Billboard Debuts Charts For Music Trending Via Twitter, From Mashable

Twitter #Music is now chartable on Billboard

Link to article on Mashable

"Billboard debuted the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts on Tuesday morning. The four interactive music charts will rank trending songs from popular and emerging artists based on how often they are mentioned in tweets in the United States.

Twitter first teased this partnership in March, with Bob Moczydlowsky, Twitter's music head, describing it as "the new industry standard for tracking and surfacing the conversation around music as it happens."

The ranking system is a new music strategy for Twitter, which earlier this year shut down its Twitter #Music app, a short-lived service that launched in April 2013 but failed to gain mainstream attention in a market full of rival music apps.

Spotify Or Bandcamp? Growing Your Band's Presence

Enjoying her favorite new band

Not sure about how to get your music heard? Well this is where technology can be your best friend. Labels are just one route to make your music accessible, but with the amount of competition, doing more to engage fans is the optimal recipe for success.  

Creating email blasts, using services such as youtube and soundcloud to stream your music, along with promoting yourself on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are effective strategies, but you have to be on top of all content sources. In the article below, Mashable posted a great article on the differences between Spotify and Bandcamp. Dig in and find out where you as an artist could potentially have your music heard by a wider audience.

Check out the original post on Mashable

"We compared Spotify with Bandcamp, a service known for supporting emerging artists, to see why some artists and labels choose one over the other. 

Two different entities, the fundamental difference seems to be that the former caters to consumers, while the latter revolves around producers. 

Nevertheless, each service still has its virtues and downfalls, most of which depend on what kind of artist and label you are.

Spotify: Exposure

One benefit of Spotify is the exposure to a large audience. With over 24 million active users in 32 countries, Spotify is an easy way for artists to cast a wide net and make their music available, especially to listeners who may not otherwise actively seek out their music.

"Spotify is just so huge and everybody seems to use it,” says Andy De Santis, promotions manager of Polyvinyl Records. One of the handful of labels that has a Bandcamp page, Polyvinyl also goes through a distributor that posts its releases on Spotify. "It’s good to have your stuff up there just as recognition for bands.”

With both new and established artists on the Polyvinyl roster, De Santis says the label tries to put everything up on Bandcamp, while a distributor handles bigger services such as Spotify and iTunes. 

Bruce Willen, one-half of emerging band Peals, agrees that Spotify gives the band access to a wider audience. "Any way you can get your music out there for people to easily access it, I think it’s a good thing,” says Willen.

A music veteran himself, Willen was part of Baltimore-based Double Dagger for nearly a decade before forming Peals, which released a debut album earlier this year. Though the band doesn’t have a Bandcamp page, the album is available to stream on Spotify.

For many emerging artists, Spotify is just another way to adapt to the ever-changing industry landscape. 

"Spotify is good for me because it’s exposure, if anything.” R. Stevie Moore, dubbed a lo-fi legend, has been releasing albums on cassettes, CD-Rs and now digital formats since 1968. Moore has experienced the shifting music industry since before digital even took form. While he operates primarily from his Bandcamp page, which includes hundreds of releases, Moore has released a select few albums on Spotify. "Forget the musical industry, it’s a digital industry now. That’s the new music industry.”

Image: Flickr, Anna Vernon

Bandcamp: Profit

Bandcamp’s payout model is one of its most lauded features. Known for paying artists a hefty profit and cutting out the middleman, Bandcamp collects 15% of digital sales and only 10% on other merchandise. Compared to Spotify’s comparatively petty payout of less than a penny per stream, Bandcamp is a much more profitable option for artists who want to sell directly to fans.

"It doesn’t really make an incentive for musicians to distribute their work [via Spotify]. It’s not sustainable for people trying to make a living from making music,” Willen says. "I think it’s just contributing to the devaluation of art.”

While Willen believes Spotify provides exposure for emerging bands, it is detrimental for up-and-coming bands that have a solid audience but are far from Top 40 status. "Their stuff is getting out there, people already know about it, but it’s not really adding as much for them,” Willen says. To him, Spotify is more valuable for unknown bands or chart-topping artists who might get millions of plays.
Additionally, because Spotify only distributes via labels or distributors, independent artists have to find another middleman to get their music to the streaming service.

Jason Shanley, an independent artist who records as Cinchel, says he went through TuneCore, a third-party distributor, to get his music on Spotify. TuneCore, however, requires a yearly subscription, the cheapest of which starts at $9.99 per year, not including other fees for setup. Other than the lag time, he says the payout was too low. "I’m losing too much money with an account there. I think I made $2 from it this year or something.”

Instead, Shanley opts to put most of his discography on Bandcamp. Even though he prices most of his albums at $1 or free, Shanley points to Bandcamp’s name-your-price model as an opportunity for profit from enthusiastic fans. "Maybe about 25% of buyers paid more than the minimum,” he estimates.

"I think there’s a psychology where if you don’t charge anything for it, people don’t think it’s worth anything," he says "But there’s a point where if you charge too much for it, then they don’t feel like it’s justifying that much of a cost.”

Josh Brechner, also an independent artist, notes that Bandcamp helps artists in giving their albums an optimal price. He says Bandcamp recommends charging around $4 for a five-track album. "But they’ll pay more if they like it,” says Brechner, who records under the moniker Visager. "In a way, that’s sort of like, ‘We believe in you.’”

Spotify: Convenience and Distributors

For bigger labels, Spotify may be a better choice to handle a large amount of input. Sub Pop, which has signed hundreds of artists since the ‘80s grunge heyday, works directly with Spotify but does not have a Bandcamp page.

"If we were to add our entire catalogue to Bandcamp, it’s a lot of content, it’s a lot of metadata,” says Richard Laing, Sub Pop’s director of sales. "To be able to manage that stuff, [Bandcamp] is not quite where it needs to be to work efficiently.” 

The label would also have to figure out a new way to pay revenues to the artists involved if they were to start using Bandcamp, Laing adds. "We need payment stream information in a certain way for us to be able to use it.”

For Sub Pop, this is the reason the label chooses Spotify over Bandcamp. "At the moment, [Bandcamp] is best-served for very small labels and self-released artists,” says Laing. "But for a label like us with hundreds if not thousands of releases, it’s not quite in-line with the kind of bureaucracy of a business as it grows like that.”

Bandcamp: No Barriers

Another major plus of Bandcamp is the lack of barrier to entry. Anyone can make an account and upload to his profile in a matter of minutes. There’s no need for a label, distributor or any middle man.

"Bandcamp is for grassroots-level artists,” says Moore, who records and uploads amateur and professional releases on his extensive Bandcamp page. "It’s worked out well for me.”
Because anyone can upload her own music without an intermediary, artists don’t have to wait around for their material to show up on the site either.

"You don’t have to worry too much about publishing. Any kid can do it; he can put it up on Bandcamp and then promote the hell out of it,” Moore says. "I’ve had extreme success with it. It’s right here in the palm of my hands. I don’t have to send out something that somebody else has to put up; I can do it myself. It’s perfect for DIY.”

Similarly, both Shanley and Brechner applaud the lack of restraint on Bandcamp. "For me, it happens whenever I want, in real time,” Brechner says. "They do everything they can to support small artists; they’ve built a platform around it.”

Image: Flickr, Blixt

Spotify: Multi-Platform and User-Friendly Capabilities

Spotify is a perfect example of catering to the audience. Not only are its slick mobile apps more convenient than Bandcamp's, but it also includes playlist features and more social integration. And with a bottom-up approach, this appeal to listeners is a crucial facet that affects artists and labels, as well.

"One of the core functions of a label is to connect music that we’re passionate about and help that music find an audience. Spotify as a service is incredibly easy for that,” says Laing. "A lot of people listen to it on their smartphone or tablet.”

Laing sees Spotify as just another part in the whole of music consumption. "I think ... what raises the profile and generates interests gives us the best chance of gaining more fans and more interest in that music,” he said. "From there, it’s up to us to serve those people in however they want to consume that music.”

Sub Pop's mission is to release its albums on channels where there are possible audience members. With the current segmentation of the market, it’s important Sub Pop is present on most, if not all, of these channels.

Some consumers will buy limited edition vinyl; others will buy a CD from chain stores; still others will listen to an album online. "I think it’s naïve to think that by not putting a record out there, that the excitement or power of a new Sub Pop record is going to change that behavior,” Laing says. "I think that’s backwards.”

Bandcamp: Flexibility and Engagement

In some ways, Bandcamp also caters to the segmentation of music consumption, but from the perspective of the artists. While most Bandcamp accounts host mostly digital albums, artists aren’t limited in what they can sell. They can list everything from physical record copies to other miscellaneous merchandise.

"It’s cool because younger bands can use Bandcamp as their central hub for everything,” says De Santis. "They can choose what they want to stream; they can sell physical stuff; tour dates get posted on there through Songkick.”

Furthermore, Bandcamp lets artists customize their pages' design. "There’s no ads or clutter. It sort of feels like how MySpace was a long time ago for bands,” says De Santis. "Bandcamp just seems like the next wave of that, giving artists the control that they want.”

Shanley is doing exactly that. In addition to his digital releases, he also sells other merchandise, such as physical art. "It’s a storefront,” he says. "It’s almost like an Etsy site, where you can pretty much sell anything.” 

Even within digital releases, Shanley likes the flexibility of Bandcamp to offer various types of files. "I’m also kind of an audio nerd, so I like the idea of being able to download FLAC files instead of a simple 320kbps MP3 file.”

Along with this flexibility, Bandcamp offers detailed statistics that help artists with fan engagement. "It shows me where people are coming from, what songs they’re listening to, how long they’re listening to them,” says Shanley. "When they download stuff, I can get their email address and their ZIP code for some other kinds of ways to communicate with them.”

Finally, a primarily local artist, Shanley says Bandcamp is helpful in setting up local gigs. "It helps me to get something to my fans quickly.”

Different Audiences and Culture

So, Bandcamp or Spotify? While there are similarities between the two services, each still stands firmly in its own realm.

For example, Bandcamp’s users, by virtue of its service structure, may be more active listeners compared to those of Spotify, who may be more passive with Spotify’s continuous streaming layout.

Additionally, Bandcamp is built for artists, whereas Spotify caters more to music consumers. And even though the latter does affect the way artists distribute music, the two are still fundamentally different in their purposes. "For Bandcamp, it’s about being able to distribute and sell your music and connect with people in a different way than Spotify, which is more or less like free music, like radio,” says Willen.

While each has its pros and cons, both services can coexist in the world of digital music, at least until a new medium elbows in."

Let Bobber Pros Do Their Magic

We can see it now, you have a certain build idea in mind but maybe not the time. Oh yeah, we are too often traveling down the same damn road and wondering why we cannot carve out just another three hours of daylight to get everything done. So yes, we are still working on the 49 Chevy shop truck and the Buell street fighter builds and praying for more free time to devote to them.

The other day I happened to stumble across these folks called Bobber Pros on youtube and damn if they cannot make some cool videos on their bikes and parts sold on ebay. Seems like they have a cool niche on their builds and would dig seeing them in more detail up close.

Link to Bobber Pros on Ebay

Check them out on Twitter

Bobber Pros customized Sportster

Bobber Pros customized Sportster

Bobber Pros customized Sportster

Bobber Pros customized Sportster

Which Do Ya Like Better, Google+ Or Instagram...

Mashable continues to have some of the best news reporting and breaking stories when it comes down to technology, social media and especially areas for which we as a whole, can use new tools to help leverage our online presence.

So you want to grow your band's following online or maybe even your own personal agenda, well here is what to do. Engage potential fans and friends every single day with pertinent information to make them feel much more involved with the growth of ideas. The way things are moving in a social function is that we all are in some form of engagement acting as voyeurs. We watch and enjoy others lives and activities from afar yet feel close to them due to how open the internet has made our lives.

Get off your lazy asses and make life happen, the world is waiting to view it 24/7.

Link to original article on Mashable.com

"Was Instagram worth $1 billion? Will Google+ ever compete or beat Facebook?

Shiv Singh, global head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages and author of Social Media Marketing for Dummies, shared his thoughts on those trendy questions and more during his recent visit to Mashable to unveil Pepsi’s new celebrity-infused “Live for Now” global ad campaign and “Pulse” digital dashboard.

In a 10-minute interview with Mashable‘s editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff, Singh commented about the launch of Google+, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, avoiding digital marketing mistakes, establishing a brand voice and creating a Twitter list for “regular people.”

Here are some highlights from the video above:

• On Google+ (7:20-8:48): “I have immense respect for Google. … But I think they really messed up the launch of Google+. … They launched it as a social network whereas it’s something else and different to a social network. … They confused their user base.”
• On Instagram (8:50-10:00): “I think Instagram was worth $1 billion because if Facebook did not get it Google would have picked it up or Apple would have picked it up or Microsoft would have picked it up and they would have been able to use it to throw darts at Facebook. … The service itself I do think it’s phenomenal.”
• On integrating social media with marketing initiatives (0:33-2:04): “Social media is like air. It should flow through anything and everything and completely.”
• On brands and celebrities using social media: (2:35-3:27): “More than the brands, it’s some celebrities that are harnessing social media. … A good example is Sofia Vergara from Modern Family. The way she connects with her followers on Twitter is so in sync with who she is that it’s like a drug. … I just want to follow her more and more and more.”

Sofia Vergara - The hottest woman on TV and maybe the world

Ready To Bleed For Your Craft?

How jealous are you of those viral video stars who rack up millions upon millions of plays on youtube? Oh yeah, you can play far better than them or maybe they have never toured and lived on $5 bucks a day per diem. Are they are smarter than you? In much simpler terms they figured out how to be heard. Maybe its a fleeting marketing pitch on their part, but it does work in certain regards, same as the Snuggie captured attention for a few months and became a pop culture phenom.

We can sit around with some cold beers or over coffee and talk ideas all day, on how to best get the word out to the masses. Don't forget the biggest piece of the entire puzzle, at any time. Write great music and the crowds will follow. Shit, how easy is that to say and still seem like great advice? The truth will set you free and in this case it boils down to leveraging talent, skill and plain ol' street smarts to be heard.

There is no exact path, except hard work and a dedication to your craft. If you truly believe that your music needs to be heard and this career path for which you were born to live, then bleed for it. Honesty and integrity are severely lacking in this "gimme" and disposable culture, which we live in now. Create something with a long a shelf life and truly believe in it, for that is just step one.

After hearing our diatribe, listen to Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins lay it down. Here is a dude that has been there and done that. Can you measure up?

Link to original article on Mashable.com

"As guitarist and co-founder of the Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan was at the forefront of one of the most important music movements in recent history. And he’s not finished. The Pumpkins have a new album coming out in June, and Corgan is splitting time between music and helping artists take back control from labels. He wants talented musicians to have more lucrative careers and engage their fans. At the same time, he’s calling on fans — who play a more critical role in artist success than ever before — to invest in the artists they love.


Corgan, who’s no stranger to controversy, believes that the music industry is currently structured to prevent artists from achieving the type of success his band enjoyed. In fact, Corgan doesn’t believe the Pumpkins could achieve the success they have, or anything close to it, if they debuted now.


In March, Billy and I took the stage together at SXSW Interactive and for a discussion that sent a series of shockwaves throughout the music industry. As he said in Austin, artists are becoming much like sex workers — once you’ve scored a record deal, “you’re just the fresh stripper.”


Sensationalism aside, his point is that both artists and fans must assume responsibility for the future of music if it is to mean something more than viral videos and hit singles. This is about engagement. This is about sustained relevance.


While we were in Austin, we took some time to also record the season three premiere episode of Revolution."

Become the best at what you do to be remembered

Communicate Effectively Through Social Media

Do yourself a favor and get over to Saving Country Music or read the full article right here. Triggerman did a fantastic writeup on social media and about using your own website, facebook, twitter, etc correctly. Unless you are completely unplugged from the grid and or don't really have any interests in social media, we are all on some form of website linking us to others for communication. If you are in a band, get yourselves set up correctly to be able to communicate effectively. Magazines are being phased out along with their indepth coverage compared to how quickly a website can give you a live feed of updates. Make the future yours and put efforts into communications that will let you to be found for the right reasons. If fans cannot find your band, don't blame the club, record label or promoters for not doing their job. It starts with the bands first and foremost.

Full article on Saving Country Music

What seems to be at the top of everyone’s mind on this 21st day of September, 2011 is the recent reconfiguration of the Facebook interface. I can tell it’s top of mind, because people’s bitch rants about the change is what occupies every one of the top 20 slots in my Facebook news stream, and from what I understand, what you see at the top of your news stream is based mainly on popularity.

Many folks are opining this is the demise of Facebook, and are fleeing to Google+. The fact is Facebook is already in rapid decline, and was even before Google+ was launched in full force. After years of record growth, including adding at least 20 million users per month over the previous year, Facebook actually lost users in May 2011, almost 6 million users, with another 1.5 million lost in Canada (read the full report). This recent reconfiguration may help escalate the Facebook decline, but it is not the cause, it was a reaction to the fear that Facebook was dying already. Even if Facebook can make it through this redesign, there is a good chance it is still doomed.

The decline of Facebook has little to do with the interface, and more to do with the drama that Facebook was scientifically engineered to create and disseminate. That was Google+’s gamble, and their ace-in-the-hole with their idea of ‘circles’ that keep information within certain groups of contacts. If Google+ wins out over Facebook eventually, these ‘circles’ will be the reason.

But both interfaces are rating what you see based on popularity, the same exact system in Nashville, New York, and LA that keeps the robust musical talent in independent circles down, while the established, mainstream acts stay afloat despite talent shortfalls. The simple fact is, since the decline of the original MySpace, the ability for artists and fans to interact and share information has been devolving. Facebook was never a viable alternative to the artist tools MySpace offered, the most important of which was the MySpace bulletin board, which was a real-time way to post and share information, that did not use some obscure formula based on popularity that chose who saw what. If you posting something, all of your friends saw it.

Twitter is the only major social networking tool available for artists and fans that does not run your information through a third-party judgement filter that decides who gets to see what, and when. It simply aggregates in a timeline bits of information from people you choose to follow, without hiding or prioritizing anything. Its character restriction limits its functionality for certain things, but at the same time, also increases its potency for others.

Listen to me, and listen good. There is nothing more important, and no bigger challenge in music right now that the ability for artists and their fans to communicate. This takes effort on everybody’s part. Lessons must be learned from the death of MySpace on how to navigate the destruction of a social network without losing the network itself. Below are some suggestions of how handle the very real possibility of the death of Facebook. Most are for bands, because they drive the boat, but fans can can help themselves and the bands by understanding how they disseminate information, and making sure they put themselves in the right channels to receive it.

Bands – Get Your Own Website

Don’t just jump to Google+ and call it good, and don’t rely on the whims of the pliable American public to afford you a viable vehicle for getting information out about your music. Every band needs a website. Even a business card website with basic information is better than nothing, but there is no better investment a band can make than a fully functional website that offers information about the band, music samples, videos, and most importantly, a blog or news feature, show calendar, and an email signup list.

Right now the biggest issue facing touring bands is the dissemination of tour dates. I cannot put into words how dumbfounded I am that there are dozens of bands out on tour right now, with no place to find their dates, mainly because many social networks make it difficult to impossible to post them.
And when you have a big announcement to make, (i.e. a new album, or an upcoming tour) don’t post that announcement on Facebook or Google+, post it on your website, and then link to it from all your social networking properties, and then send an email to your signup list. Putting original info out on social networks puts an extra layer between your information and search engines, while links on social network sites that lead to a centralized place actually help the search engines find it. Think of your website as the mother brain, with all the other sites as satellite properties.

Also understand that certain social network platforms are better for certain information than others. Work to understand what works best for you, and your followers. For example, it is probably best to post a big tour announcement through your website. But each night of the tour, announce where you will be through Twitter. Google+ might be better for personal quips or stories from the road, and pictures and video. And understand the more you post through any format in a 24 hour period, the less potency each post has. If you post something on Facebook or Google+, and then post something else an hour later, there a good chance most folks won’t see your first post at all in their news feed, that is unless the first post is more popular, then they won’t see the second. Twitter is the only format that you can be assured all your posts are accessible, but if you tweet 20 times a day, it is less likely each post will get read than if you post only 2.

And to the fans: Do your part by signing up for your favorite band’s email lists, at shows and online. We all want to stay in touch, and we all want to get information as easily as possible. We can do that through a social network’s news stream, or we can also do that through our email Inbox, which doesn’t change at the whims of some hoodie and sandals-wearing billionaire running a social engineering experiment, and your email is a place you already visit daily anyway.

Don’t Give Up on Any Social Network Too Early

We may be able to get a firm grasp on what the social networking landscape is right now, but it can change in a matter of days, Facebook just proved that. Anybody who tells you they know where social networking is going is full of it; nobody does. Who knows, Google+ could tank, and Facebook could recover. Twitter could lose it’s compass, and MySpace, now owned by Justin Timberlake, could make a big comeback. Jumping from one social network site to another is foolish. Be in as many places as you can. Spread your information out like a bad rash, and don’t give up on any social network until it is absolutely hopeless.

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Specific to savingcountrymusic.com:
We have created many tools here for artists and fans to help keep everyone connected in the post-MySpace era. The more we all utilize these tools, the better they will work. We have an active and updated Calendar that covers all the appearances by core SCM bands. The SCM News Feed in the top right corner of every page is updated 24 hours a day, in real time to try to keep everyone connected on news. For especially big news and a weekly newsletter, you can make sure your on the SCM email list, and don’t forget the message board, where you can take control and post whatever you think folks need to see, and then link to it through social networks.