Archive for the "Internet" Category
Mar29

A Wonderful Thing For Music The Internet…

Posted at 4:02 PM • No Comments

A film came through the post this morning from Netflix called ‘I’m Reed Fish’, which I can’t for the life of me remember putting in my queue. Anyway, it was one of those cute OK movies I guess, not great and not bad either. When a movie is like that I have this awful habit of watching with my laptop open, just ‘in case’, y’know. And sure enough that ‘in case’ arose.

It usually means I’m going to be consulting the IMDB with some query about the film, like location, who was on the soundtrack and any other trivia only a blogger would care about. The trigger that had me reaching for the keyboard was seeing actress Schuyler Fisk sing in a bar scene in the movie.

By the end of the scene I’d managed to ascertain (via the Amazon owned IMDB) that Schuyler Fisk was actually singing the song in the movie, she was Sissy Spaceks daughter and the track was the wonderful, “From Where I’m Standing” (and I’m not usually a folk fan).

Googling the song title got me the lyrics and also a link to a YouTube video of the song in question. Trying to get my hands on a copy of the track in question wasn’t so simple. Bizarrely (as the most memorable track on the soundtrack) the track doesn’t even get a mention on the official soundtrack CD or her MySpace page.

It pops up as a ‘demo’ stream on her artist website but seems that the track is held up in major label (Universal Music) album limbo.

Searching various BitTorrent sites got me zilch, but an MP3 blog search eventually found me the track I was looking for (apparently it was on a 2006 EP called ‘Songs For Now’.

I don’t know, bar two tracks on iTunes and a couple of appearances on soundtracks (except the one that mattered!) I wasn’t able to actually buy any other music. Anyway as an aside, I also stumbled across (her boyfriend?) Joshua Radin’s folky cover of Yazoo’s classic, ‘Only You’ too which was an unexpected gem. You’ll find it on his album, ‘We Were Here’, which by marked contrast you can get quite easily from Amazon either as a traditional CD or as MP3 download.

Related Reading

Schuyler Fisk MySpace (MySpace)
Netflix Fan (Netflixfan.Blogspot)
Orbit Rich Media Downloader (OrbitDownloader.com)

Mar29

links for 2008-03-29

Posted at 12:32 PM • No Comments
  • Future of Music Coalition Blog: “Letter” in the Post
    Here’s a fun one: Today’s Washington Post features a profile of music business renegade Bob Lefsetz, whose ongoing screed (or tirade, depending on your opinion), The Lefsetz Letter, is read by both working-class musicians and high-level industry types
  • Bit Player : Los Angeles Times
    Trendrr, a fascinating site that recently went live. An offshoot of Wiredset, a New York agency that specializes in promoting media through the Web, social networks and mobile carriers, Trendrr lets users assemble and compare data from a dozen sources (mo
  • Not-quite-year-end Analysis: Hot Chip Has Already Released The Best Album Of 2008, So The Rest Of You Can Just Give Up
    Have you recently found yourself pining for year-end lists, those neat little summaries of the year’s best music that provide fodder for argument and giggling as the calendar counts down to Dec. 31? Well, then, you’ll want to plant a big, wet one on The G
  • Seth’s Blog: The bad table
    I saw a marketing dilemma at the hot new restaurant I went to the other night. We got there on time at 6:30 and the restaurant was about a third full. We were promptly seated at the worst table in the place, in the back, in the corner, cramped by the kitc
  • Amazon takes on Apple with copy-protection-free music – Yahoo! News
    The music industry is finally comfortable selling digital music without copy protection, but the huge shift hasn’t resulted in dramatically higher sales. Instead, it produced something that major music labels have long sought: a strong No. 2 competitor t
  • who’s really number two? at 17 dots
    This morning I read with some surprise in USA Today that Amazon is “No. 2 in digital [music] sales since opening nearly six months ago.” Amazon’s entry into this market last year was an important milestone in the continuing irrelevance of DRM and th
  • It’s official: Pirates crack Vista at last
    A genuine crack for Windows Vista which allows a pirated, non-activated installation of Vista (Home Basic/Premium and Ultimate) to be properly activated and made fully-operational has just been released by a pirate group.
Mar28

links for 2008-03-28

Posted at 12:57 PM • No Comments
Mar25

links for 2008-03-25

Posted at 2:27 AM • No Comments

hypebot: 100 Free and Affordable High and Low Tech Music Promotion Tips
100 Free & Affordable High & Low Tech Music Promotion Tips.

Create An Elaborate Plan – Bruce Warila’s Unsprung Wisdom
Revenue from the sale of music is slowing considerably for everyone. Reoccurring revenue, which is the ongoing stream of revenue you make outside of touring, is going to come from consumers that tune into and fall in love with your brand on the Internet.

Breeding Ground-AllHipHop.com
For most of the 16 years of Rap Coalition’s existence, we have assisted artists and indie labels with putting out their own records and negotiating major distribution deals for those who’ve done so successfully.

Stereophile: Chesky Launches High-Resolution Download Store
The founders of Chesky Records have soft-launched HDtracks, a download store that offers full-resolution FLAC files and 320kbps MP3 files.

Digital Destiny- New York Post
MySpace’s plan to launch a digital-music joint venture with the major record companies is picking up steam, as the social networking giant nears deals with Sony BMG and Warner Music Group.

Capitalizing On Fan Feedback – Music Think Tank
Imagine you’re an independent DIY artist that’s just starting out. You’ve recorded some music and started promoting it online. The initial response is overwhelmingly positive. You get emails from friends and strangers……

Music fans prefer Wikipedia to MySpace – Yahoo! News
Search for an artist on any of the popular search engines, and the top three results are practically guaranteed: the artist’s official Web site, Wikipedia entry and MySpace page — often in that order.

ToneShop now makes ringtones for Apple iPhone
Free multi-format Easy Phone Ringtone Creator for Windows. ToneShop Build 9 now creates .m4r ringtones for Apple’s iPhone.That means you can load your new ringtones into iTunes and sync them up to your iPhone in seconds.

Mar24

links for 2008-03-24

Posted at 2:25 AM • No Comments

Musicadium Blog – The 5 Things Every Band Needs on Their Myspace
You can’t read what you can’t see. So many myspace pages are destroyed by putting hard to read text over an incompatible background photo. Make sure your text is easily readable, easily accessible and logically set out.

IFPI – Digital Music Retailers
List of worldwide legal digital music download stores, listed by country and compiled by the music industry watchdog the IFPI.

Indistr.com
Indistr places all of the control, creativity, and financial gain back into the artists’ hands by allowing you to sell your own music online. Artists take 75% of all income and get paid instantly.

7 Steps to Successful Networking – Blogging Experiment
Yesterday I gave you the secret to networking with A-listers… they’re people too! Ok, so it wasn’t all that profound but believe it or not, realizing that will help you immensely in your networking efforts.

Extended Play Music News by Todd Martens – The Envelope – LA Times
As recently as four years ago, all the talk about a failing major label model didn’t seem to stop the annual South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, from sending hordes of A&R reps and journalists on the prowl for the next big thing.

Audio: Rip It Good: From CD to MP3, by Dennis Burger – Electronic House
Whether you’re bringing a huge music collection into the 21st century, simply can’t stand the thought of buying all of your music in the digital domain, or just want to listen to some Beatles on your iPod or Zune, at some point or another you’re going to have to rip a CD.

Industry insiders look for model to replace failing ‘tip jar’ system — Chicagotribune.com
AUSTIN, Texas — While most of the 12,500 registrants at the South by Southwest Music Conference were out playing on a beautiful early spring afternoon a few days ago, the latest plan to save the music industry was being scrutinized at a dimly lit panel.

The media industry’s rising stars: top 40 under 40 – Times Online
They are the young guns tuned in to the accelerating pace of change in the media landscape – the trendspotters and entrepreneurs who stand to reap the biggest rewards over the next digital decade.

These Crazy Musicians Still Think They Should Get Paid For Recorded Music
Why is it the Brits have all the crazy-stupid ideas about how to screw up the music industry even more than it is already?

Mar23

Google Search Bot Indexing This Blog Within Two Hours

Posted at 10:31 AM • No Comments

I’ve heard lots of stories and theories about how to get your website indexed by Google and the other major search bots, (which basically boil down to Yahoo and MSN) in rapid fashion and my record up to yesterday from starting a new site to seeing search bots/crawlers activity on my server stats has been two days.

That record was trashed yesterday when the Google bot came a calling (crawling?) within two hours of my first post going up on the Musicbizhacks site. And I got a hit from a search query, “how do i get my cd distributed on itunes” that someone Googled, minutes after I’d posted this.

That’s pretty good going by any standards and is a good indication of how much faster and efficient the indexers have become. How did they do that? One simple method actually. I posted an incoming link on my MySpace profile and another in the header of my music directory, Buzzsonic.dj and that was it.

So. Anyone who tells you you need to submit your site to a search engine, or tries to sell you a submission service is living in 2002! Though you can still submit just to make sure of course. Cant get anyone to link into your website (basically all you need is an inbound link from another site that has already been indexed). Then add a link to one of your social network profiles (you have one right?). It really is that simple.

Related Reading

Search Engine Watch (Searchenginewatch.com)
How To Get Indexed By Google (Problogger)
5 Ways To Get a New Site Indexed Within 48 Hours or Less (SEONoobs.com)
Search Engine Optimization Forums (Sitepoint.com)
Search Engine Optimization (Digital Point)

Mar22

YouTube vs MySpaceTV vs Facebook Video Promotion

Posted at 2:54 PM • No Comments

I recently got hold of a copy of a promo video for one of my tracks from the mid 90s, the 99th Floor Elevators “Hooked”.

I was eager to get a copy of the video, which saw some MTV airtime in Europe, simply to use it as another online tool to promote my dance tracks which have recently been enjoying something of a revival in the UK with a series of new dance mixes.

Anyway, I posted the video on MySpaceTV, YouTube, Facebook and Last FM and it was interesting to see the difference in quality of the video stream and also the feedback reaction.

For a start most people associate online video sharing with YouTube, no ifs and buts about that one and that seems to be reflected in the amount of page views and feedback of my promo video, comparing the four services.

I’m pretty sure most people are still not fully aware that Facebook have branched out into MySpace territory with its Facebook Music spin-off and MySpaceTV has a while to go before it gets similar eyeballs to YouTube.

The difference is noticable (at least using this video as an example). The ‘Hooked’ – 99th Floor Elevators video so far has 2095 views on YouTube vs. 80 on MySpaceTV. The video was posted within twenty four hours on each service.

There does seem to be a noticeable quality difference though, with MySpaceTV winning quite easily with a noticeably superior quality stream compared to YouTube.

Though there is a settings change mentioned here to up the default YouTube stream quality. Facebook have a bigger pixel stream though on the downside there is no embed code like the other sites, just an email link to send the video link.

Related Links

Social Impact of YouTube (Wikipedia)
YouTube The King of Video Sharing? (Mashable.com)
List of Video Sharing Websites (Wikipedia)
New YouTube Developer Tools…..(Wired.com)

Mar1

Links for 2008-03-01

Posted at 11:21 PM • No Comments
  • WHA!? Studios
    Bastard pop net label, including Scissor Sisters mash-up remix album. Free MP3s/torrents.
May9

Links for 2007-05-09

Posted at 11:32 PM • No Comments
  • YouTube Killer Gets CNet On Board
    News Corp. and NBC Universal announce today a multi-year content and distribution agreement with CNET Networks for their joint premium online video venture dubbed the YouTube Killer.
  • Earbuzz anounces new site.
    the independent online music retailer, has announced a complete solution for music artists as the first and only music store to offer both digital downloads and CD sales with 100 percent of the purchase price paid back to artists
  • The Filter Launches Last.fm-style Social Network, WMP Support
    The Filter is a music recommendation service which started as a beta in 2006, and is endorsed/evangelized by none other than Peter Gabriel.
  • Beatport Launches Song Player for MySpace Profiles
    Of all the MySpace add-ons, it seems like the music category is filling up the fastest. The latest to join the long, long line of MySpace music players is BeatPort, an online music store that specializes in dance music and remixes. They’ve just announce
May8

Links for 2007-05-08

Posted at 11:36 PM • No Comments
  • Rough Trade opens massive record shop to fight internet – Independent
    Rough Trade, which had its origins in a pokey music store on Kensington Park Road in London, is to open Britain’s biggest music-only shop in a direct challenge to the all-conquering power of the internet.
  • Legal Music Services Compared
    And not so legal services….Run down includes borderline legal Russian download services.
  • Listening Post – Wired Blogs
    the popular online music streaming site Pandora instituted blockade against IP addresses outside of the United States. Frantic Industries posted a list of proxy techniques you can use to fool Pandora into thinking you’re in the U.S.