A new exciting year is upon us! Many are still absorbing the news of Imeem going down, and the few possibly..or real reasons why. For those of us in the know, it is surprising to hear what really brought Imeem down, then again maybe not too surprising. Anyways…
Onto bigger news that improves things for musicians and fans a like is the Google and Myspace deals going down lately.
Status Updates
Google works Myspace status updates into their real-time search capabilities. Oh this is so “last month” as far as news, but a really big deal for the landscape of 2010. I’m gathering the deal is you can get real time results of *status updates* from Myspace, Twitter, and soon Facebook Fan Pages, via Google.
To check this out in action, simply:
1) Go to Google
2) Below the search box click on ” + Show Options ”
3) On left hand navigation go down and click “Latest”
4) Bingo you will see real-time data start to scroll down the page
5) This is the future!
What does this mean to you the musician or band that wants to have presence on the Web?
Update your status’s! ; no matter the consensus on how “cool” Myspace is. You must still have some sort of presence there and update it, maybe even daily!
Instead of *just* status updates. This arrangement drafted by Myspace and Collecta enables users to search for sentiment / key words in Blogs, Comments *and* status updates!
Myspace is wheeling and dealin’, so be sure to include it your daily routine of Web and Social Media Presence for Music Marketing and Fan Engagement. Tell your fans about Real-time search at Collecta and Google. When people ask you where your from, say ” I’m from allova’ “
I’ve done a couple outreach campaigns with my band to European countries on a network-to-remain-nameless and I must admit, they like my music more that America does. So far at least. Last.fm is cool , but Spotify of course is all the new rage. So maybe 4 weeks ago I went through Cdbaby Digital and asked to just be put into Spotify as I have already put my music into stores via Tunecore. I am imagining I should be up and available very soon. CDbaby was keeping this somewhat low key I noticed, but the cat is outta the bag now, and you have other options too.
Just got this e-mail from Spotify:
Dear Artists,
First of all; we are really glad to hear that you are interested in getting your music onto Spotify.
We appreciate your patience since you signed up to the Spotify Artist and Label list. Since we last communicated to you we have created some pretty cool things. For instance, it’s now possible to listen to your favorite music (and hopefully soon your music) using Spotify on your mobile phone. Also, our time and energy has gone into uploading thousands of tracks every day from the 80 thousand labels we currently have agreements with. However, getting more independent artists’ music onto Spotify is important to us, so we’re working on various solutions to assist you.
The current solution we offer indie artists is to make your deliveries through Record Union, Zimbalam, CDBaby or Ditto Music. They are artist-aggregators, whom we work closely with; and through them you can create a standard agreement and upload your music onto Spotify as well as deliver your music to other great digital services such as 7digital, iTunes, Amazon etc.
So if you want to join Spotify we strongly recommend you to go one of the following sites:
http://cdbaby.com/
http://www.recordunion.com/
http://www.dittomusic.com/
http://www.zimbalam.com/
We’re really looking forward to having your music on Spotify soon!
Regards,
The music team at Spotify
Nice note eh? Now go get your music everywhere! Europe or BUST!
I saw the panel schedule last night for this upcoming Monday 12/7 SF Music Tech Summit, Brian Zisk is yet again pulling off another fantastic event full of great panel discussions. You will simply be torn as to which panel to go to as you have 3 to choose from any any time for most of the day…and a great keynote is in store! Well that’s all I can really say right now.
You know about thesixtyone yet? You should post your music up there yep. It’s all “all indie +” feast of new music. Bands post and people listen or band’s post music and also start a listener account to “be social” …or try to game the system somewhat. Some smart programming to discourage gaming and enable some real listening is in effect. The system gives you “Quests” to tackle and rewards “credibility” points and also gives you “levels” to un-lock; very video game system like. Cool stuff.
You can buy music also ; a cool mantra they tote is:
“A song means a lot; when a song is bought”
I like that one!
Now go and join and listen to my new ballad I just posted and other great bands:
Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago at 2:04 pm. Add a comment
HOT NEWS – Thanks to PRThatRocks I got a short gig helping out with the Social Media campaign for the upcoming Todd Rundgren West Coast AWATS Tour. Check it out; he will be performing the entire classic album “A Wizard A Star” live with Jesse Gress, Kasim Sulton, Prairie Prince, Greg Hawkes, Ralph Schuckett, and Bobby Strickland!!
PRThatRocks, with some consulting from yours truly will be executing a Social Media campaign around, Facebook, Myspace/iLike, and Twitter to help spread the word about these highly anticipated performances.
One main job was to author and Official Fan Page for Facebook and help migrate some fans from his personal profile over to the new page, that is sure to increase in fans numbers very quickly. Also to consult/assist the management in grabbing the vanity url. Be sure to join it at Facebook!
Stay tuned, just getting started.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago at 12:52 pm. Add a comment
Got a chance to catch up with Alan from MixMatchMusic to tell 5thbeatle fans about their new self serve app for band and musicians “MOBbase“. I’m not a big video guy so let’s see how this works right off my Crackberry.
Many thanks top the awesome Carol Tran at “Chic Meets Geek” whom provide the great event showcasing this new and exciting start-up venture. Stay tuned for more great events from her.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago at 12:23 pm. Add a comment
The leader of direct-to-fan software solutions for music, TopSpin Media and the legendary Berklee College of Music in Boston just recently announced an exciting new course offering for folks to become TopSpin Certified and work with their unique platform.
The cost looks reasonable and the courses are offered on-line, so if your big on handling this type of work for bands or can make the investment to handle your own music all on your own ; check it out; powerful knowledge from folks that have been at the forefront of digital music delivery for quite some time.
Sometimes time just breezes by and you see things go across your Web sphere with the speed of light. Not always having time to absorb the many cool things going on in Web Music Technology and to reach out to cool people doing cool things. Today I took a time out and found some good stuff mang’.
Cash Music. A non-profit organization doing some really sharp Web presentations and marketing for music ; take heed to *up to date* techniques being rendered. Take a look at the impressive list of projects on their Website at the link above.
Note a couple great examples:
50 Foot Wave
One page minimalist approach like a MUX Tape, or 8 Tracks page. Futuristic, forward thinking. I should do this
Nice big artsy graphic
One button play
One button FREE download
Link to buy from AMAZON
Link to donate through Paypal
Family of the Year
Again, excellent execution here, note upper left corner under “Find Us Elsewhere,” adhering to my “triangle” concept of 1) Main band Website 2) Facebook 3) Twitter, and including Myspace in the secondary “triangle” of Fan Outreach or Social Media wrangling.
Man, I should practice what I preach to the minimalist level ! Effective use of Web Technology and Social Media tools here, with minimal distractions. It’s all about *The Music*.
Hats off to Cash Music!
Posted 10 months, 1 week ago at 3:10 pm. Add a comment
Hmmm another new Social Media Dashboard enters the scene? Nifty. www.DigaBand.com . I’m going to put this in my “widegets” category as I simply do not have a “Dashboard” category. A dashboard let’s you control your status updates and say, similar to the likes of ReverbNation or iLike.com, an array of widgets can be deployed/updated/controlled/tracked. With yesterday’s implementation of the iLike.com Artist Dashboard and fan, music player, analytics into Myspace, the Web Music Technology / Social Networking space is getting very interesting. Who will be king?
From the description on the Alpha site, regarding the Beta launch, it seems to be just that, a Dashboard “+” other perks, such as the value add of networking with other “indie” bands “with less than 1000 fans” … ya know, the ol’ “team up with other bands” thing. Share fans, put on a show, sell stuff, drink beer with your combined fandom assets. Great article on TechCrunch this morning.
I have not got into the program yet, and I’m kinda guessing it’s a Dashboard play… but I can say perfect timing to enter the space. Good luck guys, can’t wait to tinker with the new diggs! Ok, gotta gig, gotta go!
Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago at 11:00 am. Add a comment
Starting as of September 24th, bands can sign up to FourFour for free, and then, optionally, choose to pay for upgrades from an a la carte menu of Premium Features.
As expected, the new free version of FourFour comes with limitations:
* Premium accounts can map their website to an official domain. Free accounts
must use their FourFour URL (i.e. http://bandname.fourfour.com)
* Free accounts may have outside advertising incorporated into their website
* Free accounts can stream up to 3 songs in their Music Player, Premium accounts get more!
* Premium accounts can make any songs available as MP3 downloads and
can access and use embeddable play buttons
* Premium accounts can add a Press Kit to their website
* Premium accounts can send emails to subscribers on their Mailing List
* Premium accounts get super-awesome customer support
Go to the following links to learn of the options:
