iAnts

The alternative rock band, The Charlatans posted a message on their website informing their fans that they will be allowed to download their latest album, “You Cross My Path”, free of charge starting March 3, 2008. Music can be downloaded from the band’s site or from Xfm, an alternative rock radio station based in the [...]

LouisXIV, the San Diego quartet who are set to release their sophomore album, “Slick Dogs And Ponies” next week are encouraging their fans to upload their own photos into the album cover using FotoFlexer, an online photo editor.
MySpace users that take advantage of this feature will be added to LouisXIV’s top friends on their MySpace [...]

Songza, as you may recall from an earlier post back in December, is part music search engine and part online jukebox. Songza just announced that they have joined forces with Seeqpod (which was covered back in November of 2007) and Skreemr (also covered back in November of last year) to expand its search results [...]

Songbird is a media player mashed-up with search engines, music blogs and more, making it simple to discover and find the music you like from within the application. Songbird currently lists about 40 music blogs, makes use of Skreemr MP3 search engine and you can also submit your own site, should you be a music [...]

The Yankee Group announced at the 2008 International CES that two fundamental shifts are driving the music industry - digitization and direct-to-consumer transactions. According the Yankee Group Research Report entitled, US Digital Music Forecast: What Fate Awaits the Record Labels?, digital revenue (online and mobile) is growing, but is insufficient to offset declining CD sales. [...]

Matsushita (aka Panasonic) has signed a deal with Google that will see them manufacture flat panel television sets allowing users to access and view videos online. These internet-enabled TVs are expected to hit store shelves in the US this spring.
Users will be able to access Google’s YouTube and Picasa, their photo-sharing site by simply pressing [...]

As most of you may have heard (or read), Sony BMG have joined the DRM free bandwagon.
Sony BMG is also about to introduce artist-specific digital download album cards called Platinum MusicPass. Similar (in some respects) to the iTunes digital download album cards, Sony’s cards will be priced at $12.99. Once you’ve purchased the card from [...]

I love their tag line - “If Guitar Hero™ is about shredding, thesixtyone is about scouting.” thesixtyone is part music discovery service and part loyalty program. Using a ratings system, users can vote (aka “bump”) their favorite songs, the songs with the most votes show up on the front page.
When a user signs up, [...]

In case you missed it late last year (it’s available in this month’s issue of Wired magazine), David Byrne wrote a fairly comprehensive story entitled “Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars“. While offering his take on the various distribution models available, his personal experience with the methods mentioned is a nice insight on [...]