SongClash – Battle Of The Bands Go Social

Posted on 07 May 2010 by gregrollett

SongClash - Online Battle of the Bands

Today we are talking with Juan Cross of SongClash.com, a new community all about empowering fans to find new music through competitions. The site is starting to take off with over 400 indie musicians all over the world and has even been featured over at CSS Elite as one of the Best of the Best CSS websites.

Greg: So first, tell us a little about the why? What was the need in the market and what are you doing to serve it?

SongClash: There is a lot of music out there. The web has created a massive sea of music. The why for us is also a question. How does a music fan find songs that mean something to them throughout that sea of music? It’s more than finding a needle in a haystack out there.

The need is a music filtering platform that allows music fans to find these songs, or band/artists. SongClash does just that for the music fan and our platform allows direct fan to artist connection. Music fans want to know who these bands/artists are. What are they doing…a virtual friendship.

Greg: What can bands expect from the platform?

SongClash:Bands/Artists can expect the best at our site. Our platform is easy to use, easy to navigate and completely user friendly. Our platform concepts are determined by the need of our members.

On SongClash, is very easy to upload and add music to the ongoing monthly battles, users can “Tweet” songs from the bands/artists profile or from the battle sections and more. We are also working on a streaming service that will reward bands/artists. Soon after, we will launch our SongClash iPhone app and Facebook app as well.

Artists Services – for serious bands/artists we are implementing artists marketing services from Social Media to good ole Grassroots networking.

The platform is continuously expanding with new features and strategic partnerships.

Greg: How important is competition to an upcoming act? For me, feedback is key. Most just get feedback from friends, so really seeing what others think of your music is crucial. If you are in this business to make money, you are playing for your fans.

SongClash: For every band/artists, this is an extremely important part of what they do. How else can they know that their music career direction is headed the right way? Music fans and users on SongClash are always welcome to speak the truth, being a positive truth. Besides SongClash lending an ear to bands/artists out there, we have artist reviews by well know industry professionals.

Bands/artists need to know where they stand against their competition and most importantly, against those who will ultimately support their careers – music fans.

Greg: What are some of the prizes and incentives to getting involved in the battles and the site?

SongClash: The incentives will include cash, gift cards, record studio opportunities, artist reviews by industry pros, premium opportunities give a ways, video promotions, live event opportunities and plenty more…and the ultimate goal, our very own Music Label opportunity.

We are more than a website, so our brand will expand into external regional, national and annual festival events.

Greg: How does the site integrate with other social networks? Are there ways to share on other networks, grow virally, vote through widgets, etc.

SongClash: We are integrated with Twitter. Since Twitter is being integrated through Facebook and other networks, we thought using Twitter would be the most ideal network to use.

Our monthly battles artist preview pages provide every band/artists with song badges. These badges can be placed on personal sites or editable HTML networking sites like Myspace and other sites.

Greg: As you guys just went live, what can we expect as you grow?

SongClash: We just partnered with Ping Pong Music to start the SongClash & Ping Pong Music label. We will be on the look out for bands/artists that rise on SongClash. We have a tremendous team behind the label that, once we discover the “diamond in the ruff”. We have an incredible array of artist development, marketing and management services. Details to that will soon be here.

We have other amazing partnerships in the works that will enhance the user experience at SongClash greatly.

Greg: Where can we find you online to connect?

SongClash: Besides googling SongClash, all of our networks include the SongClash name.

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I’d love for you to check out SongClash if you are looking for feedback on your music, trying to build a fan base that is engaged with indie music or have another outlet for your music. You can signup here as a fan, as a musician or check out their premium levels to get more exposure on the site and throughout their network.

These guys have been working on the site for about 2 years now and I am really proud of what Juan and his team have been able to do in that time frame. They have a great vision and a heart for indie music as they are indie musicians themselves.

If you have questions about the platform, leave them below in the comments and I’ll make sure to pass them onto Juan and the SG team.

-Greg

Amazing Social Data Released By We Are Hunted

Posted on 05 March 2010 by gregrollett

We first profiled We Are Hunted a few weeks back and they have continued to be one of my favorite music discovery sites along with Grooveshark and The Sixty One.

This week they released 2 major features that are really exciting for their company and also for us music marketers and musicians out there.

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The first feature is a new music discovery application built on the Myspace API called Hunted Radio. Essentially the app monitors what Myspace users are listening to and plays you songs based on the most popular song in the last 60 seconds! They state that the music is a mix of

emerging hip-hop, indie and a strange splash of country.

You can listen to Hunted Radio through their Myspace player, or on your iPhone or Android mobile device.

We Are Hunted Research

The second release is the one I am all excited about, We Are Hunted Research. They have amassed a ton of data from looking into social networks and what people are listening to on the social web over the last few months. And they want to share it!

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Right now on their research page they have listed the most popular artists and the one I decided to look into was Grizzly Bear. When you download the PDF report, here is what they have the ability to show you:

This report reviews the popularity of Grizzly Bear on the music charts and in the music news for the period 2009. It benchmarks Grizzly Bear against the 1,935 artists that appeared on the We Are Hunted charts during this period. The results are based on an analysis of 216,617 music articles and 11,728,789 music related tweets. News is sourced from a range of publishers including all the major music news sites and an army of passionate bloggers worldwide. Charts are compiled from samples of hundreds of charts in a range of music genres. This report was written by the We Are Hunted team and generated using the semantic analysis system that powers the wearehunted.com website.

From there you can see charts and graphs (over 30 pages worth) that include:

The Mainstream Chart

This section presents the mainstream chart performance for Grizzly Bear compared to similar artists. Grizzly Bear was ranked 62nd overall of the 1,935 artists analyzed. During this period the average chart position on the We Are Hunted mainstream chart for Grizzly Bear was 7th.

Mainstream Comparison

This section compares the mainstream chart performance of Grizzly Bear against similar artists. These charts illustrate relative popularity over time. Popularity is computed from the normalised chart position for each day. 1.0 means Grizzly Bear was ranked 1st overall of our charts for that day. 0.0 denotes Grizzly Bear did not chart at all.

Emerging Chart

This section presents the emerging chart performance for Grizzly Bear compared to similar artists. Grizzly Bear was ranked 9th overall of the 1,935 artists analyzed. During this period the average chart position on the We Are Hunted emerging chart for Grizzly Bear was 4th.

Emerging Comparison

This section compares the emerging chart performance of Grizzly Bear against similar artists. These charts illustrate relative popularity over time. Popularity is computed from the normalised chart position for each day. 1.0 means Grizzly Bear was ranked 1st overall of our charts for that day. 0.0 denotes Grizzly Bear did not chart at all.

Mainstream Singles

This section presents the best charting singles for Grizzly Bear on the Mainstream We Are Hunted charts

Emerging Singles

This section presents the best charting singles for Grizzly Bear on the Emerging We Are Hunted charts

New Popularity

This section shows the total number of music articles mentioning Grizzly Bear during this time period and the overall rank of Grizzly Bear when compared to similar artists.

News Comparison

This section compares the number of music articles mentioning Grizzly Bear during this time period to similar artists.

Top Publishers

Twitter Popularity

This section shows the number of tweets indicating that someone was listening to Grizzly Bear during this time period. Included is the overall ranking of Grizzly Bear when compared to similar artists.

ReTweet Coverage

This section shows the total clicks generated by retweets of articles mentioning Grizzly Bear during this time period.

Twitter News Activity

This section lists the articles mentioning Grizzly Bear that were shared the most on Twitter during this period.

News Highlights

This section includes the most repeated statements in the music press about Grizzly Bear month by month during this period.

And then comes the Appendixes…

THIS IS PURE MARKETING GOLD!!!!

First comes a list of all the top publishers that wrote something about Grizzly Bear. It even tells you how many times they published something with their band name in it. They list the top 100 sources!

This is like my new gold mine. If I had an artist that sounded like Grizzly Bear, I know how over 100 sources that wrote articles about them. Time to get to work, but that’s not all.

There is also a list of the top 200 overall publishers that We Are Hunted Indexes. From the New York Times to Hype Machine all the way down to The Vinyl District, Jazz Times and White Folks Get Crunk.

If your music was charted on We Are Hunted (there were over 1,900 artists featured) you can shoot them a quick email and they can run a similar report for you. This is amazing work and something that is priceless to the artists, marketing companies, management teams and smart asses that can actually do something powerful with this amount of data!

What do you think about this kind of data availability? What else can you do with these numbers and figures? What is missing? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below.

-Greg

Rank ‘Em Wants Fans To Be The Judge in Music Discovery

Posted on 30 December 2009 by gregrollett

Rank 'em Music Discovery and Rankings

I met Adam Wexler at a music conference a little over a year ago and he came up to me with this crazy idea to build a ranking platform, where fans could essentially build their own charts and rank their favorite artists.

A few months later came an email with a wireframe and the basic outline of the site. A few weeks later a Private Alpha invite and then a Private Beta.

Today I am happy to announce that Adam and his team are releasing Rank ‘em to the public and the timing couldn’t be better. It’s the end of the decade and people are building out “best of” lists like they were going out of style. Rank ‘em wants to be your source for putting together the music portion of those lists.

From Adam, CEO and Founder of Rank ‘em:

As the end of the year (and decade) comes and everybody is organizing their ‘best of’ lists, there could not be a better time to let everybody find out about Rank ‘em.

The core essentials of Rank ‘em is to rank the best songs from your favorite artists. When multiple users do this over time, you start to see what songs are really popular from a particular band. This is extremely helpful in music discovery when you want to listen to a new band or artist, but don’t know where to start.

With the public release of Rank ‘em comes a slew of updates, including a makeover of the Web site.

“We want to emphasize the fact that Rank ‘em is building the ultimate resource for accelerating music discovery,” says Wexler, “while still adding that shine that the site was lacking in its private stages.” The makeover includes an improved home and search page, as well as an expansion of the leaderboard to recognize the top-tier contributing rankers to the Rank ‘em community.

Rank ‘em will also implement a recommendation system, where fellow users can recognize and/or give “props” to other members’ taste in music or quality of rankings.

Rank ‘em will also be creating widgets for artists to display their most popular songs as “ranked” by their fans (see image below). Look for this to be released soon (and Gen-Y Rock Star subscribers may get an invite much sooner).

Rank 'em Artist Widget

Have fun ranking your favorite music at the end of this decade. Go back and hear some classic music from 2000 all the way up to today and have a good time doing it. That’s what Adam envisioned way back when he had the concept.

Become a member now, the first 20 people to use the code “PB2” will get unlimited access.

Signup for Rank ‘em
Rank ‘em on Twitter

-Greg Rollett

New Indie Music Chart – We Are Hunted

Posted on 29 December 2009 by gregrollett

We Are Hunted - Social Music ChartToday I stumbled across We Are Hunted, a new social music charting site that builds their music chart from blogs, social networks, message boards and forums, Twitter and P2P networks. While being charted number one on We Are Hunted won’t bring the prestige or fan fare of a billboard, the concept is solid. Get people excited and talking about your music and good things will happen.

Here is a quick video I shot to help you get around the service and see some of the cool tricks and features I think are important to your music marketing efforts.

They seem to be very artist friendly providing links to buy the tracks on iTunes, Amazon and In Sound as well as allowing artists to update higher quality songs and artwork if something seems out of place or not up to par.

The last interesting feature I wanted to point out was the ability to add an RSS Feed into their directory. It’s as simple as naming it and adding your feed.

I would recommend checking out We Are Hunted for a great little adventure in music discovery and work to understand how their charts work, as it will give you an indication of what you need to do to get the exposure needed for your band and your music as you approach the marketing for your band.

-Greg Rollett