Hurrah, we’re out of Beta.

It’s been a very busy seven weeks for our team: updates, bug tweaks, new features and the odd Friday beer.

It has been a pleasure to work with all 450 members who’ve joined us. Wow – we can’t really believe so many of you joined in.

Every time an artist signed you’d hear Hurrah, Oh Boy, or Yippee uttered at our office. It literally means everything to our business that you’ve all taken the plunge. THANK YOU!…

It’s official. The new MusicHype is launching at Music Biz 2012 in LA next week, put on by NARM and digitalmusic.org.

We’ll have a table at App Alley, outside the main ballroom on Wednesday from 11am-6pm and we’ll also be floating around on Tuesday. You’ll also be able to catch Kevin doing a 3-minute overview of MusicHype at the Digital Music LA meetup 7-9pm on Tuesday night. If you’re a label, management company or artist who’s struggling to focus on the fans that matter – you need to talk to us.…

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.…

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.…

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.…