Last Sunday (12^th 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.

Sony’s price-hike following Whitney Houston’s death

Legendary singer Whitney Houston passed away on Saturday 11^th February, at the age of 48. Stars paid tribute to Houston following her sudden death, with the Grammy Awards honouring the six-time Grammy winner and Jennifer Hudson performing “I Will Always Love You” at the ceremony.

Following the hours after her death, it was found that the price of Houston’s two hits compilations on iTunes had been increased by £2-3 by Sony’s UK division, according to CMU. Sony later apologised for the temporary price increase, and the prices were restored back to the original price on Sunday. In a statement issued to Billboard, Sony said:

“Whitney Houston product was mistakenly mispriced on the UK iTunes store on Sunday. When discovered, the mistake was immediately corrected. We apologise for any offence caused.”

According to the NME, it is thought that five of Whitney Houston’s tracks will be entering the UK Top 40 when the chart is announced this Sunday, and 27 of her tracks will feature in the Top 200 overall.

rnbxclusive.com is the next site to go down…

Continuing the on-going online piracy saga, the latest addition to the news is that website rnbxclusive.com has been taken down by SOCA, the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency. SOCA has stated that the site has given access to hundreds of files of stolen music, and posting these on the site may have damaged artists’ careers. According to the CMU, they have subsequently arrested its owner this week, charging him with conspiracy to defraud. It is said that the music site has cost “legitimate businesses and artists” around £15 million every year, as reported by Stop-Law.

SOCA also issued a warning on the rnbxclusive website, informing users that if they have downloaded unlicensed music from this site, they could be faced with a ten year jail sentence and unlimited fine – however this message, which wasn’t strictly true, was taken down after 3 days. It has been replaced with a short message, bearing the words “SOCA has taken control of this domain name”, and a link to the SOCA website.

This has sparked action in three other similar websites, seeing one site voluntarily taking itself offline, one considering going offline and one claiming to only deal with music files that are legal.

Which leads us on to…

IFPI and RIAA’s potential lawsuit against Google?

An internal IFPI document has been leaked, stating that the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) are considering a lawsuit against search giant Google. According, to Digital Trends, this is due to the organisation’s beliefs that Google not prioritising sites with legal music content over piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay, sending traffic to the latter instead.

However, German publication “Handelszeitung” suggests that the leaked report may have fizzled out last Summer, with a statement in the previously unpublished report dating back to July 2011 – however since this date the lawsuit hasn’t yet emerged.

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.

Getagig

http://getagig.info

Getagig helps you to get in touch with promoters and music venues, acting as a directory as well as a messenger between you and the promoters. You can search the towns you want to gig in, and the directory will pull up a list of promoters in that area – you can then click the “Get a gig” button, fill in a form with your details and send it off to them. Easy!

RADAR

http://www.radarmusicvideos.com

Do you ever find yourself stuck on ideas for your music videos, or want to find someone to collaborate with who will have a fresh take on your music? That’s where Radar comes in – it’s an online database which hooks independent musicians and labels together with music video directors, making sure that they are the best people for your job yet still fitting within your budget. Here are the services that they can offer you for free:

• Post one music video to your Radar profile – selected videos get free promotion on Radar
• Use the Radar directory to find music promotion and support services all over the world, including content partners, music blogs, PR, promotion and plugging
• Recently added “Crew Contacts” directory tab, enabling you to look for a DP, Editor or Producer etc.
• Access to the Radar blog, which offer useful suggestions and tips for promoting your music video
• Receive “29 Ways To Promote Your Music Video”, the most comprehensive music video promotion guide online, for free

The lovely people at Radar have written us a guest blog with some key tips from their promotion guide – you can check it out here.

Remember, Zimbalam have a partnership with Radar – you can sign up for a free Radar account here to check out the amazing opportunities available, and quote Zimbalam upon signing up and you’ll also receive a 10% discount on your next release with us!

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.

Paul McCartney’s music pulled from all streaming services

Universal Music Group Distribution have requested both Paul McCartney’s solo and “Wings” content to be taken down from “all streaming services” on behalf of Concord (and Hear Music), much to Rhapsody’s dismay. According to Digital Music News, Rhapsody were ‘shocked’ over the removal request after over four years of streaming his music. Spotify responded by saying the content requested for removal had already been taken down from their catalog in 2010, and any Paul McCartney tracks remaining on their service were licensed through other compilations. It was reported that Rdio was also expected to be removing McCartney’s content.

The removal of McCartney’s tracks comes at the same time as the announcement of his exclusive live-stream performance on the iTunes Store and over Apple TV on February 9th. The performance featured songs from his new album, “Kisses on the Bottom”, which was released three days prior to the stream on February 6^th.

Independent Music Publishers hit out at VEVO

It was announced last week that VEVO has generated $150 million in revenue, just two years after its launch. The video service run by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media Group (with EMI licensed content) offers videos from three of the four major labels, as well as distributing music videos online for several labels. However, Songs Music Publishing founder Matt Pincus has hit back at VEVO saying that independent music publishers are entitled to a share of this money, seeing as they have not yet been paid a penny.

Videos from Songs Music Publishing’s roster of writers appear on VEVO, including Brooklyn’s noise-pop duo, Sleigh Bells. The issue here is that the labels are being paid advertising revenue from VEVO, but not passing on the publisher’s share, according to Billboard. President of Downtown Music Publishing Justin Kalifowitz supported Pincus’s argument, suggesting that “labels have felt they can speak on behalf of publishing rights they don’t control”.

In more recent news, VEVO have further landed themselves in hot water after streaming a pirated NFL playoff game during a company-sponsored event – they were caught out when a buffering message appeared on screen at their SunDance PowerStation venue in Utah…

M.I.A.’s middle finger salute

Following the annual Super Bowl show held in Indianapolis last Sunday, MIA angered masses of viewers and stormed the headlines when she stuck up her middle finger during her half time show performance with Madonna and Nicki Minaj. Madonna was not best pleased at MIA’s gesture either during the biggest TV game of the year, claiming that she had ruined the positive atmosphere of the show. The broadcast is said to have been watched by some 110 million viewers on NBC.

Unfortunately for MIA, she may have an expensive price to pay for her mistake, as according to the NME the contract that she signed meant she agreed to compensate NFL of any fines incurred if the Federal Communications Commissions backed complaints made about the broadcasted show.

This post was written by Zimbalam blogger, Hinako Omori

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.

Crowd Booster (http://crowdbooster.com/)

Crowd Booster enables you to manage both your Facebook and Twitter accounts in one place. They offer lots of little gems of knowledge with your own personalised “Target Recommendations”, which talk you through the best strategies to reach out to your fans and audience. The Dashboard feature will show you graphs and figures on your total reach, impressions, influential followers and more.

Logging in with your Twitter account will easily allow you to analyse, for example, how many people you reached for individual tweets. You can also track how your fan base has grown over a period of time, and audience insights show you your most interactive fans.

Klout (http://klout.com/)

Klout analyses data on your social media sites and your overall online presence to measure your influence on others. Log in using your Twitter or Facebook account, and you will be given a Klout score (measured on a scale of 1 to 100) based on your ability to drive action in social networks.

Some of the websites Clout uses to measure your score include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. The team at Klout are currently working on incorporating Facebook Pages, YouTube, Tumblr and Last.fm among others.

Similarly to Crowd Booster, Klout very nicely compiles together some graphs to show your True Reach (i.e. the number of people you influence), your Amplification (how much you influence them) and the influence of your Network. It also tells you what topics you are influential about, e.g. Music, which are calculated by the content (blogs/posts etc.) you produce and the responses you receive from your audience.

Zimbalam Free Tools (www.zimbalam.co.uk)

As we mentioned in our previous blog (Promote You And Your Music With Our Free Tools) we also offer a number of tools that can help you. As well as the Zimbalam Artist page, embeddable music player, Pro Space and Fan Connect option, we offer statistical tools that will give you clear and accurate statistics on many aspects of your page.

If you’ve uploaded your music to Zimbalam Backstage, you can log in and view your statistics for your releases under the Promotions tab. This will allow you to see individual statistics for your players posted on Myspace, Facebook, the standalone Zimbalam player and also on your Zimbalam Artist Website.

The Promotions tab will tell you how many views and connections your player has had, as well as the countries your listeners are based in.

Have you also noticed the analytical tools within Facebook and YouTube?

Facebook (www.facebook.com)

You can check out your Facebook page insights on the “Insight” tab, on the left-hand side menu of your page. Here, you can see a graph showing your posts, how many people are talking about your page, and your weekly total reach, as well as statistics for each individual post.
You can also see which age groups and gender your Facebook page appeals to, as well as the countries and cities your fans are based in.

YouTube (www.youtube.com)

If you have your own channel, you can go into the Analytics tab at the top of the page in the Video Manager, which will show you a general overview of the channel. Using the tabs to the left will show you specific breakdowns in easy to understand graphs and tables for Views, Demographics (information on your audience), Playback Locations (where your video has been accessed from), Traffic sources (where your audience has been directed from). The Engagement reports cover statistics on Subscribers, Likes and Dislikes, Favourites, Comments and Sharing. You can also check out the stats for individual videos, by clicking on the Analytics tab at the top of the particular video’s page. Furthermore, you can also track an individual video’s audience retention (i.e. rewinding or rewatching a video will result in a higher graph) within this tab.

Another useful little tool can be found by clicking on the small graph icon to the bottom right of the video (next to the number of views). Here you can see a list of dates of significant discoveries (e.g. referrals and inbound links, such as the first embedding of your video on a website), information on your most popular audience (gender and age) and where your audience are based, as well as general statistics for the video.

We hope this helps as a starting point to make the most of the free analytical tools available online – it would be interesting to check out audience demographics and find out where your fans are based, so you can target specific areas and regions for gigs and tour dates. Then, you can develop personal marketing and publicity strategies with the information you’ve discovered, to create a better engagement with your fans and optimise your fan base growth.

This post was written by Zimbalam blogger, Hinako Omori

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 17^th 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 17^th February 2012.

Zimbalam is currently unavailable in the US.

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.

Google +’s fast user increase over Facebook, and how it can benefit musicians

Could Google+ be the new dominant social network? A graph posted on Business Insider shows that the rise in users increased at a much faster rate than the early Facebook – whilst it took almost a year for Facebook to reach 1 million users, Google+ has reached 10 million users in two weeks. Furthermore, it’s taken Google+ less than one year to reach 100 million since the site launched, whereas it’s taken Facebook four years.

One free tool that has gained attraction within the first weeks of the Google + launch is Google hangouts, with musicians making use of it by hosting virtual concerts and reaching to fans worldwide, as well as gaining new listeners. According to a blog on Midem, US singer-songwriter Daria Musk played the first “G+ hangout concert” to just a small number of people in her circle, but word spread fast and within minutes she was playing to hundreds of people over the world. On her second G+ concert, she had reached 9,000 viewers across 100 countries.

Music Think Tank highlight why Google+ is beneficial for musicians here – click for an interesting read.

iTunes Match automatically censors explicit music?

Apple came up with iTunes Match, a service which automatically downloads the music you purchase on the iTunes Store on all your Apple devices using the Cloud. This seems like a genius idea, saving you time endlessly syncing your devices together, but Cult of Mac have discovered a glitch – iTunes Match automatically replaces any songs with explicit lyrics to the clean versions in a mass obscenity filter! Apple has acknowledged the glitch, and is already working on a fix.

James Vincent McMorrow – Special Edition of “Early In The Morning”

James Vincent McMorrow is going from strength to strength. His debut album “Early In the Morning” has earned him an extensive fan-base and significant critical plaudits since its release in March 2010. The record has since gone Gold, been nominated for the Choice Music Prize and the Irish Mercury, and has seen James spend the last two years touring the US and Europe extensively (stopping off at Glastonbury, Latitude and ‘Later…With Jools Holland’ along the way).

Following the success of his new single, a cover of Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” featured in LOVEFiLM’s TV ad campaign through November, December and January and the single’s top 20 success in the charts, James will release a special edition of his acclaimed debut album on February 5^th through Believe Digital, before embarking on a tour around the UK this month. His 7 date tour will end with a sold out show at London’s Royal Festival Hall on February 15^th.

The Special Edition album is available to pre order here, featuring 4 bonus tracks including his stunning version of Higher Love.

IMPALA, the Independent Music Companies Association is in strong opposition of the move by Universal Music for their proposed £1.2billion takeover of one of the music giants, EMI’s recorded music division. As reported by City A.M, IMPALA, who has over 4000 members across Europe in its trade body, are concerned that Universal’s bid for EMI would disregard competition interests.

In a statement published on IMPALA’s website on 26^th January, Helen Smith (Executive Chair) said “Neither the USA nor Europe wants to see the music sector become a two-horse race, devoid of competition from any other companies.” As reported by CMU, if EMI are to be taken over by Universal, the sheer size of both Universal/EMI and Sony will overpower that of Warner and will effectively leave just two major labels as the big players in the industry.

The statement also brings to light the fact that independent artists contribute to only 6% of the Top 100 for both airplay and downloads across Europe, despite accounting for 80% of all new releases. Universal, EMI and Sony would also account for 76% of the Top 200, according to a new report by EMO and Eurosonic/Nooderslag. IMPALA also stated that in 2011 an astonishing 94% of airplay and 95% of the top 100 downloads in Europe were releases by the major labels, with Universal and Sony the leaders of the competition by a long way.

If the deal goes ahead, it will mean that artists such as The Beatles, Coldplay and Kylie Minogue, as well as the label’s subsidiaries including Parlophone and Virgin, will be under Universal’s control.

Napster relaunch in the UK and Europe set to battle Spotify?

Napster has been reborn from its original illegal file-sharing service status into a legal streaming service, with its recent relaunch in Europe and the UK.  According to the Telegraph, US digital music service Rhapsody, who bought the US version of Napster in 2011, decided to fold the service into their own operations in the US.  However, they announced yesterday that they have now acquired Napster’s international operations, keeping the service’s original name for rebranding in UK and Europe and kicking off a battle with Spotify in its first venture away from the US.

As reported by Digital Spy, Rhapsody president Jon Irwin commented “Consumer demand for subscription music has never been greater, and our partners are eager to bring music to the masses in new and creative ways. There is a lot of room for growth in this market and I firmly believe that 2012 is going to be our biggest year yet.”

Napster will offer two services to their customers – unlimited music streaming with access to over 15 million tracks on a home computer for a monthly fee of £5, and a mobile device option for £10.

Yesterday also marked the launch of Pure Music, another competitor, which will allow its users to stream over 15 million songs each month for £4.99. The new cloud-based music service has secured deals with all of the major labels.

The SOPA war continues…

According to Tech Crunch, an alliance of Pirate Party organisations are planning to sue the FBI in retaliation of recent events. Their argument is that the abrupt take-down of MegaUpload caused huge damages, both personally and economically, to many lawful users of the site. MegaUpload’s attorney Ira Rothken commented that the move was “offensive to the rights of Megaupload but also to the rights of millions of consumers worldwide”, as reported by ARS Technica. As well as this, hacker collective Anonymous announced a Facebook shutdown to take place on 28^th January in a video uploaded to YouTube. They have since then claimed that the video is fake.

The shutdown of MegaUpload has prompted other websites using file-sharing to do the same voluntarily, according to RT.

There has also been speculation that the announcement of MegaBox is the reason behind why FBI, DOJ and MPAA, all US-based agencies, called a halt to the overseas website so abruptly. As reported by Digital Music News, MegaBox was a platform at beta-stage for emerging independent artists offering a combination locker and a download store.  Offering artists to keep 90% of their earnings as well as paying them for free downloads, they posed as a huge threat to record labels. According to Tech Crunch, MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom described MegaBox as a competitor to iTunes, and the service was due to be available to the public this year. Dotcom had also announced plans of launching a new site as a platform to offer free premium movies under the title Megamovie, which meant that MegaUpload would evolve from just a digital locker site to a digital content player.

Have you got the Decks Factor?

In other news, Simon Cowell has announced plans of a new talent contest to “find the world’s greatest DJ”. According to Music Week, the yet unnamed show has been in development for over a year with a format already penned down, and will be co-produced  by Cowell’s Syco Entertainment and Will and Jada Pinkett Smiths’ production company, Overbrook, in partnership with Sony Pictures Television. Cowell tweeted on Wednesday:

Mixmag have hinted at the suggestion of the show being named “Decks Factor” – will this be a successful new venture, or a record flop? Let us know your thoughts.

This post was written by Zimbalam blogger, Hinako Omori

The topic on everyone’s lips this week – the on-going online piracy saga with SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). Many internet sites, including Wikipedia, Mozilla and WordPress, showed their protest against this by having a blackout on Wednesday which stopped users being able to see the contents on their website.

The anti-SOPA protest counts actors, authors and musicians among its supporters, and even US President Obama has said that he would not support SOPA. According to Hypebot, the following points were made in an open letter addressed to Washington posted on 17th January, from the point of view of a collective of artists and creators which includes Trent Reznor, MGMT and OK Go among the list of names:

• They mention their gratitude for the measures put into place by policymakers, to help protect their works from copyright infringement
• They highlight the importance of social media in reaching and communicating with their fans, and the “benefits of a free and open Internet”
• They voice their worry that artists and creators will be censored and legitimate services and websites blocked under PIPA and SOPA’s new powers, even though they themselves are legitimate users

It seems as though the takedown of sites has already begun, with sites Megaupload and Megavideo being closed down on Thursday. According to Tech Digest, the US government’s reasoning for this was that they considered the webmasters of the sites to be involved in a “Mega Conspiracy, a worldwide criminal organization whose members engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scale.” The Telegraph reported that the operators of Megaupload were accused of ignoring requests to remove pirated material from music and film firms, and charged with criminal copyright infringement. According to the BBC, the site has been accused of costing copyright holders over $500m in lost revenue, in an accusation by federal prosecutors.

In response, internet hacking collective Anonymous launched a DDos (distributed denial-of-service) attack on a list high profile websites, including the websites of the US Department of Justice, the FBI, Universal Music and the Motion Picture Association of America. According to Tech Digest, it is thought that each organisation linked to the targeted sites have supported the anti-piracy bills in the past. Anonymous later tweeted:

They have also since uploaded a map showing the current number of network attacks by geographic region.

Listen with your friends on Facebook, and Ticketmaster’s New Facebook App

On top of the feature which allows you to tag the seats you’ve purchased at events on Facebook, event giants Ticketmaster have come up with a clever new application – its ability to recommend concerts you’d enjoy. According to Tech Crunch, the Open Graph app feeds off the activity from your Facebook profile’s music application, generated from services such as Rdio and Spotify. This allows the application to make suggestions of artists playing concerts nearby, regardless of whether or not you’ve “liked” them. As well as this, it shows you a feed of events that your friends are attending. Genius!

Facebook have also launched feature “Listen With Friends”, which does exactly what it says on the tin. According to a blog posted on Facebook, this feature will “let you discover and share new music with your buddies without leaving Facebook.” A music icon will appear next to the name of your friends on Facebook Chat, who are using a Facebook music streaming application to listen to music. By hovering over their name and clicking on the button “Listen With Friends” that appears, you will be able to stream music in real-time with them, with the idea that you can enjoy the song and specific musical moments (like that cheeky little synth hook!) at the same time.

However, this will only work through the Spotify and Rdio apps, and you will have to use the same music application as your friends for the service to work. Read the article from Huffington Post here for more on this feature.

State of Online Music in 2011

Next Big Sound have released statistics to present the state of online music last year, using measures from daily music consumptions and purchase decisions worldwide. This extremely in-depth report is a great insight into how the online music industry is developing, including overall consumption figures and which artists are making the top of the bill on the major social media websites. Graphs in the report also show which days in the week are popular on these websites, enabling you to judge which days would be best to post content in order to gain the most engagement.

According to the report, Soundcloud had a 231% growth in song plays last year, with the top 3 artists respectively as Foo Fighters, unsigned artist DJ Bl3nd and the Beastie Boys. Twitter saw a 104% increase in followers, showing Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Rihanna to have the most followers.

You can check out the full report here.

Festival line-ups and the introduction of RFID wristbands

Artist names are beginning to emerge and line-ups are already starting to take shape for festivals this year. Coachella, which sold out in two hours, have confirmed Radiohead, Pulp, At The Drive-In and Gold Panda among its stellar cast, and The Prodigy, Metallica and a recently reunited Black Sabbath are headlining Download at Donington Park. The Cure will also be busy gigging this summer, having confirmed headline slots at Swedish festival Hultsfred as well as Southside and Hurricane in Germany.

Electronic festival Big Chill has been cancelled this year, due to a clash in dates with the Olympic Games. In an announcement on the festival’s official website, festival boss Melvin Benn felt that it would be a risk to go ahead with the festival, a contributing factor also being artist availability and confirmations received for this year. There is talk of a smaller indoor event for this year, but for the outdoor event Big Chill fans will have to wait until 2013.

According to Spacelab, there is speculation that Glastonbury’s festival organiser Michael Eavis “might be tempted” to jump on the bandwagon and using RFID (Radio Frequency ID) wristbands in the next instalment of the festival in 2013. Already used at Coachella, Electric Zoo and Lollapalooza, the microchip-fitted wristbands will help festival organisers by being able to track the location of festival-goers, thus helping them think of strategies to better traffic flow, as well as reducing crime and theft as the wristband will provide evidence of people’s whereabouts. According to ID&C, other features of the new wristband are said to be to put a stop to ticket fraud and a cut in queuing times, which are both positive developments – they can also be used for social media integration and also to make purchases at the live events.

However, Eavis has voiced his concerns to BBC Newsbeat about the festival becoming “too commercial” with the implications of the embedded chip, and there is also the inevitable (and huge) issue of protecting the festival-goers’ privacy.  What do you think of the new wristband technology? Let us know your thoughts.

Paul McCartney promotes his new album on live stream

What better way to share a press conference and Q&A with fans worldwide than using a live stream? On Thursday, Paul McCartney spoke about his new album “Kisses On The Bottom via a 30 minute stream on his official website. Fans were also invited to e-mail questions for McCartney for the press conference.

According to NME, McCartney’s new album, featuring Stevie Wonder and Eric Clapton as guest musicians, consists of two new songs, “My Valentine” and “Only Our Hearts”, along with tracks that he grew up listening to during his childhood.

This post was written by Zimbalam blogger, Hinako Omori

MANNEQUIN

http://www.mannequinofficial.com/

“We don’t care if we’re happy, sad or broke. We just want to be great.”

From London, ManneQuin are a pop duo comprised of brothers Dan and Reuben Priddy who make “songs big enough for the girls & boys to party to!” Formed only 9 months ago, ManneQuin were quickly discovered via Myspace by heavyweight producer JR Rotem, whose credits include JLS, Jason Derulo, 50 Cent and Rihanna, and they were consequently invited to LA to work together.

They released debut EP “Yo Yo Girl” on November 28th last year – a four track collection of delicious pop. Other songs aside from the EP include the self-titled “ManneQuin”, “Tick Tick Boom” and “Electric Gold”.

ManneQuin have built themselves a reputation as songwriters of undeniably catchy pop – they composed the track “Lipstick”, performed by Irish pop twins Jedward on 2011′s Eurovision Song Contest, which became #1 in Ireland, Sweden & Germany. Impressing manager Louis Walsh, Dan was asked to produce album “Victory”, as well as ManneQuin earning a support slot on Jedward’s tour in 2011.

Exciting things coming up for the ManneQuin brothers this year include their anticipated album release, showcasing the results of their collaboration with Rotem. They are also planning a tour of UK & Ireland.

REAL FUR

http://www.myspace.com/wearrealfur

Real Fur are an exciting new trio from East London, hailed as “truly innovative indie pop” by the Independent.

Featured as thefourohfive’s Single of the Week, the band’s sound is an amalagamation of influences infusing indie pop with tropical tinges, addictive guitar hooks and funked basslines.

Real Fur have received support from local radio stations Shoreditch Radio and London Fields Radio as well as by XFM’s John Kennedy, BBC Introducing and BBC Radio 6 Music’s Tom Robinson, with the song “Animal” being featured in Tom Robinson’s Christmas Mixtapes of 2011. They can also count Jarvis Cocker as one of their fans, who was the first to DJ the song “The Fool”.

Last year saw the band play at the Drowned In Sound vs. The Recommender after-party during the Great Escape Festival, host a launderette show during Camden Crawl and play at Secret Garden Party and Farm Festival. More recently they have been gigging in Paris, with events including a show for Sofar Sounds.

You can catch the Real Fur boys at the XFM X-Posure All Dayer at the Camden Barfly on 28th January.

THE LOW SUNS

http://thelowsuns.tumblr.com/

The Low Suns are a 5 piece guitar band from London, listing their influences as Jeff Buckley, The Flaming Lips, 1940s Gospel and sci-fi soundtracks. From listening to their anthemic, cinematic tracks with big orchestral riffs and infectious melodies, it is clear that this band are destined for big things to come.

With frontman Jack Berkley’s incredible stage presence and effortless majesty, the band have been on tour since May last year, including support slots for Ash, Shonen Knife and more recently The Lemonheads and rock sensations Coldplay at the O2 Arena in December.

The band released their first EP “Never Gonna Care” on December 3rd 2011. Look out for epic anthem “Carnival” – one of my favourites which I haven’t been able to stop listening to.

Having already achieved number ones in Asia (their recent Hoxton gig was also filmed for Japanese TV!), and primed to storm the UK with a plethora of stunning tunes and instant hits, The Low Suns are going to be ones to watch in 2012.

OLIVIA BROADFIELD

http://oliviabroadfield.com/

Olivia Broadfield is a singer songwriter based in the UK. Her musical style is a blend of acoustic, electronica and pop, incorporating her delicate, innocent vocals together with piano, acoustic guitar, lush harmonies and sometimes some African percussion.

Olivia is a perfect example of an unsigned musician making the most of social media to reach out to music supervisors and publishing companies. Songs from her 2009 debut album “Eyes Wide Open” were placed in over 50 TV shows including the hugely popular US series Greys Anatomy, The Hills, Melrose Place and Ghost Whisperer, and the album out-positioned major label artists to reach no.3 in iTunes’s Electronica charts. She can also count Perez Hilton and Jessica Simpson among her celebrity fans!

For her second album “This Beautiful War”, Olivia decided to create a heartfelt sound that felt more “real” to her – her main focus is on the piano, which she grew up playing, and occasionally incoporating some squawks from her synths. She wrote and recorded the album, which was released on June 20th 2011, in the comfort of her studio in the English countryside.

In partnership with Ustream, Olivia has also played a live webgig and hosted a Q&A and live Christmas Party, to allow her fans from all over the world to join in and listen to her music. She has also been featured in a number of tech blogs on her compositional technique – a crossover of old school songwriting with modern technology.

2012 will be an exciting year for Ms Broadfield, and no doubt we’ll be hearing her beautiful melodies all over our televisions again soon.

PAPER AEROPLANES

http://www.paperaeroplanesmusic.com/

Paper Aeroplanes are Sarah Howells and Richard Llewellyn, a folk duo from Wales. Forming the band six years ago, their sound has been compared to the likes of Turin Brakes, Nerina Pallot and Gemma Hayes, with The Guardian describing their sound as “intimate, jaunty and confident lo-key pop with great melody”.

Their debut album “The Day We Ran Into The Sea” was released in November 2010, and since then they have received support from BBC Radio Wales and Adam Walton, also making the Radio 2 playlist. Following this, the duo supported a variety of acts including Ed Sheeran, Ron Sexsmith and Marina and the Diamonds, as well as a live session with the legendary Bob Harris.

2011 saw the release of mini-album “We are Ghosts”, which was picked up by Maverick Magazine as “Album of the Month” and featured on The Guardian’s “F&M playlist”.

With acoustic guitar music currently taking the music charts by storm, Paper Aeroplanes will definitely be ones to watch out for this year with their delicate, heartwarming sound. You can catch them headlining at The Slaughtered Lamb, Farringdon on January 14th, or check out their website for scheduled gigs in February and March.

HANNAH TRIGWELL

http://www.hannahtrigwell.co.uk/

Only 20 years old and only 3 years into her musical career, Hannah Trigwell has certainly come very far – she has already been named ‘Best International Unsigned Act’ at the 2011 St. Helier Online Music Awards, as well as a finalist in the FutureSound competition, held in Leeds.

A singer songwriter from Leeds, Hannah started off by performing her stripped-back acoustic-pop on the streets of her hometown. Fast-forward 3 years, and she has already gained a huge online fanbase with thousands of fans worldwide – her YouTube page gains 10,000 hits per day and has gathered over 2.5 million views.

Her debut EP, “Hold My Heart”, was released in May 2010 and was no.1 on Amazing Radio’s The Unsigned Chart for two weeks, also getting to no.6 in the iTunes Singer-Songwriter album charts.

Hannah’s stunning melodies and lush orchestrations have been noticed and praised by the likes of Lissie, Ed Sheeran and Johnny Reznik (Goo-Goo-Dolls), as well as receiving support from BBC Radio Leeds, BBC Raw Talent and Radio Aire – Hannah was also featured in BBC Two’s “Young Inspirational People” documentary, which is hardly surprising!

Catch Hannah at her first gig of the year at “Plug’d In”, a night of stripped back acoustic pop at The Well, Leeds, on 27th January.

DAVID J ROCH

http://www.davidroche.net

David J Roch is an acoustic singer songwriter from Sheffield.

Describing his music as honest, heartfelt and broken, David’s music deals with loss, love, religion, death and relationships, and working as an undertaker the dark nature of his songs may come as no surprise. He collaborated with Jim Sclavunos, drummer from Grinderman and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds on his latest album, to create a sound which let him utilise his full vocal range, expanding from deep baritone to ethereal falsetto. David’s versatile and almost supernatural-sounding vocals, compared to the likes of Nick Drake or Jeff Buckley, are the key element in his music – he enables his voice to “swoop, soar and intertwine itself around everything in it’s path”, over soundscapes of stark electronic ambience or contrasting full orchestration.

His latest album “SKIN + BONES”, showcasing his dark, romantic compositions, was picked up as one of the “Best Albums of 2011″ by Shakenstir.

HOT HEAD SHOW

http://www.hotheadshow.com/

Formed in 2008, this highly energetic trio from Hackney have made quite an impression. With the ability to slip between garage, punk, ska, eccentric disco, twisted rock and avantgarde, Hot Head Show have been described as “genuinely fresh” and “appealingly bizarre” by Time Out London and “funky zig-zaggy rock”. Whatever you’d like to call it, their sound is definitely unique – however, the guys from Hot Head Show define their sound as “bangbang”. So here sees a start of their own genre!

Their ambition is to “regularly make music in a situation where it’s part of a larger psycho-spiritual entertainment equation”, with the view of writing and playing in Italy, their favourite country.

In 2011 Hot Head Show went on tour in Europe and the US with the legendary Les Claypool, of Primus fame, which included a sell-out show at Koko, Camden. They later went on to join alt-rock superstars Primus themselves on their UK and Europe tour. August saw the release of “The Lemon LP” which received rave reviews, the single “Payload” receiving considerable airplay from BBC Radio 6′s Lauren LaVerne.

You can catch Hot Head Show at the White Lion, Streatham on January 19th – one thing’s for sure, they’ll definitely blow you away with their energy and intriguing charm!

LEAVING ATLANTIS

http://leavingatlantis.com

Signe Gry Thorup and Vesa Haapanen initially met at The Powerhouse music college in London and became friends in 1999, but life split them apart until they were reunited nine years later. Upon discovering their instant musical chemistry, Leaving Atlantis was born. Signe comes from Denmark and Vesa from Finland, but they are now based in London.

Signe sings and plays the tenorion, and Vesa plays the drums, keyboard, guitars, percussion, piano, kalimba and any other instrument imaginable – as you can guess, this makes for a very big, atmospheric sound. Their music can be described as progressive electroacoustic pop, and it’s difficult not to get transfixed by Signe’s soulful voice, soaring over a lush electronic soundscape.

Their debut album “Strange New World” was recorded over the past few years in studios, a few living rooms and even a log cabin across Northern Europe and Zimbabwe, and was released in July 2011.

They are currently “brewing” new material which they plan to attack in the New Year – we can’t wait! Keep your eyes peeled for this duo.

COCOS LOVERS

http://www.cocoslovers.com/


“Kent coast folk with an African twist” The Guardian

Cocos Lovers, pronounced Co-Kross, are a six piece band from Deal on the Kent coast. Made up of family and friends, Will, Natasha, Nicola, David, Billy and Phil create their own blend of traditional folk, African and Eastern rhythms with strains of the Deep South.

The band formed back in early 2008 quickly becoming a UK festival favourite known for their multi-instrumental performances. Their festival slots to date have included three slots at Glastonbury, Cambridge Folk Festival, Green Man Festival, Lounge on the Farm, Kendall Calling, Broadstairs Folk Week and Secret Garden party.

The band released their second album, ‘Elephant Lands’ on Smugglers Records earlier this year. Its predecessor ‘Johannes’ based itself on Southern Africa sounds, while ‘Elephant Lands’ takes us to a new destination in sub-Saharan Africa. Both albums have received rave reviews for their unique styles and the band themselves for their unique preformances.

You can catch Cocos Lovers at WOODBURNER (Tunnels under Waterloo Station, London) on the 17th Feburary.

THE READS

http://thereads.co.uk/

“they deliver like a hug from the person you love the most.” Shakenstir.co.uk

Marcel, Jamie, Stuart, Matty and Clare are from Flintshire, North Wales. They play music that the North Wales Pioneer described as ‘folk doused in ambient rock then squeezed through and electronic mangle’ – and they’re really good at it. The Reads have been together (in various forms) for a decade and for much of that time played music only amongst themselves in a caravan. It was only after a friend offered to fund their album, and they built enough confidence to start playing gigs, that the world got to hear their music.

Their debut album ‘Stories From The Borders’  and single ‘Good Omens’ have only been out a few months  but this five piece have already secured rave reviews and some high profile air time. Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine loved the album so much he played two of their songs on his lunch time show back in June. Their track ‘Orange Days’ was also BBC Radio Wales’ Single Of The Week in May. The record was mastered by Frank Arkwright, who in his career has worked with Arcade Fire and The Smiths, and produced by Jim Spencer who has helped bands like Oasis, The Charlatans and Doves. Composer Joe Duddell also offered his help and took time out from working with Elbow to arrange brass and strings for five out of the twelve tracks. He worked for free after hearing just one song and falling in love with it.

Back in October the reads posted on their website that they are back in the studio, we can not wait to hear what they come up with next. You can also help them out on there quest to support Graham Coxon in Manchester on 19th April, visit the following link to find out how: http://youtu.be/Sf-B4EEp9Ks

From the section ‘Preparation, Preparation, Preparation – how to commission a great video’.

* Research the kind of video you want

These sites find and feature the best music videos on the internet:

Vimeo Staff Picks http://www.vimeo.com/staffpicks
Lost At EMinor http://www.lostateminor.com/category/music/
Music Vid Kid http://www.musicvidkid.com
Submarine Channel http://2pause.submarinechannel.com/#/new
Promo News http://www.promonews.tv/
VideoMilitia http://www.videomilitia.com/
RadarTV http://www.radarmusicvideos.com/videos

When you’re briefing potential directors, give them links to music videos you like.

From the section ‘Presenting Your Video – how to optimise for clicks that help you get what you want’

* Thumbnails

Thumbnails are the MOST important aspect of presentation and by far the biggest reason someone will click to view your video or not – particularly if they don’t know you and your music. If the pre-selected thumbnail isn’t excellent, without question you need to change it.
Most sites allow you to choose thumbnails – YouTube partners and Vimeo users can upload images. Dailymotion allow video scrolling and frame selection. If you’re not a YouTube partner, the pre-selected images you’re offered are taken from the beginning, middle and end of the video. Ask your director to end the video with static footage of the thumbnail you want, so you can be sure the thumbnail will be included in the three pre-selected images offered.
Ideal images include a close-up face with eyes looking to camera. Simple, strong, colourful images also work well. If you’ve got a few thumbnails to choose from, half-close your eyes and note which image stands out most.

* Video Description

Use your video to pull potential fans into your own networks.
Include a call to action and a link in the first sentence, preferably in the first 65 characters – this is how many characters you see in Youtube’s preview, +/- a few.
If you’re concerned calls to action and links smack of hard sell, consider instead that it’s good manners to help people find your links easily.
Example calls to action are “join our newsletter”, “follow us on Twitter”, “like us on Facebook” or “buy on iTunes”. Always follow up with the link.
A good, short story about the video or the artist in the rest of the text encourages comments and helps your video turn up in Google (also known as SEO, search engine optimisation).

From the section ‘How to spend money promoting your video’

* Pay for an advertising campaign.

This is about getting direct access to potential fans. You’re buying access to the right people and enough repeated visibility to get your message across.
How many times do you need to see an ad before you act? Here’s what people on Quora suggest.
Advertising includes Google Ads, Facebook Ads and adverts on music blogs and newsletters.
Do a lot of small advertising campaigns on different platforms and testing different messages. Always have a call to action and measure the success of each campaign relative to the cost.

You can get the complete “29 Ways To Get The Most From Your Music Video” guide by signing up for a free account on Radar, which you can do here. Quote Zimbalam upon signing up to Radar to recieve a 10% discount on your next release with Zimbalam.

Caroline Bottomley, Radar founder.