music Archive

The textbooks market is really heating up over the past few months. The startup in the space, Chegg, recently raised $57 million in venture capital. Earlier this month Amazon launched a textbook trade-in service.

Today Barnes & Noble launched a program to attempt to woo students over to their side of the field. The program offers students 10 free music downloads when they purchase their textbooks on bn.com. And if the student is willing to spam their friends, they will get a bonus 10 music downloads.

There are thirty artists to pick from. Honestly I’ve never heard of any of these artists – here’s the full list: Vampire Weekend, Neko Case, Diane Birch, Phoenix, Grizzly Bear, Gossip, Devendra Banhart, Tegan And Sara, Swell Season, Tom Waits, Alec Ounsworth, Mayer Hawthorne, Polly Scattergood, Amanda Blank, White Demin, Black Lips, Au Revoir Simone, The Raveonettes, Cage, King Khan And The Shrines, Temper Trap, White Rabbits, Cage The Elephant, Jonah Sees In Color, Metric, Avett Brothers, Wale, Chester French. Built To Spill, Fanfarlo and Brandi Carlile.

Most of the songs are available on Amie Street for 34 cents to $1.29 each. Considering that next week all of the calendars will be 50-80% off, why not throw in a nice calendar when a student buys a book? I am guessing the students already have the music they want and the calendar will make sure they don’t miss their exams and B&N could have created a calendar with monthly coupons and offers.

Here’s a great stocking stuffer for office gifts. Found via Fatwallet, Amazon is offering a free $3 credit towards their MP3 store.

Just add the code MP34FREE to your account and you can grab $3 in free MP3 music.

Here are the terms of the offer:

• Promotional offer valid for a limited time only and subject to change. Promotional offer is valid from November 23, 2009 12:00 AM PST through November 30, 2009 11:59 PM PST. You must redeem the code by November 30, 2009 11:59 PM PST.
• If you’ve previously entered a promotional code, clicking the “Enter Your Code” button above will show your remaining balance.
• After your purchase, you can confirm the dollar amount of the code was applied by checking your order confirmation, which will be sent to you by e-mail.

The popular songs list shows most songs at $0.99 so you could grab 3 tracks although some are priced at $1.29. If you redeem the code, leave a comment with the songs you picked up!

Musician ecommerce widget service TheBizmo has announced their public U.S. launch today. Previously TheBizmo has been operating in private beta here in the U.S. and in full operations mode in the U.K.

TheBizmo has a NYC presence as well – David Hazan heads up their U.S. operations. You should see TheBizmo around NYC this summer as they are sponsoring a number of music conferences.

TheBizmo is described as offering, “a new embeddable e-commerce widget that enables artists to sell MP3s, videos, merchandise and more, straight to fans, from any social networking page, website, or blog.”  The service is free to setup and both the musician and TheBizmo share in the revenues. The musician earns the following:

• Music – 70% of retail
• Tickets – 100% of the face value of all tickets
• T-shirts – musician decides on the share
• All other offerings (ringtones, e-books, sheet music, etc.) - 70% of retail

After the musician creates their store, they can push it to Facebook, Ning, MySpace and other social networks. And since it’s a widget, it can be embedded anywhere. The service could be a good way for musicians to gain more visibility and new fans.

eBay company StubHub has announced a new partnership with AOL Music today. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Basically StubHub will be integrated all over AOL Music so people can buy and sell tickets (and pay comissions to StubHub) from practically anywhere on the site. From the release, “this includes AOL’s Artist & Video pages, as well as AOL Music’s concert touring website, TourTracker. For the first time, users can also see up-to-the minute concert ticket price ranges on StubHub’s marketplace without ever leaving AOL Music. ”

“Allowing our consumers to purchase tickets to sold-out shows through StubHub will significantly enhance our user experience,” said Bill Crandall, vice president of AOL Music.

My very close friend (and CN designer) Mark loves Elvis. He has all the albums, the Atari video games and the videos. Luckily when we speak he doesn’t sing any of Elvis’ songs to me. So it was with great excitement when I received a note about a new iPhone application launching today that is perfect for Mark.

The app is called “Elvis Mobile” and here’s a list of what’s included:

• An “Elvis Sightings” section allows fans to submit their Elvis pictures, taken with their iPhone, directly to www.elvis.com from anywhere in the world and simultaneously update their Facebook pages with the same information.
• An “Image” section will be updated weekly and will feature never-before-seen and rare pictures of the life and times of Elvis Presley.
• A “Video” section will be updated periodically with clips of Elvis and special Elvis events/happenings.
• A “News” section features the latest information on all things Elvis from www.elvis.com.
• A “Livecam” section gives fans a real-time look at Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis, TN.
• A “Podcast” section allows users to listen to The Graceland Beat from Elvis Radio.

I don’t have an iPhone so I can’t enjoy the King as a I travel around the city. It looks like the application is free and even offers a Facebook Connect option so you can share your Elvis Sightings with your Facebook friends. Hmm, I wonder if Elvis is on Twitter?

I’ve written about QR codes before and if you read CN, you know that I really hope the QR technology takes off in the U.S. as it has in other countries like Japan. You can see an example of a QR code (also known as 2d Barcode) on the left. Basically when you scan the code with a reader, it does something.

Today I came across, via Dean Collins, a record label using QR codes to get people offline to interact with their music. I’ve embedded a video below which describes how Lost Highway Records is using QR Codes. The video explains that they are using the codes to get people to a website where they can listen to their music, purchase full songs and find out information about upcoming concerts.

Check out the video and then think about how you can use QR codes for you and/or your clients. While I know the easy answer is that not enough handsets support the technology, adding the codes to your ads and promotional materials is easy – so why not capture those who can read the codes?

NY-based DubFiler describes their service as, "a different kind of file management site. We are DJ’s, producers, promoters and we’re constantly slinging files around – tune ideas, so-and-so’s newest track, your new drum track. But we’re tired of sites where the files expire and we have to reupload them. We’re tired of flashing banners and typing in cryptic passwords. We’re tired of waiting 60 seconds for our downloads to begin."

The service is basically a way for musicians to share their music inside a network. DubFiler charges $5/month for 500mb of storage.

The service is very easy to use. You upload a song and then are presented with a link that you can share with others. When visitors come to DubFiler via the link, they are presented with two options: play or download. DubFiler also provides stats on how many downloads, plays have taken place for each song.

I’d like to see DubFiler add messaging options so that listeners can leave feedback for the artist. Perhaps the messaging could even allow listeners to comment on a specific portion of the music timeline similar to Viddler’s in-video-stream commenting.