Cloudy With a Chance of Discovery

For the past 7 years, I have made music in the clouds/streaming subscription music services a personal mission. Early on, I was an “early adopter” to Rhapsody, a Real Networks company. Over the years, I’ve had the distinct pleasure to try them all (Rdio, Spotify, Deezer, GrooveShark, MOG, Rhapsody, Napster). Through this affinity and trial, I quickly discerned that this is the way of the future! Exhausting the fan with numerous hurdles to just hear music is futile and I’m super excited that the major labels have woken up to this world of frictionless music discovery and consumption.…

Without Fans, There is Nothing Part 1 & 2 of an Interview with Wick-It the Instigator

I sat down with Wick-It the Instigator for a two part interview on the importance of fans. Without fans…….there is nothing!

Ben Folds and Fans (Update)

Update: Below, I sang the praises of Ben Folds and his band mates touting their fans, first, for the announcement of a new Ben Folds Five album. The following week I was more than delighted to see that Ben launched a Pledge Music campaign. The campaign launched just over a week ago and has already generated 4,146 pledges, exceeding the bands expectations and pledge goals by 206 percent. What’s interesting is that Ben Folds has 522,000 likes on Facebook and 486,000 followers and Twitter. His blended social equity puts him in the neighborhood of 500k, not bad.…

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.…

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.…

Oh, Canada

Today I am in Toronto for Canadian Music Week and doing a mentor session tomorrow around music and technology.

I love Canada, what can I say. It was over twenty years ago I first lived in Canada, Newfoundland to be exact. At 18 years old, I had NO clue where Newfoundland was, sad eh?

Upon arriving in Newfoundland, I quickly learned this is a country rich in music, both traditional and contemporary. Here I learned of two great Canadian bands: Barenaked Ladies and The Tragically Hip.…

The Day Brings

I used to work in a record store, a life long dream of mine. It’s where I met my awesome wife and mother of our two kids, my best friend. It’s where I dreamed big about doing something bigger than eastern North Carolina could offer, it’s where I listened to countless amounts of music with friends and colleagues and established lifelong relationships with those bands in person and in my memories. It’s probably where I dreamed up MusicHype and just didn’t know it until today.…