hypebot

What Makes Facebook Fan Pages So Succesful: Lessons From Linkin Park & The Major Brands

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?

Record Label Rule Book Gets Startups No Where

We're learning something important about music startups. If a company is cool and people like it, there's a good chance that they're either getting sued or working their way up the magical list.

Grooveshark is a perfect example of this. More and more people are getting turned onto the site because the interface is pretty and the user experience is great. Is it the best music service?

No. But it's the best at what it does.1

Effortlessness Is The Enemy of Cloud-Based Music.

If you like, just skip ahead and read my latest MTT essay here.

Early in January, I did a rather extensive review of Thumbplay Music. In it, I suggested features that were missing from the cloud-based music service. Soon thereafter, I was in a book store and I started flipping through The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely. One chapter called The IKEA Effect caught my eye and I started reading it. In short, the chapter is about how effort impacts the way we value things. The harder we work to get something, the higher we tend to value it. This plays out in all aspects of our lives from chasing partners to cooking food.

Justin Bieber's Manager Explains "Hand To Hand Combat" Approach To Singer's Success (Video)

After being told that there was "no format" that would play Justin Bieber on the radio, manager Scooter Braun decided "hand-to-hand combat" was his only option and took the young singer to stations across the country.  "There's not a DJ who can say they haven't met Justin Bieber," says Braun. long the way Beiber tweeted fans who swamped the stations at each stop. Watch the video:

BuzzDeck – Social Analytics For Bands & Managers

BuzzDeck is a music analytics tool developed by AWAL, a London-based music distributor. It's been floating around for a couple months now.

The service enables artists and their managers to track everything from their Twitter followers to who is watching their videos online. All of this info is pulled into a dashboard wherein the activity across networks can be compared and contrasted. Sixteen-year-old ukulele player, Misty Miller, has found using the service fascinating. It shows she has gained fans all over the world. Take a look:

Duct Tape – Proof Music Can Be Made With Anything

Real men (and women) don't need instruments to make music.

Below is a fantastic and well-produced gizmo-jam session. Everything makes noise. Done right, it can sound beautiful.

Next time you're getting tired of looking at the guitar in the corner, maybe you should raid for kitchen for instruments.

You'd be surprised how it will sound when it all comes together. Take a look:

Photo: T-Pain Gets A Facebook Tatoo

"I get a tatt every time I come to Hawaii", T-Pain tweeted showing off an arm which now reads: "You don't have to 'like' me" with the Facebook "like" button. Acknowledging that Facebook could stumble and render his tatt as obsolete as an old girlfriend's name, he tweeted "I think this ones pretty sweet, unless facebook shuts down soon 0_o." 

EMI and Spotify – Deal or No Deal? – It’s Close

Reports indicate that Spotify is close to signing a deal with EMI. If a contract is signed, it will give the company an additional toehold in their quest to launch in the US. Two weeks ago, the company landed a deal with Sony Music. Taken together, Sony and EMI represent a 37% market share of music sales in the US.

Music Biz News: Doug Morris, Industry Greed, Digital Locks, 100K U.S. P2P Users Sued, Rdio $'s & More

• Sony backs Doug Morris to show music industry he's a long-player - Universal's chairman is widely seen as a safe pair of hands - but can he revitalise Sony Music's fortunes? Opinion is divided. (Guardian)
• Greed is Achilles’ heel of music industry. (DailyAztec)
• Canadians May Adopt U.S.- Style Ban On Breaking ‘Digital Locks’ (paidContent)

More Music Industry News & Commentary:

This Week On MTT: Using Viinyl To Promote Songs

This week on Music Think Tank, there were several great essays:

• Ty White: Using Blogger Motivations to Drive Fan Connections. 
• Brian Franke: 10 Key To Do’s For A Successful CD Release Party.
• Chris Bracco: HOW TO: Use Viinyl to Help Promote Your Latest Single.
• Catherine Hol: How To Market Your Music Using The Latest Research. 

Rewind – The Music Industry's Week In Review: MIDEM, MySpace, Google, ReverbNation & More

• Hypebot gives an overview of trends and thoughts on MIDEM.
• The decline of MySpace is wonderful for musicians. Here's why.
• Mark Mulligan argues that at this point digital music has failed.
• ReverbNation links got banned accidently in Facebook for a day.

More Rewind:

HOW TO: Create Your Own Vintage Music Video

There's a new 8mm Vintage Camera iPhone app out now. It's a simple and easy way to create music videos with a retro style to them. For $1.99, the app lets users add frame jitters, dust and scratches, retro colors, and light leaks that can be activated during recording. Our friend Voyno over at The New Rockstar Philosophy went as far as creating a music video for his group. The result is rather convincing and fun. If you have an iPhone and a stand, this could be a nice weekend project. Add in some old-school decorations and clothes, and your fans will be convinced that you're rocking out in a different era. Take a look:

Rapper Hit By Ice Cream Truck, Goes Viral Twice

An obscure rapper named Optimo 55 Souf decided to dance into traffic during a DIY music video shoot for his new song. Midway into the road, he got hit by an ice cream truck. Shortly thereafter, the video got posted on YouTube and went viral. Comedian Daniel Tosh, host of Tosh.0 on Comedy Central, saw the video, reached out to the rapper, and helped him film a professional music video for his song "I'm Gipper" on the show. The song has since skyrocketed up the iTunes hip-hop singles chart to #15.

Facebook's ReverbNation Block Was Just "A Mistake", But Serves As Reminder Of Larger Issue

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.

Sonicbids Adds Its Own Facebook Profile Builder Plus A Video Tour

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:

PirateBox: A DIY File-Sharing Network in a Lunchbox

2011 is going to be a sad year if music pirates, academics, and hackers are able to create more things to get people excited about music than a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Fans have The Music Bay to look forward to in April and today they have PirateBox, an offline file-sharing network.

Warner Music Group Tech Guru Ethan Kaplan Exits

Ethan Kaplan, the popular SVP of Emerging Technology for Warner Music Group has left the company. Kaplan has not announced where he'll land, but he will continue running the R.E.M. fan site Murmurs.com. While praising his team, Kaplan was also not without criticism:

It’s Official: First Master Degree In Beatles Awarded

Back in 2009, Liverpool Hope University launched a Master Of Arts course, titled The Beatles – Popular Music and Society.

A Canadian woman has become the first person to graduate with the degree. In the course, Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy told the BBC that she studied, "how The Beatles came to be. What the political and social climate was and the cultural aspects that helped to facilitate an environment where The Beatles' could happen."

Music Biz News: Midem Stats, iTunes Upgrade, Mobile Apps Soar, Napster Court Loss & More

• Music Venture Rdio Gets Funded By Mangrove Capital. (PaidContent) 
• MIDEM Stats: Attendance fell 4.9% despite a 30% rise in participants from the digital and music tech sector.  Attendance form publishers was also up, but it was not enough to stem the ongoing decline in label attendance.
• On Thursday, Apple released an upgrade to iTunes. Version 0.1.2 is a stability and performance update and adds support for syncing “with iPhone 4 (CDMA model).” The iPhone debuts on Verizon February 10.
• Mobile apps made more than digital music last year. (Telegraph, Gartner)

More Music Industry News & Commentary:

7 Terrible Things Google Still Doesn't Censor

With Google now censoring terms like “BitTorrent” and “RapidShare” from their Autocomplete service, it’s important to put this move into context. What terms doesn’t Google filter? Big Content has pressured Google into taking a stance against piracy, but there are many things that the company is still mute about.

And in reality, the things that Google doesn’t filter are far, far worse than piracy.

"BitTorrent" is taboo, but child kidnapping? Not so much. Suddenly, making it harder for kids to find torrents seems like a sad victory for the RIAA. See below:

A Simple, Very Important Marketing Reminder

from Hugh MacLeaod of gapingvoid via TightMix

Why You May Want To Wait Before Getting An iPad To Take Payments At Merchandise Table

Thinking about using an iPhone or iPad to process credit card payments at your merchandise table? After all, Intuit and others have created very affordable systems and are even giving away the card scanner that powers them. But you may want to wait a few months before investing hundred of dollars in an iPad or iPhone.

HOW TO: Give Fans Control of an Album Release

Say you're a band from Australia and you have a new album coming out. It's done. You've picked a release date, but it's not really set in stone. There's a tour coming up through the US in April and that seemed like the best time to release it. No point in touring unless you can put an album in people's hands.

Here's the catch: you have fans all around the world and it would be unfair to make them wait to hear the music just because it happened to line-up with tour dates that they can't attend.

#MIDEM Hot Topics: The Cloud, Music Tech And The One That Just Won't Go Away... Control

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:

Why The Decline of MySpace Is Great For Musicians

This post is by Robin Davey of The Hoax and The Bastard Fairies.  Interview.

Before you could say "We're big on Myspace", it seems the foundations of this once burgeoning oasis of digital discovery have quickly crumbled. These days, it actually closer resembles an online Salton Sea.

In retrospect and with hindsight we have to ask ourselves – did we ever really need MySpace?