Gorillaz Post New Plastic Beach Mix on Youtube

Yesterday UK electronic alternative band The Gorillaz posted an 8 minute long audio preview of their new album Plastic Beach which is set to be released on March 9th.  The preview includes clips of five or six new songs off of the new release mixed into one big song.  My favorite has to be around the six minute mark where you hear some of the stuff that they did with Snoop Dogg, “welcome to the world of the Plastic Beach”.  This is the first time that I have ever seen a band give their fans such a huge preview of a new album.  The Gorillaz have a huge worldwide following, but have only released two albums over their almost ten year career.  So a new album being released is a big deal and they are making it into an event.

This is not the first video that the band has posted on youtube promoting their new album.  A series of animated videos which include the cartoon character band members and other previews have been added daily over the past month.

Gorillaz youtube channel

Iphone apps for music festivals

Music festivals have found a way to utilize new mobile technology by creating applications that people can download for their iphones or Ipod Touch.  This content enhances the festival experience by allowing you to access the schedule for the festival and a map of the venue with the locations of all the stages.  A user can create an agenda of performers that they will be viewing using the schedule and post it on their facebook to share with friends.  Coachella, Bumbershoot (Seattle), and San Francsisco’s Outside Lands Festival are some of the concerts that have embraced this tactic.  Below is a video showing how one of these apps works.

Outside Lands Festival iphone app

Sasquatch Launch Party and Timeliness

On Monday, February 15 the Sasquatch Music Festival held its first ever live launch party at the Crocodile in Seattle. The night included live performances from Surfer Blood, Atlas Sound, and Fresh Espresso, but more importantly it also included the unveiling of the 2010 Sasquatch Festival website.

This was a very timely way to announce the lineup because as bands were announced at the event bloggers who were attending could tweet or post on the Sasquatch message board lineup updates as they were announced.  By 11 pm that night someone had a picture uploaded of the 2010 lineup poster for everyone to see on the Sasquatch message board. To show how effective the lineup unveiling was Sasquatch sent out the following tweet the next morning.

“Sasquatch 2010 Lineup” = most searched phrase on Google in the WORLD, so site’s loading slowly…lineup on Fbook! http://ow.ly/17WYb 10:42 AM Feb 16th from web

Another reason why it was so timely is because organizers had made early bird three day passes available  for 170 dollars until Tuesday February 16 when the lineup became announced.  With the live event happening the night before people could wait until the last minute and see what the lineup looked like before getting their early bird tickets.

Sasquatch definitely made the right decision in what tactic to use when announcing the lineup for this years festival.  Instead of having a timed announcement system on myspace like Bonnaroo, which was innovative but let rumors leak real fast.  Sasquatch organizers created a party where information would be given and could all get posted at the same time, extinguishing the redundancy of previously known information.

Fans Contribute To Sasquatch 2010 Advertisement

The Sasquatch Music Festival really knows how to connect with their fans and them involved in hyping up this years festival.  On Tuesday the video above was posted by Seth Zeichner on Vimeo advertising the lineup for this years festival while also using video submissions made by fans.

This all started on January 22nd when the Sasquatch tweeted about needing quick 10 second video submissions from fans saying “I am Sasquatch”.  The tweet directed participants to a very easy to follow example posted on the festival’s official website.

Fan submissions were edited to music from the festivals top artists, cool lineup CGs and wooded background added.  They also added a cool look to it by having the video submissions show up on a TV within the commercial.

Fan video submissions was a great tactic for Sasquatch to use because it shows how dedicated the fans are to the event, and seeing how excited other people just like you are about something makes you want to find out more.  Posting a video online is so easy and the amount of people creating is so huge that it made for some very creative submissions.

I am Sasquatch video

Bonnaroo Utilizes Social Media To Announce 2010 Lineup

This past Tuesday the lineup for the 2010 edition of the three day Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival was announced in a revolutionary new way.  Promoters used the festivals myspace page and other social media as the medium to announce the lineup.  The Festival turned the lineup announcement into an event that lasted the whole day, announcing a new band on their myspace page every five minutes.  As the announcements happened they were tweeted on Bonnaroo’s twitter account as well.  This was a great PR tactic because it gets people hyped throughout the day about what band might get announced next and gains more viewers to their social media presence.

The thing that was great and unique about this lineup announcement was that they used social media as the medium to make it, because the internet is the place where news gets made now.  Using a timed announcement system with a cuckoo clock graphic was cool to watch at first, but after a while it got old and ended up being the drawback.  Using myspace ended up being a drawback because people see myspace as a site that’s old news and not that great of a system.  With the amount of artists that the festival announced, 92 bands by the end of the day with more still come later, it just took too long.  By the end of the day bloggers were mad at the festival for making them wait so long.  The blog College News outlined the announcement as a revolutionary concept that ended up being redundant and not able to keep with information that was being leaked.

“Sure, it’s supposed to act as an aggregate, meaning that some of the information on the MySpace page will be a collection of previously revealed information. But, given how quickly the information about the Bonnaroo lineup has leaked, the method seems redundant, not revolutionary. Plus, no one was thrilled about the use of MySpace, a social networking site many regard as outdated and poorly run”  wrote Mark Andrews of College News.

Here is how some of the Twitter community felt throughout the day about the announcement.

@musicnewsdaily Early tweet feedback on Bonnaroo lineup announcement method. Annoying, slow, crashes, no one uses myspace anymore

@TheRightMinds I’m pumped to see the Bonnaroo lineup, but whats with the myspace timed announcements? are we expected to watch this all day?

@lindseydurrell I’m not sure which is more annoying: that @bonnaroo is only announcing an artist every 5 mins. or that they’re being unveiled on MySpace.

There was some good twitter feedback too

@grimygoods The @Bonnaroo band announcements are way too cute! Love the lil clock and music!

@JashMaldner Even though I would never go to Bonnaroo I am enjoying their announcement techniques right now on myspace

So to sum it all up, I applaud Bonnaroo for finding a creative new way of announcing their lineup.  This was the first year it used this new technique and of course there are some bugs to work out, but people were still pumped about the new concept and the lineup announcement in general.

The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival takes place June 10-13 in Manchester, Tennessee visit the official website for ticket details.

College News Article

Bonnaroo official website

Artists Save Money By Releasing Their Music Videos Online

Recently M.I.A posted a new video for her first single “There’s Space For Ol Dat I See” off her third album “Space Odyssey” .  She released it on youtube and posted it on Twitter saying that it cost her only 100 dollars to make using the computer program ichat.  I think that it’s probably her best video yet because it fits the spacey beats that Rusko provided.  This option of using youtube as a way to distribute and less expensive methods to make music videos is becoming more and more popular because youtube has become the place where people go to look up music videos.

The creation of MTV in 80′s was revolutionary, because it brought the opportunity for a band to tell a story or entertain fans with a video companion piece to their song.  By the late 90′s the internet had been created and you started seeing more and more original programming being created.  The time devoted to music videos became late night and early morning hours.  Music videos on MTV now is like listening to the radio, they have a rotation of music videos by like 15-20 artists that get played over and over.

The creation of youtube made it easy for any band to create their own music video and submit it online for free, giving it the potential to go viral.  One of the first bands to be successful at using this method was OK Go with the infamous “Here It Goes Again” treadmill video.  The video premiered on youtube in July 2006 and now has almost 50 million views.

Most recently UK band the Gorillaz have taken youtube by storm using their 2d animation persona to create commercials for their upcoming album Plastic Beach.  I think this is a great PR move for them utilizing the animation as much as possible to get fans pumped.  They are a band that has a huge fanbase but don’t release records that often so it’s smart of them to make it an event when they do release an album.  Here’s my favorite out of the 5 that they have loaded up so far.

Sasquatch 2010 Still Without A Lineup

The Sasquatch Music Festival is a three day festival that is held at the beautiful Gorge Amphitheater in Washington over Memorial day weekend each year.  This festival has always boasted a decent lineup of artists in past years including Bjork, The Flaming Lips, Nine Inch Nails, and MIA.   This years edition is set to take place May 29-31, but the lineup is being kept a secret until February 16. So far the only big band that they have announced is the reunion of indie rock group Pavement, who were announced along with Jay Z, Muse, The Gorillaz, and tons of other acts for Coachella recently.  Wale, Why?, Vetiver, Morning Teleportation, Miike Snow, and Neon Indian are the other bands expected to perform.  None of those other acts besides Pavement will draw people to buy early tickets and make plans to attend.  Sasquatch needs to leak some big lineup news soon if promoters want people to still have a reason to attend, because Coachella and Bonnaroo are definitely beating them to the punch.

One of the biggest rumored bands early on was The Flaming Lips performing “Dark Side of The Moon”.  The possibility still exists they will be there,but singer Wayne Coyne just leaked on February 2nd that The Lips will perform the popular Pink Floyd album in its entirety on the first night of Bonnaroo 2010.  Bonnaroo is an annual three day music festival that takes place in Manchester Tennessee June 10-13, only a few weeks after Sasquatch.  News being released via their Twitter is that the budget was raised significantly for this years fest, and that it will the biggest year yet.  The rest of the 2010 lineup will be released Tuesday February 9th, a whole week before Sasquatch is scheduled to release theirs.

The point that I’m trying to make is that Sasquatch is totally dropping the PR ball by not releasing enough lineup hints early, and I think attendance will suffer.  The main reason why Coachella and Bonnaroo will be bigger is because they have been creating buzz online.  Bonnaroo has been tweeting hints about its lineup and getting people amped for weeks now, and I have seen none of that from Sasquatch.  Sasquatch has been infamous in the past for keeping their lineup a secret, but there’s a difference between being totally secretive, and letting information slip out that could drive ticket sales.  Getting the idea in the fans minds that The Flaming Lips will be performing at Bonnaroo is great, because Flaming Lips fans are extremely loyal and Bonnaroo’s lineup will be stacked to the brim with much more talent.  If Sasquatch does try and announce The Flaming Lips “Dark Side of The Moon” as their huge selling point it’s not going to be a big surprise or a selling factor.  People will look at the Bonnaroo lineup on Tuesday and say “well I can wait a little bit longer and make the trip to Bonnaroo and see The Flaming Lips plus so much more great acts” the decision could be made before Sasquatch can make any claims to fame.  The fact that everyone,including the competition, has known the lineup is going to be released on February 16 for around a month now is pretty bad too.  Any music festival could steal their thunder by announcing a bigger lineup before that date, which Bonnaroo has done.  Come on Sasquatch step up your game.

Here’s a cool commercial that they made for last years announcement. It was released on February 17th last year, which means they probably have this years ready to post by now.  If it were me I would have a video announcing headliners at least by now to try and combat media attention surrounding other festivals.

Sasquatch Music Festival website

Bonnaroo Music Festival website

Coachella Music Festival website

Flaming Lips Article

The Grammys Utilize Social Media To Keep Fans Connected

The 52nd annual Grammy awards take place tonight at 8 PM, and that will be the subject of numerous twitter and blog posts throughout the night.  Huge events like the Grammys or the Academy Awards are able to reach a whole new level of hype through the use of Twitter and other social media sites.  Right now Grammys is the 4th most talked about topic on twitter.

The Grammys have picked a good slogan for this years show “we’re all fans”, which promotes the way that fans have become a part of music culture.  The show has profiles on all of the main social networks to keep people updated throughout the night.  If you miss any of the ground breaking there is no doubt that they will be archived on the official Grammys youtube page.  If you aren’t able to watch the grammys they have a iphone app to keep you updated on the go.  The Grammys are covering all the different types of audiences for their show which is even better.

Some people tune into the Grammys for the red carpet and performance aspect of it, with the utilization of youtube fans can watch those highlight over and over.  Other people just want to know who won the different awards, the use of twitter and facebook updates come in handy there.

I could see this as a model that could easily be used to promote other huge live events in the future.  Utilizing social media is a great way to get your message seen and heard by millions, and this is a perfect example of it.

Grammys Official Site

Stubhub.com and Ethics

Stubhub.com is an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of live entertainment tickets, even for events that appear to be sold out.  Two Stanford Business School students Eric Baker and Jeff Fluhr founded the company in 2000.  On the site sellers can post tickets for whatever price they choose.  Unlike other ticket websites like craigslist or ebay, stubhub takes a 25% commission after a sale takes place (10% from the buyer, and 15% from the seller).  Sellers can range from season ticket holders who want to unload tickets they won’t be using to professional ticket brokers.  So is it ethical to buy tickets and sell them online at a marked up price?

What stubhub does is unethical because they are promoting the action of scalping tickets.  Even though scalping is legal in most states it is an act that is frowned upon in the live entertainment industry.  Most peoples vision of a scalper is someone that is outside a live event venue the night of a concert selling tickets to people, but with the invention of the internet business becomes easier.  Now someone can buy up a whole bunch of tickets to a big concert and auction them off on a site like stubhub for more than face value.  Co-founder Eric Baker comments “I’m probably the one person from Stanford’s business school who decided to take his MBA and become a ticket scalper,”.   Stubhub is facilitating a market that is driving up ticket prices.

When asked in an interview on CNBC’s  “Big Ideas” if it was scalping co-founder Jeff Fluhr responded by saying that Stubhub was a marketplace for ticket exchange.  Their sales have sky rocketed over the past few years, and numerous sports teams use them as their source for ticket resales.  People are actually making a living selling tickets to sporting events and concerts online.  According to ABC the secondary ticket market is a 10 billion dollar industry, and business is booming.  But this takes away from a large population that are not able to pay thousands of dollars to buy concert and sports tickets, but could if tickets were sold at face value.  If the secondary ticket market keeps growing you could see the face value of tickets increase as well.

It is unethical to use someones desires as a personal gain for yourself and that is exactly what it seems like companies like stubhub are trying to do.  Sure you are filling up seats that would otherwise be left empty, but there is a thin line between wanting to fill seats and price gouging.  To me it seems like the latter is what is going on and it’s sad that it is perfectly legal.  The only thing to do to prevent it would be for the government to put a cap on the price of resale tickets, or prevent people from making a home business out of it.

Stanford Magazine article

Music DNA: The Future of Digital Music

I just read an interesting article on the UK news publication The Guardian’s website.  Bach Technology, the same innovators behind the MP3 file  recently unveiled what they believe will be the next generation in digital music, Music DNA.  MusicDNA files will contain more than just music they will also give listeners artwork, lyrics, tour updates, and twitter feeds.  A new way for bands to keep in touch with their fans, and fans get more out of their music experience.  It is also good for the labels because they have an opportunity to create fan relationships that last long after the initial sale of the album.

“We are taking an existing idea, giving the end user a lot more and making that file much more valuable – like transforming a tiny house into a huge villa.”  says Stefan Kohlmeyer, chief executive of Bach Technology.

One hope is that this could help the music industry in their fight against internet piracy by encouraging people to pay for their music.  You will only be able to gain these extras through downloading legal files, illegal files will remain static.  A big determinate of how well received it will be by customers is the price, which is yet to be determined.  Developers hope that it will be close to the current price of digital music, but the decision will ultimately be made by the record labels.

Tom Silverman, creator and CEO of Tommy Boy entertainment had this to say “It’s a boon for labels because this high-value consumer experience is not clonable, yet highly viral, and gives them full content and pricing flexibility. Their imagination is their only limit … If MP3s were the cassette, MusicDNA will be the CD.”

This new product is set to debut in Spring.

We have been looking at the idea of creating relationships in the first weeks of class, and how to make an idea stick.  I think that this is a key example of both.  If this new technology takes off record labels and artists will have a way of remaining in contact with fans and offer a more in depth musical experience.  Offering listeners more than just the music also creates a memorable experience that listeners will crave more of.

I found an in-depth interview with Stefan Kohlmeyer on youtube courtesy of Paidcontent:UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/24/musicdna-digital-music-file