Following the example of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, Coldplay will also be adding value this summer by providing fans attending dates on their international tour beginning May 15th in North America with a free copy of their album LeftRightLeftRight. A free download of the record will also be available at the same time on their site.
“Playing live is what we love… this album is a thank you to our fans – the people who give us a reason to do it and make it happen.”
Universal Music Group International and its joint venture company, All The Worlds, are hitting the track by joining forces with Formula One Administration Ltd. to create F1 ROCKS, a new global entertainment initiative. F1 ROCKS will combine racing’s most glamorous and spectacular sporting event with A-list stars at international F1 racing locations.
“The partnership between the world’s most thrilling sport and the world’s biggest music company is one of the most exciting entertainment initiatives to be launched anywhere. The combination of music, megastars and motor sport will create a groundbreaking, all-new entertainment spectacular, channelled through the multiple platforms open to our two global brands.” — Lucian Grainge, Chairman/CEO, Universal Music Group International
Sonicbids, the leading online event submission platform, has released a series of plugins for its 14,000+ promoters to better gauge the online presence and reach of the artists they may wish to book through the site. Now, when an artist submits his EPK (Electronic Press Kit) for an event through Sonicbids, the event’s promoter will have access to third-party, public data from Last.fm, Twitter and Google. As such, in addition to reviewing the artist’s content on Sonicbids, a snapshot of number of plays, listeners, mentions, links and posts across other networks should support and streamline the promoter’s selection process.
Sonicbids is home to 150,000 artists and bands, offering an event marketplace for artists to find gigs, and for promoters to secure talent. The site caters to every imaginable music industry sector, with a strong focus on live performances at leading music festivals and conferences, including SXSW, CMJ, Popkomm, Midem, and MusicExpo.
This is an update follow-up on one of the most promising enterprises in music tech at the moment. ArtistData is attempting to solve a ubiquitous problem: today, an artist’s online presence consists of several social network pages among other web assets which, unfortunately, are not connected with one another. As such, gig schedule updates and other content must be ‘updated’ manually on each network. This is time consuming. ArtistData addresses this problem by translating and syndicating a single update to all of the artist’s network pages. More about this topic here.
In addition to ArtistData’s core offering, the company developed some nifty side-features based on geo-specific attributes such as where to get a cup of coffee or new set of guitar strings near the venue. Not a huge selling point but certainly a nice-to-have. The “Local Listings” feature is more compelling, serving as a local press distribution platform for live show promotion. Anyone who has had to manage a PR campaign, hire a publicist, or distribute through PR Newswire will appreciate the value of such an application.
Local Listings Tour:
While every leading and emerging artist service is selling “self-promotion” as its mantra, ArtistData has beautifully positioned itself by focusing on the necessity of syndication: making data quick and easy to manage. Simple and brilliant.
Following his successful ‘free’ distribution initiative in the UK, Prince, who is both a pioneer and a royal pain in the industry’s ass, is following up on his previous co-venture success with an online ‘bundle’ initiative launching on the 24th March at lotusflow3r.com. For $77, Prince fans will have access to three new albums from the artist presently known as Prince in digital format as well as physical through Target stores across the US. The site will provide an entire experience around the music and will undoubtedly create new buzz for this extraordinary recording artist and performer.
Remember Hanson? Well, they’ve been operating independently for some years now and been doing so with as much flare and vigor as any bootstrapping hero taking the stage today. Their self-released album, “Underneath”, which debuted at #1 in the Billboard Top Independent Albums in 2004, remains one of the most successful indie releases of all time. Hear them now.
This year, SXSW, the Austin mega music festival, will showcase a rare collaboration indeed: former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist, James Iha; Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos; Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger; and Hanson’s very own Taylor Hanson taking the mic. Ladies and gentleman, Tinted Windows have arrived!
ArtistData caught my attention a few months ago as an excellent solution for updating your gig schedule across numerous platforms, saving much time and ensuring consistency across the board. The service currently supports the major music-oriented networks, including ReverbNation, Virb, PureVolume, Sonicbids, Indie911, and, soon, facebook, by importing your gig schedule from your MySpace page and publishing the data simultaneously on all of your registered network profile pages. The service also syndicates the data across a number of concert databases, including Jambase and Last.fm, which serves as a swift and effective live music marketing solution. ArtistData is limited to gig schedule syndication but reports to be working on other data publication solutions for artists. Ping.fm, which I learned about on Hypebot today, also provides a data syndication solution but focuses on message posting across multiple sites as opposed to gig schedules. However, the two services combined may serve as a very powerful set of tools to notify all your fans, regardless of how they are connected to you, in one single blast.
As an artist, getting your ass on stage and performing to as many people as often as possible is key. In the US, SXSW is arguably the largest draw of both music fans and artists, certainly independent artists. Should you get on a SXSW stage? Of course you should. However, assuming that you are not yet well known, playing live at an over-crowded and super competitive event has its limitations. Sometimes, you have to get off the stage in order to truly make an impact and, year after year, I’m seeing more independent artists attending music conferences, on their own behalf, and with their business hat on. Although the largest of the lot, Midem in Cannes and Popkomm in Berlin, also offer a variety of live performance opportunities to acts big and small, the true event value is in the aimless wondering between the booths and random handshakes with industry professionals. I’m not joking. You’ll meet a lot more people on the floor than on stage. If you meet someone who wants to hear you play, both Midem and Popkomm have listening rooms big enough for you to perform acoustically. If nothing else, attending these events will teach you a lot about the current music market and provide you with the confidence to approach prospective partners who may [or may not] invest in your next recording, touring, licensing, or writing initiative. You never know.
Further to my piece on Don Ross earlier this week, I wanted to add another post about one of his fellow CandyRat Records artists who really caught my attention last night with his original composition, “Catching the Light”.
Dufour has lots of video performances on YouTube, equally as stylistically impressive and melodically driven. As one of Canada’s emerging young stars of acoustic fingerstyle guitar, he is building a strong fanbase and reputation as an awe-inspiring live performer and innovator of the solo acoustic guitar style driven by him and his CandyRat peers, many of whom are also prominent YouTube stars.
Anyone who has randomly surfed through YouTube has eventually landed on a video of a teen guitar virtuoso with millions of accrued views. Search a little further and a vast world of amateur instructional guitar ‘how-to’ clips will reveal themselves with tantamount popularity. Guitar is a massive interest category on YouTube and, with it, a traditionally unrepresented musical niche has emerged to the fore: Guitar Virtuosos. Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Nuno Bettencourt, and alike, were popular long before YouTube unveiled itself as the premier video portal, however, a new breed of guitarists have caught the attention of the dotcom generation with unique styles that, until now, experienced only nook-and-cranny exposure.
Enter CandyRat Records, the most visible alternative acoustic guitar label on YouTube – or anywhere, for that matter. The boutique-sized label, founded by Rob Poland, has capitulated extraordinary guitarists through a series of low-budget video clips of their music, the most successful of which include some form of tapping, odd tuning, or any other unconventional manner of playing their instrument. Although CandyRat represents a whole slew of talented guitarists and singer/songwriters, the company’s most notorious roster of YouTube maestros includes the likes of Erik Mongrain, Antoine Dufour, and, of course, Andy McKee, who has garnered just under 20 million views for his video performance of “Drifting“, an original composition, and over 8 million views for an innovative version of “Africa” by Toto. And then there’s Don Ross.
Don Ross was Rob Poland’s first signing, even though Don remained contractually independent. In 2005, Don released an album through CandyRat which marked the label’s investiture as an acoustic aficionado. In a recent communication with Jill Katona of Paperwork Media, Don’s booking agent and Andy McKee’s former rep, I learned that it was Don who brought Andy to Poland’s attention, who later signed him and released two of his CDs under CandyRat. Old friends, Don Ross and Andy McKee collaborated for the label and enjoyed mutual exposure online. However, it was McKee’s video performance of “Drifting” that truly put CandyRat on the map and significant offshoot traffic in Don’s direction, as well as the other artists on the label’s growing roster.
Don Ross and Andy McKee’s styles are comparable. The two masters of their trade govern the art of percussive, finger-picking, neck-hammering guitar techniques which make their solo guitar compositions sound as if there are multiple instruments omnipresent. Considering Don Ross’ lengthy tenure as an acoustic guitar performer, I can only assume that he is one of the pioneers of this style – he has certainly become renowned for it.
Don is currently on tour with Brooke Miller, a 2007 finalist in We Are Listening’s Breaking the Band, and their aggregate talent should make for an excellent series of live show.
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