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Facebook Introduces Hashtags

In a sign that the company could be changing direction, Facebook announced that it will introduce clickable hashtags on the site. Most other social sites such as Twitter (the originator), Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram have incorporated hashtags already. On the surface this may not seem to be such a big deal, but there's more to this announcement than meets the eye.

Up until now Facebook was all about the friends you know electronically banding together to share insights on their lives. It was intimate, and kept that way by the fact that in order to friend someone, both party's had to agree to it. Want to cut someone out of your Facebook life? Just unfriend him. Want to narrow the list of who could see certain posts? Put them on a list.

Hashtags change that dynamic by making whatever you post a broadcast to the world where someone can find your topic with the click of the keyword that your hashtag uses. This means that the emphasis of the network is gravitating more towards public conversation and interaction than private, a change that many already disgruntled Facebook users may not embrace.

Read more: http://music3point0.blogspot.com/2013/06/facebook-introduces-hashtags.html#ixzz2WBtlYCZ8
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Apple Announces iTunes Radio

(UPDATE 2) Almost two hours into its annual Worldwide Developers Conference and after several dozen major launches and upgrades, Apple announced iTunes Radio, a Pandora-like music streaming service. Not called iRadio as rumored, iTunes Radio includes several hundred curated streams along with artist driven and user created stations.

ITunes Radio will be free and ad supported, but subscribers to Apple's cloud based music storage locker iMatch can listen ad free. All stations can be fine tuned by the user. 

In a move that could be help spur Twitter #Music adoption, one iRadio station uses songs trending on the micro-blogging service to chose tracks. 

Expected to launch in U.S. in the fall, as part of the new iOS 7 operating system, iTunes Radio will be available on all iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) running iOS 7, as well as, iTunes on the Mac and PC. Perhaps due to licensing issues, Apple says it will roll out iRadio in other countries later.

Apple may be later to the streaming game, but with a huge user base that includes more that 575 million registered accounts, iTunes Radio will be a formidable competitor. 

You can get an advance look at what iRadio looks like along with specifics on all of it's features on the detailed page published by Apple on Monday here.

Choosing Who You Surround Yourself With

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” - Jim Rohn

For those of you who follow me on the various social networks, you may have noticed that about four months ago I joined a creative co-working space in Dumbo called Studiomates. Here I am surrounded by photographers, developers, designers, illustrators, writers and all kinds of creatives doing amazing work. So much great stuff happens here that I proposed keeping a monthly tally on projects launched and accolades received, of which the first one was published on Tina Roth Eisenberg’s Swiss Miss blog. Check it out here, and marvel with me.

Previous to moving into Studiomates, I have been fortunate to share offices with all kinds of inspiring and wonderful people, from Spencer Fry and his previous portfolio startup Carbonmade, to Mike and Malcolm founding Skillshare one desk over from mine, to my music friends at Ghostly and Drip.fm, to the incredible digital agencyCrush+Lovely, to Sarah who founded community experience studioLoyal CX beside me, and the list goes on.

Being surrounded by people doing amazing, innovative, good things inevitably rubs off on you. Being surrounded by stiffling, negative and scared people does as well. Choose wisely. Choosing who you surround yourself with is a first step in choosing to become the person you want to become, doing the things you want to do, especially for a creative person.

These past four months at Studiomates have truly re-energized me with creativive energy, and I am excited to share some new creative projects with you in the next few weeks. In the mean time, I am stoked to share that after not picking up my camera for a few years, being around photographers like Helena Price and Julia Robbs has inspired me to get back to capturing the amazing people around me. I am posting a few portraits a week on my tumblr, which you can find here.

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6 Bad Habits Most Musicians are Guilty Of

BY: SIMON TAM 

It’s hard being a musician these days. In addition to writing/performing music, we’re often bombarded with the need to maintain an online presence, deal with licensing contracts, book tours, work with promoters, find sponsors, record/mix/master/distribute CD’s, and more. Because the work can be overwhelming, it’s easy to fall into bad habits and do things that hurt, not help our careers. Here are some of the bad habits that musicians are guilty of:

1. We focus on the wrong things. It’s easy to get obsessed with filling the booking calendar and end up over-playing instead of being strategic about shows. On social media, we look at the wrong numbers, focusing on the number of followers rather than building up engagement. We need to take a step back and look at our long term goals, instead of focusing on immediate urges.
2. We want a shortcut to everything. I get more emails asking about an easy way to get a sponsorship or booking a show than anything else. The easiest way to get anything in the music industry is to do the hard work of building up a local fan base and create a unique niche for yourself. That’s when you can make the pitch. As Beverly Sills states, “there are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going.”
3. We copy other acts. It’s good to learn from others’ examples, but you need to create something totally unique for yourself. Look for untapped markets where you can make fans in unexpected places. Have a unique voice or approach to social media, come up with unique pieces of merch, try new ways to promote. Don’t copy another act’s image. Imitation might be a form of flattery, but it does nothing to flatter the person doing the imitating.
4. The “magic solution.” This goes along with the shortcut: we often look for the next golden egg that can help launch the career. At first, everyone thought it was acquiring thousands of “friends” on Myspace, then it was licensing. Sometimes it is a national tour, others, the “solution” is getting a song on the radio. Reality check: there is no single solution that works for everyone. This is why I say that the best social media site for bands is the one your fans is on, not any site created by artists or made for bands. You have to find what works for your target audience, then do those things well.
5. We try and appeal to everyone. Instead of thinking of your target audience in terms of a demographic collection (i.e, 14-38 year olds), try to narrow it down to a single person. Who is your most enthusiastic fan? What sets them apart? What are they interested in? What is it about you that resonates with them? Once you determine the one person (rather than a generic group), forget about everyone else and just focus on other people like them. You’ll make better decisions and you’ll see better ROI on your efforts.
6. Not practicing for performance. Many acts might rehearse and get their songs down tight in the garage, but they don’t seem to be practicing for performance. In other words, even if the songs are tight, there the live show has issues: they don’t know how to set-up and clear the stage quickly, transitions between songs are long or loose, band members necessarily are messing around on their instruments during sound check or between songs (or “live” tuning), they don’t know how to address the audience. Try taking video of rehearsals and shows, compare the two. Time them. Fine tune it. If you want to be a professional, don’t act like an amateur band.

Do you find yourself slipping into one of these mindsets?

We have more resources for musicians than ever before, opportunities abound. However, bands also have to work harder than ever before as well. So before you just dive in, take a moment and think about your long term goals, develop a business strategy, and think about how you can give value to your most enthusiastic fans.

What’re some habits you find yourself falling into?

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Simon Tam is the President and Founder of Last Stop Booking, author of How to Get Sponsorships and Endorsements, and performs in dance rock band The Slants. Simon’s writing on music and marketing can be found at www.laststopbooking.com. He is on Twitter @SimonTheTam

14 Apps For Live Producing and Performing on iOS

Written by Rheyne on June 9th, 20133 Comments

We’ve all heard the declarations that the age of physical hardware or controllers is at an end in the production world, and that mobile devices and tablets like the iPad will become the primary way that musicians make music and perform it live. But how realistic is this claim? Today, we’ve asked an expert in the iOS live production and performance world – Rheyne – to share some of the apps that make jamming on an iPad more fun and significantly cheaper than buying a ton of analog hardware. Read on to see what’s worth picking up – and to enter a contest to win one of the apps mentioned!

Were you linked here just to win some iOS apps? Feel free to jump to the giveaway entry by clicking here.

WHY PRODUCE OR PERFORM WITH IOS?

Having played piano and other keyboard instruments for most of my life, but only been using iOS apps since Dec 2011, I’ve given equal attention over the years to both hardware and software instruments, realizing both have their strengths and weaknesses. To my ears, playing sawtooth wave on my Moog Prodigy with the filter fully open, and playing a sawtooth wave from NI’s Reaktor, it’s hard to tell them apart. You can assign knobs and sliders from a controller to the various synth parameters in something like Reaktor, giving me an approximation of that hardware synth feel.

There are inherent differences in real analog keyboards vs. software instruments which justify owning both, and I couldn’t be more than thrilled at the recent uprising of the affordable “new wave” analog instruments from companies like DSI, Moog, Arturia, and Korg. However, being an owner of keyboards which were manufactured before I was born, all I can say to the hardware purists is if you haven’t given iOS music apps a spin, you have no idea what you’re missing. It took a lot of convincing for me to give it a try, since I was never an “Apple guy” and still stick to my PC roots. But when I was given an iPhone as a birthday present a couple of years ago, I really started to see how smooth and expressive music apps were becoming.

Before we get started, here’s an exclusive video made just for this article – a performance with iOS tools. It’s a live looping improv jam using the DJ TechTools Midi Fighter 3Dfor note input, and a KMI 12-Step for live looping in Ableton. The four banks of the MF3D are controlling four separate instruments: Native Instruments Kontakt for drums, NI’s Massive for bass, Sunrizer on an iPod Touch, and Animoog on an iPad.

Get list of 14 Apps For Live Producing and Performing on IOS

What Do Your Younger Music Fans Want from You?

By Chris Robley

MTV recently did some research to find out what Millennialsexpect from their favorite artists — and what an artist/fan relationship should look like in the 21st century.

Paul Resnikoff from Digital Music News summarizes those expectations in his article “The 7 Attributes of Younger Music Fans.”

Check out Paul’s article for the full details — but if you want bullet-points, here they are…

Millennial music fans:

1. probably won’t “buy” your music — because they think music should be free. But if they DO buy your music, it’s a gesture of extreme support and gratitude.

2. crave  “intimate glimpses into the mundane daily activities of their favorite celebrities,” according to MTV’s Allison Hillhouse.

3. want to feel involved in the creation, branding, and taste-making process.

4. need frequent interaction on a number of social platforms.

5. prefer “zero distance” between artist and fan. They want constant access — and intimate details.

6. are fond of shuffle-mode listening, playlists, and a diverse array of artists and genres.

7. don’t care about artists “selling out.” According to the study, they “understand that the system of getting free music/streaming means artists have to make their money somewhere.”

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