Social networking site Facebook's founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg plans to enter the digital-music business in the wake of the launch of News Corp's MySpace Music last month, the New York Post said.
Zuckerberg is talking to a number of song-streaming services and music community sites, including Rhapsody.com, iMeem.com, iLike.com and Lala.com about an outsourcing deal, the Post reported, citing sources familiar with the situation.
Facebook executives have been busy meeting major record companies about the strategy, the paper said on its website.
The Post quoted sources saying that unlike MySpace, which traded equity in its music venture in exchange for licences to stream ad-supported songs, Facebook doesn't want to secure licences to distribute music, or build a proprietary service from scratch.
Sources further cautioned that nothing was imminent, and Facebook may ultimately walk away from the plan altogether, the paper reported.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Facebook eyes digital-music business
What People Want to Read About Your Band
Source: MaxLowe.NET
Sitting down to write those first mind-racking band descriptions and introductions on your profile can be very hard. It involves a great deal of thinking, planning, and usually a lot of collaboration with the rest of the band, your friends and family members for ideas and the “right” thing to say. But, rather than worry excessively about what you want to say, you should consider what people want to read about your band.
New Fans and Innate Curiosity
When a new fan visits your site, they likely have three questions in mind:
- What kind of music do you play?
- What are you and the other band-members like?
- How does this affect me?
MySpace provides plenty of space and prompts for you to provide information about what kind of music you play and what kind of band you are. You can upload tracks for them to listen to, list your major influences, and create a series of mini-profiles with information about your band’s members. However, the third question is one of the most important and must be addressed carefully in the descriptions you write.
You might notice that many bands write a very long, involved profile discussing who they are, where they came from and what they see in their music. Other bands simply post a concert calendar and a short bio of 200 words. While a profile that is too long will simply bore readers, one that is too short does not address the question of “how it affects them.”
Continue ReadingWednesday, October 15, 2008
The End of Poverty - The "Homework" of Our Generation
My name is Shawn and on September 14 2006, I found my answer on how to make the world a better place. It's because of that answer that I am now in Bangladesh.
On September 14th, 2006, the University of Notre Dame (of which I was a student studying for my Masters in Sociology) canceled all of its classes so that students could learn about an important issue: the problem of global health and third world poverty. One of the people who came to speak to us was Dr. Jeffrey Sachs (author of the book "The End of Poverty").
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs believes that extreme poverty can be eliminated in our lifetime. The power of this message inspired me to put school on hold so that I could do my part and hopefully inspire others along the way. I have come to Bangladesh to try and help the poorest of the poor. I am sharing this experience with the world through the power of YouTube.
I know that my little "uncultured" project is a drop in the bucket. But hopefully, the more people that be inspired to believe we can end poverty in our lifetime - the closer we can get to that goal.
This is just a montage of what I did in my first five months. Please check the other videos for more of what I have been able to do.
Aid That I Gave In This Video Include:
- 1 Long-Lasting Insecticide Treated Mosquito Net Donated by Vestergaard-Frandsen
- 2 Cases of Bottled Water to Residents of a Flood Affected Region
- A nutritional meal (including beef as a source of protein) for a large group of poor school children
- 1 windup flashlight given to a young student in the rural village who cannot afford electricity
- 50 Locally Made and Locally Purchased Mosquito Nets
I plan on making more videos explaining each aid operation in more detail in the future.
My Project's Blog: http://uncultured.com
My Project's Photos: http://flickr.com/photos/uncultured/
More YouTube Videos: http://youtube.com/UnculturedProject
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Value of Free Part 1 : Musical Notes by Bob Duskis
From Global Noize:
While the rest of America watches in slack jawed horror as Wall Street tumbles into previously unheard of depths, we in the record business have been going through our own financial apocalypse for some time now. Without going into a long and drawn out history lesson, somewhere along the line, a basic shift has occurred in the way people value (or don't) music. While music plays a larger part than ever in our day to day existence, the fact that it has become so easy to get for free has somehow translated for many consumers to the fact that it SHOULD be free.
I will never forget one Christmas a few years ago, teaching my niece how to download from the i-tunes store (she had just received her first i-pod for the holidays) and her 16 year old cousin commenting that "paying for music was for suckers and chumps". This was a kid who was heavily into the alternative punk scene coming out of his native Northwest area. When I asked him how the bands he loved were supposed to survive without people paying for their music, he told me that he would happily pay to see them live and buy a Tee-shirt but why would he buy music when it was so easy to get it free. Besides, everyone knows that record companies rip off artists anyway so why shouldn't people rip THEM off. I have spoken on this issue at many colleges and high schools and I can tell you that this is an attitude that is widely held by younger music fans who have absolutely no idea of any distinction between the historically heinous practices of many major labels and the vastly different world of independent music.
Those of us who work on the independent side of the music business know that with very few exceptions, no one is getting rich in this game. Most of us have made conscious decisions somewhere in our careers to forego higher paying, major label jobs in order to focus on music that we love, rather than music that could sell in huge quantities. I have a large network of friends and acquaintances at other indie labels and I am here to tell you that for the most part, these are fans just like yourselves who are still passionate about music and have made many sacrifices to work in this world. I'm not trying to paint us all as glorious martyrs. We have gladly chosen a path that was never going to make us wealthy BUT we never signed on as charity workers. The idea that my contemporaries and I shouldn't be able to make a living in the music business because technology has made it easy to download and burn music for free is simply ridiculous. I believe it was Doug Morris (chairman of the Universal Music Group) who when asked how the RIAA could condone suing their own consumers for illegal downloading, asked the rhetorical question, "What do you think the makers of Coca Cola would do if someone invented a device that you could easily install at home, enabling you to get free Coke from your own sink?"- you can damn well expect that they would do whatever they had to in order to stop it and no one would blame them for a second. Think for a moment about whatever business you are in. If some new technology allowed your customers to steal from you with impunity how would you feel?
Continue reading...
YouTube Adds Amazon & iTunes Download Sales
The YouTube eCommerce Platform will be rolled out on a larger scale over the coming months to include partners in music, film, TV, and publishing selling alongside related videos. Retail links..
to buy songs from iTunes and Amazon will appear on the watch pages of authorized video content. Those partners who use YouTube's content identification and management system can also enable retail links on claimed videos that they have chosen to leave up on the site.
The YouTube eCommerce Platform is currently available in the United States. Over the coming months, the platform will be expanded internationally.
ReverbNation Gets $3M To Expand Music Services
From Hypebot:
Hypebot named recently dubbed ReverbNation one of our Top 10 Indie Music Marketing Tools. The site serves as home base for artists tapping into multiple social networks simultaneoulsy, including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Hi5. Artists get free tools and interactive functionality for these networks, their homepage and blog stimulating viral spread and tracking it across the web.
What will they do with all this money? Believe it or not, the goal is to expand an already pretty robust platform of d.i.y artist services. Helping the 250.000 bands that use the service earn money via sponsorships is part of the expanded offering, as well as, part of RN's monetization strategy. "We have observed that Indie Artists are actually more influential, pound for pound, than their established counterparts.
They know their fans personally, and have stronger relationships with them,” said Mike Doernberg, ReverbNation co-founder and chief executive officer. ”Alone, these individual Artists cannot deliver the reach that Brands need, but bundled together they can. We configure entire ‘portfolios’ of participating Artists based on the fan demographics the brand is targeting, and allow the Artists to opt-in to the program. These types of paid partnerships have traditionally eluded Indie Artists."
“It is increasingly difficult to connect with consumers in a meaningful way via mainstream media,” said Jason Caplain, general partner, Southern Capitol Ventures. “ReverbNation’s Artist Influencer Network, comprised of millions of loyal fans, represents a focused evolution of permission-based marketing that works.”
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Jingles All The Way
Here’s the thing — you either love those freecreditreport.com jingles or you loathe them. But if you loathe them, its only because you’re mad that you’ve been singing them all day. Here they are if you’re not familiar with them:
“Freecreditreport was the first musical job I’d ever done,” said David Muhlenfeld, the staffer at the Martin Agency responsible for writing the trio of tunes. “They didn’t ask for music but that’s where it went.” Most of the clients that come to his advertising firm are on retainer, meaning companies pay them a monthly fee in exchange for an ever-flowing supply of print, radio and television ads. But freecreditreport.com signed up on a project basis. “A corporate one-night stand,” Muhlenfeld joked of the relationship, saying the company came to them based on the strength of the agency’s work on the Geico cavemen commercials, a campaign Muhlendfeld himself didn’t work on.
With freecreditreport.com’s contract expiring, and wanting to try something different, the one-time synth pop geek penned a handful of songs for their radio campaign. “I thought it was just a funny premise to start out with,” he said of the original spot, which featured lyrics about a slacker who meets his dream girl only to discover she’s got bad credit. But because the TV-portion of the campaign he was creating didn’t have quite enough material, Muhlenfeld decided to adapt his radio jingle into a TV spot. And it worked. “We played it for the client,” he said, which he performed over the phone on an acoustic guitar. “It was the last thing we presented – and he immediately said, ‘That’s what I want to do, go write some more.’” So he did. Three more in fact, which he demoed on GarageBand, the results of which were later played for the employees of freecreditreport.com who voted on their favorites, eventually becoming the campaign’s first three commercials.
The effectiveness of the commercials’ quirky songs was evident right from the get-go. “The numbers were very good,” Muhlenfeld said of the increase in visitors to freecreditreport.com. In addition, the commercials became viral video hits. “Somebody leaked the spots onto YouTube,” he said. “At first we got 600 hits, and then 1200 hits, and then we checked back in a week or so and it was 20,000 hits. And now it’s up to 600,000 or 700,000 for each of them.” Capturing lightning-in-a-bottle and becoming a successful viral video is not something that’s easily re-creatable. It’s hard to understand exactly why Tay Zonday or Little Superstar or the Cadbury gorilla commercial tap into the cultural zeitgeist and become a hit. “That’s the real success,” he admits. “Without really even trying to create a viral-type success, we did. And now of course we’re going to try and convince people we meant to do that all along.”
Aside from the professional attention the commercials have garnered, the jingles have brought some personal satisfaction with them as well. “It’s definitely an ice-breaker at dinner parties,” he joked. “And kids are really into it,” he added. “I’m always getting stories about how they were at a pep rally at their kids football game and the whole gym started singing the song.”
Muhlendfeld said he hopes the success of the commercials will wake people up to what music can do for advertisers. “I think jingles had gone quite out of fashion,” he told us. “It was nice to reignite some interest in singing.” He thinks the spots worked so well because the band in the commercials (led by actor Eric Violette) think of themselves as a real band. “They’re real ballads about this guy’s sad ass life,” he said. Though the songs didn’t necessarily come easy to Muhlenfeld, he said jingles are often easier to write than traditional pop songs. “You’ve got a list of three of four things you must say in order to paid by your client, and you know that you have 30 seconds, which is good since it gives you parameters to work from.”
If the freecreditreport.com jingles could maintain any place in our collective memory, Muhlenfeld hopes they’ll remain as indelible as his favorite jingle for Juicy Fruit gum. “It’s the most sexually suggestive spot I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe they got away with it.” See the spot below:
If you’re a fan of the three current freecreditreport.com commercials, you’re in luck. There are new spots on the way, and in several new genres, one with a “punkier edge.” And if you’re not a fan, unfortunately they may be tough to escape. There’s also a jingle-based reality series on the way from CBS and Mark Burnett called “Jingles.” Note to producers: Muhlenfeld wants in. “I want to be a guest judge,” he said excitedly. “That would be awesome!”
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