SONG CONTEST BLOG

Trent Reznor’s revolutionary and somewhat controversial music marketing activities (read Reznor’s back story) continue to push the envelope with the release of the NIN frontman’s very own iPhone App.  We are not worthy.

Related Post: iPhone Artist Promotion

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.

Stop motion video editing is popular on YouTube.  I first got sight of its viral potential when young Lasse Gjertsen uploaded his outrageous piano and drum montage:

More recently, Oren Lavie enjoyed tremendous success beyond his YouTube exposure with a beautifully conceived yet shoe-string budgeted piece:

Yesterday, I discovered a symphony of YouTube clips that, collectively, sound quite amazing and reflect the exciting prospects of remixing previously published and shared content:

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

I’ve been following Bandcamp for a little while now (see earlier post) and I noticed today that the company made some revisions to its home page.  Most notably, Bandcamp created a “features” page which lists the entire suite of tools and services.  I was also delighted to learn that Bandcamp now provides Creative Commons licensing designations:

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:

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.

$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.

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.

Free Hugs Campaign