Socializing the Music Industry: Online Tools

social media clubIn brainstorming for tomorrow’s panel on Social Media and Music tomorrow tonight (Sept. 11) at Kleiner Perkins in LA (I’m co-moderating with Jackie Peters), I came up with the below list of concepts, products, and applications that peer into the future of music and the Web. More info on the panel is here. Please feel free to add more context / suggestions in the comment section below:

DIY LICENSING & DISTRIBUTION PLATFORMS

— SNOCAP — http://snocap.com
— RouteNote — http://www.routenote.com/
— ArtistShare – http://artistshare.com/home/default.aspx
http://cashmusic.org/
http://youlicense.com
http://licensequote.com
http://severedfifth.com
http://www.fina-music.com/

SOCIAL PLATFORMS for FANS and ARTISTS:

— Buzznet — http://buzznet.com
— ArtistDIRECT — http://artistdirect.com
— TunesBag — http://www.tunesbag.com/
— HobNox — http://hobnox.com
— Eventful — http://eventful.com
— Gruvr — http://www.gruvr.com
— Jambase — http://jambase.com
— AnywhereFM — http://www.anywhere.fm/player/
— MySpace Music (whenever it *really* launches)
— Seeqpod, MusicBrainz, iLike, iMeem, etc.
even more tools (the Mashable list)

DISCOVERY:

The New Zune firmware / Marketplace (FM click to purchase and recommends) — http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/default.mspx
http://www.archannel.tv/
http://www.deezer.com/
http://amalgamdigital.com/
http://alterhit.com/
http://www.soundflavor.com/
http://www.jogli.com/
http://www.songza.com/

http://www.signalpatterns.com/

WIDGETS & APIs

Y! Media Player — http://mediaplayer.yahoo.com/
MusIcon — http://www.muzicons.com/
FineTune — http://finetune.com
MixWit — http://www.mixwit.com/
Music-related APIs — http://www.programmableweb.com/music
Y! Audio Search API — http://developer.yahoo.com/search/audio/
Music DNS API — http://www.musicip.com/dns/
MusicBrainz API — http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/XMLWebService
Seeqpod API — http://www.seeqpod.com/api.php?music_discovery#Disco_Rex
Gruvr API — http://gruvr.com/developers/

FILESHARING & MP3 DIRECTORIES

— Dropbox — http://getdropbox.com
— Media Master — http://mediamaster.com/
— HypeMachine — http://hypem.com

FINANCING / LICENSING MUSIC w/ SOCIAL Media:

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/could-payola-save-online-radio
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/major-label-see.htmlFormer Label Exec Sees Future Outside Music Distribution
— Monetizing / Licensing music via Creative Commons: http://ccmixter.org/, http://freesound.com, http://www.podsafeaudio.com/, http://opsound.org/
— Free vs. ad-supported vs. Subscription models. Subscription tied to Hardware (Nokia, Lenovo, GM, etc) or to Operating system / software (Zune, iTunes)
— Pairing bands with advertisers based on social demographics

10 Replies to “Socializing the Music Industry: Online Tools”

  1. really nice list, thanks! Im particularly interested in the APIs for live music.

    Will the panel tonight be live-cast somehow, for those of us not in LA?

  2. I agree. Most studies and analytics on the topic seem to be kept private — the benefit of crowdsourcing/socializing such data could be huge. It is a two way street, perhaps the majors would be more apt to open things up if we lay it all out there. Everybody deserves the chance to succeed in the Arts and, alas, if nobody makes money for making music, we'll eventually notice less and less great music.

  3. Still a private beta (that I haven't seen yet), but you might add http://www.bandmetrics.com to the list. What interests me about bandmetrics is the potential: oddly, there seem to be few people working on the kind of thing that bandmetrics is trying to do: not provide a new online distribution or management tool, but rather provide overarching analytics to track and measure how effective an artist's online presence is over time.

    It almost seems like online music is where online companies were in 1998: we've figured out that the Internet is an absurdly huge opportunity, and that there are a million ways you can use it, but people are focusing on *doing* everything they can come up with, without *tracking* all of it in a systematic way. There's no “business intelligence for bands.”

  4. Hey Andy: Thanks a lot for adding Hobnox to the list, really appreciate. Please make sure to have a look at the Audiotool (within the Noxtools) – a browsedbased production suite for electronic music. We will update the tool in two weeks from now which will enable live recording.

    Also, I'd like to point out to Soundcloud.com, a sharing and distribution site for professional audio producers. they're good friends here in Berlin and worth to check out, it's a great product. Let me know if you need an invite, they're in private beta until October.

    Cheers, David

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.