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.
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.
“MySpace has reinstated the registered URL www.myspace.com/mobile to the band–this was an error on our part and we apologize for any inconvenience caused. The band’s profile has not been altered in any way.”
MySpace took http://www.myspace.com/mobile which Canadian group, Mobile, registered with two years ago and redirected it to its new mobile enterprise.
Montreal band, Mobile, two months into their second album and on their first leg of a tour with Chris Cornell, received a message from MySpace regarding their profile URL:
Greetings MySpace member,
We are in the process of making MySpace better which requires the use of the URL you have chosen. MySpace will reset your URL within 48 hours of receipt of this email. After it has been reset, you will be able to choose another URL. The reset of your URL will not affect your profile at all. Should you have any questions, feel free to reply back and a MySpace representative will assist you in this process.
Thank you for your time and understanding!
The MySpace Team
MySpace made this move due to their launch of a new mobile platform:
www.myspace.com/myspacemobile
Needless to say, MySpace can not have a band URL compete with a service URL.
After 2 years on MySpace, the band, Mobile, will lose their identity on MySpace, a catastrophic event that is likely to occur again and again as MySpace continues to unveil new services with names that match that of member artists on their site.
This is a silly, technical hitch that could have easily been avoided had MySpace used sub domains in the first place (i.e. www.myspace.com/artist/mobile instead of www.myspace.com/mobile)
Beware! Any artist/band with a name that may be conjured up by MySpace as a future service is a risk.
TuneCore, the do-it-yourself digital music distribution platform, landed $7 million in a recent round led by Opus Capital. The company offers immediate access into stores like iTunes, and poses serious competition to existing indie distribution companies like CD Baby.
Artists can distribute their albums or individual tracks across a number of digital music stores for under $30, and keep the royalties, a model that has yet to be tried and tested by the major digital distributors on behalf of long tail clients.
MP3 metadata contains a large amount of searchable information, including the basics of a song: song title, artist name, and album title and artwork. Some artists take the time to include discography and biography details, as well as liner notes, lyrics, images, and anything that allows the digital file to be found, catalogued and, most importantly, relevant and a source of added value to the consumer. The successful distribution of digital files largely depends on the manner in which they are tagged.
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