Technology News

Cash Music's "Seed" is Creating Free Digital Tools for Musicians and You Can Help

Source: HypeBot
February 3, 2011

What Wordpress did for bloggers, non-profit CASH Music hopes to do for musicians. They've been creating free open source digital tools for  for several years, and now they are reaching out to artists and the industry to help complete their most ambitious project yet, Seed. Details, A Video Intro & How You Can Contribute: Seed is an open-source PHP music marketing and sales platform that anyone can download and install on their own server. It comes with an installer and ...

Continue Reading...

What Makes Facebook Fan Pages so Succesful: Lessons from Linkin Park and the Major Brands

Source: HypeBot
February 1, 2011

Almost overnight, Facebook Pages have become one of the most powerful tools in the music marketing toolkit. But beyond the massive number of eyeballs that Facebook offers, why are Fan Pages so powerful? During a MIDEM session last week with Rachel Masters of Red Magnet Media, Aaron Ray of management and new media firm The Collective admitted that when they first ramped up Linkin Park's social media presence, they assumed that fans wanted exclusive content. But they were wrong. “It ...

Continue Reading...

Sonicbids Adds Its Own Facebook Profile Builder Plus a Video Tour

Source: HypeBot
January 29, 2011

RootMusic is getting kudos for its program that creates great looking Facebook Profiles and ReverbNation has a popular tool that makes it  even easier by pulling from assets already stored in its system.  Now Sonicbids has added a Profile builder with a feature that encourages fans to “Like" an artist: As you might expect, Sonicbids pulls content from subscriber's EPKs.  Users can customize the look of their tab with a banner image or color scheme (can be Sonicbids colors, Facebook ...

Continue Reading...

Facebook's Reverbnation Block Was Just "A Mistake", but Serves as Reminder of Larger Issue

Source: HypeBot
January 29, 2011

Yesterday, ReverbNation told its tens of thousands of active artist users that Facebook had disabled RN links on their site. “This was a mistake in one of our automated systems for preventing spam," a Facebook spokesperson told Hypebot and by late in the day, the problem had been fixed. But the incident serves as a reminder of a hazard that accompanies the incredible potential of interconnected marketing—lack of control. While not confirmed officially by either company, it's likely that Facebook's ...

Continue Reading...

Exclusive: Sonicbids Now Making a Serious Move into Facebook...

Source: Digital Music News
January 28, 2011

Updated, 11:45 am PCT: Digital Music News readers can use promo code DMN2011 to get a 30-day free trial.

So who's the latest to dive into Facebook? That would be Sonicbids, a company that is about to announce a serious expansion into the network. This is an involved artist profile builder that further broadens the Sonicbids model beyond live performances.

Members are getting notified later today. “We realized that we were helping people get gigs but not cultivating their audiences," ...

Continue Reading...

"BitTorrent" Censored from Google

Source: HypeBot
January 28, 2011

Early in December, Google vowed to distance itself from piracy. To do so, the company agreed that it would remove terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in their Autocomplete and Instant services. Google has since rolled this questionable feature. Now terms like BitTorrent, uTorrent, and RapidShare are filtered out. However, terms like BitComet and Vuze remain, which suggests that the keywords were picked rather arbitrarily. This censoring does not affect full search results, but it does show a clear ...

Continue Reading...

#Midem Hot Topics: The Cloud, Music Tech and the One That Just Won't Go Away... Control

Source: HypeBot
January 28, 2011

I just got back from Midem 2011 and will post some very informative presentations in the coming days. While there were no game changing announcements, music in the cloud—streaming, lockers, mobile—was on everyone's lips.  It's clearly what fans want and the assembled companies appeared intent on giving it to them. Sadly, however, the debate still continues over how to make more money from the cloud. If I could send a single message to the music industry, it would be: Stop talking ...

Continue Reading...

Real Men Launch Paid-Only Apps...

Source: Digital Music News
January 27, 2011

The iPhone race was sewn up years ago by the likes of Pandora, Tapulous, and Shazam. And tens of thousands of apps later, it's incredibly difficult to gain meaningful mindshare. But the iPad remains a virgin platform, at least for music, and a fantastic place for experiments on the paid side.

Look no further than SoundHound, which surprisingly popped up as the biggest paid iPad app in a recent Apple ranking. Not for last week, but overall - ie, since ...

Continue Reading...