Independent Music Resources, News and Information
Deborah
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Posts by Deborah
Why It is Important that We All Pay for Music
Sep 5th
All the litigation around intellectual property rights as they apply to music on the Internet is important to track. But, more important than any threat of legal action against illegal downloaders or CD distributors is the fact that music is created by musicians, artists who are trying to make a living just like you and me. Paying for music produced by others should not be motivated by fear but by a sense of fair play. Just like any other profession or service rendered, a musician is providing you, the listener, with a product that you use and enjoy.
Plato said, “Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” Think about the important role that music plays in your life. Think about the many positive benefits you get from listening to and creating music for yourself and others.
Now think about the struggling musician trying to get his or her sound out there. Often working for “free” for the elusive goal of “getting exposure,” the musician needs all the income he or she can get from the sale of music that has taken hours to create, record and produce.
As a musician, you need to get up to speed about copyright law – try and protect yourself as much as possible. But, don’t be naïve, either, and think that copyright laws are necessarily clear and “theft proof.” Read Brad Templeton’s 10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained, for example, so that you have a basic understanding about what is, and isn’t, permitted in creating music and how to protect your work.
And, for musicians who want more, you can get a more detailed overview of actual federal copyright statutes by visiting the law collection at Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute. This overview is from Cornell University’s more comprehensive collection of 17 U.S.C. Sections 101 – 810 (U.S. Copyright Act).
In the meantime, all of you music lovers need to do the right thing. Pay for the music you want to listen to. Paying ten bucks for an album you will listen to for a thousand hours is a pretty good deal.
Deborah@Audimated.com
Audimated.com: Cutting Through the Noise Online
Sep 5th
I don’t know about you, but I think we all find the sheer volume of information – and music – available on the Internet mind boggling. Some of it is good, but unfortunately the majority of it is bad. This is a catch 22 for up and coming artists. On one hand you have they playing field leveled so that you can compete online against the major label acts (with millions being spent on marketing), but on the other hand you now have millions of other artists (just like you) all struggling to reach a limited number of fans online. Because of these pressures, a good online strategy is now a requirement for any musician who hopes to make a career out of their craft.
A favorite book of mine that helps sort out what is happening to those of us on “information overload” in the Internet Age is Steve Johnson’s book, Interface Culture. The author writes about the role of social networking media in the dissemination of knowledge both pre and post Google. I recommend this read to anyone looking to learn more about how people use and share information online.
Currently there are over thirteen million active artist accounts on MySpace (US only) and in 2009 $3.4 billion dollars (that is a ton of money!) were spent on independent music in the United States alone. The numbers do not take into account the underground or unregistered transactions that occur in the music industry nor the countless other artists around the world who are not on MySpace. In addition, as the price of home recording equipment continues to decline, the number of people creating and marketing music will continue to increase. This creates an ever-expanding supply of new artists, each of which will need increasingly more marketing to be heard.
As a result of these market pressures, independent artists are now spending more time on social networks, email accounts and giving their songs away for free than they are creating their music. On the other side, the music consumer is facing thousands of websites and millions of songs to choose from and is spending their time browsing more text, email and free streams with no way of filtering out the content they are interested in. These fans want a personal connection with the artist, but are instead subject to banner ads, pop ups and viruses associated with the consumption of music. Both the independent artist and fans are wasting their time, energy and money on everything but the music. This is becoming an increasingly large problem…
There are thousands of social networks and platforms online, but how do you choose the right one? Should you go with a larger more broad network like Facebook, Myspace or Twitter? Or should you use a more niche focused network like bandcamp? Should you join all of these networks? How much time should be spent on each and what is the focus? The answers to these questions can quickly spiral out of control and in the end you will probably be left with more questions then you started with.
One solution is Audimated.com (which we endorse) which was built specifically to solve this problem. How does Audimated solve this? In its simplest form Audimated musicians only have to join one network (Audimated.com) and let their fans (who are on multiple networks) spread the message on their behalf. In this way, the artists can stay focused on their music (thats the goal right?) and let the fans be the sales force online.
Why is this approach unique?
Together Audimated and independent artists like you, can solve this problem by revolutionizing the independent music industry with a new model for compensating artists and distributing music. Both artists and fans are rewarded for creating and sharing the music respectively. Here is a little bit more on how it works.
This model should prove as an music overload “filter.” Music recommendations come from the fans, and not from the artists “blasting” would be fans asking for a listen. Good music will eventually “float to the top” of the Audimated charts and browse features and be passed along by interested fans (this is also how the ebay and amazon models roughly work) . Because fans on Audimated are actually there for the music (as opposed to the random old man or robot profile on myspace), you know that your music is being heard and spread by people who are actually interested in the music.
Check it out. As a musician and a fan, I think we need all the help we can get finding good music and getting the word out there.
Deborah@Audimated.com
What fans think about music and Audimated
Sep 1st
This year Audimated attended Rock the Bells 2010 to ask fans what they thought about music and Audimated. This video is what they had to say:
Customer Testimonial: Keep It Up!
Aug 31st
Here is what Audimated Fan Stephanie had to say about the service:
“…Just took a look at the website and it is sooooooooo good! its very easy to navigate and i can hear the music all the way here in the philippines! this is impressive because i cant even get itunes store to stream a 30 second sound clip without it breaking up the sound clip. seriously the website is awesome. good job.”
Thanks for the kind words Stephanie!
If you have any comments, concerns or suggestions for the Audimated service please email support@Audimated.com
Add music to your facebook page:
Aug 31st
First create a Facebook page:
1. Create a Facebook page (if you have a facebook page skip to the next section).
2. Go to Facebook.com (you need to be logged out of facebook first).
3. Create a page on Facebook but clicking on the bottom right hand side of the screen.
4. Select “Artist, Band or Public figure.” Choose a name and category for your business/music. Click “save.”
5. When prompted, click “I already have a Facebook account” and log in with your information.
Second, open a new window and create an Audimated account for your music:
1. Register with an Artist Account at www.audimated.com.
2. Confirm your email address by clicking the confirmation link in the email Audimated will send you after signing up.
3. Once confirmed, go back to Audimated and log in to your account with your account credentials.
4. Click “Edit Profile” in the top right side of your dashboard.
5. Click the “Store” link in the left hand menu.
6. Click “Singles” in the middle of the screen.
7. Click “Create Product” which is displayed under the singles header.
8. Click the “Browse” button on the top right, select a song from your computer and click “Upload.”
9. Next you can change the meta data (information associated with the song file) for your mp3 music. You can add a picture, title and song details as well as pricing information if you want to sell the music. Fill out the fields in the center and click “Update” at the bottom (you can continue to add as many songs as you like by repeating this process for each mp3).
10. Once you are finished uploading your songs click “Home” in the top right of the Audimated navigation bar.
11. In the center you will see your radio playlist with a orange “Get radio embed code.” Click this orange button and a flash script will be displayed (a bunch of text). Normally we will use this code to paste into any website, but Facebook is particular about what code is allowed on the site so we need to make some changes to it first.
Third, add the radio code to facebook:
1. Sign in to Facebook.
2. Click “Applications” on the left.
3. Search for “Static FBML.”
4. Click on “Static FBML.”
5. Click on “Add to page” on the left hand side, select the page you just created and click add to page.
6. Click “Home.”
7. Click on “Ads and pages” on the left.
8. Scroll down and click “edit” under FBML.
9. Change the box title to the name you want displayed on your Facebook profile (this will be the text in the tab when people view your Facebook page).
10. Paste the following code into the FBML box. You will notice that the code is a little different that when it was displayed on our Audimated profile. This is again because Facebook has specific requirements which must be met in order to add your own HTML to the site (which we are doing here).
If you want to read up on what else you can do you can visit the developers page. Make sure to change the YOURUSERNAME to your Audimated user name (this is the portion of text that comes after the .com/ when viewing your Audimated profile ie: www.audimated.com/YOURUSERNAME).
<fb:swf imgstyle=”border-width:3px; border-color:black;”
swfsrc=’http://www.audimated.com/widget/player.swf?playlist_url=http://www.audimated.com/widget/player.widget.php?user=YOURUSERNAME‘
imgsrc=”http://www.audimated.com/img/AudimatedRadioFacebookCover.png”
width=’514px’
height=’198px’
waitforclick=’true’
/>Get your own <a href=”http://www.audimated.com/”>Audimated Radio</a>
11. Click “Save.”
12. Click the name of your page in the top left of the screen to view the changes.
At first you might not see your tab at the top of the page, but this is likely because there is not enough room. If you click on the discussions tab you can click the pencil icon and select “delete” (this tab never gets used too much). We can create some more space and even change the order of the tabs by clicking and dragging them to a new position. I advise moving the tab as far left as possible to make sure people can see it.
You are done! Visitors to your site can now stream, download or purchase these songs. You can always access your account on Audimated and change the songs, prices or data associated with your playlist.
Mea Culpa: Audimated Emails
Aug 30th
Dear Audimated Users:
Unfortunately this morning roughly 300 email addresses were mistakenly shared in an invitation message to new members. Just to be clear, this is not a security issue and no personal information about our members or invitees was jeopardized. This was simply an error where a group of emails was pasted in to the “To” section instead of the “BCC” section. As a result the recipients of this email are now able to see the other emails that were addressed.
Audimated takes full responsibility for this mistake. If any of our members, readers or constituents was upset by this error please contact support@audimated.com so that we can make it right.
Audimated Support
Support@Audimated.com