Category: Artists

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE NEW SITE

They blog, they twitter, and its not lame.

www.mychemicalromance.com

Very cool to see the band use tools to talk to fans and each other! Strangely, their transparency leads to increasing the persona and mysteriousness of the band in a cool way, especially when they are having conversations with each other on their own site!

It’s also a great example of how bands work with WBR. There’s an amazing guy named Jeff who works in new media, and has been working with the band from day one. He believed in this band before many others did, and has stuck with them all the way, building trust, and keeping everyone at Warner Bros honest to the bands vision. He recently worked with the band to build them this new site, and the result is something special, artistic and fun!

Take a read, and tell me your thoughts.
Follow the band here:
www.twitter.com/gerardway
www.twitter.com/raytoro
www.twitter.com/bobbryar
www.twitter.com/michaeljamesway

LIVE MUSIC FROM WARNER BROS RECORDS in burbank.

I set up a Ustream video feed in an old conference room at the Warner Bros offices in Burbank. With a simple sony hd camera, through a PC, into our network, I can broadcast Aritist ‘s live when they come into the office (which is a lot!).
First was Eric Hutchinson The second was a live video chat with Wayne from Flaming Lips (ustream lost the archive on this one!)

But the best so far was Tyler Hilton. I need to edit this clip down, but for now jump to :50 seconds in and see Tyler light up when he finally sees all the fans on the site.

Free video chat by Ustream
You can see he connects to them and rolls into his first song as if his online community was physically in the front row with him! He played for almost an hour, and seemed to really connect with the experience.

These live shows are a great grassroots tools that connects with the fans with artists. We had over 10,000 people watch the first three shows.

Another goal of the live studio was to capture the spontaneous moments. The community of Artists coming through the building on a regular basis was one of the reason I went live. When neil young and lil scrappy are here at the same time, or Lyndsey Buckingham and The Used. The variety of WBR artist’a is impressive, and I knew id get some some random parings.

Sure enough – during Tyler’s performance i came close! I found out Talib Kweli an Eric Benet were in the building at the same time Tylere was playing! I didn’t end up getting them all together, but as everyone gets familiar with with the studio they will come ready!

Stay tuned!

Fall playlist – New Racheal Y, Oasis, Murs and more!

“original sounds” New Music Fall sampler

A killer mix of new artists from Warner Bros (where I work). I think this mix shows that big labels can support amazing creativity. More than happy to work on aspects of the new media campaigns for each of these artists.

RACHAEL YAMAGATA
OASIS
JOSIAH LEMING
MURS
LIGHTS
MEGHAN SMITH
THE SPILL CANVAS

OASIS WIDGET – LISTEN TO NEW MUSIC AND GET A FREE OASIS SHIRT!

If we could just get people to LISTEN to the new Oasis album, they would love it! Great albums, and not enough outlets to get the the word out. The idea was simple – incentive fans to hear the new music, and reward them in an authentic way, that would also spread the word and re-brand the band.

So check out the Oasis Widget, listen to six songs, and you can get a free classic Oasis t-shirt! Strength of idea is really the music, not the free shirt – I believe in this as a very strong body of work.

We also have their merchandise rights (online and tour!), so it creates buzz for merch, and builds databse of new customers.

Ultimatley, it was supposed to be a random givaway so the promotion would last longer. Due to tech issues, the widget was incorrectly set up to go to the first 3000 fans, which we of course went viral instantly, and crashed our store! So we’re fine tuning the idea. Would love any thoughts on this idea, and how to make it better. Send me your thoughts and I will send you an Oasis shirt – but you should still listen to the tracks – its worth it!
jbloggmusic@gmail.com

OASIS “DIG OUT YOUR SOUL”

Verizon Wireless College Tour 2008

Went to Baltimore last Weekend to see LIGHTS, on the Verizon Wireless College Tour 2008.
Headliners were Boys Like Girls, and Cute is What We Aim For. My first time seeing LIGHTS live, and I was impressed. The songs show how good they are live, she looks amazing, and she has a live energy that enhances the music. LIGHTS connected with the crowd right away.

Here is some footge I filmed with my phone and posted to my You Tube Channel.

Here is what She filmed with a Nokia N95, and then edited on her laptop. The music is also by LIGHTS!



Myspace Music vs Imeem Pt 2

The Myspace site is still buggy, and from the commerce side, buy links still dont show up for most artists. Slow on the big fixes!

From a promotional standpoint, they do seem to be getting lots of traffic – many of the bands I work on are having higher than normal play counts (if its workign and tracking them properly!)

Jason Reeves (Warner Bros) got hundreds of thousands of new plays in a few days, during a feature on Tom’s Playlist. The Featured playlists area is a good way to discover new music.

In response to Myspace music, Imeem changed their site and focused on the basics. Home page is now blog style, and I like the cleaner design. Their Browse, and Chart’s of top songs and playlists is also improved. Their basic playlist tools, and music service is unchanged.

Here are recent articles on the Myspace Music Launch, and Imeem’s site.

Indies upset with Myspace Music Launch:

Hypebot
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2008/09/the-competition.html

Rollingstone.com – MySpace Music Takes on iTunes
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23356455/myspace_music_takes_on_itunes
The only thing they used from my interviews was “not groundbreaking” but I guess thats echoing what i’ve said here….

The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/oct/02/myspace.music.unfair.on.indies

MYSPACE vs IMEEM – nice analaysis on this blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/aniyer/archive/2008/10/03/myspace-music-v-imeem.aspx?

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3775361/Doubts+Loom+Over+MySpace+Music+Strategy.htm

Data – What You Need to Know about Myspace Music Strategy

E-marketer
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006599

MySpace Music Points Way To Free Music Economy
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/10/myspace-music-p.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/01/bmoasis101.xml

Forbes.com video
http://blogs.forbes.com/digitaldownload/2008/09/whats-up-with-m.html

Throwing Sheep
http://www.throwingsheep.com/blog/?p=12

Transparency and Mystery

Jack White created something incredible with his band The Racounteurs. Their live shows have the fire of Led Zepplin and the Who. They change up their set, improvise, and are touring behind Consolers of the Lonely, one of the best albums in the last ten years. 


This band is hardly transparent the way new media blogs, and “indie” artists talk about today – no twittering from Jack White.

I was sitting with some fine folks from Zappos, the kings of transparency and customer service, and as we discussed Twitter and the ecommerce biz, I was making the point that some bands should not be “transparent”. A bold instance on Mystery and perfecting ones musical craft should be allowed. (I DO think they convinced my boss to start twittering!)

Awhile back at the Henry Fonda Theatre (and again, last week at the Greek), I watched The Raconteurs improvise an extended intro to one of my favorite songs from their new album and I was blown away by the direction they took the song live. The fact they dared to explore new (old?) textures to a song I loved was mysterious, and at the same time transparent, revealing the hidden melodies within the song and perhaps how the song was created in the first place. Old school transparency  – were just going to Rock! 

Twenty years from now I hope the Raconteurs Mystery, and approach to music, will make them a legend as fans hunt down, search, and try and interpret the bands motive to the musical scraps and clips left behind.

LIGHTS – music and multimedia wonder woman

Im working with a new artist called LIGHTS! She is a very special artist that I believe will be very succesfull, and will help shape the profile of a musical/new media artist in todays musical ecosystem. She has a vision for herself beyond just her songs, across multiple mediums, and modes of expression.

I get to be a part of the process and join momentum she’s already built on her own. Working on this should be an innovative adventure, and I hope to break new ground in helping her to achieve her vision.

Check out these clips, listen to three tracks,



LIGHTS EP SAMPLER

LIGHTS

Lights Tour Announcement from Crystal Caves….




The Police Wrigley Field

Met all of my friends in Chicago for the fourth of July, and the POLICE, live, after all these years! My friend got busted for pot before the show and went to jail! The Chicago Police were not joking around. I was innocent but in handcuffs to for awhile, but they had nothing on me and had to let let me go!

So from the seventh row – here are some great clips!