I’ve had a few of my clients log into their Myspace account lately and be presented a chance to “upgrade”. Poof. Custom CSS Myspace site all gone. Now they have to start from the ground up using the new “templates & plug-ins”. Bummer.
Well, now who’s to say that this is bad? There is even an option now for a graphic header above the infamous Myspace ad banner. Whoa fancy pants! Get back!
This is Social Media, it’s free, and policy is subject to change at any time without warning. The digital music and social media sites are just this way. Only a very loud community backlash can * maybe * get an unpolular policy changed back. I for one have no time or interest but to roll with the punches with this one. Yawn.
Either do not upgrade, or just do it. Poke into Myspace and manage your fans if you have a fan base worth managing there. But do not completely ignore it, Rupert is not done yet. Myspace is good SEO/SMO too.
Ok, here’s the deal…..I’m kidding! Your custom profile did not go away, yet. You simply have to revert back to the old profile. Check out this blog post to see the details of how to get your profile back if you have made the same mistake as some of my clients.
Now fair warning we have some great details here courtesy of this MS blogger:
New Regular User Accounts (starting 07/19/10) cannot switch from 3.0 to any other profile type. Those accounts are locked into 3.0.
If you had a Regular User Account and upgraded to 3.0 you can still switch back to your previous account.
Regular User Accounts do not have a custom CSS option (yet!, still in Beta testing).
Some think that New Band User Accounts are automatically given 3.0 like with Regular User Accounts. They are not. New Band Profiles are given the old profile structure (for now). Then you can upgrade to 3.0. If you upgrade you can still switch back.
Band User Accounts can still enter custom CSS codes into their Bio section. New codes will need to be generated as lots has changed. Check back in the coming days for new codes.
For either account type, and this is speculation, I think you only have 7 days trial period before you are locked into 3.0. So if you try it out, make sure you switch back after a few days if you don’t like it or you will be locked into it.
No matter the profile type, the instructions on switching back are the same.
We’ll see ya in Cyberspace kiddies. Pay attention to the _music_ and pay attention to the buttons you click!
Cheers,
Your 5thbeatle
Posted 3 weeks, 4 days ago at 11:15 am. Add a comment
*Social Media Network analysis, network authoring, strategy consulting, redesign, execution, and maintenance
*Facebook Fan Page creation and maintenance, ad buys, custom fan page tabs
*Twitter Custom Page creation and use strategy
*Myspace friending, custom page design, and commenting campaigns
*Additional Social Network seeding for SEO
*Website Production ( hand coded, FourFour, or WordPress ), and maintenance.
*Total Web site content migration to CMS system ( Want to blog / update yourself? )
*Basic Sysadmin projects ( moving Websites, e-mail creation i.e. you@yourband.com )
*iPhone app execution and launching, maintenance
*iTunes Digital Booklet Production
*Entertainment PR
*Physical and Digital Distribution
*Special Project Management
*Graphic Design
Want some free DIY advise? Click the top images ( WEBSITE – MYSPACE – FACEBOOK – TWITTER – WEB RADIO – PR ) for informative tidbits on using the Web and Social Media to market your music on-line.
These days our bandwidth can be so low from working and maintaining relationships with family and friends how do you keep up with the latest and greatest? Easy; use Twitter to follow the people that actually create the technology. That brings us to Lee Martin; he takes care of Them Crooked Vultures and Beck’s Web needs, and he is also a developer within the Web Music Technology community. I am a little late on being completely blown away by his Twitter app to stream music twt.fm. To be exact I am up and over 1.7m users late!
Within maybe 30mins I had uploaded links to 3 songs of my band Life Love Misery, including links to purchase from iTunes and it was played almost 200 times. Imagine if you band is popular; watch your bandwidth! Once you log in and start an account this is what your twt.fm page looks like.
This app enables you to find certain song streams from a currently unknown source and Tweet to your friends, or you can upload links to mp3s, YouTube videos, and Soundcloud song files.
An advantage to using twt.fm is you can only stream the file, you cannot download it as far as I can tell. A good attribute for those whom do not want to just give away their music downloads for free.
You ask, “well how to I keep track of find these talented developers that are hacking the future of Web Music Technology?” I suggest keeping tabs on this Website and following those whom attend the “Music Hack-days events” that are organized by Soundcloud.com’s own David Haynes.
Another good example of finding a gem of an app or “hack-of” is included on this list. Which one do you think is a gem? Which one is bound to not fade away with the constant 6-month technology tide that washes away someones great idea? Well, I’ll be hacking away at my fav and I will debut my case-use of this hack very soon. Stay tuned to 5thbeatle.net!
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago at 11:34 am. 1 comment
Ok, so Google Buzz got a privacy patch? And what was that? Turning it off? Hmmm. Here is an interesting article from CNET about turning it off successfully. Myself I have, for now turned it off, as it is an overload as this specific moment. But I do wonder how this new “Buzz” can be used successfully to engage fans within a Social Media campaign for music. Join the 5thBeatle.net Facebook Fan Page and I’d love to hear what some of you think of how the new Google Buzz may play into Web Music Technology in 2010.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago at 2:31 pm. Add a comment
Well we all love statistics, here is a very interesting slideshow by LeeAnn Prescott of www.venturebeat.com and www.research-write.com on Social Media usage by
using data from US Comscore and Hitwise. We want information like this so we don’t waste our
time when trying to market our music. Check it out, it’s a good quick read.
Bill had lots of content so FourFour.com was the right choice. He will be Blogging and Video Blogging from the road with Santana, so again this self publishing platform was perfect choice for Bill to be able to keep his fans up to date with ease. Check it out at www.billortiz.com . 5thbeatle.net can work with a range of budgets to help your band achieve such Web presence.
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago at 11:32 am. Add a comment
While working on Santana’s Trumpeter, Bill Ortiz’s upcoming Website using the www.fourfour.com Band Website CMS I had to create a few pages to showcase his music. Featuring his latest release was easy to-do by using the built-in “Store” and music player widget in the CMS. But then I had to create two pages to feature “Live with Santana” and another entitled “As a Guest Artist” and upload a number of one-minutes samples of music he has played on including Toni Toni Toni, Luce, Rebeca Mauleon, and Joyce Cooling just to name a few. After considering a custom hack of the Yahoo Media Player, and a couple others, I landed on Soundcloud.com .
The new feature to reach out to your Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail contacts is pretty nifty to get the word out that you are on Soundcloud. Also the Social functionality is tops, you simply click anywhere on the time-line of the sound file and you can leave a comment, after logging in at Soundcloud of course. The widgets are up-to-date looking in presentation and easy to use. For free accounts, if I have this correct, you have a limit of minutes of audio ( 120mins ) you can upload, but there are no limits on outbound streaming. The site has other “fee based” options to be able to share audio with others. Check it out here.
This is some serious cool-factor. Below is the “standard” Soundcloud widget I made for my band. I would show you Bill’s widget but you will have to wait until we launch his new site. The Premium widgets look great and come with their Premium services. BTW, you can upload multiple songs into one widget. You can also embed these nifty widgets on Facebook via the Soundcloud Player Facebook App.
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!
