DubMC

Self-Management Just Got a Whole Lot Easier

Musicians who manage their own bands have a tool box of new software applications at their disposal. Here is a round-up of some of the offerings available these days.

ArtistForce gives musicians a variety of internet-based tools: a booking widget, an interactive press kit, built in eMarketing tools, and career and performance feedback from the experts.

Nimbit is a site used by bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Los Straitjackets, London Symphony Orchestra and Blind Boys of Alabama.  Here you can keep track of your sales and distribution, and connect to fans all on one site.

BandCentral hopes to keep you organized with the diversity of tasks and information a band manager has: expenses, gigs, merchandise, and fans.  This site includes the ability for multi-login for band management multi-tasking.

With Bandize you can manage everything from tour dates, accounting, contacts, tasks, and product management on one easy page.  They offer a free 30 day trial. 

No internet connection while you’re on tour?  No problem.  With Indie Band Manager, you can download the program and go, no internet needed.  You get the tools to manage your tour and distribution as well as resources to find new gigs and contacts.

Managing the Floodgates: The Discovery of New Music

As technology continues to shrink the world and music becomes more and more accessible to the masses, what's the best way to find the new music that you love? It's a task that can seem overwhelming at times, and presents unique challenges for those in the global music industry. To help answer the question, we asked some industry pros what their strategies were for discovering the latest gems, and we present their responses here.

Erich Ludwig, Senior Director of Operations at MediaUnbound (www.mediaunbound.com), a company that provides recommendations services to other media companies finds the question particularly interesting since he is in the business of music discovery. He also works as a consultant for artists who are trying to get discovered, and speaks to the question from these two different angles. Here are his responses:

1. What are your top 5 sources for finding new music on the internet?

On a personal level, my answer is as follows:

a) email from friends/colleagues
b) IM's from friends/colleagues
c) last.fm
d) music blogs (primarily African music oriented)
e) Google news feeds (using appropriate key-words)

The best source of recommendations has traditionally come from friends. Especially for those of us in the "snobby about my music" category. Even though I work for a recommendations company, I don't use personally (or even in my consulting business) any of our companies' clients on a regular basis to discover music. That is likely due to change...I'll explain more once we go public...

Anyway, personally I find most discovery engines not able to capture my diverse interests, although I certainly play around with them for competitive analysis and for testing our own products. There are also some problems for recommendation services for international music, whihc is primarily what I listen to. These problems have to do with tagging and naming, as well as with actual usage data. These 2 things are large components of a recommendation system, and one can see the problem here easily on last.fm just by entering any artist whose name has accesnts or is easily misspelled (try Ramata Diakite for an example. Her last.fm page is http://www.last.fm/music/Ramata+Diakite/). I'm Ramata's manager, and have linnked up all the other permutations of her name on her page:

Ramatou Diakité
Ramata Diakité
Ramatou Diakite

There is no easy way to get around this, and it severely affects the discovery of international music. International labels & managers MUST be sticklers for tagging and labeling tracks and albums to take advantage of the recommendations systems being built into many new web sites.

2. Do you have any other sources for finding new music? If so, what are they?

My network is really very good at helping me find new music. Usually that involves someone in my network contacting me to ask about this project they are working on, and asking me various questions about that project - how to market, promote, distribute, book, license, sign to label, etc...Through this process I sometimes find music that I personally enjoy, and other times, find stuff that is great, but that I may not love. And of course WOMEX, SXSW and a couple other festivals are great places to load up on new music.

3. How do you  manage the overflow of music that comes across your inbox, desk, and ears? Please give specific tools, techniques, and philosophies.

Vieux Farka Toure: An Emerging Case Study on the Simultaneous Convergence of Remix Culture, Niche Marketing, and New Source Material

Two weeks ago when DubMC's Dmitri Vietze facilitated a discussion titled "Digital Explosion and Live Performance" at the annual Arts Presenters conference, a somewhat spontaneous "case study" emerged as various people involved with the debut album of Vieux Farka Toure and the parallel remix album produced by Derek Beres shared different aspects of the project. Here we offer a Q & A with producer Beres about this new-model approach which supports: original source material and accompanying live performances as well as a remix project, whose tracks will be staggered over a few months, and for which there will also be a live dance party with DJs and Vieux playing live; and, exclusive downloads on various e-tailers and blogs, and even a fan-as-remixer project in collaboration with Creative Commons/Mixter. The intent here is to expose the inner workings of such a project and explore new models for cross-marketing world music.

Describe the mission of the Vieux Farka Toure remix project.

It’s twofold. First, the remixes are a way to lead people back to the source material, which is the root of anything Vieux does. Second, I wanted people to recognize both the foundation of African music, which shines through in the soulful, bluesy songs he writes, as well as a “future culture” that is not limited by geographical location but is nonetheless influenced by African music. Every aspect of the mission leads back to Vieux himself.

Digital Explosion, World Music, and Niche Aggregators

A great discussion took place during the Digital Explosion session at the annual Arts Presenters conference. In the spirit of Wiki, attendees were asked to jot down some notes to share with those who could not attend. Radio programmer and concert producer Charles Blass of WKCR FM (NYC), Lovevolv, Inc., and Brooklyn Sugar captured three quotes:

Study Reports Internet Linguistic Diversity is Far Less Than Actual Global Linguistic Diversity

An associate professor of informatics at Indiana University named John C. Paolillo authored a study called Linguistic Diversity in the Digital World. He says Internet linguistic diversity is far less than actual global linguistic diversity, and even less than that experienced in many countries in the world. "The results are significant because they contradict the popular notion that linguistics diversity on the net is on the rise," said Paolillo. If this is a pattern with language diversity on the Web, how might this affect music diversity on the Web?

Hypebot Interviews J Records About Digital Marketing Tips

Music Technology blog Hypebot interviewed Tarek Al-Hamdouni of J Records about how his major record label approaches digital marketing. Part One gave an overview of the company's digital marketing department and current projects; Part Two talked about the relationship between traditional marketing and digital. Here we run Part Three in full, offering specific advice about what is really working in this field (Thank you to Bruce at Hypebot for permission!).

The Long Tail of Global Music: Why International Music Will Thrive More Than Ever in America, Part II

Here DubMC founder/editor and global music publicist Dmitri Vietze continues to explore how the emerging Long Tail economy will affect the field of global music in America. Using Wired's editor Chris Anderson's recent book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More as a springboard, Part II in this article explores market advantages specific to the global music field in the switch to a digital distribution model. (Part I went over some "Long Tail Basics.")

The Long Tail of Global Music: Why International Music Will Thrive More Than Ever in America, Part I

Passing references to “the long tail” on DubMC have garnered more reaction to date than anything else in the trade journal. Here DubMC founder/editor and global music publicist Dmitri Vietze applies to America’s global music market the research and theories of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, a recent book by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine.