RootMusic takes the “bandpage” to a New Level

::Originally Posted 6/30/11::

If you have a Facebook page for your band, you’re probably aware of many of the applications available for enhancing your page. Some of them provide your fans with an ability to listen to your music, buy your album on iTunes, view upcoming tours, etc. The Reverbnation band app has brought a lot of these features together into one tab, however a newer application called RootMusic is taking that model to the next level.

RootMusic provides a free Facebook tab that is almost entirely customizable. Think Myspace page, without the html, all in one Facebook application. The app, called “BandPage ^TM,” makes customizing your page incredible simple; almost anyone can create an awesome page if they have photos and media to upload. The BandPage^TM taps into already existing Facebook tools to pull your photos, videos, information and more into the app, and its integration with Facebook allows fans to post your songs directly to their Facebook walls. Basically BandPage^TM incorporates all the functionalities you could ever need into the tab, so your fans are never directed outside Facebook unless you want them to be.

This allows bands to direct their audience to one location, rather than spreading their attention to multiple points of reference. “Find us on Facebook” is all you have to say, and that’s all they need to know. They’ll find everything on your page. Other features that stand out include a free mailing list sign-up and “listn.to,” a link-shortener like bit.ly to use on Facebook and Twitter. Speaking of Twitter, you can also hook up with your twitter account and even blast particular Twitter lists if you own the list personally. Soundcloud? Vimeo? YouTube? All of that is integrated as well.

RootMusic combines the sharing power of Facebook with the customizable element that made Myspace so attractive. Pilar Vree, RootMusic Community Manager says, “A few years ago it was pretty difficult to represent yourself professionally on Facebook without spending a bunch of cash. When we first started building RootMusic, MySpace Music was the standard for musicians who wanted to share their music online. But MySpace Music was simply a medium for listening to music; it wasn’t the powerful sharing tool that musicians and fans needed. On Facebook, there was no way that musicians could share their songs, photos, videos, and shows the same way they share links to internet content. So we decided to build an app that would allow musicians to both represent themselves and share their music on the social network that all their fans call their online home: Facebook.”

BandPage^TM Basic is already revolutionizing how people share music on Facebook, but BandPage^TM Plus takes it even farther. The extended version allows users to create incentives like “Join the mailing list,” “Send a tweet,” or “Like us” in order to unlock exclusive listens or free downloads. The appearance of your BandPage^TM Plus can change whether a viewer is a fan or not, and it gives the owner advanced editing features for the page’s appearance that allow you to add fonts, customize headers, and more. Their $1.99/month rate is standard for anyone who uses RootMusic, and all subscribers all have access to the same features. “We believe in helping musicians at every level,” says Pilar Vree, thus it’s no wonder why over 200,000 bands are now using BandPage^TM , from your local indie band to artists like Rihanna, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez and more.

The most exciting part? RootMusic has integrated with TopSpin Media to allow fans to purchase merchandise directly from your BandPage^TM. Vree says, “It was something a lot of our users had asked for and this is was first step in that direction. We worked with TopSpin to link into their API and automatically pull users’ store info to the BandPage. Users only need to copy and paste their API key into the store section to add songs, t-shirts and what not to their store on the BandPage.”

BandPage^TM launched in February of 2010 and by their first anniversary the application claimed 20 million monthly active users. As of June 2011, RootMusic has more than 30 million monthly active users, 1.3 million of which are active daily. We asked RootMusic about the original goal when creating the BandPage^TM, Vree told us, “We believed there was a better way to do music online. The Internet is an excellent tool for musicians, but too many musicians are bogged down by the technical rigmarole of coding to know how to maximize its potential. We have already seen the Internet revolutionize the way that music is consumed by listeners, so we knew there were some answers out there for musicians as well. We wanted to create a better way to let musicians interact with their fans, book shows, talk to labels, make money, and connect their music to the people who want to hear their songs.

“We aspire to give musicians the tools they need to optimize their online presence, and our users are the ones who inspire us to make RootMusic better. As our company continues to grow, our users are telling us what they need to succeed in the music industry. They’re always sending us their ideas, and we’re always here to listen and act on them.”

Get to know RootMusic better by watching their product tour video below. If you want to know more, visit www.rootmusic.com.

Photos and video courtesy of RootMusic and TopSpin Media.

Patagonia Apparel Launches Music Collective

::Originally Posted on MI Blog 7/15/11::

Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, has a long-standing reputation of advocacy for the environment. Their latest move to support the environment recruits the help of musicians worldwide to create an online music collective that raises funds for select non-profit environmental groups. The funds are raised by the sale of donated tracks and the funds generated by specific purchases go to the organization of the artist’s choice.

Musicians such as Pearl Jam, Bonnie Raitt, Ziggy Marley, Maroon 5, DeVotchKa, Toad the Wet Sprocket, John Scofield, and Jack Johnson are just a few of the many who have donated tracks to raise funds. The Patagonia Music Collective comes with the help of Seattle-born GIST Lab, a company that combines music and marketing to produce social results. Sue Devine of ASCAP spoke with Geoff Stanfield of GIST to gain more insight on the Patagonia project.

She asked Geoff several questions, one of which was about the mission and goals of the project.

Geoff answered, “The mission of Patagonia Music is to generate revenue and awareness for grass roots environmental non-profits through the sale of music. We also seek to engage and educate music fans on the environmental issues that we face as a community. Let’s face it, with current budget cuts that affect the EPA and other organizations, there is no more crucial a time for people to learn the issues and support organizations working in the environmental space.”

He also commented on how the project will assist Patagonia is achieving it’s goals as a company.

“From early on, Patagonia has made enviro- giving a core element of its business practice. PatagoniaMusic is both easy for the artist to use and a great way for fans to hear new music. One artist and his or her fan base focused on a single issue is powerful on its own, but when that equation is multiplied by many artists and many fans, it has an even greater impact. Patagonia may be a collection of climbers and outdoor enthusiasts, but they are about as punk rock and DIY as they come. The independent spirit is alive and well there and it runs through all the employees from front desk to CEO.”

When asked what the platform will achieve for the artists involved, Geoff said, “I believe that at the core of every artist is the desire to have an effect on something. That may be a person, an idea, a cause, or a movement. Artists are leaders and have a great deal of influence, able to provide direction to the people who choose to listen. Giving is not solely for the established rock star. If Patagonia Music can provide an opportunity for an artist, large or small, to do the right thing while making it reasonably streamlined for them to do so, then we have done our job.”

Marketing Music Through Non-Linear Communication: Bas Grasmayer for Music Think Tank

::Originally Posted on MI Blog 7/20/11::

This morning Music Think Tank posted an interesting article contributed by Bas Grasmayer, head of online communication for official.fm and contributor to @techdirt and @hypebot. The article is a summation of his thesis “The Answer is in the Ecosystem: Marketing Music Through Non-Linear Communication,” which offers excellent insight into the changed ecosystem of music marketing that must account for the way the internet has changed the way music is shared and sold. He claims that one of the main motivations for his thesis was the piracy debate, “I found it a waste of time,” he writes, “Partly because I’m a so-called ‘digital native’ who grew up with the internet and I’ve never really seen piracy as a huge problem compared to the massive opportunities the internet created. When I recently interviewed French electro-producer Para One, he echoed my opinion about the internet: ‘it would be unfair to hate it.'”

His skepticism over the piracy debate led him to investigate the topic further and speculated that the issue of internet piracy had to be a symptom of a larger problem. He says,

Graph Courtesy of Bas Grasmayer (basbasbas.com) and Ryan Van Etten (ryanvanetten.com)

“The web has allowed for non-linear communication through networks on a massive scale. The music industry’s first introduction to this was probably Napster (oh yes I said the N-word). To me, Napster symbolizes the music industry’s near total loss of control over the distribution of their product. The industry’s unwillingness or inability to adjust to this new reality of non-linear communication only made things worse (perhaps a lack of understanding has been the problem).

Other symptoms of the web’s non-linear communication are social networks (including the music industry’s darling MySpace), ‘word of mouse’, music like water and there are even people who say it has changed young people’s thought processes.” See the ‘Problem’ section of his thesis for a more detailed explanation, this is very much an abbreviation.

What Bas wanted to figure out was how artists and labels could fully adapt to this changed reality.

So the solution? Well, I’ll direct your attention back to the title of the thesis: the ‘answer’ is apparently in the ecosystem, but let’s investigate this assertion a bit further. Bas says thinkers like Derek Sivers and Mike Masnick gave him ideas about “do’s and dont’s,” but it wasn’t until he had coffee with Dutch music manager Niels Aalberts that he was able to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. Aalberts described his artists’ fanbases as ‘ecosystems,’ which gave Bas the insight to make the following conclusions:

“To me, fanbase suggests a certain distance between artists and fans. It comes from a more linear age where one-to-many was the norm. You would communicate to fans through your music, interviews in magazines, appearances on the radio, music videos and perhaps you would return fanmail every now and then. Now the artist can be placed at the center of the network and is the unifying factor of fans who can now get interconnected. One of my favourite examples of this is deadmau5’ Minecraft server, where fans and artist literally immerse themselves in a world composed of fan art.”

He hypothesizes the formula for the digital age to be explained this way:

“Be remarkable: whatever you do, whoever you are has to be a story worth talking about. Without that you’re never going to be able to leverage non-linear communication. There are a lot of very skillful musicians and artists out there, but how many are really worth talking about?

Be easy to discover: pretty basic, but you’d be surprised. Be on YouTube, be on Facebook, be on Twitter, have a homepage that unites them all. Publish in as many different places as possible and let your content be your marketing. If your content is truly remarkable, you should make it easy for fans to let it go viral. My favourite example here is The Ugly Dance.

Turn your fanbase into a party: this is where you will really start witnessing the ecosystem’s dynamics. We’ve all been to house parties where everyone was bored, standing around, waiting for the host to come talk to them whilst figuring out an exit strategy and how much food and drinks to consume to make the trip to the party worth it. What a huge difference that is with a great house party where the host makes sure everybody’s connected and having a good time; the type of party where people wouldn’t really notice if the host went for a 30 minute walk. The internet works the same way!

Connect: at the same time, one needs to deepen their connection with fans. Fans have to feel involved with you, make them care. People are more likely to buy music after connecting with them.

Listen: your fans listen to your music and you should listen to them. If you’re really interconnected with your fans, you can more accurately pick up the non-linear communication and jump in whenever people want something. From this listening the business opportunities arise. They go way beyond selling digital or physical copies of music. People want to spend money on music, truly, but you need to give them a reason: don’t offer them something you want them to buy, offer them something they want you to sell.”

“Be remarkable, be easy to discover, turn your fanbase into a party, connect, listen.” It’s that simple. You can read the entirety of Bas Grasmayer’s thesis here. For the article posted on Music Think Tank, click here. To stay up to date with other writings by Bas Grasmayer, we suggest following him on Twitter: @Spartz.

Photo Courtesy of Bas Grasmayer (basbasbas.com) and Ryan Van Etten (ryanvanetten.com)

Turntable.fm Launches iPhone App

::Originally Posted on the MI Blog 9/13/11::

“Social DJ service” turntable.fm released an iPhone application today that will allow users to engage in the service from their mobile device.

Mashable’s Chris Taylor downloaded the app today and wrote:

“Visually, the Stickybits team has done a great job of packing everything in to the small screen. It actually seems easier on the iPhone to scroll down the list of rooms people have created (the list loads as you scroll). Step into a room, and it looks exactly like a Turntable room should. Even packed with avatars, it’s not significantly slower. My iPhone 3GS was able to render a 200-avatar room with no problem; the music didn’t skip and the head-bobbing was smooth.”

But an app “this complex,” isn’t without it’s bugs.  “The first time I tried to spin, the app booted me off when it came to my tune. (Anecdotally, I heard a few stories of iPhone DJs getting booted; it’s easy to tell, because the avatar is holding a phone instead of a laptop). The second time, nobody could hear the music — despite it being a track I’d played successfully many times in the web client.”

Chris has no doubt, however, that Turntable will iron out these bugs shortly.

“With a $7 million round of funding led by Union Square Ventures, also announced Tuesday, the company now has a lot more resources. We can’t wait to try the (as yet unannounced) Android and iPad versions.”

Read more from Mashable, VentureBeat, & The Wall Street Journal.

Viacom vs. Youtube – Round 2

::Originally written for the MI Blog 10/18/11::

A second round of the Viacom vs. Youtube battle moves to a Manhattan appellate court today as Viacom appeals a June 2010 U.S. District Court ruling in Youtube’s favor. The case has been boiling since 2007, when Viacom originally sued the Google-owned internet media website for nearly $1 billion in damages for copyright infringement.

Variety‘s Ted Johnson wrote for the publication’s website on Friday with the prediction that this case “could define the rules of the road for the Internet because it centers on where YouTube’s liability lies when users post infringing material, massive amounts of it, on its site.” He wrote, “The ‘safe harbor’ provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, written many years before YouTube was born, shields Internet service providers, website operators and others from liability for infringement by their users when they meet certain conditions, like promptly responding to takedown notices sent by content creators.”

Johnson quotes journalist Robert Levine, author of the new book Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, who wrote recently, “The suit could go to the Supreme Court, and its outcome will define the future of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and perhaps the Internet itself.”

Viacom’s case definitely appears stronger this time around, especially in lieu of the many amicus briefs filed by other media companies like Yahoo and Facebook in addition to numerous artists with much at stake in this case.

About the case, Robert Levine said, “The idea of YouTube being responsible for everything on its server would be a disaster for the Internet business, and the idea of them being responsible for nothing would be a disaster for the entertainment business.”

More Information:

Variety

Bloomberg Business Week

All Things Digital