SONG CONTEST BLOG

While next-generation music pros are angling for music 2.0 success stories and peddling self-promotion concepts to upstart artists, Bruce Warila of musicXray wants us all to take a breather, not go overboard and lose our shorts.  Bruce colourfully describes the myriad of current industry obstacles and unveils a step-by-step coup d’état.  I particularly enjoyed this analogy, perhaps one of Bruce’s softer moments:

“Genres are coastlines, niches within genres are beachfront properties, and standalone artists are rocks or grains of sand.  Sticking with the metaphor: coastlines and beachfront properties are compelling, interesting and entertaining; rocks and sand are things that get stuck in your shorts and sandals.”

Read the entire onslaught.

iLike, the hugely successful consumer-facing extension of the not-so-hugely-successful indie artist community, GarageBand, announced its further investment in self-promoting artist tools for iLike registered artists, specifically the marketing and syndication of music and music-related collateral across several social networks.  The 300,000 member iLike artist community will now be able to automate their feeds to Twitter, synchronize their YouTube channels to their iLike accounts, add an ‘up-selling’ widget to their MySpace concert listing, and include an iLike ‘music tab’ to their Facebook profile… and this is just the very tip of the ice-cream: iPhone apps, content syndication tools, premium artist stats, own web-domain management and many more flavours. 

iLike is a powerhouse, catering to 45 million music fans across its network.  This investiture will undoubtedly put some pressure on small players such as BandMetrics and RockDex who focus on statistics for artists, and ArtistData who focus on content syndication, to offer value features that iLike can’t or simply chooses not to.  And in spite of ReverbNation’s exponential growth and market lead on the indie artist front, iLike enjoys an unmistakable advantage: primed access to consumers en mass.

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