTube’s homepage. This month, the pickings were so rich we couldn’t narrow it down to just four, so we chose six artists to feature, and they’re an inspiring group that spans the gamut, from a sixteen-year-old emcee from New Jersey who’s sworn off cursing to J Dilla protege and former Slum Village member Elzhi. Add a few jazzy singer-songwriters into the mix and there’s something for everyone.







Burning Man Survival Kit

The annual art festival takes place in Nevada Black Rock Desert this week. And while the event’s official focus is art -- kinetic, sculptural and frequently fire-breathing -- it’s also a premier gathering spot for fans of electronic music. Soundsystems on the “playa” vie with each other, putting on all-night raves that host cutting-edge deejays as well as some of the business’ biggest names. We’ve assembled a playlist of some sounds you might hear if you were there.







James Blake and Bon Iver: Fall Creek Boys Choir

Dubstep’s errant child and indie’s golden son have teamed up for an EP that releases later this year. They’ve dropped the first song from it on YouTube, and it’s a mysterious and spacious experiment in sound...just as we expected.







Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Pigeon John ‘The Bomb.’”

Music Tuesday: Catching our breath with Zee Avi, Tom Waits and The Decemberists

Whew. Did you catch all that? We’re still trying to recover from five intense days of music mania. That’s right, we relaunched youtube.com/music last Thursday, and throughout the weekend you saw our logo redesigned and a bundle of playlists from folks you might have heard of: Lady Gaga. David Guetta. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Eminem and Royce Da 5’9. And we had folks like SPIN Magazine, XLR8R and The Needle Drop clueing us in about what music we don’t know about, but should.



In the coming weeks, keep returning to youtube.com/music to discover more new videos, live performances and eye-opening playlists. Not only will our first batch of curators be returning with new features to share, we’ll be adding even more regular features from influential blogs, magazines, video bloggers and others. Keep coming back; we promise you’ll dig it.



Zee Avi curates the YouTube homepage

After featuring a bevy of celebrities over the past week, it’s fitting to come back to a celebrity YouTube helped foster. When Zee Avi posted her first video on YouTube, she had no idea it would make her a star; she just wanted to share a performance with a friend. One album and oodles of views later, she’s back with her second album, ghostbird. Today she shares an extremely lovely acoustic performance of several songs from the new album with us (we’re tripping over the first song, “Anchor,” which she filmed on a rooftop). She also shares some videos that put her in a state of self-described enchantment.







The Decemberists “Calamity Song”

The song is off their most recent album; the video was inspired by a scene in David Foster Wallace’s door-stop of a novel Infinite Jest. It feels to us like a metaphor for bad international decision-making, set on a tennis court with kids playing world leaders. What do you think?







Tom Waits “Bad As Me” Private Listening Party

How do you keep albums private in the digital age? How do you build excitement and mystery in an age devoted to breaking it down? Tom Waits, as always, shows us how.







Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Beirut - O Leaozinho.”

Music Tuesday: Jeff Bridges and other actors-turned-musicians

We’ve been a little obsessed with the intersection between film and music on youtube.com/music this week -- we kicked off Monday with a playlist of music videos by the acclaimed director Spike Jonze, who just directed Kanye West and Jay-Z’s easy, playful video for “Otis” and is also known for his work on the big screen, most recently for Where The Wild Things Are. And then there’s Jeff Bridges...



The Big Lebowski...Sings

Actors can convince us of a lot of things, but historically speaking, it’s pretty hard to make us believe they’re actually musicians. (Remember William Shatner’s “music” career?) But after his portrayal of a washed-up country singer in Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges got inspired to go back to a recording studio -- which he built on his own land -- and start writing songs again. With the expert support of producer T Bone Burnett, Bridges is proving himself to be more than an actor playing a part. His first single from his new album is catchy, smart and -- best of all -- convincing. Today we feature the man better known as “the dude” sharing a little bit about the music that has influenced and inspired him.







Actors: Wannabe Musicians?

In the spirit of Jeff Bridges getting his songwriting on, we thought we’d look at the track record of other actors who tried their hand at the music biz. You might be surprised by how many there are: from Keanu Reeves and Ryan Gosling to Minnie Driver and Zooey Deschanel, a lot of thespians have tried to cross the divide -- with mixed results. Wondering who soars and who falls flat? Only one way to find out: watch!







Fool’s Gold: Wild Window

Back in 2009, the L.A. band Fool’s Gold convinced reluctant indie rockers that they actually could enjoy music that wasn’t in English -- in part because the unholy mongrelism of the band's debut album was just too compelling to ignore. (Perhaps that was due to the incongruousness of a singer crooning in Hebrew over guitar licks that came straight of the Sahara.) The focus has changed on their follow-up Leave No Trace -- vocalist Luke Top sings primarily in English and the once-sprawling collective has become a tight five-piece. But if this charming video is any indication, change is a good thing.







Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Feist - How Come You Never Go There.”

Music Tuesday: Lollapalooza, old-school hip-hop and supporting East Africa

This week we're recovering from Lollapalooza after three days and in the sun and storms of Chicago, IL. We also travel back to the birth of a genre in honor of one of those that made it great. And finally, we showcase a Bob Marley & The Wailers classic, re-released today in support of Save the Children's East Africa campaign.

You'll find all this and more on youtube.com/music, where each day we serve you up the tastiest morsels from the world of music video.

Lollapalooza 2011
Twenty years ago Perry Farrell founded the traveling circus of a festival that was Lollapalooza. Now with its roots firmly planted in Chicago, the three day extravaganza continues to grow, mixing the biggest names in music with a dizzying array of bright young stars. This year YouTube brought the festival to the world, live streaming 39 great acts from across the weekend including headliners Coldplay, My Morning Jacket and the Foo Fighters. Check out some highlights in the playlist below.



Old-School Hip-Hop
In music, you gotta know your history and appreciate the artists who laid the foundation for today’s tunes. Today is Kurtis Blow’s birthday, which put us in mind of the golden age of hip-hop when rap battles on your front stoop, wheels of steel and gold chains were the rage. To celebrate an era whose influence is still resonating today, we put together a playlist of the best videos of the era from folks like the Fat Boys, RUN-DMC, Slick Rick and the Sugar Hill Gang. The music holds up, and trust us—so does the fashion.



High Tide or Low Tide
A devastating food crisis continues to impact millions of children and their families across East Africa. Today, Save the Children and the Marley family re-release the 1973 song 'High Tide or Low Tide' to raise funds for food, water and medicine. The project is supported by Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Justin Beiber and many others in the entertainment industry, and the video was crafted by Oscar winning director Kevin Macdonald.



Tim Partridge, Music Marketing Manager, recently watched "LisaNova Does Royce da 5'9 Tinie Tempah Foster the People, Ellie Goulding & Mayer Hawthorne."

Music Tuesday: Lollapalooza Week on YouTube, and more

Can’t make it to Chicago this weekend to check out Lollapalooza on its 20th anniversary? We’ve got you covered. Starting at 11:45am PT this Friday, you’ll be able to watch four festival stages live on youtube.com/lollapalooza. The webcast will run all weekend long and feature a few bands you might have heard of: Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Muse, Damian Marley and Nas, Bright Eyes and many more. See the full list of bands participating in the webcast here.

To celebrate, we’ve been featuring video premieres from some of the biggest names playing the festival/webcast. On Monday, the Foo Fighters unveiled their affecting “Garage Tour” short film, which follows the band as they play intimate shows in people’s garages across the country. (Warning: the first vignette might make you cry.) Today, we feature headliners My Morning Jacket. We’ll have more premieres from bands playing the webcast through the week; keep checking back to youtube.com/music.

My Morning Jacket curation
My Morning Jacket takes to the homepage today with a curation of some of their favorite videos. We’re still over the moon about the amazing clip from a Jim Henson short they chose, which is so beautifully edited it feels like music, even though it’s not. The band also shows a marked predilection for jazz and Marvin Gaye, which is hard to argue with. And in honor of their participation in the Lollapalooza webcast later this week, they premiere their video for “Holdin On To Black Metal” with us today.



Global Ghetto Music
In recent years, we’ve seen urban and electronic music circle the globe and shape-shift everywhere it landed. Miami Bass and old-school hip-hop headed to Brazil and became baile funk; house music headed to South Africa and became kwaito. Dance music trickled down to Angola and became kuduro. A few years ago, M.I.A. grabbed headlines for tapping into this rich vein of global funk. Today we showcase bands who are picking up where she left off, marrying their local sounds to hip-hop and electronic source material.



Toro y Moi “How I Know” video premiere
And last (but by no means least!), we debut a brand-new video from the genre-evading indie/psych/chillwave phenom Toro y Moi (aka Chaz Bundwick). “How I Know” is easily one of the best songs off of Bundwick’s lauded Underneath The Pines, a track that marries his gauzy vocals with damaged Burt Bacharach-esque pop and a palpable sense of longing. Put it together with a video that references movies like Goonies, Poltergeist, Ghostbusters and Victorian ghost stories, and you have pure genius. The video was directed by Jordan Kim, whose wonderful animation work you might know from the hipster kids show Yo Gabba Gabba.



Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Toro y Moi - How I Know.”

Music Tuesday: Bjork, Mick Jagger and bidding farewell to Amy Winehouse

The death of Amy Winehouse on Saturday has dominated music headlines. This week on youtube.com/music, we commemorate her talent and mourn her passing, while also turning our gaze to a famous rocker’s birthday and a video premiere.

RIP Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse came into the music world as a singer-songwriter who had the phrasing of a world-class jazz singer and the swagger of a hip-hop star. She left it as a tragedy and cautionary tale. Winehouse was just 27 years old when she died—the same age as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. It’s both auspicious and grim company to keep, and Ms. Winehouse fulfilled both attributes, grabbing the world’s attention with her ferociously good music (which succeeded, in no small part, thanks to the contributions from her borrowed band The Dap-Kings) and then slowly squandering that attention with increasingly addled behavior that was fueled by her multiple addictions.

After the story fades, the music will remain. People may think of the bravado-laden “Rehab” as her signature song, but the flipside of Winehouse’s bravado was intense vulnerability, which you hear in spades on wonderful songs like “Love Is A Losing Game” or the deceptively upbeat “He Can Only Hold Her.” To pay homage to Winehouse, we shied away from her official music videos and looked for live performances that let you experience her towering talent more directly -- as well as her charm and humor.



Happy Birthday, Mick
Rock’s most dynamic frontman turns 68 years old today. We salute the Jagger-meister with a playlist of videos capturing his onstage antics through the years.



Bjork “Crystalline” video premiere
The Icelandic singer has made a career of subverting expectations and pushing boundaries, so it’s no surprise that her upcoming album Biophilia is in fact not an album but an app that’s due out in September. You can chew on that, or you can check out her mystical new video for “Crystalline,” which debuts with us today.



Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “The DL - Amy Winehouse ‘Valerie’ Live.”