MTV Partners with OurStage

Van Toffler, the President of MTV Networks Music Group, announced during his keynote speech at the Billboard Music & Money Symposium that MTV has partnered with OurStage.com to develop an array of promotional initiatives for emerging talent. OurStage’s fan voting platform will be used to discover artists for showcasing across on air and online MTV properties. The plan is “Needle in the Haystack” where each week MTV will spotlight an emerging artist from OurStage. The artists will be interviewed by MTV Music bloggers and promoted as an “artist to watch” across MTV’s sites and social network channels.

OurStage works by having fans compare one song or video to another and then choosing which song they liked more and by how much. The judging system randomizes all entries so that fans have no way of knowing or controlling who they judge. This system eliminates cheaters and the best performers are driven to the top by fans.

By partnering with MTV, each vote on OurStage becomes significantly more powerful and the opportunities for the artists that are voted the best are greater than ever. MTV averages 150-200 music cues daily in their current programming and has 600 music video hours on TV each week not to mention online music video programming, mobile music apps, and music video games like Rock Band. With MTV’s scope combined with OurStage’s unique voting platform, unknown artists from every genre could quickly become household names.

Source: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/03/ourstage-and-mtv-partner-for-artist-discovery.html

~Emilia Segatti

SXSW gets a new SPIN with the help of Four-squares

South by Southwest is just around the corner and as fans, bands, and industry players get ready to head to the south, SPIN Magazine is teaming up with social network Foursquare to create a musical adventure like no other. What Spin and Foursquare plan on doing is creating a musical scavenger hunt that people must do in to do in order to collect special badges SPIN will offer. One scavenger hunt they have requires people to check out three bands with an animal related stage name to gain the “Animal Collector” badge. With each badge a person collects they will get a reward.

I think this scavenger hunt is interesting because it’s a creative way for SPIN to gain more readers to their magazine. I have no doubt that one of those rewards will be a year subscription to their magazine, and few other products/events they’re sponsoring. Also, this is good for Foursquare because they could get more people to use their service after using it during SXSW. Overall, I think this type of fan engagement and partnership between companies needs to occur more often because it provides new ways to enhance the way music can be marketed via mobile phones. I can only imagine how this type of interactivity would work for a band releasing an album.

Submitted by: Jarvis R. Smith

Source
http://mashable.com/2010/03/06/spin-magazine-foursquare/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

Dum Dum Girls Release Cassette Tapes!

The Dum Dum Girls, a garage-rock band, are having a release of their special compilations by distributing no more than 400 cassette tapes consisting of 11 tracks. This is being done in hopes to promote their new LP entitled I Will Be. This is a great idea to try to sell something really special and different that will get the fans buzzing about the return of the cassette tape. As we've talked about in class, I believe cassette tapes will follow what vinyls have done by becoming almost a collectors item and a hot commodity. It will be cool to see if the cassette craze will carry through and what other artists will decide to release their music on cassettes as well.

-Abby Goldstein

http://pitchfork.com/news/38080-dum-dum-girls-release-tape-comp/

OK GO Goes Viral Again

Everyone remembers OK GO's famous treadmill video for their song, "Here It Goes Again". They were one of the first bands to experience major success due to their self-made viral video that was put on YouTube. A new OK GO clip was released in January, but bloggers were not pleased to see that the viral embedding was turned off this time, the blame for this being placed upon EMI.

With an open letter to fans, OK GO let their fans know that they were not happy about the disabled embedding. Luckily for them, State Farm Insurance came to the rescue. State Farm offered them a sponsorship deal so that they could come out with a new embeddable video for the same song. In exchange, State Farm's logo would get exposure within the video.

Just 72 hours after it was posted, the new viral video had over 800,000 plays on YouTube alone!

OK GO wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't for their first viral video. It's smart to continue on with what worked for them the first time by doing the same thing with another new, innovative video. What surprises me is that EMI would try to disable the embedding of the video this time around. Obviously, the embedding was a great thing for OK GO the first time: it gave them a huge amount of exposure and notoriety that they probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Didn't it even land them that performance on the MTV VMA's that one year?

I just don't get when labels are going to realize that "free" exposure over the Internet is helpful in the grand scheme of things.

P.S.- Check out OK GO's new video above. I like it, but I think I still prefer the treadmills.

- Samantha Bruno

Source:

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/03/ok-go-goes-viral-again-with-help-from-state-farm.html

Thumbplay on the Cloud

Thumbplay, a music subscription service, has hired Apple's Pablo Calamera as it's Chief Technological Officer. Calamera oversaw technology development for MobileMe, Apple's cloud service. It's not coincidence that Thumbplay is launching their program on the cloud through a Blackberry application on Thursday. Thumbplay will provide access to millions of songs through unlimited, on-demand access.

Thumbplay has created the CTO position just for Calamera. Sounds like Thumbplay needed someone who knew what they were doing and had experience to get them where they want to be on the cloud, and Calamera was there man.

Sources:

http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/ringtone-monger-thumbplay-hires-apple-exec-cloud-based-music-service/

http://hypebot.com/

- Rebecca Weyhrauch

Rage Against the Machine Vs. Simon Cowell

At the beginning of the 2009 Christmas season, a fight for the number 1 Christmas song began between Rage Against the Machine and Simon Cowell. RATM claimed that it was tired of Cowell's "karaoke acts" taking the no. 1 spot, and urged their fans to make their 1992 hit, "Killing in the Name" the best seller. Although RATM is one of the biggest (and in my opinion greatest) rock bands of all time, MANY were expecting one of Cowell's X Factor acts to take the top spot. This is because as we all know, in recent years, Cowell has been one of the biggest influences in the music industry with his roles at American Idol, X Factor, and Sony. RATM, however, managed to beat Cowell, and many people were surprised by this feat.

So, how did RATM manage to beat Cowell for the no. 1 Christmas song? They reached out to their fans by using social networking sites like Facebook. A group named "RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE FOR CHRISTMAS NO.1" emerged on Facebook, and within 2 weeks, had over 450,000 members. Not only Facebook helped, but also their websites, various blogs, and many other media outlets. It's surprising to me, yet really really awesome that RATM found a way to make a song from 1992 a bestseller in 2009. It just goes to show how artists can use the internet to spread the word about their product to the consumer.

The funniest part about this feud though has to be the fact that Sony is behind both of the acts. Yes, that's right...RATM is under Cowell's Sony deal, so even though Cowell "lost," he still gets that money in his pocket at the end of the day.


-Ashley Stokvis

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/dec/11/rage-against-machine-christmas-no1

Are Apps The New Music Model?

According to the article I read, sales of iPods are slowing. However, iPhone sales are growing, and this means the use of apps are also growing. This article takes the stance that Apple needs to develop a new platform for the sale of albums that make apps "a key channel for music sales." This is because the younger generations are much more interested in throwing their money at an app than at digital music sales. Three-quarters of digital music buyers are 25 and older, which means the young teens right now might need something different to capture their attention and keep music sales afloat.

Although iTunes music sales are still growing, it is coming from "the increasing average number of downloads per buyer." This means that once the CD generation gets older and we're left with the young kids today in their 20s, they may not be interested in using iTunes and spending money on music in this way.

The author of this article believes that if Apple can come up with a music product innovation by taking apps to a platform for sales, it will appeal to the youth more than putting songs on their iPod will. It's an interesting thought, and I'm sure we're heading for new innovations no matter what.

-- Ashley Snider

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-the-music-industrys-demographics-problem/