With the weather heating up and summer fast approaching, here are the top jams – old and new, covering a little bit of every genre – to quickstart your summer celebrations.

1. “Can’t Hold Us” – Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

When there’s an opportunity to add Mackelmore to your playlist, you take it. “Can’t Hold Us” is an excellent kickstart to your summer with its lyrics about making the most out of life. It’s a party jam for your upcoming summer parties.

2. “Hey Love” – Quadron

“Hey Love”‘s smoky vocals and spunky beats make this track a chill dance number perfect for this summer.

3. “Differentology” – Bunji Garlin

“Differentology” has every component of a perfect summer jam – piano chords, a nice rhythm and a Spanish guitar strumming in the background. This Trinidadian track could belong at a beach rave, a carnival, or any street party.

4. “Deadbeat Summer” – Neon Indian

Neon Indian made a big first impression at last year’s Coachella. Their techno track about summer is a must for any summer playlist.

5. “That Summer Feeling” – Jonathon Richman

It sounds like the happiest summer song to ever be recorded, but the haunting chorus quickly tells you that assumptions is wrong. Sure, it talks about the wonderful things about summer, but it also reminds you how nothing else will compare. So, don’t waste your summer days.

6. “Happy Hour” – the Housemartins

Summer usually comes with at least one road trip and “Happy Hour” is the perfect song for long car rides. It’s a nice, fun, upbeat tune to pass the seemingly never-ending time spent on the road.

7. “Margaritaville” – Jimmy Buffett

It’s the original summer jam. That’s the only explanation it needs.

8. “Mirrors” – Justin Timberlake 

It’d be a shame to waste Justin Timberlake’s return without attaching him to a summer playlist. “Mirrors” is the perfect relaxed, yet upbeat jam for the summer.

9. “Radioactive” – Imagine Dragons

After a quick rise from obscurity, Imagine Dragons have taken over nearly every movie trailer this summer making “Radioactive” a perfect track for the summer.

10. I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) – The Proclaimers

This is another road trip ready song. Because, honestly, who doesn’t like this song?

11. “Hindou” – El Guincho

Canary Island native, El Guincho’s, song is the personification of summer.

12. “Rockaway Beach” – The Ramones

Summer in New York is an experience and “Rockaway Beach” nearly captures it.

13. “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” – Otis Redding

It’s a classic, feel-good, perfect for summer song.

14. “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody” – Fergie

It’s inevitable that some of The Great Gatsby’s stellar soundtrack make itself onto a summer playlist. Channel your inner Jay Gatsby (but not too much – that won’t end well) and throw your own roaring party with this jam.

15. “Wild for the Night” – A$AP Rocky

This hip-hop/dubstep hybrid is a perfect party mix and shouldn’t be too long before it rises to the top as one of the top, if not the top, song of the summer.

Social Music News | Music Technology and Start-Ups

22 May 2013, London: CueSongs, the one-stop music licensing hub for online and digital media, today announced a partnership with music licensing and technology company Audiosocket. Audiosocket’s music catalogue now includes CueSongs’ roster of established artists, and will be available in early June to customers which include Vimeo, The Associated Press, Monster Energy, StyleHaul, Tongal and WPP.

Licensing famous music for web media and user-generated content has been next to impossible. These challenges have caused disruption to copyrights on a global level. This new partnership will begin to change that by opening up the licensing process around famous content, where more than 90% of all license requests have historically gone unanswered. With more than 80 hours worth of video posted online every minute, this presents a huge growth opportunity for artists and publishers.

CueSongs will now enable Audiosocket’s clients, including independent film and video creators, to find and easily license music from established artists for their digital and mobile productions. Audiosocket customers can elect to offer CueSongs music via the Audiosocket licensing system, ensuring that these artists are compensated for use of their work.

CueSongs signed agreements last year with all the major publishers, as well as working directly with a number of artists such as Groove Armada, Embrace, French Horn Rebellion, Dido, Ziggy Marley and Peter Gabriel.

Peter Gabriel, music pioneer and co-founder of CueSongs, says: “Making video is no longer exclusive to a small professional elite, it is now open to all of us. Many of us want to add music to our videos, but have no idea how we might get the right permissions. Whether we be amateurs, semiprofessionals, small businesses or schools etc. there are millions of potential users, who currently have nowhere to go to license their music. CueSongs painlessly connects music licensing to the new world of social media, Youtube, and the web. In the same way that low cost airlines encouraged millions of people to make trips that they would never have considered in the old traditional model, we believe CueSongs can create a whole new flexible and responsive market for music licenses.”

Jenn Miller, COO of Audiosocket, comments: “Audiosocket provides highly curated, culturally-relevant music for client projects, and is focused on making the customer experience of sourcing, licensing, and using music as seamless as possible.
Delivering great music to our customers while making sure our artists have a platform for distribution that ensures they are properly compensated for their work has always been top priority. We are thrilled to add well known artists to our collection via CueSongs, and are very excited to introduce our current and future customers to this new partnership.”

The integration of CueSongs with the Audiosocket catalogue will first be made available to existing Audiosocket partners and will be made available to all clients later this year.

CueSongs and Audiosocket will be presenting together at internet TV and independent production industry conference STREAM, taking place in California 3-4 June, 2013.

Social Music News | Music Technology and Start-Ups

In 1956, a war-torn Europe created a night of musical unity that was intended to bring the countries back together. This past weekend, Sweden hosted Eurovision’s 58th Annual Song Contest. The theme was “we are one” and sought to highlight the cultural diversity and influence of the participants.

The idea behind Eurovision is simple. Each country submits a song to be performed live on television and at the end of the night, they vote for another country’s performance to declare a winner who will host Eurovision the following year. While Eurovision is a strictly European event, several participants have gone on to be worldwide phenomenons. Sweden’s ABBA won Eurovision’s 1974 competition and went on to international stardom.

A total of twenty-six countries participated in this year’s contest and in true Eurovision fashion, the acts varied from classic and patriotic to downright bizarre. Because the winning country is required to host Eurovision, countries in financial crisis will sometimes send absurd acts to ensure that they don’t win. For instance, Greece performed a song called “Alcohol is Free” in what was likely an attempt to guarantee their failure.

Aside from the free Greek alcohol, there were enthusiastic Belgian dancers, vikings, sexual tension between a singer and a man in a glass box, Sweden’s half-time show of stereotypes, and Romania‘s dubstep vampire opera. In the end, Danish Emmelie de Forrest’s “Only Teardrops” took home first place with an impressive 281 points.

Social Music News | Music Technology and Start-Ups

Rumors are circulating that Beyoncé is pregnant again from Jay-Z.  Jay-Z recently sent an email to a New York DJ that Beyoncé was indeed not pregnant, MTV reported.  However, news has come forward that Beyoncé IS in fact pregnant with a second child, a boy this time around.

An inside source of the Knowles-Carter crew has come forward anonymously to spill the beans on the new baby.  “She has a hospital room booked at Seder Sinai Hospital,” the anonymous source tells So So.  “She’s actually nine months along and is set to give birth on [May] 31, next Friday.”

Beyonce trying to hide her baby bump back in september of last year

The anonymous source has told us that she knows the name of the baby and it is Blueprint 2 Carter.  Congratulations to Beyoncé and Jay-Z for their newest addition.

UPDATE: The anonymous source claiming that Beyoncé was set to give birth has come forward as Michelle Williams.  When asked why she came forward, she replied, “Remember me? I was the other member of Destiny’s Child that wasn’t Kelly or Beyoncé. What? You’ve never heard of me?  I came out with three albums, I performed that one song at the Super Bowl with Beyoncé.”

Michelle Williams has been with Destiny’s Child since since 2000 and has been under the radar since before that. We’ve yet to hear any statements from Beyoncé  about the status of her baby and what she will do to Michelle.  Best of luck to Michelle.

This Isn’t Even Beyonce’s Final Form

(These are only Rumors)

Social Music News | Music Technology and Start-Ups

Here are the Top Ten One Hit wonders of the world, according to So So Active

The 10 songs used in the video

10. Rockwell – Somebody’s Watching Me. Motown Records
9. Sir Mix-a-Lot – Baby Got Back. American Records
8. Amber – This is Your Night. Tommy Boy Records
7. Eagle-Eye Cherry – Save Tonight. Diesel/ Work Records
6. Alien Ant Farm – Smooth Criminal. SKG Music
5. Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock – It Takes Two. Profile Records
4. Outasight – Tonight Is The Night. Warner Brothers Records
3. Sugarhill Gang – Rapper’s Delight. Sugar Hill Records
2. Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby. SBK Records
1. A-Ha – Take On Me. Warner Brothers Records