Free Press Release Sites Reviewed
Marketing Sherpa has a review of 13 free press release distribution sites.
A lot of their stuff goes behind a pay wall though this might not. Nevertheless, check it out sooner rather than later!
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Marketing Sherpa has a review of 13 free press release distribution sites.
A lot of their stuff goes behind a pay wall though this might not. Nevertheless, check it out sooner rather than later!
Mashable's Sean P. Aune brings you 200+ Tools for Surviving the Economic Crisis aka Our New Daily Reality.
Mashable has a really great list of
270+ Tools for Running a Business Online that builds on last year's 230+ Tools for Running a Business Online.
Kim Ellis and Wendy Day are teaming up to offer In The Know, a series of monthly online music industry seminars.
Official Site:
In The Know Seminars
Google's Insights for Search launched today. Described as an extension of Google Trends, Insights for Search has a number of features that marketers will find of use.
Danny Sullivan shares a quick demo of Insights for Search.
Also from Danny Sullivan:
Google Ad Planner Launches, Offers Site Demographic Profiles
Google Trends Comes To Web Sites: Trends For Web Sites
Kevin Kelly on escaping the trap of long tail economics by finding 1,000 True Fans.
Chris Anderson is doing some stuff about Freeconomy at Wired and it's definitely worth a look given our always fluctuating business environment.
Apparently there was a very brief free offering of the March issue focused on the whole Free thing.
They offered it Monday and now it's gone. It's weird what a strong flash of rage I felt to have just found out and yet to have already been cut off from something I really wanted.
Yeah, it was free for other people.
There's some other stuff worth looking at from the above link but I ain't linking to anything else on there. You'll have to sort it out for yourself. There's a video but I didn't watch it cause Anderson looks pretentious and I'm in annoyed mode.
Yes, there's a downside to how you handle "Free".
Via Agenda Inc.
Business Week gathered together a group of brief useful articles in a special report on business plans.
Via My Global Hustle.
Jimmy Iovine on Breaking Into the Music Industry
I recently ran into this music industry website, Artists House Music, that seems to have a lot of good career education resources for those trying to break into the industry.
When this Jimmy Iovine video hit the blogosphere, I didn't realize that it was from Artists House Music, but now the dots connect. I'm sure Mr. Iovine has some great things to say but I couldn't get past the first two minutes.
High point of the first two minutes:
"the song thing is very important"
I think I'll put than on a t-shirt!
Video via Hypebot.
Over at Hip Hop Press:
Music Industry Heavyweights and Educators Discuss the Future of the Music Industry on ArtistsHouseMusic.org
Mashable has:
20+ Free Press Release Distribution Sites
30+ Ways To Advertise Yourself
250+ Tools and Resources For Coding the Web
Mashable has a lot more of this kind of thing but I can't find any categories or tags on their site. You can scroll down to the bottom of each post for more links but somebody's missing something. If it's me, please clue me in.
There is a link on some pages to TAGS but that goes to a networking feature. I can't believe I wasted my time trying to find something so basic and still can't.
This works: Search Mashable: Toolbox
A new group of manifestos is available from Change This including Build Your Brand in Bits and Bytes about building your personal brand online.
William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson present a systemic approach to evaluating and improving your online brand presence. It's nicely organized with the possibility of going analytical or simply browsing the sections for new ideas.
I think this would be a useful document for anyone considering issues related to online brands and it might be just the thing for folks looking at the Internet in relationship to their personal brand and feeling totally overwhelmed. If that's where you're at, this looks like a good place to start.
Though geared to individuals, folks considering larger brands will also find it relevant.
William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson are the founders of Reach Branding Club.
Programmable Web discusses Smart Editor a very cool app for any writer and maybe a lot of websurfers. You write in a box on the left and it brings up related web links in a box on the right.
Try something poetic. I found some very cool things. Ok, then I found some boring things but it's a fun tool.
Official Site:
Smart Editor
YouTube has launched a special Nonprofit Program for nonprofits with 501(c)(3) tax status.
Here are some of the benefits of a nonprofit YouTube channel:
Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity
Rotation of your videos in the "Promoted Videos" areas throughout the site
The option to embed a Google Checkout "Donate" button — and to fundraise without transaction costs.
Sounds like a great opportunity.
Public Enemy is using TuneCore to digitally distribute their next album, How Do You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul.
Not sure if this is a tie-in to the album title but TuneCore is currently running the saying, "Sell Your Music, Not Your Soul."
TuneCore also provides a helpful free Music Industry Survival Manual with tips on promoting and making money from your music via their homepage.
Email newsletter and RSS/Atom newsfeed options are now available for the following mixed feeds based on positive response to their availability at World Cypher:
RSS/Atom Feed ~ Email Newsletter
ProHipHop Job Board:
RSS/Atom Feed ~ Email Newsletter
Music Biz Blogs:
RSS/Atom Feed ~ Email Newsletter
Media 2.0 Thinktank:
RSS/Atom Feed ~ Email Newsletter
Venture Capital Bloggers:
RSS/Atom Feed ~ Email Newsletter
Open Access Publishing @ Cultural Research:
RSS/Atom Feed ~ Email Newsletter
Under the Watchful Eye of Sauron @ spyfeed.com:
RSS/Atom Feed ~ Email Newsletter
Though it's mentioned in the music industry news from Hypebot, I want to draw special attention to a free 96 page white paper from Andrew Dubber at New Music Strategies titled:
The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online
The white paper or ebook briefly outlines the 20 things and then goes into a deeper discussion of each point. Point 6 on Web 2.0:
Forget being a destination — become an environment. Your website is not a brochure — it’s a place where people gather and connect with you and with each other.
You can keep up with Hypebot, New Music Strategies and 15 other music industry blogs at Music Biz Blogs. The related search engine includes those blogs plus a wide variety of other music industry sites and individual resources.
While we're on the topic of useful lists of things to consider, Basement.org's 10 Things We Can Learn From Apple is well worth your time.
If you're interested taking some business classes or, more importantly, gaining the knowledge one would gain in such a class, consider checking out the free classes offered by The Open University and by MIT.
The Open University, a leading UK adult education institution, offers the OpenLearn LearningSpace with free short self-study classes in a variety of topics including Business and Management. Most of these units are designed to be completed in 4 to 6 hours.
Useful looking courses include:
Finding information in business and management
Marketing communications as a strategic function
MIT offers MIT OpenCourseWare with materials from full length undergraduate and graduate courses offered at MIT including many from the Sloan School of Management.
The course materials range from readings and lecture notes to videos and vary from course to course. Interesting examples include:
Special Seminar in Management The Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans
How to Develop "Breakthrough" Products and Services
Entrepreneurial Marketing
If you check out any of these courses more closely, please let us know what you think and be sure to thank the offering institution, if you feel so inclined.
The OpenCourseWare movement is worldwide.
Onlinegigs adds tour date syndication to its suite of automated tools for the "administration of live music booking and promotion".
YouLicense is in private beta but it's worth checking out as an "online music licensing marketplace".
Fancorps.com offers street team management in online community form.
Late last month Yahoo Music began offering legally licensed lyrics for free [supported by ad revenue that's split with rights holders]. Now they've added a lyrics search shortcut.
Since TechCrunch reports that this is the first time lyrics have been legally available online, I think making it a featured link on search would be worthwhile, even given the minimalist Yahoo Search interface. It even seems downplayed on Yahoo Music.
Yahoo's Ian Rogers wrote about the launch referencing the lyrics of the Beastie Boys' Brass Monkey and a brief interview with Mike D.
Via TechCrunch:
Yahoo Music To Add Music Lyrics Later Today
Yahoo Adds Lyrics Shortcut to Search
The folks at the growing empire forming around tech blog GigaOM have launched a new blog called Found+Read focused on startup businesses.
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch states: Malik says he is starting this becasue he’s gone through growing pains building his own business over the last year, and realized that most of the hurdles he had to jump weren’t new, just new to him. He’s hoping Found+Read can become a resource for others to get advice as they grow their companies.
With only a handful of posts to date, it's hard to miss Katie Fehrenbacher on Dr. Dre: What you can learn from the 'founda' of Gangsta Rap. Om Malik has a similar piece on Derek Jeter and it looks like learning from such celebs, or Aces, will be an ongoing theme.
Be sure to check for insightful comments from Frank Young in the Dre post.
One of the more important sources for the Media Biz 2.0 Thinktank blogfeed is John Blossom's ContentBlogger, a blog I've followed over the last few years to keep up with developments in online publishing. I've learned a lot from Blossom but I was a bit surprised at his recent optimism regarding open web business search engine and database ZoomInfo.
Though Blossom does point out that the "accuracy of Web content mined by ZoomInfo has been questioned by some in the past", he feels that "new semantic processing software about to be launched along with a powerful new interface promises to kick up the quality."
Unfortunately, an initial analysis immediately showed that ZoomInfo's current search is easily outperformed by Google, a real problem for a niche information service.
For example, Zoominfo returns 5 initial web sources per search, once an individual or company has been identified. John Blossom's first five at ZoomInfo look a lot weaker than the first five at Google.
But an even stronger example is that of Russell Simmons, whose profile at ZoomInfo returns web results that are incredibly weak and pathetic compared to results from Google.
Though ZoomInfo has other features that will strengthen it over the long run, the fact that their focus is on using the open web to profile businesses and business people means this weak performance brings their very reason for being into question [scratch that, we know what their rea$on for being is]. I'll check back when they roll out their new search engine but, given that they're taking on the even more difficult task of semantic search, I'm still doubting. Then again, why not be optimistic when there's nowhere to go but up?
Update:
John Blossom from Shore Communications dropped by and made some telling points regarding the new and improved version. Bottom line, I stopped examining too soon to really give the full range of options a fair chance. As he points out in his follow up post, there are specific ways in which ZoomInfo achieves more targeted results than Google for certain searches. That alone suggests that ZoomInfo has great potential and I see why Mr. Blossom was getting so enthused.
However, I mistrust services that have really basic gaps. In the previous version, the results for Donald Trump and Russell Simmons were weak. In the new version, they're nonexistent in the name search. That makes me wonder what other gaps exist.
Maybe this is really a reminder that search is similar to mobile phone service. We love it cause we get something we didn't have. We hate it cause the quality of service regularly disappoints.
In any case, I now look forward to the possibility of ZoomInfo becoming the service it truly wants to be cause that would be an awesome thing.
Although the focus right now is on rock, indieSolo is a unique experiment in music marketing and community building that will soon extend to hip hop. They're currently auditioning groups and signing up fans for their rock launch which will then feature one group a day for maximum exposure. Each artist will also have a promotional section that will be an ongoing service.
The big differentiator that indieSolo emphasizes is the concept of indieSolo as a stage that allows each band a day in the sun without additional noise. The fact that they're also filtering acts via an audition process increases the overall quality making it an interesting middle ground between seeing the same limited number of acts that tend to get featured on major music sites and the overwhelming mass of acts one finds in a community like MySpace.
Their approach to web design is also relatively noise-free which is a big bonus.
I mention indieSolo because I think it's a great idea and because you can go ahead and register for the anticipated launch of hiphopSolo.
Popular web app company 37signals shares its nimble small team approach to building web apps that can be applied to a variety of business endeavors and projects in Getting Real, now available for free online and still for sale as a book or PDF.
After getting a solid start with the music industry search engine Music Biz Search, I decided to go ahead and launch World Cypher: Hip Hop Search Engine and start the long process of adding sites and refining search results.
In Music Biz Search, I'm limiting the search to specific sites and webpages that are then searched using Google's Custom Search Engine. With World Cypher I'm selecting sites to be emphasized but the full reach of Google results is included. My goal is to produce search results that emphasize high quality sites and I will continue to experiment to achieve the best results.
At first I was holding off on creating a hip hop search engine, in part, because I already knew of at least two others being started using Google's CSE but then I realized that every new wave of online tech has brought new hip hop search engines so I might as well join the fun.
If you have a site that you think should be included in either Music Biz Search or World Cypher, you can write Clyde at:
search(at)prohiphop(dot)com
Please also send feedback on your search results. If you have a specific search that results in lots of links to one or two sites or that returns low quality resources, please let me know including the search terms entered and a basic description of the results.
With more details emerging regarding the MySpace music store plans with Snocap, I'm actually rather positive about what they're up to as opposed to my typical feelings once I get the details of various music industry initiatives such as those of Universal Music for free ad-supported music & video downloads.
As previously noted, MySpace is working with Snocap on enabling MP3 sales by musicians. Robert Levine gets into more detail for the NY Times.
The big picture I'm getting from Levine's article is that, since MP3s don't have copy protection, the major labels will not be playing this game which means that small labels and independent artists will actually be at the forefront of such developments. However, some folks feel that this move will push the major labels to respond and an unidentified source claims that EMI is in talks with MySpace regarding this matter.
eMusic also sells MP3s and is said to have no material from major labels. But they do have "almost 13 percent of the market for online music" as of July.
MySpace will charge around 45 cents per track that will be split with Snocap. MP3 pricing will be set by musicians/labels. The music store will accept PayPal rather than credit cards due to lower transaction fees [this could result in a serious boost for PayPal which makes me wonder if they're more integral to the deal than has been discussed].
It sounds like there will be a MySpace store but there will also be band storefronts to which folks can link directly.
MySpace cofounder and CEO Chris DeWolfe is quoted as saying:
It’s not that easy, if you’re an artist on the street, to get your music on iTunes . . . With Snocap you can upload your music, sign the contract and do everything online.
Obviously DeWolfe wants to put the best face on things and he may be right about artists dealing directly with iTunes but, if I was an independent artist or small label, I would seriously check out CD Baby, they not only make your CD available for on and offline purchase, they also work with iTunes.
If you've had experiences with CD Baby, I'd love to hear about them. I always recommend checking out their services because they offer the best deal with the most services for indies but I have to add the caveat that I haven't spoken directly to artists that have worked with them.
I would, of course, also recommend closely following developments with MySpace and Snocap.
Hip-Hop, Rap and R&B Submissions Wanted for Air Play
ThugLifeArmy.com is pleased to announce the addition of Thug Life Army Radio to their growing network. The soon to be live radio feed is being hosted by their affiliate partner CRNLive.com - the 'Original Chicano Radio Network'.
Thug Life Army Radio is seeking submissions from artists and especially unsigned hip-hop, rap and R&B and Soul artists who need exposure for their music.
Independent Music Awards: Raising The Profile Of Indie Musicians
Now in its sixth year, the IMAs deliver unique opportunities for indie artists and releases. Produced by The Musician's Atlas, a division of Music Resource Group, and co-sponsored by mega retailer Borders Books & Music, IMA Winners are promoted to more than 9 million music fans, radio programmers, talent buyers, journalists and other industry decision makers using direct marketing, promotions, print, broadcast and online initiatives.
Tap Into FAME With Tap It
Recently nominated for 2006 Innovators Of The Year by Black Enterprise Magazine, Tap It FAME works as a multi-dimensional online tool for artists. The Web site allows them to increase their market presence, clearly identify target audiences, creatively market their talent and benefit from real-time statistical tracking of users.
Indie-Friendly iMoveMusic.com First All-In-One Web Site For Musicians Offers listeners compilation CD subscription, more
iMove Music.com is a comprehensive digital distribution, marketing, and promotion company which provides free tools for independent artists to promote their music to listeners. iMoveMusic is one of the first to offer all-in-one promotional services to independent artists at no upfront costs.
iMoveMusic.com is a frontrunner in offering Online Ticketing to independent artists allowing the end user an entertainment outlet in their local area, providing musicians with a new avenue to connect event planning to the media and to their fans.
iMove Music.com's services for artists include one free user-friendly webpage featuring a ring tone generator which allows T-mobile, Cingular and Sprint users to download ring tones from their phones and online ticketing with MapQuest. Artists are able to use their backend accounts to edit their biography, location, genre and organize songs. With the growing popularity of MySpace, artists have hi-end inter-connectivity by placing their iMove Music player onto their MySpace page with a direct link to their iMoveMusic webpage.
I just found out about Rap Newswire, a hip hop oriented pr service that apparently launched back in March. It's still rather light on content and I'm surprised that they didn't get a press release to me at Hip Hop Press because that is their game. However, they found me on MySpace recently so it's an example of another good reason to be on there.
Maybe they just hadn't found out about Hip Hop Press since they claim to be:
the first all rap/hip-hop news wire service for the global community of rap/hip-hop music entertainment professionals, web and print publishers and media marketing companies.
Um, third, at best, after Hip Hop Press and, before that, after Manhunt by quite a while. This raises some questions about their knowledge of online resources but they would certainly be a good place to submit a free press release.
On the other hand, maybe they're doing one of those claims to being first based on how they worded that claim. In any case, it's a reminder that claiming to be the first at anything requires that you check out what's there already. It's also a reminder that being the first to do something is not always that important, it's what you do and how well you do it that ultimately establishes your claim to fame.
Disclaimer: I generally don't like the claiming first thing so I tend to give people a hard time about something that may not actually be all that important. But that's what I'm here for!
Mark Wilson led me to a great series on the concept and practice of Office 2.0 by Ismael Ghalimi, including My Office 2.0 Setup, and a related Office 2.0 Database.
I always imagined having a central location for online office apps but our needs are being provided for in a decentralized fashion. It would be nice if someone came up with an online control panel from which all one's decentralized apps could be accessed for those of us who'd like to be able to organize things that way.
Shawn Prez, CEO of Power Moves, Inc. a marketing and promotions company based in NY, has started the Power Call, a weekly conference call with guest speakers in which club and mixtape DJs discuss a wide variety of topics. As DJ Irie of Miami’s 99 Jamz says:
“The intimacy in this call, keeps it moving. Everyone is heard. People actually pay attention. Anything anyone brings up becomes a topic of discussion. It’s not all about what record is gonna be hot, it’s about things that matter in our industry—it goes across the whole spectrum of things that matter to our culture.”
Oddly enough, the Power Moves Inc. website doesn't seem to have any info on the Power Call. Try emailing info@powermovesinc.com if you're interested in participating.
The LA Weekly has an interview with the founder of CD Baby, a service designed to help independent musicians distribute their music. Derek Sivers tells the story of how he got into it when he found that back in the late 90s even many online music stores were resistant to anybody that wasn't working through an established distributor while distributors weren't responsive to independent musicians trying to establish a base. CD Baby helped change that situation and they also help with getting music on Apple's iTunes Music Store.
I was led to this interview via the BlogAds blog whose author Henry Copeland also found the following quote of interest:
"Like right now, I meet lots of 30-something musicians, who maybe spent their teens and 20s wanting to be a rock star, and now are kind of starting to think, “Well, maybe I can make a good living just putting out my music directly and doing it on my own.” But they kind of had to fall over to that way of thinking. What I think will be really interesting is, imagine being a 13-year-old musician right now, growing up surrounded by this mentality of “f*ck the label, the label sucks, indie is cool, go direct, never sign over your rights to somebody else”! Imagine growing up in that mentality, and what that’s going to look like in 10 years!"
This is especially interesting given that, for the most part, record labels take the rights to musicians' music and their labor becomes work for hire. They get various deals based on what it makes, but they lose control of the music. That's what sets up situations where a musician has an album recorded but it's not getting released or it doesn't get released until it's really kind of out of date. Numerous musicians have had their careers ruined that way before they really got a chance to see how far they could go.
Another interesting resource for indies is GarageBand, and I'm talking about independent musicians here, not indie labels which can be fairly large and can also f*ck artists over, though they can also be very cool. In any case, Inside Digital Media has an extended interview with GarageBand CEO Ali Partovi that should be worth checking out. Just a quick glance at the GarageBand site reveals that they've also added a Podcast Studio that looks kind of cool.
I love it when someone expands a term in a useful way beyond it's typical usage. Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools defines a "cool tool" as:
"any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true."
Kelly bases his choices on recommendations and experiences that indicate that something works well and can be relied upon, i.e.:
"stuff that is extraordinary, better than similar products, little-known, and reliably useful for an individual or small group."
For Kelly, that means a site like Modest Needs that facilitates small grants to people with specific immediate needs, as the site says:
"Since May 2002, when Modest Needs became a charitable foundation, the members of this community have helped 1332 families to afford $246,932.24 worth of unexpected expenses ranging from the fee for a GED exam to the cost of burying a stillborn child."
If you find Modest Needs of interest and you hadn't encountered their site before this post, please remember, you heard it first from a hip hop site.
Bill Clinton helped launch business search engine Accoona last night. Currently you may submit your site and company profile to be added to their database for free. Though search options are limited and search results are a mixed bag, this product should improve over time.
I just discovered Inside Digital Media via Brad Hill's Digital Media Weblog. Phil Leigh produces a daily audio webcast with the option to download the audio portion or to view a PowerPoint presentation with voiceovers. The webcasts feature "interviews with thought leaders in the Digital Media industries" and would give anyone interested in digital content a lot to consider.
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