imeem Launches Site Redesign and Introduces New Social Recommendation and Discovery Features

imeem ( www.imeem.com), the world's largest social media network, is releasing a new layout and new features that make it even easier for people to discover and enjoy more music and entertainment. imeem will begin to roll out the new design.

The new features, including personalized playlist, music and video recommendations based on people's tastes and social activity, create new ways for people to experience imeem. They also open new opportunities for artists, brand sponsors and label partners to connect with imeem's global community.

imeem is the world's largest social media community, where millions of people discover, upload and share music, video and photos. imeem reaches over 100 million people each month through imeem.com and an extensive network of music and video playlists embedded across the web.

"We're excited to launch our redesign and new social recommendation and discovery features," said Steve Jang, chief marketing officer and head of business development at imeem. "We are now harnessing the scale of imeem's content catalog and community to deliver personalized recommendations, using social activity data from the over 100 million people who use the imeem network each month."

imeem's new layout introduces several features to help people easily discover music, video, and people that match their tastes and interests:

Spotlight: The new Spotlight page features the latest music, video and entertainment content that people are posting on imeem. This landing page will highlight what's hot on imeem today, including new music, popular videos, album exclusives and celebrity playlists.

Discover: imeem created the all-new Discover page to give people personalized recommendations of music, videos, artists and people, based on what they and the people they are connected to in the imeem community are listening to and watching. By constantly analyzing people's likes, dislikes, and who their friends and favorite artists are, imeem is able to give a unique set of recommended music, video, playlists, artists and events. The more people use imeem, the better these recommendations get.

Browse: The Browse page offers chart-based browsing of music, videos, and photos based on their popularity among imeem's community of over 100 million people. People can now filter by media type, genre, and popularity in the imeem community, making it even easier to surf the vast world of playlists, music, video, and photos available on imeem.

Artist Pages: Fans can now search to find new Artist Pages that pull everything related to that artist on imeem (including music and videos posted by the imeem community) into one central page. Now, imeem users have easy access to artists' complete catalog of music and videos, and can see who else is a fan on imeem. Whether they like Lil Wayne or Radiohead, fans can check out their artist pages to see tour dates, auto-generated playlists for each of their albums, and their all-time most popular songs and videos.

On imeem, people can stream unlimited music and videos for free, express themselves with music and video playlists, and find friends with similar tastes. To build playlists, people can legally upload their own music and videos to imeem or choose from millions of songs and videos already available. People can easily share the playlists they find and create on imeem by embedding them anywhere on the web, including blogs, web sites, and profiles on other social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook. In addition, imeem offers people the choice to buy downloads from either iTunes or Amazon.

imeem is the first social network to partner with all four major labels and thousands of independent labels and video providers to offer free, on-demand streaming of their music and video content on an ad-supported basis. A number of the world's largest brands and companies have worked with imeem on advertising campaigns, including Apple, AT&T Wireless, HP, McDonald's, Microsoft, Nike, Target, and Toyota Scion, among others.

Def Leppard Launches "ROCKZIMITY MARKETING"

Def Leppard proves once again they are pioneers not only in music, but now, as leaders in the digital age, through a strategic partnership with Mobile Marketing Firm Ace Marketing & Promotions Inc. On August 23rd at the group's concert in Detroit, MI at the Joe Louis Arena, Def Leppard will introduce their "ROCKZIMITY MARKETING," a Bluetooth & Wi-Fi proprietary marketing technology, only from ACE Marketing & Promotions Inc.. Ace Marketing will power the delivery of exclusive content direct to the fans of Def Leppard, via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled "Hot Spots" at the show.

For the first time ever in an arena environment Def Leppard fans will be "Welcomed to the Sparkle Lounge" upon walking through the main entrance of Joe Louis Arena. They also can get a message that enables them to "Win A Trip To The Sparkle Lounge" after the show. Fans will also receive select discounts on merchandise adding a third layer of value for the Def Leppard fan.

Def Leppard lead singer, Joe Elliott, said of the program, "You have to differentiate your music in today's industry and how you introduce things to your audience. This is the direction for the future of the way fans connect with artists, it also adds another dimension to our live performance by getting the fans involved from the moment they walk though the door -- literally."

Matt Gaines, Sr. Vice President of Marketing for Ace Marketing & Promotions, stated, "We are proud to partner with Def Leppard on this ground breaking initiative. We love firsts, this is a first for Rock music and a first for the fans of Def Leppard. It doesn't get any better than this. So come to the show with your Bluetooth visibility enabled, and experience 'ROCKZIMITY,' you could win a trip after the show to meet Def Leppard in 'The Sparkle Lounge.'"

Def Leppard's "ROCKZIMITY MARKETING," will be activated at key HOT SPOT locations in and around Joe Louis Arena. Upon arrival at the venue, signs will direct fans to enable their Bluetooth or Wi-Fi signal on their mobile device. Once fans are visible to the zone, they then will receive a message from the band. Upon accepting the message, fans will instantly begin receiving exclusive content from Def Leppard. There will be no cost to a fan, data charges or minutes of service incurred for content.

ReverbNation Lets Musicians Add Press Clippings to Any Website

ReverbNation, the leading Marketing and Promotion Platform technology for Musicians, Labels, Managers, and Venues, today introduced the ‘Press Widget’ to over 215,000 Musicians and Bands that use ReverbNation applications to enhance their social network pages (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, etc), homepages, and blogs.

The ‘Press Widget’ allows Artists to aggregate accolades from the media or fans into one place, and then deploy them to all of their other sites. Artists can add an unlimited number of clippings, with each one containing a link back to the original source for fans to read more. The deployed widget can be customized to match the color of any webpage, and will update in real time when the Artist adds, edits, or removes old clippings. The widget has smart word detection, which rotates clippings at a slower speed for long quotes and a quicker speed for short quotes, timed with the fan's ability to read them. Typical of all ReverbNation widgets, the 'Press Widget' can easily be shared by fans or made the object of 'Street Team' missions that incentivize the most rabid fans to spread it virally.

“Reviews and peer opinions are incredibly important for musicians. Often times, a well-placed quote from a credible source can be the difference between a potential fan actually engaging with the music, or just passing by,” said Jed Carlson, Co-Founder and COO of ReverbNation.com. “But all the super reviews won’t mean anything if they aren’t actually seen by fans or potential fans. The Press Widget can’t get you good reviews, but it can help you showcase the ones you do get.”

The Press Widget is FREE for any Artist, Label, or Manager to setup, and only takes seconds to deploy it to other sites. ReverbNation tracks the Press Widget, reporting back to the Artist how many times it has been viewed, clicked, and shared.

For more info on the Press Widget, and all ReverbNation widgets: ReverbNation Widgets

Faith Hill's Mozes-Powered Listening Party

Mozes ( www.mozes.com), the service that connects people to what they love from their mobile phones, is powering a mobile listening party for five-time Grammy(R) award winner Faith Hill. The mobile campaign lets mobile fan club members get an exclusive preview and offer feedback on cuts from the multi-Platinum-selling country star's new Christmas album "Joy to the World," which will hit stores on September 30th.

The "Christmas in the Summer" campaign makes one new song from the upcoming album available exclusively to members of Faith Hill's "mob," or mobile fan club, each week. Fans can listen to the cut and call Faith's Mozes line at 615-823-5605 to leave messages with feedback about the music. The campaign has run since June and will continue right up until the album's release date. The album's first single, "A Baby Changes Everything," will be the final song that mob members hear before the album hits stores.

"When it came to deciding how we would promote Faith's new Christmas album, we realized that getting fan input right from the beginning would be crucial to creating early excitement about the new release," said Genevieve Jewell, New Media Manager at Borman Entertainment, Faith Hill's management company. "The listening party has given us a chance to connect fans directly with Faith and her music, all through a service that fans can trust to be spam-free and totally permission-based."

Faith Hill is among several leading artists from a wide variety of musical genres, including Wu Tang Clan, Teddy Geiger, Danger Radio and others, who have made Mozes listening parties an important part of their pre-release marketing strategies. Mobile listening parties give fans exclusive access to new artist content and have led to explosive growth in mobile "connections" by means of the Mozes service.

"Listening parties like Faith Hill's are an excellent example of how mobile is changing the way that artists interact with their fans and generate revenue opportunities," said Chad Schultz, director of business development at Mozes. "Our trusted service gives fans a feeling of exclusive access to new artist content, while giving bands and labels easy-to-use tools to create engaging mobile experiences for their audiences."

Listening parties are just one example of the many features that bands, brands, sports teams and others are integrating into their Mozes campaigns. Trivia contests, exclusive mobile-only concert tickets, mobile scavenger hunts and rich media exchange are some of the other innovative approaches that marketers have created using Mozes.

ILike launches music concert promotion ads, targeting social network users

ILike, the music fan site that has gained millions of new users through applications on Facebook and other social networks, is releasing a new form of ads that enable concert promoters to reach fans based on location and musical tastes.

The Seattle company has already offered ways for bands to display concert dates within its applications, but these ads (sample above) are more advanced. They appear in banner-ad positions on Facebook “canvas” pages for third party applications, and include features to help spread the word about the concert. There’s a link that a user can click on to tell friends about the event, or find other local fans of the performing band who plan to attend. Users can also click on the link to buy tickets.

An advertiser can set the time frame in which they want the ads to run, similar to Google’s AdWords, and get data about the total number of people who saw the ad, how many people interacted with it, and how many people clicked on the link to buy tickets. Advertisers are charged based on the number of impressions the ads receive.

This is the latest act by iLike to connect the music business with fans, and make money for everybody — except for traditional media competitors. Concert promoting has historically relied on finding fans through methods like printed fliers, email lists and radio ads, so this is a new way for any promoter to reach social network users — typically teens or 20-somethings who might not otherwise hear about a concert.

Through a partnership with Rhapsody, iLike has also recently started letting users listen to the full recordings of songs within its applications. Previously, users could only listen to 30-second clips. After you’ve heard 25 songs, you get asked to sign up for Rhapsody, or get reverted to the truncated clips. Rhapsody covers the royalties due record labels for the service. The songs include affiliate links to iTunes and Amazon, so iLike and Rhapsody can earn revenue from any referrals. These streaming tracks are already available on iLike.com and will shortly be introduced to its applications.

The new ads also include songs that Rhapsody doesn’t have, such as those uploaded to iLike by an unsigned indie band that has fans on iLike’s applications. The company is separately introducing ways for other developers to integrate songs from its service into their own applications, although this feature is not live yet.

ILike has a total of 30 million registered users, up to 20 million of which are active every month, the company says. Users of its Facebook applications make up around 40 percent of its total users — iLike was one of the companies that managed to grow big, fast through its Facebook applications, when the Facebook application developer platform launched a year ago. The company has more recently launched applications on rival social networks hi5, Bebo and Orkut. The company’s applications on those sites are also seeing big growth, iLike cofounder Ali Partovi tells me; he says the company hasn’t focused on MySpace and its new platform, however, because MySpace has its own music service, and rivals like imeem and Project Playlist have had simple, popular music-sharing widgets on the site for years.

While it doesn’t rule out focusing on MySpace in the future, the company doesn’t seem to need to do so. It has already been proving itself to the music industry, recently streaming entire new albums for bands like R.E.M. and Lady Antebellum, helping those bands to sell more albums and fill more concert seats.

Widget Enables Radiohead Style Distro

At first glance NoiseTrade is a simple widget that enables Radiohead style pay what you want music distribution. But as two dozen indie acts including Sixpence None The Richer and Sandra McCracken learned, it also can be a powerful viral promo tool which in the two weeks since launched has delivered 20,000 full albums for purchase and fan promotion

Artists distribute their music via NoiseTrade's embeddable widget where fans can sample then either choose to tell three friends about it or pay any amount in exchange for an album download. Name plus an email and zip code are captured along the way. Fans can also embed the widget into their own blog or social networking profile.

ReverbNation Registers 200,000th Band in First Twenty Months

ReverbNation, the leading Marketing and Promotion Platform technology for Musicians, Labels, Managers, and Venues, signed up its 200,000th Artist last week, adding 100,000 in the last six months alone. In addition, over 6,000 Labels and Managers have created profiles to promote themselves and their rosters, and more than 2,500 Venues and Clubs are using the ‘venue tools’ to help pack their shows, grow their fan bases, and integrate promotional efforts with musicians. To date, Artists and Labels have posted nearly 700,000 full-length songs to the site.

The success can be primarily attributed to the free suite of Fan Relationship Management (FRM) technologies the company provides for Artists, Labels, Managers, and Venues . The suite includes a content repository, promotional widgets and applications for viral distribution across social networks and blogs, integrated Street Team tools for motivating, tracking, and rewarding rabid fans, a communication platform to keep Artists connected with fans, and a comprehensive stats package to provide the insight they need to make marketing and promotion decisions.


Since inception, the company has focused on helping “Independent” Artists and Labels by providing marketing tools, for free, that are usually reserved for major labels with large budgets.

“In all my years as a musician’s coach and mentor, I have never seen the likes of ReverbNation for Indie musicians. They get it,” says Madalyn Sklar, owner of GoGirls Music and operator of the ‘Indiemusiccoach.com’ website. “They absolutely understand the needs of the independent musician and build software that makes a difference for them everyday.”

“Are you an Artist that needs to generate a newsletter and send it out to 10,000 fans?” asks indie Artist Jeff Nelson of the Syracuse, N.Y. Rock band ‘Merit’. “Need a music player for your homepage or your Facebook page? Want to build a Street Team and have their actions tracked automatically? Want to know how long people listen to your songs before they turn them off, or if they passed them on to friends? Do you need help finding venues for your tour? I need all of that. ReverbNation delivers this and more. These guys offer the sickest platform of tools I’ve ever seen, and I can actually afford it, because it’s free.”

Use of the ReverbNation technology has recently spilled over from the indie ranks to some of the more recognized names in music as well, like 50 Cent, Kenny Chesney, Madonna, O.A.R., Natasha Bedingfield, Trans Siberian Orchestra, Sara Bareilles, and Sean Kingston, to name a few. Over 60 of the Billboard Top 100 now have a presence at ReverbNation.com.

Said Chris “Broadway” Romero, Creative Director, G-Unit Records (50 Cent), “ReverbNation's TuneWidget and tracking tools have been great for us here at G-Unit Records and Thisis50.com. Their tools and applications let our fans easily become involved in the marketing and promotion of our music across the web. There are a lot of ‘all in one’ solutions out there, but the ReverbNation platform is the only one that allows us to develop a marketing strategy first, then use the technology to execute it.”

“We build technology that can help virtually any musician, label, manager, or venue,” says Lou Plaia, Co-Founder and V.P. of Artist Relations at ReverbNation.com. “We help Artists take the music to the people, wherever those fans are spending their time online, and then empower Artists with tools for leveraging their content to drive real business objectives at those touch points. Artist objectives might include selling music, merch, or tickets, extracting valuable fan relationships from the social networks, or keeping content up to date across all of their sites. We give them real insight into what’s happening with their content and how their marketing efforts are affecting their overall Band EquityTM. At the end of the day, the most important asset an Artist has is their portfolio of fan relationships, and it’s our mission to help them grow that asset.”

Over the coming months, ReverbNation will expand the offerings to Artists even further, giving them more tools to succeed at the ‘business’ part of the music business, including: Low-cost digital distribution to iTunes and other retailers, a dynamic ‘Reverb Press Kit’ for media outreach and gig submissions, a ringtone generator and sales tool, and several enhancements to the FanReach communication tool. In addition, the company plans to introduce an “Artist Sponsorship Platform’ where Brands can link up with thousands of interested Artists at a time, creating a new revenue stream for Artists in these challenging times of declining music sales

Top 10 Indie Music Marketing Tools

Every week brings the launch of another online service to connect musicians and fans. Beyond spending endless hours on MySpace and Facebook, what are the best affordable online tools to communicate with fans and monetize the relationship? Here are our picks in no particular order:

1. HOST BABY - It all starts with a great web site and these guys give you the tools to build one quickly.

2. SONICBIDS - Easily and affordable. Create a robust emailable electronic press kit (EPK) with bio, photos, mp3's, videos and more.

3. CD BABY - The granddaddy of D.I.Y. music empowerment. Sell your CD's and downloads in a large community that supports indie music.

4. NIMBIT- A one stop shop to help you sell CD's, DVD's, downloads, merch. and e-tickets with very fair commissions. Plus great tools to spread the word.

5. GYDGET - Everybody's got widgets, but these guys get it right by enabling you to grab your info, music, and video and spread it across the net. Free.

6. REVERBNATION - Communicate with fans, build a street team, get widgets and Facebook apps, sell stuff. Tools do do it all and most of them free.

7. TUNECORE - Affordable flat rate digital distribution to all the major download sites worldwide with no strings attached.

8. TUBEMOGUL - You made a great video for a $23.57 budget. Now what do you do with it? Simultaneously upload to 18 sites including all the biggies then track performance. Basic service is free. (Bonus: A list of viral video sites.)

9. ARTISTDATA - Update tour dates on your website, MySace, Pure Volume, Last.fm, Jambase, Pollstar, Sonicbids and more all at once plus submit tour dates to local media.

10. MOZES, BAND TXT ALERTS (tie) You could use Twitter to communicate with fans, but not everyone wants an account. Every cell can accept text messages. Mozes is free (carrier rates apply) and robust, but pays for itself with ads that could upset some. Band TXT Alerts costs a little, but takes a way the ads.

Wanna get your music in a video game?

These days new bands have many options for promoting themselves. Digital distribution and sites like MySpace can really help a band get known. If you are really lucky maybe you’ll get featured on an Apple commercial but if that isn’t an option (and for most it isn’t) how about having your music featured in a video game? Now that would be pretty dope.

Music and gaming is big business these days and getting your band’s music featured in a popular game can mean massive exposure. EA Games is one company for instance that has done well using previously unknown artists in many of their titles and those artists have gone on to great success because of it. As console and online games have grown in scope over the last 5 years the need for fresh soundtracks and scores for the games have grown along with it. Many other gaming companies are now actively searching for new musical talent to include in their games.

The popular online gaming site, Instant Action is currently holding a contest called Attack the Soundtrack in which the winner will get to have their music featured in one of the site’s popular games. Artists are invited to submit their music, via an MP3. Fans will then have an opportunity to vote for their favourites and the top vote getters will be included in the judging by a panel of music industry veterans including superstar rapper Fat Joe.

If your interested in submitting your song, you’d better hurry - all submissions must be in by June 26 2008. Check out the website here.

Advertisers Look to Music Blogs To Push Product

Pity the music industry. Between 99-cent downloads, free - if not always legal -file-sharing services and MP3 blogs, and an increasingly fragmented audience, it’s desperately in need of a new revenue stream.

Jon Cohen and Rob Stone, two veteran music marketers, think they’ve got one: advertisers that will underwrite free downloading. They’ve put together of network of MP3 blogs including three of their own such sites - thefader.com, thetripwire.com and 1200squad.com - and RCRD LBL, an innovative web music destination run by Peter Rojas, founder of Engadget and Gizmodo.

It’s not surprising that Cohen and Stone marry blue-chip sponsors and bloggers. As the principals of New York-based Cornerstone Promotion, a music-marketing firm, they have worked with Ford (F, Fortune 500), Nike (NKE, Fortune 500), Levi Strauss and Converse. Plus, they have street credibility to spare. They’re the founders of The Fader, a glossy magazine that puts breakthrough acts like Kanye West and the White Stripes on the cover just before the rest of the world takes notice of them.

MP3 blogs, meanwhile, have a tough time selling ads on their own. Many, of course, post songs without the permission of copyright holders. And even the biggest legit ones are too small to have much clout with big media buyers. Thefader.com, for instance, has 93,000 unique monthly users. RCRD LBL has 125,000. Thetripwire.com, an “indie” rock destination, has 15,000. The hip-hop oriented 1200squad.com has only registered users. That’s because it doesn’t allow just anybody to join. So far only 2,500 people have qualified.

By rolling the sites into a network, Cohen and Stone can now approach advertisers with an audience of nearly 240,000. “It’s easier for our corporate clients to get their heads around this because they aren’t buying 12 different sites,” says Stone.

Zune’s Stephenson says advertisers would love such an opportunity because they can be pretty sure of whom they would reach through a sponsorship. “With the right five bands, I can cover 100 percent of my target audience,” he says.

Bands could also benefit by giving their music away. Radiohead earned a lot of good will and publicity when it allowed fans to pay what they liked to download “In Rainbows.” Thom Yorke and his anti-corporate mates might not agree to a sponsorship deal with, say, Lexus. Okay, but what if it was a hybrid Lexus?

Gydget Expands Reach With Fests & MySpace

There's a lot of hype about widgets and dozens of new companies promoting their solutions, but Gydget seems to gaining the most traction with its free multi-use widget garnering 1400+ major label and indie users. Last week Gydget expanded its presence on MySpace with FanSpace a gallery of gydgets that makes it easier for fans to find and use their widgets on the site.

Today the company announced that three of America's largest music festivals Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and All Points West and thus three of the biggest festival promoters Superfly, C3 and have adopted Gydget as a media-rich viral...

marketing solution for raising awareness and driving ticket sales across the leading social networking platforms.

“Social marketing is the cornerstone of our festival promotion,” said Kerry Black of Superfly Productions. “Bonnaroo is about the community as much as the music. Creating a festival gydget allowed us to develop a communications platform to broadcast news, video, music and more across all social networks. We looked at many solutions but chose Gydget because it allowed us the most flexibility and customization.”

“We needed a technology partner to create a widget that could follow our strict branding guidelines while integrating premium content that we had already developed," said Nick Shuley of C3 Presents, producers of Lollapalooza. "By allowing us to link to RSS feeds and YouTube channels, the Gydget updates dynamically as new content is added, which helps to keep our audience current on all things Lollapalooza.

AEG Live, one of the largest promoters in the world uses Gydget to drive awareness and ticket sales for their concert tours and festivals. They have used Gydget to promote the Stagecoach Festival and this summer’s highly anticipated All Points West Festival. “The All Points West Festival is all about connecting the fans to the music,” said Glenn Miller, Internet Marketing Manager at AEG Live. “We felt the most integrated way to engage the community with our festival was through a branded widget. Gydget works closely with AEG Live to meet our changing needs and customize the widget to make it easy to provide content to festival fans 24/7. We all win when the fans feel they are a part of the marketing force and endorse the event with their friends."

ReverbNation Adds Twitter Support

FACEBOOK STATUS NEXT

ReverbNation, a growing online marketing and promotions platform for music has added Twitter to its artist profile pages. Member artists can import and display their Twitter posts, keeping fans informed of daily activities and can create new "Twits" directly from their ReverbNation account. A similar integration with the popular "Status" feature on Facebook is coming soon.

Artists don’t always have a new album or tour to talk about,” said Lou Plaia, V.P. of Artist Services at ReverbNation.com. “Twitter gives them a way to keep the fans engaged in...

between the big stuff - maintaining the share of mind that they have painstakingly acquired, and keeping the fans warmed up for when the album finally drops.”

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE: About the company

ReverbNation provides the innovative marketing solutions that musicians need to compete, cooperate, and differentiate in an increasingly noisy online environment. Unlike typical “closed” communities, artists use ReverbNation as their home base for approaching marketing and promotion across the Internet as a whole- be it via social networks, blogs, email, IM, or the artist’s homepage.

Tools like TunePaks, FanReach, TuneWidget, and Street Team Manager give the artist the power to spread their music and information virtually anywhere. Real-time stats then provide a 360-degree view of how the music is spreading, who is listening, and which fans are actually passing it on to their friends and posting it on their pages. ReverbNation empowers Artists to take the music to the people, no matter where they spend their time online.

Brand Yourself With a Gydget

Create your own digital mark or brand to show off your music, your business or just yourself. Stars such as Beyonce, Gwen Stefani and Godsmack are using it, why not you. Create your own Gydget with your brand, your name or whatever you want on it.

Automatically add your MySpace information to your Gydget by just entering your MySpace ID. If you're a band you can add your band's MySpace information, events and videos to your Gydget too. Just fill in the form with your own information and create your own personal online Gydget.

Once you create your own Gydget you can add it to your website, blog or social networking site. Other's can add it too. If you find a Gydget of one of your favorite stars, you can add their Gydget to your site too.

iLike (and its apps) are helping musicians reach fans across the web

iLike is an emerging leader in this competitive but still relatively young marketplace of “music discovery” services that help musicians build fan bases. We’ve been tracking the Seattle, Wash. company for years, and at this point it appears to have become a significant component of how music will be shared in the future. Both new and existing acts are using it to help advertise album releases, and iLike is starting to have a big impact.

The company, which has gained more than 25 million total registered users, bridges two industries of questionable value — music and social networking. And get ready for this: It has a couple interesting revenue streams coming in. More on that in a second.

A key component of iLike is its social network applications on Facebook and other sites, that let you become “fans” of musicians and do things like see when a band you’re a fan of is playing nearby. Artists can also stream songs or entire albums live within their pages on social networks. A musician can send out a single update about a concert, a new track or whatever, and iLike will distribute that message across all of iLike’s properties.

Nineties’ rock band R.E.M., for example, launched a comeback album and tour last month starting with a live stream of its new album and promotional page on iLike’s app, and — and this is at least an interesting correlation — the album spent a week at number one on the two largest music sellers on the web, iTunes and Amazon’s music site earlier this month, and had sold-out concerts.

However, R.E.M. is a known act so maybe this and the quality of the music were what drove people to like it? Here’s another example of iLike at work. Earlier this month, it played an interesting part in helping an album release up-and-coming band called Lady Antebellum become the first country act to crack the iTunes top albums list, reaching number three at one point.

The album has also become a mainstream success, performing in the recent CMT country music awards ceremony, and becoming the first new act to debut at #1 in Billboard’s list of top country hits since the list itself was created in 1964. It sold more than 43,300 units in its first week of sales. And, while country hits normally only generate 4.5 percent of sales from digital music, Lady Antebellum’s latest album’s sales were more than 21 percent digital — which suggests that digital marketing of various forms, such as iLike’s applications, led people to buy digitally.

So where does iLike fit in?

Lady Antebellum has nearly 10,000 fans on its iLike page (see screenshot above), which includes fans on its Facebook application and other social networks. It is an increasingly large component of marketing music online — where MySpace still reigns. The band was formed because its members met each other in 2006 on MySpace, and began posting tracks there — now it has 28,270 friends on its MySpace site profile (warning: If you go to that page, you’ll be assaulted by a song and a music video — with ads — all at once). Meanwhile, Lady Antebellum has only been using iLike for the last eight months, meaning that’s its popularity there has had less time to grow, and its been doing so in properties that aren’t as immediately recognized as places for musicians and their fans.

Also, Lady Antebellum had promotion efforts like interviews with radio stations and paid ads that it ran for its album. There are lots confounding variables when it comes to determining what makes music successful, besides just being good.

So here’s more on why you need to be paying attention to iLike. Its strategy is to be everywhere with an internet connection, especially everywhere besides MySpace. It began as a free-standing music community site where you could share clips of songs and see music that other people liked, part of indie band site GarageBand.com. The company has expanded to include a desktop iTunes toolbar that tracked what you listened to and recommended new music to you based on what other fans of your favorite music also liked. It launched a set of applications on Facebook when the social network began letting third parties build apps within its site, nearly a year ago. Its most popular Facebook application lets you post clips of your favorite tracks on your Facebook, profile, see when bands that you like are playing near you.

In the past half a year, it has also introduced similar applications for other social networks, built on the Open Social app development standard, including apps on Hi5, Bebo and MySpace, but its early days for all of those social network platforms. While its Facebook app has more than 13 million total users, and used daily by around 400,000 of them, the Bebo app appears to be the second largest among social networks, having been added by nearly half a million total Bebo users.

[Update: hi5 (the ‘h’ in the company name is officially lowercase) tells me its iLike app has been installed by 4.3 million of its users, far more than Bebo’s number of installs. This is pretty impressive for hi5, because the number shows that with less time and a less complete platform than Facebook’s, many third party apps can still reach millions of users on it. The caveat here is that iLike launched its app in December, as a beta tester of sorts, while the hi5 platform only officially launched late last month. Bebo also offers other options for viewing media, that may have dampened interest in its iLike application. Anyway, the metric that really matters here, that only Facebook seems to openly measure, is how many users actively use the application.]

Academic researchers have yet to prove the casual relationship between online buzz and album sales, but the evidence keeps building that it is, and iLike is showing something more. Its showing the value of giving away music for free.

R.E.M.’s album on iLike was streamed more than 1.5 million times before the album went on sale. ILike makes money from revenue-sharing agreements with Apple and Amazon, sending its users to those services. Ticket sales are another revenue stream. iLike is already one of the top sources of tickets for Ticketmaster, an investor.

Of course, there are other music discovery services, like Last.fm, Pandora and Imeem. ILike’s service requires attention by whoever’s running a band’s universal dashboard: Short, frequent updates with some regularity tend to attract the most attention, chief executive Ali Partovi tells me.

And, on that note, here’s a (rather choppy at the start) audio recording that I made of a recent call with Partovi. He talks about the success of R.E.M and other bands on iLike, and more. Check it out.

Why You Must and How to Implement a Free Song Strategy

By Bruce Warila

I read most of the music business blogs out there, and I read a lot of comments that readers post on many of these blogs. I believe it’s a common misconception that new-music-business bloggers generally advise artists to give away all their music for free. So, I am declaring my position here, along with guidelines for implementing a Free Song Strategy.

General Comments on Making Songs Available for Free
The day you enable fans to download your songs without paying for them - will NOT be the day you experience a massive spike in traffic. In fact, nothing will change. Those that really wanted to obtain your music for free already did so.

More than 50% of the population will buy your songs if they like your music. Digital music revenue is growing not shrinking. There is no survey or statistical evidence that demonstrates that FANS that share/borrow/demo/steal music will NEVER buy music from the artists they like.

When people get older they have less time to share/borrow/demo/steal music; instead they opt for uniformity and convenience; this is when you will convert the other 50% of the population into purchasers.

There is a lot of dribble out there about the growth of BitTorrent/file sharing and the percentage of demonstration (stolen) music within MP3 players - ignore this. There are bigger picture concerns that labels and artists should be focused on. The only thing these surveys tell me is that a lot of people are test-driving a lot of music.

You are NOT training an entire generation of music consumers that music should be free. You are declaring to the world that you may try my music prior to buying it. However, you should also be declaring that your music is available for purchase on every digital music store on earth. “PLEASE BUY AFTER YOU TRY” should be your message.

It is EXTREMELY difficult to run a profitable business when you are relying upon selling $.99 cent downloads that are sold by stores that take a cut of your revenue; irregardless of your size and popularity. MP3 downloads will NOT be the last digital product this industry creates. If you focus on seizing every bit of download revenue you can obtain, you will be hurting your chances to increase your popularity; which will hurt your chances of selling high-margin digital products when they arrive. Focus on popularity not on selling $.99 cent MP3s.

Reasons Why You Must Make Some Music Available For Free
For a lot people - the MP3 player is their radio, and this is a rapidly growing segment of the population. If you want to be on this radio - you have to make free songs available for download. You cannot expect people to buy your music until they are fans of your music.

Falling in love with songs is a complex process; although widgets help, it rarely happens by listening to songs played through a widget that is tied to the Internet. In a recent post I use this equation: Listeners * Frequency * Conversion Rate = Fans. If you have a few minutes, you should read this post.

Read the rest here...

iLike becomes major factor in digital music universe

One criticism that’s often leveled at contemporary music fans that utilize the Internet for their music enjoyment is the notion that they aren’t as devoted or interested in the art form as their predecessors. But Ali Partovi, the CEO of the social music discovery service iLike, disputes that contention and says that the rapid growth and acceptance of iLike only reaffirms how much interest young people today have in all types of music.

“The one area where we were seeing a lot of room for development and growth in terms of music and the Internet was in the area of social interaction,” Partovi said. “We saw the opportunity to get fans who enjoyed particular artists or genres in touch with each other, and generate more interest and communication between them. That in turn creates more interest in music and in my view is a very healthy development.”

iLike now has more than 25 million users. It has emerged as the dominant music discovery service and also the main music application on such social networks as Facebook, hi5 and Bebo. They will soon be launching applications on MySpace and Orkut. Partovi is in town today as a featured speaker at the Leadership Digital Music Summit at Belmont.

This year’s Summit is the fourth annual, and is being held at the Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business. The number of people attending has grown from 400 in 2005 to 600 last year, and Leadership Music this year is partnering with the Nashville Chamber of Commerce to handle the increases in attendance and programs. Partovi is among 24 speakers presenting conference sessions.

Ted Cohen, managing partner of Tag Strategic, LLC, is serving as the conference’s strategic chair. Jay Frank, senior vice president of music strategy at Country Music Television (CMT) is chair of the programming committed. Curb College Dean Wesley Bulla and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean are offering a welcome and opening remarks for the all-day conference. The complete schedule and registration information is available at digitalsummit.conference. org.

Among iLike’s many services are links to iTunes and Amazon.com to purchase music, and Ticketmaster to buy tickets. Such artists as Dave Grohl, Will Ferrell, U2 and Jason Mraz have videos or other items available on iLike (which is a free service and available at iLike.com). Whenever artists post songs or video messages, or write blogs, they immediately syndicate the content to their fans not only on iLike, but also Facebook, their sidebar for iTunes and Windows Media Player, hi5 and Bebo and the just launched iPhone application.

Also available are Artist Newsfeed bulletins each time performers post new songs and video or issue new discs. Customized, local concert information is also available. iLike can identify the artists that users like, and tell them when they are coming to town and where they are playing. Based on listed musical preferences, it can also show users when of their friends are going to various concerts.

“What we’re doing with iLike more and more is personalizing and expanding the musical experience,” Partovi said. “Our research shows that the people who use our service purchase 250 percent more music within the first month after they’ve been on it, as well as being heavy affiliates of both iTunes and Ticketmaster. So I think that iLike is creating more demand for music, and getting more people to buy music, and that’s something that is now a major concern of the music business.”

Digital Promotion Is Today... And Growing / Madonna "4 Minutes" Video

Madonna - 4 Minutes


Internet users in the U.S. officially watched more than 10 billion videos online in the month of February alone. That’s according to the comScore Video Metrix service.

On a related subject, Madonna just made her first straight-to-YouTube video. What was she waiting for? Maybe to decide where she would come down on copyright and copycats? What do you know: She’s in favor! But maybe - just maybe - it's more about letting her fans enjoy the work she does, celebrate her freely in the web because what it all comes down to, is this: free promotion. Not a bad thing because all in all her fans benefit, she benefits, the hype around her benefits, and that leads to her album sales benefitting - either digitally or physically, it doesn't matter. Everybody wins. Warner Bros. might have something to say about that though, especially after her new album Hard Candy, all the singles, videos and tour is behind them. Plus we must not forget the next follow-up, Madonna's final greatest hits compilation under her long-time label. The grande finale between Warner Bros. and the pop icon who - against the majority of assumptions - became the best-selling female performer in the world, among many other things.

When the fairytale is over, however, Warner Bros. is unlikely to let the chance go past without cashing in. Quite in contrary, Warner Bros. will most likely keep a close eye on their rights to profit from the unbelievable back catalogue Madonna leaves behind - of course she will also be profitting from her creative fruits through her copyrights.

Madonna is making smart business moves, looking on to the future and expanding the avenues through which she can reach the public - so it is quite understandable she is not against people who freely celebrate her via the web. Naturally, there is a great concern over the on-going copyright enfrightenments in the music business. But when the music along with other products including videos, seem to go on digital sale before the physical appears, it is highly unlikely that public video making is allowed to any material that is in sale digitally co-sidedly. With "4 Minutes", Warner Bros. showed just where they stand on this. The videos were yanked down repeatedly and even videos that had nothing to do with the new material, were being yanked down as well. Now it is allowed, with the consent of Madonna herself - but only after the inial "ka-ching". After all, music business isn't called business for nothing. Even if it is a creative field, it's still a big money making machine - not a charity.

Another interesting note, regarding the numerous videos people have made for Madonna's new single, is this: before Madonna's message appeared in You Tube, the endurance of Miley Cyrus' video for "4 Minutes" was unbelievable. Even though at the same time Warner removed just about everything connected with the song or any new Madonna material for that material, they left this one untouched. The act speaks volumes. Miley Cyrus' video gathered 950,000-plus viewers and while the amount of views might be partially explained by Miley Cyrus' presence, the promotional value was much greater than a video created by an average You Tube user. This is ultimately the reason why it was not brough down with a 'copyright enfrightenment' message accompanied. After all, how could they have not known about it when everyone else talked about it? Maybe the video got Warner's approval? Maybe - maybe it just marked the turn of a new promotional strategy?

For those who want to attract attention or promote their services or products, You Tube has become a marketing platform. Just this week it was announced that one You Tuber who had produced a series of videos and managed to acquire great following, was approached by the big players who wanted to invest. The idea behind it was that by investing in the projects, they could have a "commercial" either at the beginning or at the end of the video. It seems You Tube is becoming a side-wing for television marketing - not just a tool for the fans to adore their idols or post personal footage or their own creations. As everyone knows who watches television, between shows we are bombarded with commercials to the point that it's starting to feel like harassment. It would not be a surprise if we would start to be exposed to ads and promotional material in You Tube through new deals between businessmen and the You Tube users. It's almost like all those websites out there, with irritating pop-up windows that start to interfere with the main thing, enjoying what one came there for to begin with. While in You Tube you may skip the ads, at least for now, this may not be the case in the future.

If the interaction between those who create professional quality videos and those who want the exposure becomes a growing trend, You Tube might have to start thinking about their resources to deliver for the new market. So far the downloads are limited to short clips but if the ads start to take time from the actual video, it's time to expand the length of footage one can upload for the public to see. If all pieces fit, it's clearly a new way to promote oneself - no matter what the product is.

Madonna - Message to YouTube

1000 True Fans Revisited

Juan Zelada gives us his take on Gerd Leonhard’s blog 1000 Ture Fans.

1000 reasons to quit
by Juan Zelada

So I was reading Gerd Leonhard’s blog the other day and one of his posts led to to Kevin Kelly’s raved-about 1000 True Fans article. The article is genius and it’s a very interesting concept, but I think there are some problems in there. If you Google “1000 True Fans” (with the inverted commas to get the exact phrase), you get 98,200 results. If you do the same search but just Blogs, you get 232 reactions and if you narrow it down to one week, you get 21 blog results. What does that tell us? Well, for one it shows that the article hit a chord and Kevin Kelly knows what he’s talking about, but it also shows how quickly information flows through the web.

What does that mean? That everyone is talking about this concept, millions of artists are eager to start their own 1000 true fan base and companies around the world are gonna come up with “The 1000 True Fan” model just for you. Like Calabash, which “is a simple formula to allow fans to microfund working musicians. Calabash is changing the way the world finances music by applying the principles of microfinancing to the music industry”. However, they need cash too so they’re asking fans to fund their project! Which is a great idea but I think that with increased competition, the concept might loose freshness and fans will be increasingly reluctant to fund projects.

In this sense, I see a lot of the problems in this model mentioned by John Scalzi, for example:

Read the rest here...

ReverbNation continues to roll out powerful features for Artists

The ReverbNation network continues to grow steadily. Combined, Artists at ReverbNation reach over 24,000,000 uniques per month via our website, widgets, and applications (http://www.quantcast.com/p-05---xoNhTXVc). Content deployed from ReverbNation (widgets and apps) is now present on approx. 1,100,000 unique urls, and is being displayed a total of 180,000,000 times per month. Our 160,000 registered Artists have posted 525,000 full-length tracks to the site, growing at around 2,500 per day. And we continue to see Artists signing up at a rate of 500-1,000 per day.

A few weeks ago ReveberNation launched a couple important features, 'Fan Exclusive Songs' and 'Band Equity Score'.

1. 'Fan Exclusive Songs' allow the Artist to give access to full-length streams or downloads exclusively to listeners that become registered 'fans' of the Artist (read: email addresses, demo info, and permission to contact). Initial data suggests that Artists that have designated at least one song as 'Fan Exclusive' have been growing their list of registered fans at a rate that is 600% faster than Artists that are not.

2. Band Equity Score, the score that measure a Band's overall "Brand Value" has really taken off with our Artists. Over 100,000 Artists have taken an interest in this score and begun tracking it. Thats over 60% of our Artist users.


New Features
Conversion Tracking
Tracking 3rd Party Widgets
Widgets for Blogs/Ning
MyBand Application Launched on Bebo


Conversion Tracking - We've been tracking impressions and clicks on web banners for Artists and Labels now for over 5 months. They simply upload any banner image (.gif, .jpg, .png) into their Artist profile and then post the image code we give them to MySpace, their blog, or wherever. We then track the activity and report it back to them in the Stats area of their profile. Artists, and especially labels and promotions companies, have found this measurement tool to be very useful, especially for more established Artists who might have multiple banner campaigns running simultaneously to support a new album, sell tickets, and sell merch, etc. Recently, we've received requests to be able to track the actual conversions created by those banners (i.e. sales). So we've built in conversion tracking. Think 'Google Analytics Conversion Tracking' simplified down for the music industry.

This feature tracks conversions that occur after the 'click-through' on any web banner, and reports them to the Artist inside the ReverbNation Stats area. Conversions can occur anywhere on the web (they don't have to be at ReverbNation), and can even be used as the 'Mission Goal' in our Street Team feature for Artists. i.e. "We'll give out back-stage passes for anyone that brings in more than 5 ticket buyers."

Artists who want to use conversion tracking simply grab the conversion code we supply to them and paste it into the appropriate 'success' page that follows the desired conversion activity. Conversion tracking helps us close the loop for our users, tying our Fan Relationship Management and Promotion solutions directly to desired outcomes (conversions). http://www.reverbnation.com/main/features_tabs?tab=Track%20Your%20Banners


3rd Party Widget Tracking - Artists employ a variety of widgets from different companies to achieve their online goals. As you may know, the ReverbNation Street Team function allows Artists to make deployment of widgets the 'goal' of the missions they give to their most rabid fans to carry out.

e.g.
"Spread our new single all over the web by posting this music player widget to MySpace, blogs, etc, and we'll give an autographed CD to the three fans who make the most postings".

We've had lots of feedback from Artists saying that they wanted to be able to use widgets from other companies in their missions (Eventful, Slide, Zazzle, YouTube, etc). Up until now, Artists have been limited to using only ReverbNation widgets. So we've built a function that tracks these 3rd party widgets and reports the data back to the Artist. Now they can make missions like "Spread our YouTube video" and we can track the 1st generation placements and impressions against the individual Street Team members who are responsible. http://www.reverbnation.com/main/features_tabs?tab=3rd%20Party%20Widgets


Widgets for Blogs/Ning - A recent article has suggested that blogs are a surprisingly important source for music sales. It was high time we made some widgets that were a custom fit for blog sidebars and Ning sites. This week we introduced 3 widgets that are tailor made for those sites - a music player (with store links), show schedule (with ticket links), and fan collector (join the mailing list). Many of our Artists have waited patiently for this. http://www.reverbnation.com/main/features_tabs?tab=Our%20Widgets

Here is a live example of someone using the widgets:
http://tinpanbluesband.com/wordpress/


MyBand Application for Bebo
MyBand, the leading Artist application at Facebook with over 265,000 installs, has been made to work on the Bebo network. ReverbNation is going to take over the UK!
http://www.reverbnation.com/main/features_tabs?tab=Bebo

Top 10 Mistakes Bands and Musicians Make

In a recent blog post David Hooper author, music marketing guru, and the host of Music Business Radio. Outlined the the Top 10 Mistakes Bands and Musicians Make on his blog musicmarketing.com

10. Being Too Difficult (or Too Nice)

First of all, let’s get this clear... Just because you wrote a few good songs and recorded them, doesn’t mean that the world revolves around you. Lots of people write and record good songs, so get in line.

Contrary to what the online rumor mill or media would have you believe, people in the music business are involved because they love music…and they’re not making enough to deal with jerks. And they won’t deal with jerks. If you’re a pain, they’re just go to the next guy, who also writes good songs, but has a better attitude.

With that said, don’t be too nice. You don’t have to say yes to everything. Pick your battles. If there is something you really feel strongly about, don’t settle for anything less.

Bottom line: Keep your ego in check and behave with courtesy and respect. At the same time, don't let anyone treat you any less.

9. Trying to Convince People of Anything…

You play music; you’re not in the convincing business. Either people get what you’re doing or they don’t.

So, some reviewer, booking agent or manager doesn't like your new album. Let it go! Don't try to convince him he'll like is better after a second listen. He won't. And the more you press him to give your music another shot, the more he’ll remember how annoying you were. This means he’ll be far less open to ever listening to you again.

There are a lot of people who won't "hear it" when you approach them. So what? Move on. There are plenty of other people in this business who can help you. Go find the people who do "hear it" and put your energy into building good relationships with them instead.

8. Looking for Industry Approval

There was a time when the "industry" had a lot more pull when it came to breaking an artist, getting them distributed, and everything else. This is a new time, so we're playing with different rules now.

Distribution is easy. Every day, more and more albums are being sold digitally, so you no longer need a label to finance pressing tens of thousands of physical albums (or more) and getting them to record stores.

These days, recording music is easier than ever. You can get a good
recording setup for just a few thousand dollars. And if you can't afford recording equipment, there are plenty of people who have some, whom you can hire inexpensively. You are not limited on the number of options for getting something on tape.

But most importantly, once you get this stuff together, you don't need the industry to tell you your music is worthy. The consumers, the people who buy your music, are really the only opinions that matter. And when you have the love of the consumers, the industry will come around.

The thing is, in the music industry, technology has changed faster than mindset. Stop believing you are at the mercy of any record label executive. You're not. Connect directly with your fans--on your terms. The feedback, loyalty and money you receive from them will be far more gratifying than you spending your time beating your head against a wall trying to figure out a way to get an approving nod from a record label.

Read the rest here....