On the Grind…Building!

For the past six week, some of you may have noticed a bit of a slowdown in posting to the Netmix blog. It’s not for lack of trying, I’ll tell you that much. It’s simply because I’ve been insanely busy with a couple of projects, and I have been too frazzled to sit and crank out a few posting.

I know, you say, “too busy?” Yes, too busy. In face, so busy that I missed the Electric Zoo Festival, which was something I was really looking forward to. Too busy, that in the last 30 days, I think I pulled a few 12-hour days and one 19-hour day. The latter killed me, because I didn’t leave my office until 7:30 AM, which was 19-hours after I’d gotten to the office the day before. Okay, I cheated by 1.5 hours. I took a little break to share a plate of Calimari with some friends at a local eatery. Rest assured, I jumped right back into work shortly thereafter.

What’s one to do when you’re so busy you can’t post to your own blog? I tried to enlist the help of a Wordpress plug-in, FeedWordpress, which enabled me to aggregate RSS feeds from other sites to post to Netmix, but I stopped using it for a couple of reasons.

First, while FeedWordpress did a great job of ingesting posts from other sites for display on Netmix, it took the entire post from Billboard.com’s RSS service, which included both text and photos, instead of just a summary. I can’t be sure, but it seems as if Billboard.com’s RSS is displaying the full text with images of articles, and not the text summary. For legal reason, I did not want to infringe on Billboard’s copyright by using their content without permission. Because it was an automated tool, I didn’t have the time to go in and credit each news service pinged. After adding multiple services, I realized there were so many posts, it would have just taken way too much time to go through each one to post an attribution, so I gave it the old heave-ho and deleted it.

A second and equally important reason, is because FeedWordpress was causing a harsh php scriptiong error affecting the Netmix home page load incorrectly. Each time the page loaded with php parsing error, it affected Netmix’s page view stats with our analytics program. Certainly a very serious issue.

Lastly, the content coming through these feeds was of relatively little interest to the DJ culture community. It’s all pop crap, right? Netmix has always been committed first and foremost to DJ culture and not general music news. There are a few competitors out there already that do a pretty good job of covering music news. You know, Billboard, MTV, Yahoo! Music, AOL Music and the like. Yeah, I could go head to head, but…er…no, thank you. I’m just kidding, of course. It’s just little’ol me plugging away on Netmix whenever the urge arises. I couldn’t be bothered covering what a “jackass” Kanye West was, who’s getting divorced, or whic faux pas some superstar artist committed. Not my bag, man. We’ll stick to DJ oriented stuff here.

What’s New

There’s a few new things I want to tell you about.

1. 20dot20

20dot20.com

The first is an industry networking event the guys and Habitat Music and I launched four months ago. I know—not a peep here about it on Netmix. Crazy, right? That’s what happens when you’re juggling multiple Twitter feeds (@djtonyz, @netmix, @twiijdj and @eroticdisco, blogs, my Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Orkut, Tribe.com, Ping.fm, LinkedIn, Plaxo and all the other Web 2.0 sites that are keeping me crazy busy.

Fortunately, we’ve been documenting everything over at 20dot20’s web site (http://www.2odot20.com). We’re very proud of this event, which is the buzz of the advertising music industry.

The event takes place the last Thursday of the month. We were located at 20 W. 20th, however, we just gave up the space and are moving the event to 95 Morton St. in the interim. Check the 20dot20.com Web site for event details and to sign up to the event or receive email notifications of future events. Here is the invite link: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/431022199

2. National Museum of Hip Hop

For the past four months, I’ve been assisting the organizers of the National Museum of Hip Hop with their online strategy. We’re in the process of developing their Web site, which will be tentatively located at http://www.hiphopmuseum.org. The group is planning its fund raising campaign with a a gala event on November 10 at M2 UltraLounge in New York City. Stay tuned for more details and the Web site launch in just a week or so!

3. Twiij.com

Twiij

In the spirit of UltraLight Startups, a New York City small business networking event focused on entrepreneurs bootstrapping their ideas with a few bucks and some wind at their backs, I threw $500 an idea at the wall and got Twiij.com to show for it. What’s Twiij? It’s a Twitter-based music promotion service, where anyone can Tweet their tracks to DJs following our Twitter account: @TwiijDJ. With hundreds of DJs following, you can simply fill out the form. Twiij shortens your URL using the Bit.ly API, and through an online form service creates all the hash (#) tags. Hit submit and watch your Tweet roll out in our feed, where DJs following can pick up on the new music. Think of it as the first Twitter record pool for DJs. Just go to http://www.twiij.com to Tweet your track.

4. EroticDisco

There’s been an explosion of talented female DJs around the world. You can find a few sites dedicated wholly to female DJs, like the popular SheJay.com. One day last year, I was putzing around the Web, thinking up ideas for new sites. I’d been listing to an old Vanessa Dauo album, inspired by the poetry of Erica Jong. That gave the idea for EroticDisco. I completely understand that some people think the word “erotic” followed by the word “disco,” means that it’s some kind of porno site, but that’s the furthest thing from my mind. However, I do want to focus on the fashion of female DJs, because I think that’s going to be a driver for young women who are interested in DJ culture.

EroticDisco.com Tamara Sky

My girlfriend, bless her heart, thinks that EroticDisco.com should cover ALL female DJs, no matter what they look like. Well, that’s what SheJay is for. We’re trying to be a little different and focus on the fashion, the style AND the music. It’s my editorial vision for the site to focus on stylish, attractive women who are also slamming DJs. Call it whatever you want. If you’re not feeling it, then may I suggest that you start your own Web site. There are thousands of ways to launch your own Web site nowadays, it shouldn’t be too hard. Just don’t hate the player, hate the game! We’re just trying to have a little fun in all the seriousness.

Wrap-Up

Yes, we’ve been GRINDING it out this summer! That’s for sure. If that wasn’t enough, I’ve been in the studio with DJ Ming working on some music. And, I’ve been helping my friends with their sites: TrendyMommies.com, 622Photography.com, and MelibeeGlobal.com.

I’ve also started developing our NetmixMedia.com corporate site, which is the parent org of this site, Netmix.com, and Twiij.com, DJGig.com (coming soon) and SoundsSocial (also coming soon).

This, and all the work I’m doing with Zaah Technologies at Lead User Experience Architect, which includes a bunch of sites that I can’t disclose, but they are all pretty big projects and we’re doing some fun stuff!

That’s a wrap. Stay tuned, because I’m going to be kicking it a bit more here on the blog in the next few weeks! Apologies for disappearing for a minute, but you can see why. It’s been mad hectic, for sure!

– by Tony Z.

This is a hot new tune from AVH, which scored a number one on the British charts. Check it.

We love the folks over at MixMatchMusic.com, one of the cooler music services navigating the digital landscape. The company provides online software to mix and distribute music in a viral fashion, with built-in ways to generate and share revenue between producer/remixers and musicians collaborating in the software online. It’s a unique service, one in which you can tell a lot of love has gone into.

The company just release a remix widget, which is another unique asset to any online marketing plan. We heard they also have plans for an iPhone application, coming soon.

The company’s PR rep, Lisa Greenfield, made an appearance on today’s panel. In this video, she explains what MixMatchMusic.com is and how you can use it to generate interest to action on your music through the services online tool sets.

The List Web site

Looking for the hot parties at the 2009 Winter Music Conferece? The List, a web site created by the organizers of the WMC, is the best place to begin your search. Check out The List on the Winter Music Conference Web site.

The site is updated weekly with a countdown to the conference, which takes place from March 24th to the 28th in sunny, Miami Beach. Check the main Winter Music Conference Web site for conference details.

Beatport Affiliate Temporary Cancellation Email

Beatport Affiliate Cancellation Email

The venerable Beaport, according to some the most popular DJ download store in America, continues to amaze us with their extraordinarily piss poor vendor support and customer service skills. Sure, we love the service, but they don’t seem to love us–the DJs, blogs and web sites that have helped them brand their service and become the first, succesful dance music download store on the Internet.

On October 20th, Netmix received a cryptic email from Beatport’s affiliate support department notifying us that we had been temporarily removed from their affiliate program. The email implied that we had done something wrong and our partnership is now terminated

All of the Netmix mix shows in the Podcast section have links to purchase titles through Beatport. Without prior notice, Beatport made a decision to shut down the program, without notifying us (or anyone else for that matter) in advance.

As you can see from the emails we have posted above, first we received notification of termination with no explanation. We replied to that email and received the second one, which simply confirmed everything.

If Beatport knew they were shutting down their affiliate program, didn’t they consider it would make sense to do it in phases? They should have let blogs and web sites know that they were going to terminate the service in 30-days time to give their partners (and I use that term very loosely) enough time to remove hard links to titles.

This is especially true in the case of a new DJ culture site, ILOVETHATTRACK.com, which provides DJs with the ability to upload play lists and link titles to services like Beatport for their fans to purchase and download. It must be a stunning blow to their revenue model. Maybe they have some side deal with Beatport to link up to an API or something, but after testing the site tonight, all the Beatport links are broken.

It’s got to be pretty devastating to a new service that is dependent on a partner like Beatport. Just pull the plug and lave ILoveThatTrack’s team high and dry to figure out something overnight. It’s not easy to make a wholesale change to your web database that pulled in and hosted all of those links. It will take days if not weeks and real, hard dollars to remove Beaport from their system, or switch to another service that may not have the same catalog.

This is why I’ve never been a big fan of the affiliate model. Your partner can pull the plug at any time and leave you holding the bag after you’ve invested time, resources and real dollars into building a business that depends on that ongoing relationship.

The company gets all the benefits of your partnership, especially in the form of marketing and promotion of their brand name, as well as the long term customers you’ve pushed into their system. Since you’re not taking the transaction, that customer is never really yours. Although ILoveThatTrack is a great service we hope succeeds, they’ll never be able to build a real business on the affiliate model for this very reason. You can see that dependency on affiliate partnerships as a revenue driver is a risky proposition. They’re going to have to go out and build a music service of their own to fulfill their customers expectations, if they haven’t started already.

It’s just another example of Beatport having absolutely no clue when it comes to relationship building with its partners. The perception is now that they’ve reached a certain level of success, let’s turn off the program that helped get tens of thousands (if not millions) of dollars in FREE exposure and good will through hundreds of web sites from around the world, without any prior warning.

One Beatport executive told me that there were a variety of problems with the affiliate program and it was costing the company more than it was making. Okay, we understand. You need to shut it down to ensure that you’re not spending more than you make.

But, the good will that has been squandered by just turning if off overnight is the same mistake that company after company has made with supporters, suppliers and vendors for hundreds of years. Has anyone at Beatport gone to business school? Don’t they read Seth Godin’s or Guy Kawaski’s blogs?

It’s part of the ethical code of running a business that you notify your partners well in advance that you are going to make a major change to your business model, which will affect their revenue and their content IMMEDIATELY. You must give your partners time to prepare. Beatport did not, and for that they deserve a letter grade of “F” for failure.

What’s worse is, not only did Beatport shut it down, but in our mind slapped all of its partners in the face by telling them that they’ve been removed from the program for negative reasons, without any explanation whatsoever. That’s real warm and fuzzy for ya! A great way to run a business in this day and age. Kick the people who put you where you are today.

Every time a company goes out and makes poor judgments like this one, they can’t expect to go back to the same people for support in the future. Why would anyone want to help you now? They’re probably laughing right now reading this, but I say to them, look at GM and Ford. Two of the greatest car companies in the world are on the brink of collapse, all because they refused to see the future.

Whether something is working on not, you have to ask yourself, is it in my best interest to shut the program down without any prior notification? Or, should I let everyone know what the deal is before I pull the plug? The way I work, I think letting people know is the fair and right thing to do. The way Beatport is run, it seems like a very few in that organization care about their customers or their partners. And that’s what the dance music industry never learns, which is certainly the subject of a future post: How come the dance music industry can’t get out of it’s own way?

It’s all about Beatport and no one else. That’s a lonely road to travel as your competitors chip away at your lead. Sounds like an election we just had.

– by Tony Z.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you know it’s serious when Diddy starts complaining about something. Anyone who keeps up-to-date with Diddy’s video blogs on YouTube knows what I am talking about. On his 12th video blog, Diddy begins to complain that gas prices are too high and he can no longer fly his private jet.

Aww, Diddy! I completely sympathize with your situation. If I couldn’t fly my private jet, I would get a camera, complain and put it on YouTube too. [lol]

But in all seriousness folks, you never know; maybe gas prices will start to decrease. I mean c’mon! What isn’t possible through the power of Diddy?

Didn’t you see the Burger King commercial?

-Jacklyn Mendoza | J.FRESH

That’s right!

You didn’t read the title wrong and no, this is not a joke.

Daddy Yankee has publicly endorsed John McCain.

Over the weekend, the presidential candidate John McCain made a campaign stop at Central High School, a dominantly Latino school located in Phoenix, Arizona. While attempting to encourage the group of students to “be involved”, McCain softly acknowledges the real reason any Latino student would stand to listen to him. He begins to introduce his “special friend”, whom he describes as an “all American success story” and list this guest’s credentials, but falls short of mentioning the house with the white picket fence and the little dog in the backyard.

Right after miserably failing to make a joke out of Yankee’s hit song “Gasolina” and the rise of gas prices, McCain introduces Daddy Yankee to a number of screaming and excited Latino high school students.

Now beside the obvious shock of Yankee endorsing John McCain, there is only one thing I find very curious about this whole video. Right as Daddy Yankee makes his greeting, he is quickly interrupted by a man in a blue collared shirt (obviously a man who works for the McCain camp). After stopping Yankee’s speech for about 20 seconds, Yankee gets back on the mic and proceeds to continue his speech. But alas, Yankee is once again interrupted by the presidential candidate himself. McCain, quickly grabs Yankee’s arm and directs him to the group of students behind him.

Yankee, always being the crowd pleaser, proceeds to greet every single one of the Latino students. Once he does finally get to speak, Yankee begins to slowly state how he chooses “him [McCain] as the best candidate”.

Now I don’t know about you, but I just find this whole scenario a bit odd. I mean, whats the deal with all the interruptions! If your going to bring out someone to endorse you, wouldn’t it be a good idea to let them TALK!

And honestly, how much did they pay Daddy Yankee for that endorsement? Or did they threaten to revoke his passport or something. I dunno, maybe it’s just me. But I don’t really picture McCain drinking a Corona and shouting CAPICU at the Domino table.

-Jacklyn Mendoza | J.FRESH

Minitek Festival Flyer

The summer is just about over. What’s one to do?

PVD on the pier is history. Ibiza is shutting down. Burning Man is kicking off, but we certainly don’t have gas money for the RV this time around. Our prodigal American DJs are returning stateside to residencies that pay them 1/4 of what they’re actually worth; to a battered economy and and a country frozen by fear-factoring Republicans.

Where can one find inspiration and creative dose of liberal relief? Minitek! That’s where!

Perfectly situated at the end of summer parties on the Hamptons and the influx of thousands of NYU students returning for the Fall semester, the first ever Minitek festival kicks off between September 12 and 14th at various venues and locales throughout New York City. Home base, where all the exhibits will be on display, is Penn Plaza. If you don’t know Penn Plaza, think Madison Square Garden and the surrounding streets

The festival organizers are on an ambitious effort to organize a celebration of elecontric arts, culture, technology and music. Innovation Pavillion is the epicenter, where the festivals installations, exhibits and vendor booths for companies the digital media and music spectrum will be contstructed.

According to the festival organizers, projects on display will “explore new technologies to create sounds and visuals, with emphasis lying on interactivity. The pavilion will be present at the day site and the original creators have been invited to present their work to you live; sometimes you will even directly or indirectly become part of the art presented.”

DJ sets will take place at various venues throughout the city. Confirmed are Richie Hawtin, Magda, Audion, Heidi, Tiefschwarz, M.A.N.D.Y. and more. Record labels will also have booths set up to promote the latest electronic beats.

For more information on installations, vendors, DJs and locations, visit MiniTekFestival.com. For tix, visit ResidentAdvisor.net.

We’re looking forward to this event and are planning to provide some coverage here. So stay up with Netmix and we’ll bring you a little slice of the Minitek Festival.

8tracks

Have you ever just wanted to upload your own MP3’s to an easy to use web site, program those tracks sequentially, then send all your friends a link to listen your custom mix? Well, now you can with 8tracks, a new service providing anyone with the ability to become their own play list master and superstar online radio DJ.

Sure, you can go to iTunes and download music, but how do you share legally with friends without having to worry about the dreaded RIAA or their sinister cousin, SoundExchange, from draining your bank account with legal fees?

After all, you thought it was okay to uploaded your grandmother’s fav Frank Sinatra track to your blog so she could listen on the laptop you bought her for Christmas. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but you get the point. Sharing music is illegal and there are a few companies now trying to solve that problem.

The recent buzz has been focused on Muxtape.com, a simple service catering to the music discovery and play list creation community. Despite the cool factor, it’s a pretty rudimentary tool with few community tools and other features available to create a network around your play lists. Another major issue with Muxtape is that anyone can right-click on a track title from within the services pages and actually download the music files. That puts the service squarely in the legal grey area. Internet music strategists are watching to see how far Muxtape will get before hitting the legal wall.

Many web developers have been implementing an open source solution, the XSPF Music Player, into their clients web pages. Mostly, record labels who need a player and own their own content, which they can stream legally since they own the rights. Although a decent solution, there’s a bit of a learning curve on the technology side.

First, you have to upload your tracks to a server. Well, that’s if you have or rent server space in the first place. Although some fifteen year-old’s know how to FTP, it’s not the majority. Second, you have to edit a configuration file to point to the folder where your tracks reside, in order for the player to load files for playback. And third, you have to embed the player in your web page, social network or blog. That can be a challenge for 90 percent of the population who want to create mixes, but have no HTML skills, since you have to create the embed code yourself, instead of someone providing an embed code for you.

Of course, streaming music over the Internet without a license is a no-no. It’s surely a buzz kill when the summons shows up in your snail mailbox and you have to ask mom for $20K for to cover your lawyer costs.

8tracks Web Site

Leave it do David Porter, CEO and founder of 8tracks (http://www.8tracks.com), to figure out a way to create and share play lists legally. A former player over at Live365,, the Internet’s first successful user generated streaming radio service, David knows the ins and outs of streaming radio operations and Internet licensing parameters. Seizing the opportunity to create an elegant solution that would be easy to use while protecting users legally, he and some friends banded together to launch the service, which is coming out of its private beta on Friday, August 8.

(Before I go any further, let me disclose that I am an adviser to 8tracks for the DJ market.)

I’ve been playing with the service from its alpha to beta and now the public release. It’s a really neat and I’m sure it will be a hit. As always with bootstrapped start-ups, there are features yet to be implemented, but the basics are there and new tools will be rolled out over the next 6 months.

It’s pretty simple to use. Just register and then start creating your mix by uploading a minimum of 8 individual tracks, which is approximately 30 minutes of music. You can upload more if you like, but 8 tracks is the minimum, mainly for legal reasons and branding purposes. No one track can be over twenty minutes long and you can’t play two tracks by the same artist from the same album. Another legality, but that’s okay because your playing DJ, not record label A&R executive.

The cool thing about 8tracks is that you can also browse other users play lists and drag and drop their tracks into your mixes. This is the ultimate mash-up for online radio programming. Don’t feel like uploading today, simply search within 8tracks for music you like, create a new play list based on those selections and then publish and share your mix.

Files encoded as MP3 must be used, as other formats will not work. You can’t, for example, upload music from your iTunes library. You must convert it to MP3 first, by burning your tracks to CD then ripping them back down to your computer in MP3 format…but don’t tell anyone we told you how to do that.

Once you create your playlist, you can use your mouse to drag and drop titles in the order you want. After  you’ve done that, it’s as simple as sending out the URL provided to share your mix with your friends. They can either visit the URL you’ve sent them by email or you can publish your player to your web site, blog or social network and drive people there. That way, you can promote yourself in one place, without having to drive people somewhere else just to hear your mix.

David Porter says, “8tracks believes handcrafted music programming trumps algorithms. Think radio in the 1970s, mixtapes in the 1980s, and DJ culture of the 1990s through today. DJs share their talent in taste making, providing exposure for artists. Listeners get a unique blend of word-of-mouth sharing and radio programming — long the trusted means for music discovery — on a global scale.”

The company will most likely monetize the service with a mix of advertising and tiered services. For the time being, the goal is to get user adoption while working on a parallel track to implement the revenue model. Initially, the service has an affiliate relationship with Amazon.com, which may also be expanded to other services, like Emusic or Beatport, as the need arises. Users can purchase any track, as long as they are available through Amazon.com.

I’m working with 8tracks to create DJ-centric tools to allow professional DJs expanded capabilities. Those type of special DJ features will come down the road. For now, test out the service and let the guys at 8tracks know what you think through the prominent, red “feedback” tab provided.

Check out our first mixes on the 8tracks service:

http://8tracks.com/djtonyz/sounds-of-erotic-disco

http://8tracks.com/djtonyz/netmixcom-internet-radio

Artist : D:Fuse & Hiratzka
Release “Breathe In”
Remixer: Fine Taste
Label: Currve
Catalog: CR041
Release Date: June-18-2008
Genre: Progressive House, Tech House, Chill Out
Format: Digital

Review: Fine Taste remix is repetitive and simple. Not a floor filler by any means. Something to get the crowd warmed up. Neil Colo’s Tech House remix has a lot of structured complexity with dark overtones. If you’re into the darker side of Tech House, this one’s a sure bet. The downtempo, chill out album version is included with the EP download.

Artist: Killfish
Release: Tatooman EP
Label: Jetlag Digital
Catalog: JED002
Release Date: July-04-2008
Genre: Progressive House
Format: Digital

Review: Out of the gate, Jetlag Digital put out a couple of nice tracks. These two are fairly forgettable. They don’t go anywhere or do anything exciting. Simply just filler tracks. “Grinder Cool” has a bit of an electro house flavor to it. A vocal sample drifts in and out, but there’s no reason to really care. The breakdown is fairly simple. Nothing we haven’t seen before. The modulation of the synth warps around as it comes out of the breakdown, but it doesn’t capture the big room, epic transformation you’d expect out of a long breakdown and build up. “The Fisher” is another filler track that I might play in the beginning of the night, but definitely not peak hour. These guys need to go back to the drawing board and take it a notch higher. The label is out of Spain. This sound may do well there, we don’t know, but we don’t expect them to break any records in the U.S. with this release.

Artist: Terry Williams
Release: San Francisco
Label: Lad Publishing & Recordings
Catalog: LADAL08041
Release Date: June-18-2008
Genre: Tech House
Format: Digital

Review: We’re digging this thick track with synth stabs that sound like urgent horns placed evenly along throughout. A nice twangy bass line carries the groove. This track is good for putting that skip in your step when you’re on the floor, grooving to it. If this is the sound of underground San Francisco, then we’re looking forward to hearing it played out the next time we visit. The Natalino Nunes remix takes it a bit darker, but that means it loses a bit of its cheery flavor. So, we’ll stick with the original here.

Artist: Incognito
Release: Tales From The Beach (Album)
Label: Heads Up International
Catalog: HUCD 3141
Release Date: June-24-2008
Genre: Jazz
Format: Digital

Review: Just when you were looking for a smooth, soulful jazz album from Incognito, here it is. The band has returned with lush, gorgeous music and vocals you’d expect from such a legendary group. Incognito fans will be satiated with all that’s great about this group. DJs have three house tracks to pick from, “Love, Joy, Understanding”, “Freedom To Love”, and “Feel The Pressure.” All three are perfect for a Lil Louie Vega set. We’re thinking someone from Giant Step has already called him for a remix.

Head to Giant Step to listen to the DJ Sampler.

If you’re like me and are immersed in social networking and Web 2.0, then you should know what Twitter is. For those of you who don’t, I’ll try to explain it in as simple terms as possible.

Twitter allows you to “micro-blog.” That is, to create a profile on Twitter.com and the constantly feed it with your current thoughts in 140 characters or less. There are no photos, no video–it’s simply just a running text feed of your current status. Sort of like your Facebook feed, but you can port your Twitter status updates into Facebook and other social networks, while you can’t yet do the reverse with your MySpace or Facebook status updates.

With Twitter, you can follow people’s feeds and they can follow yours. I’m following a few hundred digerati, DJs and music industry professionals and have reached over 1,000 posts. Twitter has become such a phenomenon, that the site has had difficulty as of late staying online. The criticism is that they built the site using Ruby On Rails server technology, which is said to not scale as efficiently as other technologies available. Nevertheless, Twitter just raised a $15 Million round of funding and that should quiet the critics and hopefully smooth out their operations.

What’s great about Twitter is that people from all over the world are already jumping on the bandwagon, typing in the minutiae of their lives. My girlfriend, Missy, thinks Twitter is useless. That is, until a blogger in Egypt twittered that he’d been unfairly arrested. The “twitterspehere” the blogger operates in quickly came to his rescue. That changed Missy’s mind (for now). That is, until she sees me post something about her…lol.

Anyway, the point of the story. Yes…I’m getting to the point here, is that the user @aztrovoi contacted me through Twitter–all the way from Mexico. Who knew I had fans in Mexico!

Why the “@” symbol? Twitter uses the “@” symbol to allow sending direct messages to folks. So, if you want to post and address your post to me so that I see it in my “Replies” box, just put the “@” symbol in front of my user name: djtonyz. The message will go to both community and me.

The power of Web 2.0 is amazing. So many of my friends and colleagues are now following my updates through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and many other networks I’m part of. This gives me the ability to communicate what’s happening in my world everyday, and helps all my contacts stay up on my status.

Sure, it’s a lot of work constantly managing your online life. But, the means justifies the end! As I begin to build my off line DJ career again, all these tools have become necessary to promote and market oneself. You have to take advantage of them, because that’s where the people are.

Beatportal.com, the daily blog journal run by the folks at Beatport.com, where kind enough to run my latest Netmix Global House Podcast in the Community feed section. You can check out the posting here.

Many companies are now looking to users to generate content for their blogs. Hiring bloggers is an expensive proposition against revenues. If you’re traffic doesn’t cover the cost of the hosting and content production, then it’s smart to look to the user community to develop content for a web site. We may be doing that ourselves very soon!

On another note, we’re moving away from Podpress for Wordpress as a Podcasting plug-in. It seems the developer is no longer supporting the application since 2007. As far as we can tell, Podpress has become extremely problematic, conflicting with more recent plug-ins, to the point that it breaks the plug-in repository in your Wordpress admin. We found the new Podcasting plug-in. When used in conjunction with a Feedburner_Feedsmith plug-in, we think it works quite nicely.

Podcasting supports iTunes, but it does not have links to the other podcasting web site featured through Podpress. It also does not host a download link with its player, nor does its player show the number of downloads. A bit disappointing, yes, but do I really need to tell people how many podcasts have been downloaded? Or, is that just a bit of ego on my part? I’ll go with the ego and forgo displaying the number for now. As long as I know what it is and that number is in overall subscriptions, I’m going to say that’s more important to Netmix growth over the long term.

That being said, my workaround was to simple. I added a text link under the Podcasting player provided by Feedburner to allow anyone to subscribe to my podcast feed. That way, it will ping users who have subscribed to the podcast with updates, in the same way that Podpress functions.

In a nutshell, I think we’ll be better off for the time being. Feedburner is quite a powerful way to organize and distribute feeds. For Netmix, that’s another great analytics tool, which compliments our Google Analtyics and GetClicky accounts.

If you’ve stumbled across this post, Netmix Media is the parent of Netmix.com. The company consults to media & entertainment organizations on web strategy, including blog and site development, rich media application development, Internet marketing and promotion and a host of other services. Contact Netmix Media if you need help with your web site or blog.

The next installment in Tony Z’s Global House Mix series for June 2008. This mix is dedicated to my girlfriend, Missy, who has been so supportive despite my disappearing for hours in the studio to produce these shows. It’s also dedicated to all those who are seeking inspiration to pursue their goals and realize their dreams.

Download the podcast or listen to the mix using the player below.

Download

Download June 2008 Netmix Global House Sessions Podcast

For DJ bookings, contact me.

If you want to purchase the individual tracks, click on the download links at the end of every song title to purchase from Beatport.com.

1. Love In War – KID Remix – Pete Gust | Download
2. Give It Up – Alex Gold Remix – Adam K/Soha | Download
3. Jupiter Calling – Original Mix – Thomas Schwartz | Download
4. Sunrise – Original Mix – Dave Spoon | Download
5. Pjanoo – Original Mix – Eric Prydz | Download
6. I Just Want To Be – Antoine Clamaran Remix – Sebastien Drums/Rolf Dyman | Download
7. Automatic – Tikaro/J.Louis/Ferran Remix – Ultra Nate | Download
8. Rhythm Is A Dancer – Tom Novy Remix – Snap! | Download
9. Down Down Down – Mattias Remix – No Tone | Download
10. You – Tom Novy Remix – Steve Mac/Paul Harris | Download
11. Got That M – Original Mix – Patch Park | Download
12. Vertical Smile – Original Mix – Andomat 3000 | Download
13. Rising Up – Christian Malloni Remix – Ross Couch | Download
14. Yes We Can – Original Mix – House Music United | Download
15. 4 AM – Adam K & Soha Mix – Kaskade | Download
16. Moscow After Autumn Rain – Original Mix – Elastic Sound | Download
17. Silence (feat. Sarah McLachlan) – Neils Van Gogh vs Thomas Gold Remix – Delerium | Download
18. Delightful Encounters – Terry’s Deeplightful Edit – Terry Lee Brown Junior | Download Not Available
19. City of Lost Souls – Stan Kolev Remix – Pete Moss | Download

Mushrooms – Justin Martin Mix – Marshall Jefferson/Noosa Heads | Download

20. Papaia – Original Mix – Tony Lionni | Download
21. We Are Facing The Sun – Original Mix – Sascha Funke | Download
22. The Big Blue – Original Mix – Billy Dalessandro | Download
23. Here Come The Beats – Original Mix – Fred Everything/JT Donaldson | Download
24. Manta – Original Mix – Jona | Download
25. No Comment – Original Mix – Solomun | Download
26. Berno – Mark August Remix – Till Von Sein | Download

As you can see from the Netmix blog updates and sidebar, I mainly use Twitter as a quick communication tool that resides somewhere between the world of an IM, an email and a blog post depending upon how you look at it. It’s the world of “micro-blogging,” a form of blogging that takes place in around 140 characters or less.

Surely, many early adopters of Twitter know about Pownce and its other competitor, Jaiku. Although Twitter is extremely popular, Pownce takes the strategy one step further by allowing file sharing and video posts.

I’ve found that on Twitter, the network I’ve built so far is mainly DJs who are early adopters and web development industry folks I like to follow whose kernels of insight I generally find useful to add to my knowledge base. I’ve been a little afraid of Pownce after getting a few invites this week from spammers, which I don’t seem to get as much of from Twitter. However, I’m willing to give Pownce a shot, mainly to distribute my mix shows to a built-in community; much like I do on Facebook. I’d like to see them add a similar Flash audio player to Pownce in the same way Facebook recently enabled which has allowed me to simply post a link to my mix on someone’s profile page, where they can play the show (hosted on my server) immediately without having to download it. That’s a pretty neat feature of Facebook, which MySpace or Bebo have yet to implement.

Pownce was co-founded by Kevin Rose, a co-founder of Digg.com, the popular bookmarking site. So, it’s got some leverage behind it. Oddly enough, when I was in San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo, Digg folk were using Twitter. That seemed to be the main form of communication. Twitter is having its fair share of issues with the Ruby On Rails framework it relies upon. Over the past week, the site has been hit with a number of outages. If that continues, look for Pownce to become quietly take the lead in the space. Twitter has got to get a hold on their issues. One of the main architects at Twitter, Blaine Cooke, recently broke with the company and word on the street is that they are going to build out the next version in PHP, which should be more stable and scalable, which depends on your viewpoint, but I’ll leave that up to the experts to figure out.

On the Powce site, you’ll find a set of Tools & Apps already being implemented to interface with other services like TypePad and even Drupal, two popular open source CMS platforms. And, you can add most of your social networks to the sidebar as well as web sites you want to promote or be associated with.

For me, Facebook is far and away a better platform to promote my DJ work. The group features are much cleaner and the simplicity of the interface is what continues to attract me to the site. I’m on another 60 or so social networks anyway, so why do I prefer Facebook over the others? It seems as if Facebook is now becoming the spot for a higher level of discourse than MySpace. On Facebook, there seem to lengthier conversations taking place, whereas on MySpace you have short bursts of promotion and it’s difficult to add friends of friends because of the lack of AJAX technology that makes clicking around in Facebook a bit more intuitive than MySpace. I think these new, micro-blogging services will bridge the gap somehow.

Jaiku’s website seems to still be in beta mode. You’re allowed only so many invites and at this point, it all has to be done by email, unlike Pownce which provides tie-in to all the major services, including Facebook and Gmail among others. The interesting take-a-way from Jaiku, is that the site allows you to add RSS feeds from a variety of services, as well as importing you blog postings via RSS, which allows for the ability to micro-blog your main blog postings. You can also set up Groups around a common theme, which should help build the community. I added DJs and Tech House to see who would join the party, which would make it easier to find and follow others.

All the services allow you micro-blog to your IM account. That’s a neat feature, but once I don’t use much at this point. I’m sure my friends don’t mind following me outside of IM, but inside IM would probably get annoying after a while. I mean…who has the time? LOL. If you have time for Twitter, then you have time for just about anything that comes down the road.

But I could be wrong and have been before. It’s just what I feel I’m getting out of it for me that counts the most.

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Last night I searched the term “DJ” on Twitter and returned approximately 350 pages of profiles containing the term. I ended up adding about 150 or so new follows to my Twitter profile. One of them was Hyline, a DJ, radio presenter and A&R Manager at Jetlag Digital, an all-digital progressive house label based in Germany.

They’ve got a great roster of global progressive house DJs, including the legendary Trance producer/DJ, Taucher (Germany), as well as Killfish (Spain), Facundo Romano (Argentina), Nacho Casco (Argentina), Federico Manachesi (Argentina) and Tobia Hoppe from Germany).

Taucher and Hyline host a radio show on FriskyRadio.com every 4th Thursday.

Shane – The Arrival is the first EP release from Jetlag Digital, with mixes from Killfish and Facundo Romano.

The Original and Extended mixes are house driven with a haunting female vocal that has a bit of a romantic middle eastern twist to it. Killfish brightens the levels a bit with a progressive mix and Facundo Romano takes it frighteningly deep and dark, for a late night sounds that is sure to send chills up any clubbers spine. A nice first EP from Jetlag, who associate their music with the sounds of global travel–sans the name, Jetlag. Check it out at Jetlagdigital.com.

Track Listing:

Shane – The Arrival (Original Mix)
Shane – The Arrival (Extended Mix)
Shane – The Arrival (Killfish Remix)
Shane – The Arrival (Facundo Romano Remix)