Today is a Fairytale: Taylor Swift takes your questions on YouTube

From "Tim McGraw" to "Sparks Fly," Taylor Swift has won over fans worldwide with her vocal talent and songwriting skills. In addition to a tremendous fan following, Swift has racked up four Grammys, six CMT Music Awards, thirteen Teen Choice Awards and even the Academy of Country Music’s Entertainer of the Year award, joning the likes of Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and The Dixie Chicks. And now she takes your questions on YouTube!

Ever wonder what it’s like to become a major pop star before you’re out of high school -- on the strength of your own songs? Whether you’re cheer captain or on the bleachers, Taylor wants to hear from you and she’s agreed to be fearless in answering!



Starting today, submit written or video queries on Taylor Swift’s channel, and she’ll answer the most popular ones as part of our YouTube Presents program. You have until noon on August 31 to submit your questions and vote on the ones you’d most like to see her answer.

YouTube Presents is an ongoing program dedicated to bringing you live performances and interviews with your favorite artists. Upcoming YouTube Presents events will include artist interviews (with questions provided by the YouTube community), intimate performances at the YouTube offices, and live streams of music festivals.

Stay tuned for more YouTube Presents sessions this fall -- and watch the homepage to see Taylor’s Q&A, which we’ll post as soon as it’s uploaded.

Anna Richardson, Communications Manager, recently watched "Our Song."

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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.”

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YouTube.com/music is your ever-changing guide to music

YouTube has videos across the entire spectrum of music, from current pop hits to classic tracks to obscure but wonderful sounds. But how do you find that next piece of musical gold? To help with this task we’re re-launching our YouTube Music page with a host of new features to help guide you on your audio-visual quest, and several guest curators to help out as well.

On YouTube.com/music you can now find:

• recommended videos and artists based on the music videos you’re watching


• local concert listings in your area paired with artist videos


• the YouTube Top 100 - your invaluable source to the most popular music based on what the community is viewing

To help you get more into music on YouTube we’ve also partnered with music experts and tastemakers to provide you with daily playlists and picks. In the coming weeks you’ll be able to check out curations from SPIN, Vice, XLR8R and more. Some of YouTube’s music vloggers will also find a new home on the page, like the “Internet’s busiest music nerd,” Anthony Fantano of The Needle Drop.

Finally, you may have noticed the electric guitar adorning the YouTube logo today. It’s there today to celebrate the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Guide to Rock, who have the first hand-picked playlist on the new music page. Over the next five days some of your favorite music stars will be sharing a personal guide to their genre, including David Guetta’s Guide to Electronica on Friday, Lady Gaga’s Guide to Pop on Saturday and Eminem & Royce Da 5’9”’s Guide to Hiphop on Monday. Look out for a new music-based YouTube logo each day, and clicking on it will bring you straight to the music page.

Tim Partridge, Music Marketing Manager recently watched “Check out the new youtube.com/music.”

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Creating new opportunities for publishers and songwriters

YouTube has become a thriving music ecosystem and a place for established and emerging singers and songwriters to find an audience. Today, we’re happy to announce an agreement with two leading U.S representatives of music publishers -- the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and its subsidiary Harry Fox Agency (HFA) -- that will help more music publishers, and the songwriters they represent, make more money from use of their compositions in YouTube videos uploaded by fans.

We already have deals in place with a number of music publishers in the U.S. and around the world, and today’s deal offers more choice for rights holders in how they manage use of their songs. Going forward, the 46,000 music publishers already affiliated with HFA will be able to license the musical compositions they represent for use by the YouTube community. When these publishers allow YouTube to run ads alongside user generated videos that incorporate their compositions, the publishers, and the songwriters they represent, can make money. We’ll also be working with HFA to invite other publishers to sign up, even if they’re not affiliated with HFA.

Our Content ID system allows us to identify the works of these songwriters whether the compositions appear in an original sound recording or in a cover version, using information provided to us by the publishers. This means that more songwriters will be able to share in more of the revenue that the YouTube community’s creativity yields. It’s simple for publishers to opt in to this licensing opportunity, and advances in our technology help publishers to find even more performances of their songs, providing the opportunity for more revenue. Content ID is used today by 2000+ partners including every major US music publisher, record label, network broadcaster, and movie studio.

While this deal is only with the publishers, it will also benefit recording artists and record labels. It’s been YouTube’s policy to run ads alongside videos with commercial music only when the copyright holders for both the sound recording and the composition have authorized YouTube to do so. We’ve long had agreements with all four major record labels as well as dozens of independent labels, and now that we are broadening our coverage with more publishers, we’ll be able to create more revenue streams for all of them.

With today’s deal and advances in Content ID technology, we’re continuing our recognition of songwriters for their artistic contribution by supporting them with an additional revenue stream to help their future creative pursuits.

Elizabeth Moody, Head of Strategic Partner Development for music, recently watched "The Joy Formidable - Whirring live at Lollapalooza, August 7th, 2011."

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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.”

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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.”

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Music Tuesday: The Needle Drop, fresh faces and more

It’s been a busy few weeks on youtube.com/music. We celebrated the July 4 weekend in the U.S. with a playlist of music to BBQ by and took a look at the women of Americana. Last Tuesday we were wooed by indie rockers YACHT, who made a completely adorable video introducing their curation of the YouTube homepage. We also paid homage to the Latin Alternative Music Conference, a gathering for Latino buzz bands that took place in NYC last week. Then it was on to a haunting new genre of music, and a look at the latest in live performances on YouTube.

Introducing The Needle Drop
This week we debut a new monthly series from Anthony Fantano, the DJ and music critic otherwise known by his channel name, The Needle Drop. Anthony quickly became one of our favorite music reviewers on YouTube for his witty and perhaps nerdy insights into a broad range of music. Sure, he skews indie, but as he admits himself, that’s only when he’s not reviewing major label releases, hip-hop or metal. His serious engagement with the music is matched only by his entertaining screen personality, and this week he begins a monthly round-up for us of his favorite releases, complete with music videos and reviews.



Fresh Faces: July
Oodles of under-the-radar musicians find a home for their work on YouTube, and every month we feature four of them on the homepage. Today we profile four very different artists who bring strong, distinct perspectives to their work. Shankar Tucker is a young clarinetist who got obsessed by Indian classical music, with awesome results. Jayanti’s now-burgeoning career got started when a friend took a video of her singing a song at dinner one night. LaTosha Brown is a crazily talented singer who actually stopped performing eight years ago and now heads the Gulf Coast Fund, a social justice philanthropy organization. (San Francisco micro-label Porto Franco Records caught one arresting video of her singing recently, and we decided it deserved a feature.) And we just liked Faded Paper Figures’ style.



Kurt Vile “Baby’s Arms”
Vile’s deceptively simple song gets its power from its stripped-down aesthetic, and it’s bolstered by an extraordinarily lo-fi video which was shot entirely on a smartphone. This is the kind of one-two punch you have to love.



Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “SBTRKT - Wildfire.”

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Music Tuesday: Mystery bands, Buddy Holly and more

Things have been popping on youtube.com/music over the last week. Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti’s son Seun just released a new album, and in honor of the potent genre his dad created, we put together a playlist of Afrobeat essentials. We also joined the world in celebrating pride week last weekend with a clutch of anthemic songs new and old. And we turned our attention to England, where the Glastonbury music festival raged. We remembered Glastos past and heard from a young band named Viva Brother, who played the festival for the first time and guided us through the experience. Oh yeah, and pop star/actress Selena Gomez debuted her new album (with commentary) on Sunday. On to this week!

Mystery bands
With the release of Shabazz Palaces’s full-length debut Black Up this week (which you can listen to in its entirety here), we found ourselves thinking about disguises, and all the bands over the years who’ve used them. Shabazz Palaces offers an avant-garde take on hip-hop; the group is helmed by Ishmael Butler of Digable Planets, but he hid behind the moniker Palaceer Lazaro for several years and still refuses to name his collaborators. Butler isn’t the first to cloak his musical experiments in a veil of mystery. This week, we present some artists who have used anonymity to fuel their boundary-pushing work, starting with San Francisco provocateurs The Residents and moving through the leftfield R&B of The Weeknd (who seem to be linked with Drake), the pop culture pastiche act Nike7UP, British oddities Hype Williams and more.



Buddy Holly raves on
Buddy Holly forever altered the course of rock’n’roll with his astonishing 25 hit songs—all of which he penned and recorded before he died in a plane crash at the age of 22. Don McLean famously sang that the day the plane crashed was “the day the music died,” and it was hard not to agree with him. But nothing proves Holly’s music lives on like Rave On Buddy Holly, a tribute album that features everybody from CeeLo Green to Patti Smith covering his songs. We check out a few tracks from the album as well as other tributes to the rock’n’roll pioneer.



Breakbot “Fantasy Jacques Renault Remix”
With “Fantasy,” the French producer Breakbot turned out a song that could have come off of Michael Jackson’s “Off The Wall” circa 1979. But really it’s the video that had us at hello: a mash-up of roller-skating videos from the 1970s and ‘80s that practically screams “summer.”



Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Bon Iver - Bon Iver ALBUM REVIEW.”

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Music Tuesday: Other Music, Terra Naomi and Pete Rock

Summer is finally underway in the northern hemisphere, and while new releases may be slowing down, youtube.com/music is getting busy. Neo-soul songstress Jill Scott graced us with a playlist of her inspirations over the weekend, the ever-charming Alicia Keys celebrates the ten-year anniversary of Songs In A Minor with an invitation to the YouTube community and the music world mourned the loss of Clarence Clemons, the gentle giant who played saxophone with Bruce Springsteen for more than thirty years. Meanwhile, everybody from Bon Iver to Pitbull are releasing new albums today. Later this week we’ll feature a contest, another video premiere and some very special coverage from England’s Glastonbury music festival; be sure to check out youtube.com/music over the weekend for updates.

Other Music recommends...music!
When we started inviting independent record stores to curate playlists of their favorite music, we had no idea that so many of you would be watching. More than 500k views later, Amoeba Music’s playlist is still turning people on to good music, so this month we head to the East Coast to see what’s popping at Other Music, the New York record store known as a home to all things indie, experimental and adventurous. They came up with a creative collection of videos which we’re featuring on the homepage today.



Terra Naomi
One of YouTube’s early music stars, Terra Naomi set the template for many who followed. Her song “Say It’s Possible” featured one of the first crowdsourced music videos; five years later, she’s releasing a new album and a new crowdsourced video, which she’s premiering with us today. The video is directed by Alex Albrecht and made in conjunction with iPhone app Hipstamatic and pulls images from over 10,000 entries from around the world. She also shares a playlist of some of her favorite cover songs of all time.



Smif-n-Wessun & Pete Rock premiere the album Monumental
Smif-n-Wessun (later known as Cocoa Brovaz after a legal dispute over their name) helped define hardcore hip-hop lyricism with a string of successful, critically-lauded albums back in the 1990s. Pete Rock has been in the game just as long, an emcee and producer who helped define jazz-hop alongside acts like A Tribe Called Quest. He went on to become one of the Wu-Tang Clan’s go-to producers, crafting tracks for everyone from Raekwon to Ghostface Killah. Monumental proves the duo’s tag-team rap style is still on lock, while Pete Rock’s production never misses the mark — and often recalls his late, great colleague, the venerated J Dilla. Check it out now, one week before release date.



Sarah Bardeen recently watched “Breakbot - ‘Fantasy’ (Jacques Renault remix).”

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Music Tuesday: Eminem’s live Q&A, new jazz and dubstep meets G-Funk

It’s a quiet week on the new release front, but on the video front, things are popping. Perhaps the biggest debut was Katy Perry’s new video. The pop vixen performs as her alter-ego Kathy Beth Terry, and the video features none other than Rebecca Black and other familiar faces. If that doesn’t float your boat, check out what else is happening on youtube.com/music today.

Eminem’s favorite collaborations
How many EPs generate this much buzz? Eminem and fellow Detroit rapper Royce da 5'9 go way back -- the duo met in 1997 and immediately clicked. They formed Bad Meets Evil and recorded a few songs, but then Emimen got signed to a major label and, well, you know the rest. Though Royce appeared on The Slim Shady LP, various beefs led the friends to fall out until a mutual friend’s death reunited them a few years ago. Now they’re back in the studio, and Royce’s skillful rhymes seem to have invigorated Eminem: he sounds looser and more playful than you’ve heard him in years. You can see their chemistry in the video, which emphasizes the lyricism and wordplay with painted graphics. Today, Eminem picks his favorite collaborative videos to celebrate the release. It’s a Dre-heavy mix, naturally, but he also showcases an EPMD classic and the Junior Mafia evergreen “Mo Money, Mo Problems.” Also, Royce and the famously publicity-averse Mr. Mathers take to his YouTube channel this afternoon at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT to answer your questions live.



New jazz, now
This week, we extract some fresh jazz tidbits for the curious. Top of our list? Ambrose Akinmusire, a young trumpeter out of Oakland, Ca. who has been making waves among jazz fans for his fluid compositions and compelling tone. We’ve also got Norah Jones singing a lovely rendition of “Come Rain or Come Shine” with Wynton Marsalis and a short piece on the new album from the sultry Brazilian vocalist Eliane Elias.



CHLLNGR “Ask For”
This is the first single off of CHLLNGR’s upcoming release Haven. Who is CHLLNGR? The Danish producer has been quietly remixing everybody from M.I.A. to The XX, but that’s not why we love him. First, the creepy video is a win: shot in a forest outside of Copenhagen, nothing much happens, yet you keep watching in rapt anticipation. Something might happen. Equally awesome is the song’s G-funk synthesizer line, which erupts straight out of the West Coast circa 1992 and collides with dubstep’s unsteady bass (currently London’s biggest export). It’s a subtle and smart combination, and it has us looking forward to more from this producer from the north country.



Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Bob Dylan - Tangled Up In Blue.”

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