Techdirt/Studio 64′s Mike Masnick offered an insightful look during Midem explaining how NIN’s Trent Reznor’s model for his multi-platform marketing campaign was a prime example of serving and connecting with his fans. Using an array of creative online and offline marketing techniques and by giving away free music, Trent created a deep personal connection with fans rather than alienate them.
Have a look…
[via MidemNet Blog]
Lux Interior, the out-of-this-world frontman/vocalist for The Cramps passed away last night from a pre-existing heart condition. The rock’n'roll arena has seen many great performers but in my humble opinion, no one could match the sheer excitement and overwhelming strange sensation you would get from watching Lux’s statuesque, lean skeletal frame sporting stiletto heels, wearing a PVC thong while deep throating the microphone.
I was fortunate enough to see The Cramps perform live a few times and their shows will forever remain one of the highlites of my concert going life. The Cramps combined Rockabilly, Surf, Punk, Blues, Glam and many other styles to create a sound known as Psychobilly.
Here’s some footage from their 1978 tour (perhaps one of the strangest moments in the history of music) when they played a gig inside Napa State Mental Hospital, one of California’s biggest mental institutions.
I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately reading up on the mobile marketing platform and these new fancy web enabled handheld sets seeing I own an iPhone. As much I like it, I find that browsing can be challenging when a webpage does not render as it should on these tiny little devices.
As I was becoming intrigued with all things mobile, I had an opportunity to meet the people from Mobify.Me, a company who can “mobify” (this word should be trademarked) any existing website. With a quick, one-time process, their online tools can help transform your site into a mobile offering. Mobify.Me is pretty cool. Although still in beta, I like the product offerings.
In fact, we “mobified” the existing Two Hours Traffic website, which now lives at m.twohourstraffic.com
We now plan on doing this for The Trews in the coming weeks.
This is what happens when you cross Jay Z and Radiohead, courtesy of Minty Fresh Beats. Check out their MySpace page for more info and music. This link takes you to their page where you can download free 10 track album of Jay Z and Radiohead mashes. Get it while you can.
First off, apologies for not updating this space for the last few weeks. I will try to post more often in the coming weeks. Ok, now that I got the guilt out of the way, let’s get back to business.
There’s a great story on Adotas making reference to a four-part equation to successfully reach the masses through social media. In a nutshell, blogging is often overlooked but it seems that blogs far outweigh social networking sites when it comes to unique visitors.
The four parts are: Consumer Generated Content, Third Party Validation, Social Media & Search Results Optimization. Although the story refers to “brands”, I think this applies to any musician, label or any other form of entertainment entity. The bottom line - you need to engage your audience.
Read the entire story entitled “Social Media For The Masses“.
[via Adotas]
We7 has officially launched and is now offering free streaming and ad-supported downloads. Highlights from their press release…
We7’s ‘Big Listen’ Launch Campaign delivers:
We7, gives music fans unlimited access to millions of great tracks from major record labels and Independents across all genres, to listen to for FREE and on-demand. The We7 difference is that while fans get free music , rights owners and artists get paid by We7 utilising both audio and digital advertising, so it’s a win-win situation for all.
[via We7]
The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco began yesterday. Here’s an interesting keynote from Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker who offers some insight on all thing tech, internet and money! Get comfortable, it’s about 20 minutes and worth watching.
Also tune in today at 5pm PST for the Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music Group CEO and Chris DeWolfe, founder and CEO of MySpace, in a keynote discussion regarding the future of the music industry. This event will be available via webcast at www.web2summit.com.
[via MarketWatch]
I recently signed up to begin using ArtistData, a service which allows you to publish and manage your tour date schedule across many different networks including MySpace, Last.fm and many more sites. By seamlessly updating and distributing your data from a single hub, it simplifies the process of adding new tour dates to the countless different sites used by artists and labels. Most, if not all bands have a MySpace, VIRB, a PureVolume account and many more social networking profiles. As you can imagine, updating one site at a time can be counter productive and time consuming.
ArtistData’s platform is a such a time-saver and an essential tool for any label. They intend to roll out more services in the near future. It only syndicates shows for now but plans to add blogs, news, and more features are in the works.
The people at ArtistData (thank you Brendan) were generous enough to set me up with label accounts, which make the process even smoother. After a few simple steps to properly set up each account, I was entering new tour dates and it automatically syndicated the information to a handful of other sites we currently manage.
Their “dashboard” is simple, easy to use and offers lots of flexibility on how and which sites you wish to update. They also have additional tools called “Local Listings” allowing you to reach out local media about your show and “Nearby”, allowing musicians to locate what services are close to the venues they are performing at.
For a complete demo, watch this Walk-Thru from ArtistData on Vimeo.
YouTube, the most popular video-sharing site on the planet has plans to roll out an e-commerce service through which it will sell music, films, TV shows, video games, books, concert tickets and other media-related products.
Seems YouTube is going to embed links on music videos that will direct users to either the Amazon.com digital store or the iTunes store.
Amazon and iTunes will share revenue with YouTube when users buy content through the partnership.
Read the entire story here.
[via Reuters]
A new organization called the Featured Artists’ Coalition has been formed by UK based artists to give performers & musicians greater control over their own recordings and bargaining power in their dealings with record labels.
Over 60 artists have joined so far, including the UK’s top recording acts like Radiohead, The Verve and Kate Nash.
This London-based organization was officially launched at Manchester’s In the City conference yesterday (Oct. 5). To read the Featured Artists’ Coalition’s Charter or to see a video of some of the artists who are part of the Coalition, visit www.featuredartistscoalition.com
