On Thursday, I headed over to Broadway Studios in Brooklyn's Greenpoint section to go on set with Machete Music recording artist, Notch (Notch on MySpace) for the shooting of "Dale Pa' Tra (Back It Up)," the first single from his forthcoming album, Raised By The People. We tracked all the styles from the shoot. The video and style info will appear in the StarStyle.com Media Player in a few weeks. I'll post to let you know when it's ready.
Ror-shak from DB and Stakka; Drum & Bass is back and better than ever!
Koch Entertainment, once thought of as a mail-order music company releasing specialty childrens compilations and other nice albums have become quite aggressive as of late with hip hop and rap releases. In March, the company released Deep by Ror-shak, the alias behind legendary drum & bass DJ and Breakbeat Science co-founder, DB and underground drum & bass remix producer Stakka. The new electronic mix leans down-tempo, drum & bass and features vocals by Morningwood’s Chantal Claret, Lisa Shaw, Julee Cruise, and Wendy Starland.
Javier tour dates with Joss Stone
What would happen if you mixed Usher and Bryan McKnight with Mark Anthony and Luis Miguel? You'd most likley get one heck of a recording artist named Javier. Already one of my all-time favorites, this budding superstar recently announced tour dates with none other than Virgin Records soulstress, Joss Stone.
More on the disappearance of M3 Summit from Miami New Times
A user posted this link to a recent article in the Miami New Times on the disappearance of the M3 Summit from this year’s Winter Music Conference, in “Comments” on my original posting.
More photos from SXSW 2007
When I wasn’t running around trying to check out bands, I had camera in tow and took a bunch of photos. Click on this link to check them out in this blog’s photo gallery. I’ve posted a few below to get you started.
Netmix SXSW Podcast Interview w/ John Toone, CEO of Muzu.tv
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:50 — 14.5MB) | Embed
After a 4-day swing through South by Southwest in Austin, TV, I’m back in New York wading through the content I’d generated during the festival. While walking through the main exhibit hall, I ran across a number of companies promoting products and services to artists. Muzu.tv is one that caught my eye. In this Netmix SXSW podcast, Muzu.tv CEO, John Toone explains the company’s toolsets and philosophy.
The two-year old company are planning a late Q2 launch of their online platform of front end and back end tools allowing recording artists, labels, DJs and DVD DJs, record producers, remixers, video artists, directors and more to build and maintain highly customizable online profiles. In addition to general profile features, under a simple set of tabbed headers, creative types can build a network of video channels alongside a library of copyrighted works, which can all be made available for streaming or paid/free download, with rights issues, transactions and tracking all handled within the system.
DJs, remixers and video remixers can create their own profiles, grab samples or tracks from other artists in the system and create new tracks and mashups, with all rights, clearances or transactional payments handled through as well.
The service provides promotional tools within the network. Profiles have a variety of social networking features and the ability to handle merchandise transactions, like t-shirts and ticket sales. A wiki provides user generated content organized by city about upcoming performances, bios on bands and other relevant information that can be added or edited and updated by anyone in the network.
Recently, the company made its public debut at Midem, the world’s largest music conference in Cannes, France. In our interview, Mr. Toone relayed that feedback was positive, considering the number of entrants in the marketplace competing for the attention of the world’s bands, musicians and DJs. Mainly, it’s the simplicity that’s key. With an interface that generally keeps the user from having to scroll down to view, presenting the content generally above the scroll in a mostly Flash-based experience, the web sites core principle is K.I.S.S., which stands for “Keep it simple, stupid.”
Operating out of Dublin, Ireland with staffers in London and New York, Muzu.tv CEO, John Toone applied his extensive music legal experience in business affairs at both Virgin and A&M to create a legal and scalable platform to distribute copyrighted works with an extensive tracking system. Copyright owners are excited about the company’s plan to share revenues from video pre-roll and banner advertising with those contributing to the network. Where applicable monies will be distributed back to copyright owners on the sale of new works created within the system should they be downloaded. A pretty neat feature in itself, but widely dependent on creators to upload to the system.
To the layman, one would probably ask how is this different from MySpace, YouTube and other user-generated content companies in the marketplace? A key differentiator is that Muzu.tv was built by music industy folks who have a deep understanding of the challenges facing copyright owners in a widely fragmented space, providing a legal platform to ingest and redistribute content with rights tracking and payments handled organically by the system. Instead of a build and worry about the rights later, which is what MySpace and YouTube orginally did, the creators of Muzu.tv saw the need to provide an efficient rights-based system.
I have yet to look through any agreements a copyright owner would agree to to upload their content, but I believe the system is built on retaining rights while Muzu shares in revenues generated by those rights.
The challenge facing Muzu.tv is to convince the world’s band’s already on MySpace, YouTube and other music plaforms, like CDBaby, to move over to and leverage to Muzu.tv stystem. MySpace’s partnership with SnoCap gives artists the ability to offer their tracks for sale on MySpace’s pages. However, the downside with Snocap/MySpace is the reliance on third-part providers to build widgets. Many MySpace pages are disjointed, broken and can crash browswers after artists add some of these third-party tools. Given the technology the company has built and its founders vision, the technology comes from one source, not unlike Apple’s proprietary system. Although it’s great that a cottage industry is being built around MySpace for third-party solutions, having a place like Muzu.tv could save artists time and money with a closed system that will add new products after extensive testing.
I’m thinking it’s reasonable to believe Muzu.tv, given the intellectual and technology capital in the company, should do quite well once artists begin to trust the service and use it as their home base and an extension of their own web sites.
Netmix SXSW Podcast: Dr. Matthew Dunn, CEO of Music IP
Netmix presents a SXSW 2007 podcast with Dr. Matthew Dunn, CEO of Music IP. The company is a leader in the audio fingerprinting and music recommendation space with a catalog representing over 28 Million tracks.
SXSW Update: No Kudu at Nublu party
This pic seems to sum up New York-based pop electro funk band Kudu's performance last night at Austin's Club One 15. After what seemed to be about an hour to set up the band's equipment, for some reason, the main microphone didn't work.
The Sunshine Underground rock the SXSW in their first ever U.S. appearance
Playing the first-ever U.S. showcase, Leeds-based indie rockers, The Sunshine Underground (official web site) certainly didn't disappoint. Launching into a feel good set at NME's SXSW event, TSU showed why they're certainly one's to watch in 2007.
SXSW Web Tools Panel
I know that’s not a shot of the Working the Web: Resources for Musicians panel. I was too busy asking questions to get a good photo. So, what you’re seeing here is the badge pick-up area. I thought it would give you a good idea of the inner workings of a conference.
Anyway, let’s get to the good stuff. I was a little late getting to the Web Tools panel, which took a look at new technologies artists can use to get their music heard. A few interesting notes:
– Questions arose around Internet radio and the recent controversial U.S. Copyright Office decision regarding increased payments by Internet broadcasters to stream music over the web. For more on this story, click this link to PaidContent.org.
– One attendee asked the panel about rights issues around click-wrapped downloads on 3rd-party music download sites. You want to make sure that you’re aware of what you’re signing away when you upload your music to a service like SnoCap, CDBaby, Emusic and others. Does the agreement allow for those sites to then redistribute your music without your consent? Does the agreement permit the service to use your tracks for compilation CD’s or DVD’s. Make sure you read the fine print before giving your music to a download service. Yes, I do mean iTunes too.
– There were a few who might be in the proverbial dark when it comes to web sites and resources online for musicians. One woman asked for one site from each panelist (besides their own sites) that they’d recommend, since today there are so many to choose from. Jeff Price from spinART suggested MP3 review blogs like Stereogum.com as a place to promote your bands music. Jordan Glazier from Eventful.com suggested trying out the new music recommendation sites like Pandora, iMeem, iLike.com. Left out of the discussion was the popular Last.fm.
Of course, SXSW is an indy-based conference and a few grumbled about the dominance of iTunes, mainly because of the inability to get one’s music positioned against major label or major independent releases on the service. It’s one reason why the future looks good for music distribution online, whereas you’ll see multiple genre-oriented distribution points. People will demand more filters, and companies will provide them with a way to find more of what they’re really looking for, instead of the limited catalog Apple currently carries. Not that Apple won’t sign-up new content, there simply will be sites that will cater to the niche and succeed incrementally against the big boys.
I ran into Lindsay Tredent, Music Content Producer at MySpace; Amanda McCabe, label relations at SnoCap; and Damian Manning, co-founder of Echospin.
Gotta run to the next event…latah!
Tony Z.