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Musicians Take Over Chatroulette →
http://chatroulette.com/ is a website that connects you (webcam and audio) to another random chatroulette user in the world. You can click “next” at any time to connect to another random user.
Its full of all sorts of people (ok, mostly guys, but not entirely), and yes, a lot of people doing very, uh, rated R (or worse) things. You can *always* click “next” or “report”.
So what’s this event? Lets get a bunch of musicians to “take over” Chatroulette for a day. Share your music with random people - and get instant feedback! If they don’t like your tunes, they’ll click “next” (and be prepared to click next yourself). But you’ll be amazed how many people will appreciate your performance!
All you have to do is set up a webcam and a good way of capturing the audio on your computer. Then show up on http://chatroulette.com/ and play tunes until you get bored or grossed out. Or both. This is an *experiment*. It’s completely anonymous, so why not try it out!?!?
Who knows, maybe you’ll even find other musicians and make new musical friends!
***Please feel free to add to the invite list. We would like to make this a national/worldwide event, so the more, the merrier!***
PLEASE USE THE HASHTAG #MusicTakeOver on your various social media (twitter, youtube, flicker, etc)
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A great 20 minute introduction and discussion about the “Amen break” a 6-second drum break from a 1969 recording that became the basis for much Hip-hop and electronic music. Ends up with a rumination on the effect of overprotection of copyright and how it inhibits music today.
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SF Music Tech Summit - 1 minute Pitches
SF Music Tech was a great event, but the session that seemed to excite me the most was the “1 minute pitches”. Most of them were for web sites/services for musicians (of course). Here’s a list of the ones I wrote down that I found interesting:
- LiveCut: ”LiveCut makes getting one-of-a-kind live recordings easy. During a performance and for a limited time after, LiveCut allows you to use cell phone text messaging to order recordings of the songs that you heard and that you want to add to your music collection.”
- GigZee: “gigzee shows you all the upcoming gigs - small and big, free and pricey! Plus you can do a lot more cool stuff on gigzee like follow your favorite artists and venues, review artists you have heard, read reviews by real people and generally maintain your coolness by being in the know. ” (Apparently with an iPhone App as well as the web)
- MixMatchMusic - a set of web site tools for helping musicians connect with their fans:
- MobBase - “reach out and touch your fans with your own iPhone app” (The band Pepper’s official iPhone app built with this)
- Remix Wizard - “the fast, free way to host your own remix contest anywhere on the web” (this looks fun)
- Tra.kz - connect fans with your music via Twitter
- MixMatchMusic Community - collaborate with other musicians and create music online
- PledgeMusic - a new kind of music company:
“Pledge Music is a music company offering you a new way to take control of your career. We’re not interested in being a rights owner – Pledge does not want ANY rights to your music, live income, merch etc. We just help you fund whatever type or format of record you want to release next.
To do this we simply help and encourage you to participate with your fans in an exciting and unique way. Pledge allows you to easily create an irresistible customised menu of exclusive content and experiences that integrates your database, MySpace friends, Facebook fans, Twitter followers and various other social networking sites. You decide how much money you’d like to raise and your fans pledge money for whichever item or experience they want. They will only be charged once the full target amount has been raised and there’s even the option to build a charitable donation into your campaign. We charge a flat 15% fee, which reduces to 10% if you use Pledge for more than one campaign. We have no hidden fees or transaction costs whatsoever.
You are your own A&R and Marketing Manager – you choose the studio, the producer, the artwork, the promotion – it’s all down to you! Let the fans be your label, while you keep the rights to your music. - MusicShake: “Musicshake is the super easy and user friendly application to create your own music without having to go through the hurdle of learning an instrument, taking music classes, or owning professional audio gear. All you need is a PC and an internet connection to start creating your own tracks.” (This looks like a lot of fun too! Making music “for dummies”)
- Swift.fm: social discovery and promotion of music using Twitter. Lots of interesting features, including building channels around hashtags, pushing songs to friends, etc.
- LocalMusicVibe: a community/directory site for local music scenes. ”Anyone who registers can instantly create free, custom pages for any aspect of the music industry they represent: band, musician, performer, venue or resource, such as studio, teacher, rentals, etc. Local merchants and corporations also benefit through targeted, interactive sponsorships, and advertising opportunities. User-generated content and a local focus enable complete coverage for ex-urban markets that are currently ignored.”
- VocalDownloads: lots of samples of vocals, both free and for charge, for your own work. Fun place to poke around.
- GetPlayLists: “Join to share playlists with friends and to get new playlists that work with your songs, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and your iPod or MP3 playlist … Automatically. Get unlimited access to our playlist library, share playlists with friends, the playlists automatically work with your digital music player.”
- Playdar: A very interesting open source project to solve the “shared playlists, but unshared content” problem (as with GetPlayLists). I don’t think I actually saw the one-minute pitch, but it really deserves to be in this list:
“Playdar is a music content resolver service - run it on every computer you use, and you’ll be able to listen to all the songs you would otherwise be able to find manually by searching though all your computers, hard disks, online services, and more.
Playdar provides a consistent API for accessing any song ever recorded. - MyCypher: winner of the best 1-minute pitch (started with Portuguese, French and English I believe), not clear what this site is offering, but something about a “global open mic” focusing on hip-hop, spoken word, etc… Hope it comes to fruition, based solely on the 1-minute pitch.
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SF Music Tech Summit →
This Monday, Dec 7 in San Francisco:
The SF MusicTech Summit brings together visionaries in the music/technology space, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment.
I’ll be there, find me if you are attending!
Video
Patrick Daly, a regular at Angelica’s Bistro Open Mic does a cover of the new John Mayer song “Who Says”. Starts at about 1 min into the video. Close your eyes. Tell me who what you hear…
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Social Media Club SFSV - The Music That Moves Us, Online and Off →
Come on out and join us at a Social Media Club event where we’ll have musicians and music fans share how they’ve used social media to connect with each other (and not just via a label).
Look forward to seeing you there!
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A first-time manager's peek into managing "Get Busy Committee" →
From Ian Rogers:
I am going to try to blog the experience in hopes it might be interesting/useful for others.
Being the CEO ofTopspin and *not* having experience managing a band is like running Flickr and not taking photos.
All in all, a tantalizing taste of a “behind the scenes” description of how to launch and promote a band without the backing of a label. Mention of a lot of the tools and services out there, and why some were chosen and not others. Very interesting reading!
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DigABand Empowers Independent Musicians To Boost Their Online Presence →
Gonna have to try this out and keep an eye on it. I’ve been waiting for just this sort of platform for the “1000 true fans” model…
DigABand,which just launched in private beta, is hoping to help independent artists manage their online presence easily and through and single platform.
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Forrester Article: "Music biz needs radical overhaul to thrive" →
In the “no duh!” file…
This Ars Technica coverage of a new Forrester report states what seems to me to be stupendously obvious:
“The music industry needs a “radical overhaul” to its products if it wants to revive sales, and that overhaul revolves around actually catering to consumer needs. That’s the argument in a new report from market research firm Forrester, which says that the music business needs to give up being obsessed with itself in favor of letting users create their own music experiences with ease. “
And here’s the clincher:
Needless to say, doing all of this involves the true death of DRM as we know it—or, as Forrester says, a makeover of DRM. Instead of keeping users from doing things like mixing and sharing, it should “primarily be an enabler of the consumer experiences, creative processes, and sharing.”
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Zoe's Incredibly Interesting Blog: Deep thoughts on my music career →
A great interview of Zoe Keating where Zoe discusses (among other things) why she didn’t want to sign to a record label:
“I’m not trashing record labels. They perform a useful service for many artists. But I don’t think the model works for me. I think of recording contracts as very, very expensive bank loans. In the future, if I need extra money to make an album, I’m more likely to try and raise it by appealing to my fans.”
She also talks in some depth about how she makes a living being a completely self-funded artist. A very interesting test case for the future of label-less artists…
[Thanks again to Adina Levin for the link]
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