Lou Reed's New iPhone App

In a featured commercial on YouTube, Lou Reed's new iPhone App promises to make whatever you need to do "as fast and easy as possible." I don't know about making everything you need to do as fast and easy as possible, but this iPhone app will at least make it easier to read the names in your contact list..for the price of $1.99.

Rocker Lou Reed's iPhone app entitled "Lou Zoom" essentially just supersizes the names in your contact list. The commercial embedded in this article starts off by showing Lou complaining that he always has problems with his iPhone. It quickly shifts gears when Lou chucks his iPhone on the ground and claims that now with his Lou Zoom, "life is perfect." Each name in your contact list will expand to the full width of the screen making the names really easy to select.

I suppose this is being marketed to older fans of Lou who don't have great eyesight.

To me, this app is equal parts dumb and equal parts smart. $1.99 seems a little steep for something that merely expands the names in your contacts list, but perhaps there is a market for it. It's obviously not going to sell to kids and young adults because seriously, I know I would never drop 2 dollars on a "zooming" app.

However, I'm sure there are older, diehard Lou fans out there who are more willing to spend the 2 bucks on this kind of pointless app than I am. So all in all, maybe it will help Lou make more money or maybe it won't, but I guess there's no harm in having it out there.

You can check out the sort of-weird commercial for Lou Zoom here:

Source:

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/03/lou-reeds-new-app-for-aging-eyeballs.html#comments

- Samantha Bruno

Important Tips for Your Artist Website

Hard to navigate websites are the worst. It's as simple as that. Whether you're surfing the net for movie times, reading the news or checking up on your favorite artist difficulty finding what you're looking for is the easiest way to guarantee you won't be back to that site any time soon. For me, websites that don't have a logical layout rank high on my pet peeve list. So obviously I was thrilled to see an Chris Vinson, from Bandzoogle, had written an article on hypebot.com today called "6 Rules to Make a Band Website That Rocks."

Vinson's 6 rules are #1: No flash!, #2: Make a strong front page, #3: Keep it simple, #4: Keep it updated, #5: Keep it personal and #6: Create a community. While these tips seem obvious they're so often overlooked by bands (or their management) who think that their design is so creative that people will love it. Creative or not, if I can't find information about when your next show is because of your fancy formatting, I probably won't be coming.

To any artist working on a website, read this: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/03/6-rules-to-make-a-band-website-that-rocks.html#more

--Katherine Wood

New Profits from Lyrics

Sony/ATV music publishing is partnering with Zazzle's ARTSPROJEKT to make t-shirts and other merchandise inspired by song titles and lyrics. Zazzle allows artists and fans to create and customize original works. They already have partnerships with Disney, Hallmark, and Star Wars to name a few. Since Zazzle has a custom manufacturing process and a marketplace to monetize content, there is little up front cost or risk. If this works, it is a great way to make money off of old songs.

Sources: www.hypebot.com, http://www.artsprojekt.com/newest_brands

by Rebecca Weyhrauch

More News in MGMT's 'Congratulations'

I previously wrote about MGMT's new creative way of packaging their sophomore album "Congratulations" by way of scratch-off album artwork, but now there is another interesting twist with the release of this album. "Congratulations" was set for an April 13th release date in the US, but like many albums these days, it was recently leaked on the internet. In order to go with the flow, MGMT wanted to offer a free download of the album to their fans. Columbia, however, was against that and thought it a better idea to stream the album from the official MGMT website.
This is a good idea, because it will get more fans to the website. With more visits to the site there will probably be more purchases from their online merch store as well as other interactive actions on their site. It really works to their favor now to have a limited edition release of the scratch-off albums, because since fans can already listen to the album online for free, this will be incentive for major fans to go out and actually buy the album. All around, I don't think the leak was a terrible issue for the band, because bringing more traffic to the site now with the free streaming will still benefit the band.


Listen to the album at: www.whoismgmt.com




-Ashley Stokvis

Prince Charges Fans

Apparently, Prince has charged his fans for membership to his fan club after the have cancelled their subscription. This all came a year after the fan club opened, and the members had sent in requests that their accounts be cancelled. These fans have been charged $77, not a small price.

The article I saw was a blog post from a fan. The fan said that when he sent in his request to cancel his account, he never received at reply. Upon being charged, he visited the fan club's Web site, only to find that the site was down.

The fan who wrote this post was blaming Prince wholly for this situation. In reality, it was the sales team behind the fan club's fault. This brought up the idea that the people surrounding an artist directly reflect the image of the artist. Prince, although he may not have been aware of this problem, is ultimately being blamed for it by the angry fans such as this blog poster.

Prince has yet to comment, and it will be interesting to see if he does. Having a massive fan base, I wonder if he sees this potential loss of some fans as an issue.

--Ashley Snider

Source: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/03/prince-charges-fans-for-closed-fan-club.html#more

Ben Folds uses Chatroulette for live inspiration

In case you haven’t seen this Chatroulette video of Ben Folds live, now you have. If you haven’t heard of Chatroulette yet, then kill two birds with one stone and watch the video. WARNING -- Video drops the F bomb.

Ben Folds connects with random people around world with webcams. As you can imagine, a good half of the people he runs into are lonely men looking for human interaction (though there is no nudity in this video).

As bands around the world try to break ground via texted song requests or streaming live feeds of their concert, Ben Folds pulls a 180 and uses the consumer for song material -- on the spot.

With a ton a views, he is getting publicity at the same time. As the digital marketplace continues to gain market share, everybody is looking to be the next online phenomena (even seasoned pros like Ben Folds).

- Ian Gollahon

Immitter: Pandora Wannabe

Immitter debuted alongside 65 other starups at this year’s VentureBeat Spring DEMO event touting their “Pandora-style discovery of great new indie and d.i.y. music.” The founders of Immitter think that people enjoy discovering new music, but most don’t have the time to wade through millions of MySpace profiles and mp3 blogs.

Basically, Immitter works by having artists upload their original content that will be played according to specific parameters, much like Pandora. The founders think that artists will be willing to pay for this service because it connects them with a target audience. The big question is whether artists will be willing to pay to have their music on Immitter and that will largely depend on how many active listeners the site can deliver.

I highly doubt that there will be many artists who are willing to pay to be played on Immitter. To get played on Pandora, the only thing the artist has to do is have their music for sale on Amazon. I don’t think that Immitter has differentiated itself enough from Pandora or Jango to make it seem like a worthwhile investment for indie artists.

Source: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/03/immitter-music-discovery-pandora-style.html

~Emilia Segatti