Archives for February, 2012

Music News Review – 17/02/12

February, 17th 2012 19:06

Indie labels storm the Grammys, and social media goes wild!

Last Sunday (12th February) saw the annual Grammy Awards take place, with a huge social media surge surrounding the event. Facebook and Twitter were amassed with 13 million comments generated by users in the US in the 3 hours before and after, as well as during, the telecast. A new social TV record was also achieved by the awards ceremony, beating the hugely popular Super Bowl event last week.

Independent labels triumphed this year by winning 34 trophies in categories including Best New Artist, Best Album and Best Country Song. According to A2IM (American Association of Independent Music), Bon Ivor won awards for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album, and label winners included Concord Music Group, Rounder Records and Big Machine.

2011 was also the second consecutive year that the independent labels and artists dominated industry nominations, accountable for 194 of the 387 possible nominations.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News Roundup | 1 comment »

Free online services connecting you with promoters, gig databases and more…

February, 14th 2012 20:00

This week, we’re looking at the websites available which enable you to get in touch with music services, such as promoters and concert databases.

 

Artistdata

http://www.artistdata.com

Artistdata is a great website, enabling to update all your band profiles at once as well as send details of your upcoming gigs to top online concert databases – this way, you can ensure that your social media websites and gig listing websites are updated with the latest information. It’s a free service, and here are some of the features that they offer:

  • Update your status on your social network accounts at once, including MySpace, Facebook and Twitter
  • Upload your gig details – date, time, show type, name, venue, ticket price, age limit, poster etc.
  • Artistdata will submit your concert dates to top online concert databases for you (including BandsInTown and SongKick), saving you lots of time
  • Create your own ArtistData profile which displays all the content you’ve uploaded to Artistdata, as well as ticket links, recent Twitter posts and a customisable banner

The website is powered by Sonicbids, which is another useful site for musicians to help them find gigs – the services they offer require a monthly fee, but you can try their services for free for the first two weeks. Some of the features they offer include building your EPK, finding gigs through their site, checking statistics for your Twitter, Last.fm and Google blogs, and promoting your gigs.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 comments »

Music News Review – 10/02/12

February, 10th 2012 20:24

iLike closed on Facebook, moved to Myspace

This week saw the closure of iLike, once the most popular Facebook music application peaking with 60 million registered members. As reported by Music Week, the online music sharing and download service was snapped up in 2009 by Myspace after its launch, but only three years later their official website redirects you to their Myspace page, bearing the words “We welcome you to Myspace, home of the largest catalog of FREE steaming music on the web!” on its banner.

In the wake of the closure, iLike co-founder Hadi Partovi spoke in an interview with Geek Wire, blaming “radical changes in the Facebook platform” as well as Rupert Murdoch’s failure to take advantage of available tech assets for Facebook under his management. However, the iLike team are still on full form as Partovi has hinted on the new startups they are involved with in Seattle, namely ThinkFuse, Familiar and PaperKarma.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News Roundup | 2 comments »

Free Social Media Analytical Tools Available To You

February, 7th 2012 20:08

As an artist with a band page or website, wouldn’t it be useful to be able to see how many fans you’re able to reach, or if you have fans in different countries that want to find out more about you? If you haven’t tried these features out before, you’d be surprised at the number of free tools there are online to analyse the statistics of your social media sites – information which you can use to your advantage!

Here are some of the free tools available online which will help you to keep a track on fan analytics.

 

bitly (http://bitly.com/)

As well as a means for shortening links to fit into tweets, this website also includes a very useful analysis tool. You can create a free account with bitly, add the links that you want to post, and keep track of the statistics of each link.

By accessing the “Analyze” tab at the top of your bitly page, you can see the number of clicks on a daily basis for all the links in your account. You will also be able to see the percentage of referrals from each site, for example your Facebook or Twitter, which will enable you to see which of these has had the most clicks from the links you’ve posted. The Analyze tab also tells you which countries your fans are based.

By entering your bit.ly link followed by a “+” in the address bar of your internet browser (http://bit.ly/xxxx+), or adding “/info/” in the middle of your link (http://bit.ly/info/xxxx) you can also bring up the statistics as above for that particular link too, which is super handy! The “Conversations” statistics also shows you how many tweets and Facebook shares, likes and comments this link has had – another very useful feature.

More information on how to analyse your links on bitly can be found here.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media | 1 comment »

Troubled by TuneCore’s issues with Amazon? Zimbalam offer unlimited free releases to you.

February, 7th 2012 13:38

 

Last week, TuneCore announced on their blog that Amazon had removed all of their content from their MP3 stores in the UK and European Union. Ditto Music has offered free distribution to Amazon UK and Europe for affected TuneCore customers, but here at Zimbalam we are doing one better. Restart all your distribution through us for free to all stores and territories until 17th February.

 

Come over to Zimbalam where you will get:

 

Free UPC & ISCRC codes

No add-on fees to access Zimbalam’s leading suite of digital promo tools:

Real time sales reporting, a streaming media player, artist websites, contact management & newsletter tools, promotional stats & an iPhone app.

Zimbalam provides all the tools artists need for an effective release campaign, including the ability to give fans free tracks in exchange for their email address and to provide selected users, such as media contacts, access to exclusive content.

Zimbalam also guarantee that every release will be listened to by Believe Digital’s A&R team. They look for the most promising emerging artists to upgrade onto a premium distribution deal with Believe, where they will receive access to expert advice and additional services.

Subscription to Zimbalam is free – sign up here to test the system. Existing Zimbalam customers can also take advantage of this deal.

Simply type in the code welcome in the promotional code box on the payment page to upload your releases for free.

 

Code valid until 17th February 2012.

Zimbalam is currently unavailable in the US.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in News, Offers | No comment »

Music News Review – 03/02/12

February, 3rd 2012 20:04

What happened at MIDEM…

This week saw MIDEM, the annual music industry conference take place in Cannes, France. Among the many announcements made during the four day event, Webdoc.com announced integrations with SoundCloud, Songkick and Topspin, promising to “provide fans and pro users with a range of new opportunities for self expression, sharing and community engagement”, as reported by Music Week. A strategic partnership between Spotify and Coke was also hinted at.

One of the highlights included Hack Day, in which around 30 developers participated in creating new apps to enable fans to discover new music, and to have a deeper involvement with the music by their favourite artists. Hypebot has compiled together a full list of creations from Hack Day, which you can check out here.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News Roundup | No comment »