Foursquare & Fan Rewards

Rewards and the element of friendly competition can be a great way to generate interaction between artists and the fan community, and utilising new technology can be a great way monitor and benefit from the information gathered.

The increase in adoption of geo-location services, such as Foursquare, present such an opportunity.

The Importance Of Analytics For The Fifth Beatle

While hardly the most inspiring topic for musicians, web monitoring and analytics are becoming increasingly important for bands hoping to succeed online in the new music industry. If you’re not able to optimise your own campaigns, it’s well worth finding someone who can…

Warner Music Decide Their Future In Free Streaming Services

With Warner Music Group’s CEO Edgar Bronfman’s comments this week about how free streaming music services are “clearly not positive for the industry”, and his stating that in the future Warner will not be embracing such deals, how does this affect WMG’s place in the future music market?

Traditional vs. Digital: Artist Management in 2010

As an observer, something like the yearly MIDEM conference in Cannes is a great way to catch an insight into the current views of those inside the music industry about what is happening right now, and how they see things changing in the future. It is often supported by fantastic panels with often conflicting views. [...]

Fan Inclusion: A Unique Fan Experience

For me, one of the most exciting elements of a transitional music industry in which independent artists are becoming empowered is that bands are free to make their own rules and guide their own stories and careers, without being stuck in a ‘traditional’ release campaign structure.
More and more frequently I’m reading articles covering independent artists [...]

Why the difference between D2F & D2C is more than just a letter

As the industry shifts and tries to settle, the opportunities that developments in technology allow for independent artists are well documented. George Howard has written a great article briefly analysing the ‘leveling’ effect that these developments have caused.
When George mentions the changes in distribution and publicity/promotion, two phrases come to my mind, both of which [...]

What will 2010 hold for the music industry?

How better to start a new year of articles than with a look ahead to what may come in the next twelve months?
After reading Nick Crocker’s article on Mashable, I’ll admit I was initially critical of it. I felt that it was a very ’safe’ list of predictions:

“Labels will get smart”
“Physical sales will continue to [...]

Musicians Making The Most of Social Media Opportunities

Anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time, or discussed with me the opportunities artists currently have online, will know I’m a big champion of how important fan interaction is to music artists, whether they be signed to a major label or totally independent, releasing work and marketing themselves.
Amanda Palmer of the [...]

Sharing Is Becoming Less Of A Dirty Word

Developments in both the music industry and that of how we interact as a society (through an increased use and reliance on the internet as a means of communication) have gone firmly hand-in-hand over the last twenty years. In fact, it is quite possible to draw correlations between the two through the well-documented ups and [...]

Indaba Prepare For Release Of New Browser Console

Online music collaboration site Indaba Music are counting down the days until their browser-based session console is upgraded to the new version, produced alongside Sun Microsystems.
The system has a large number of updates and improvements, including for the first time allowing users to record high-quality, uncompressed audio directly into their session, as opposed to uploading [...]