Find the Music We Love

It’s pretty exciting ’round here getting ready for our launch in 2 weeks – crikey! So this is a quick post to show where you can listen to the music we (Kevin, Mike, Jeff & Annabel) love.

Grooveshark
You can find us over with the good folks at Grooveshark. We’ve got a TasteMaker’s Best of 2011 playlist up. And you can check out our monthly playlists – see April’s Revisits (oldies but goodies) and there’s, of course, April’s Hot List (fresh tracks).

Rdio
If you’re an Rdio kind of kid we’ve got all those goodies on there too: The Best of 2011 – Hot List April 2012 – Revisits April 2012

Record Store Day and the Resurgence of Vinyl

Last Saturday (April 21st) was the fifth annual International Record Store Day. Taking place on the third Saturday of every April, the day celebrates the independent record store and is accompanied by a slew of limited edition vinyl releases only available on or around the day itself.

The purpose of Record Store Day is to encourage an enterprise that for a while looked to be a dying breed: the independent record store. However, thanks largely to the vinyl resurgence, independent record stores have been slowly but steadily popping up all over the placed, while their mainstream CD-selling high street rivals continue to close in ever-larger numbers.…

Alive Inside

I’ve been rather fortunate to be raised by a caring mother who was a social worker for 37 years. My mom always saw the good in everyone, no matter who they were, and instilled that in me via her actions. She was, and still is, very observant and considerate towards older people and that is what drew me to this amazing video:

After watching it, I did a little research on who was behind this. It is a company called Music & Memory.…

Sneak Peek of the New MusicHype.com

Here’s a quick sneak-peek into our recent keyboard tapping, strategizing, wireframes, more wireframes, more strategizing and design work.

These mockups give you a sense of what we’re doing with MusicHype.com and how you’ll be able to identify the fans that matter & give them props.

A huge shout out to the smart digital folks who’ve been so kind with their time & expertise to help us build the best bloody product we can: Sarah Abdel & Xavier Rameriz from Silverback Management, Jeff Kuprycz from AFrame Management, Mike Rosenthal from Paracadute Records, Jason Kadlec from CHNL, Paul Mabray from VinTank and Eric Garland at Live Nation.…

Thoughts on Tupac Shakur’s Coachella appearance

So you’ve probably already heard: hologram technology has now advanced to the point where we can bring dead performers “back to life”. This week Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre’s festival-closing Coachella set featured a performance by a holographic Tupac Shakur. In case you missed it:

So do we really want to bring performers back from the dead? Especially when we’re putting words into their mouths that they couldn’t possibly have said during their lifetime.

Tupac gives a shoutout to Coachella – a festival that started in 1999, 3 years after his death.…

Influencers That Matter

There has been a lot of discussion lately about measuring influence online, and influence scores from services like Klout, PeerIndex and others.

One recent book, Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing (Zowee, what a title!) provides details on how influence may be leveraged effectively by marketers, “this eye-opening, action-ready guide shows you how to reach the superconnectors who ignite epidemics through word-of-mouth influence . . . and become one yourself”

But many others are questioning what these influence scores mean, and argue that they: actually measure popularity, rather than influence; have murky algorithms; and often lack proper context.…

“The Thank You Economy” by Gary Vanynerchuk for Musicians

Our CEO Kevin turned us onto Gary Vanynerchuk’s latest book, The Thank You Economy. He told us how the book fired him up & ultimately lead him to our company. It helped him figure out the kind of culture he wanted to be a part of. That inspired me to read it.

Part 1 “Welcome to the Thank You Economy” covers why you should care about social media & how we’ve circled right back to mom & pop principals. With the birth of social media we have the ability to talk to everyone, just like a customer who’s walked into your brick & mortar store.…

The Music Biz Could Learn a Thing or Two from Kotex

Yesterday I was forwarded a rather interesting post from the guys behind the most recent Kotex campaign using Pinterest. Essentially, this is the first major brand to utilize the power of Pinterest in an organic way to raise brand awareness.

Here is a video, recapping this rather clever campaign:

I think the key take away for musicians is how Kotex recognized and rewarded key influencers for behavior they were already doing. This campaign also exemplifies the importance of permission marketing, or the welcome knock on the door.…

The Shins debut new video exclusively via handheld console

We’re all big fans of The Shins here in the MusicHype office. We’re also big video game fans, so this is kind of a cool one. The Shins recently released their first album in five years, Port of Morrow, and are debuting their latest video exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS hand held console.

“The Rifle’s Spiral” is the opening song on Port of Morrow, and the video is a creepy, Night Before Christmas-esque stop-motion affair. The full video should be made available any day now, but for now it’s the 3DS or nothing at all.…

What do 1,000 True Fans look like in 2012?

When Kevin Kelly first wrote his blog post “1,000 True Fan Strategy” in 2008 it caused a huge flurry of debate.

Now it’s 2012, and many of us are overwhelmed with the depth & wealth of fan information coming at us. Artists, managers & their teams are staring into a giant pool of fans, well over 1 000. Bands have fans on Twitter, fans over on YouTube, fans on Rdio, fans on Instagram…and on it goes.

Genuinely caring about your 1,000 True Fans is even more relevant in 2012.…