Since the release of his debut album, “The Living Room Sessions”, in April 2008, Andrew Allen has toured and played live in more than 200 venues throughout Western Canada and the UK, secured airtime on the UK’s BBC Radio 1 as well as on Canada’s own CBC radio, and, most recently, won Round 1 of The 2009 Singer/Songwriter Awards from We Are Listening.  His winning entry, “Not Loving You”, draws striking resemblance to “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz, while other tracks from his setlist gravitate toward the sound and songwriting style of Maroon 5, John Mayer and Jack Johnson.  Congratulations Andrew, we look forward to working with you!

Andrew Allen on MySpace

Just discovered a quirky new site for music and music video discovery called YouMusic.  Under the strapline, Make Music?  Find Fans!  Love Music? Find Talent!, the site crowd sources its content from artists and allows music consumers to rate what they hear and see.  There’s a music chart, gig schedule, contest and other community and artist opportunity bells and whistles.  I wonder how much the YouMusic.com domain is worth?

P2P streaming music service, Grooveshark, has launched an artist promotion initiative – much like the track placement scheme Jango conceived of – as a means for artists and music promoters to purchase plays on its platform, a direct advertising approach that makes sense.  The Gainesville, Florida, company of approximately 40 young entrepreneurs has created a music service that rivals that of Last.fm and Pandora, the two major players in legal music discovery and ‘free’ music streaming.

Grooveshark claims to have deployed a legal music discovery and consumption model, providing its users with a financial incentive to share music, compensating artist/labels for their respective share of ‘broadcasts’, and maximizing illegal file sharing by financing its original sources.  Whether this service is actually legal or not is questionable and it appears that the company has created an expensive model to sustain on ad revenues alone.  However, they’re coming through on some very interesting marketing features for small budget music marketing campaigns.  At its core, Grooveshark Artists offers pay-for-play audio realestate matched to its existing track recommendations and provides analytics tools for track placement optimization. 

In addition, it has partnered up with some of the most talked about music tech startups for music retail, licensing, funding, and more, including Bandcamp, Sellaband and TheNextBigSound, all under the Grooveshark banner which already includes a number of subsidiary services including Tinysong, a track link generating tool for viral distribution, and  Twisten.fm, a Twitter crawler that finds music-related tweets and links them to playable tracks.  All of this put together amounts to a powerful enterprise of do-it-yourself marketing and a 360 indie approach akin to ReverbNation.

On demand music streaming service, Spotify, has been on my radar since the company announced a distribution deal with CD Baby in the first week of February.  CD Baby, the leading force in independent music retail and digital music distribution, represents more than 175,000 artists which account for over one million tracks, all of which are now available through Spotify’s lightweight music streaming application.  This licensing deal marks the ‘long-tail’ trend in music availability and consumption, and celebrates the access independent artists have today to mass audiences through pioneering music services, many of which had treated indie talent as nothing more than an afterthought after securing major label catalogues.  Under the aphorism of “access not ownership”, the Luxemburg-based company has been growing exponentially since its €15.3m venture capital injection in October 2008 and, in turn, joining an elite group of legal music experience providers such as Pandora, Last.fm, TheSixtyOne, and others, which have found success in catering to music consumers through a balanced and worldly music library whilst reserving significant real-estate for up and coming artists: a pop-culture and grassroots music mix that appears to be paving the way for a new industry.  A spot in Spotify’s limelight is not yet available directly for small acts and labels but CD Baby has certainly lowered the barrier of entry.  Thank you Derek or, rather, Disc Makers for making this possible…

Related Post: Jango AirPlay

Over the weekend, I learned that Nimbit, which has been on my radar since Jon Delange of Tinderbox Music introduced me to the company’s CEO, Patrick Faucher, several months ago, has secured venture capital to the tune of $1 million.  The company provides eCommerce solutions for artists and music promoters, and bespoke services such as digital distribution, CD/DVD replication and merchandise production, and web design.  The company’s turnkey approach incorporates web technology to market and distribute digital music with physical solutions such as download cards and promotional prints.  Nimbit appears to be acting in two ways: the first, as a technology company developing digital retail and marketing solutions such as embeddable storefront apps; and, the second, as a broker for commercial print requirements, from CD/DVD replication to custom-branded merchandise which complements its web facet. 

Nimbit’s DownloadCards (credit card-sized branded cards with a unique ‘download’ code) can be sold or given away to the fan at the live venue and later redeemed online as digital tracks through a custom Nimbit store.  This is an excellent example of digital commerce converging with physical commerce, however, DiscRevolt offers an almost identical solution.  Emusu is also competing for a share of this market.  In terms of digital music distribution, Nimbit is facing strong competition from TuneCore, ReverbNation, and CD Baby.  As for print and duplication, Discmakers dominates the US music market and recently acquired Oasis, another formidable opponent in this space.  Although Nimbit’s individual services are not particularly competitive as stand-alone features, the services, as a group offering, and Nimbit’s convenient all-under-one-roof approach, may satisfy artists and promoters with a slight edge.

Slicethepie and Bebo announced a co-venture this week whereby Bebo members will have the opportunity to grab the A&R seat at Slicethepie’s artist career-funding network.  Strikingly similar in concept to Sellaband, Slicethepie is tapping into the leading British social network’s community assets while Sellaband remains very much an independent platform.  The music “business” role-play idea has been embraced by a number of players in one form or another, including Songness, TheNextBigSound, and  Soundout, a Slicethepie imprint, based on the belief that if potential fans are provided with both a true hand in an artist’s fledgling career as well as a financial incentive, consumer loyalty and word-of-mouth shall follow.  Perhaps the shape of things to come.

An independent artist by the name of Rustcycle contacted me a couple of days ago about his interesting marketing idea and cross-over musical offering.  Rustcycle (a.k.a. Adrian Johnson) developed a gorgeous looking 255-level iPhone and iPod Touch game which mimics the natural flow of particles when the player manipulates the electromagnetic field with his finger.  Far out.  The $0.99 game, aptly named NANO, is set to Adrian’s self-composed and produced ambient music, creating a “meditative, serene journey that stands in contrast with the tense experience of many other iPhone games.”  Adrian has differentiated himself by bridging two talents to create an experience that few artists can compete with or even conceive of.  By drawing users (paying users, incidentally) into a world of nodes and particles, Adrian is exposing his musical facets to a highly targeted new audience.

I love the thinking behind this and I praise Adrian for identifying and employing his strengths as a creative programmer in order to bring his musical attributes to the fore. 

Demo:

Related post: iPhone Artist Promotion

Under the Creative Commons licensing designations, artists who make their music public, in this case via Bandcamp, are providing limited rights to other artists and music fans who wish to remix, share, or use the music in a variety of ways without having to formally ask permission.

Not yet familiar with Creative Commons?  Overview:

Discmakers, the CD replication giant that recently acquired CD Baby, announced the launch of a new promotion yesterday for independent artists.  The company’s CD and packaging artwork division, The Design Studio, is providing customers that place design orders by the 10th April 2009 with a chance to appear front and center on their print brochure.  During the eight week campaign, a panel of professional graphic designers will select 10 CD album artowkr designs from that week’s “pool of design approvals”.  On the 20th April 2009, one Grand Prize Winner will be selected for placement on the brochure’s front cover, along with five other selections to appear inside the fall edition.  Details…

$99 Music Videos is a brilliant ‘indie’ solution for both music artists and filmmakers.  The online video portal provides a gateway for artists and credible filmmakers to collaborate and produce music videos within 24 hours and for $99 or less.  Completed clips are submitted to the site and broadcast twice weekly, along with “making-of” video content, to be rated by viewers.  The idea is to encourage artists and filmmakers to get back to basics and dispel the myth that music videos require major label budgets.  $99 is certainly a challenge, as is a 24 hour turnaround, however, the $99 Music Videos team are confident that a budget skillset and approach will result in creative and potentially viral gems.