CNN published an informative guide to the world’s best music festivals, highlighting the most renowned music events, a few of which, I must admit, I haven’t heard of, including India’s Sunburn Festival and Woodstock… no, not that Woodstock. The one in Cape Town, South Africa. It’s a good idea to keep music festivals and conferences on your radar. Many of them have indie programmes for their smaller stages so, if you’re quick and your music is blazin’, you may find yourself strutting your stuff in Serbia…
IEG, a global leader in sponsorship consulting services, valuation and measurement, published promising figures for US music sponsorship spending for 2009, in spite of the current economic climate. The report highlights the consistent growth in the ‘big ticket’ live music sector, while noting that local music events and properties are displaying a decline in sponsorship support.
Recent deals include J. C. Penney Co.’s two-year integrated partnership with Rascal Flatts on behalf of its American Living brand; The Clorox Co. co-presenting the US stops of Keith Urban’s tour on behalf of its KC Masterpiece sauces and Kingsford charcoal; and Research In Motion Ltd. aligning with U2 on behalf of BlackBerry.
Tighter budgets for working class musicians is expected as a reflection of the music industry’s flux, but cashflows in the direction of A-listers may [eventually] trickle down toward the indies as competition for aligning brand with band stiffens.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Kyte, the San Francisco based company providing turn-key solutions for online and mobile digital content production, distribution and monetization, has announced the launch of custom iPhone and iPod Touch apps as a new means for music fans to access their favourite artists’ music, videos, news, and exclusive content. In a separate affair, 90’s rock group, Presidents of the United States of America, who made a name for themselves with “Lump” and “Peaches”, have just released their own iPhone app along the same lines. For $2.99, fans can stream the band’s entire catalogue over a Wi-Fi or cellular connection, as well as gain access to exclusive content and previously unreleased music. This is exciting music industry news! iPhone apps are hugely popular and provide an unparalleled platform for artists to access their audience and visa versa. It won’t be long before we see more and more artists, from megstars to indies, harnessing this technology to promote themselves, monetize their catalogue, and upsell associated initiatives and assets such as concert tickets and merchandise.
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.
IEG, a global leader in sponsorship consulting services, valuation and measurement, published promising figures for US music sponsorship spending for 2009, in spite of the current economic climate. The 
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