Social Media Week 2012 will be held February 13-17 with over 1,000 free-to-attend events in cities across the globe in New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Miami, Toronto, Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Tokyo. Registration, along with a preliminary schedule of events, is now live over at SocialMediaWeek.org.

via Mashable

by Sarah Kessler

Facebook wants you to listen to music with friends — even if you’re not in the same room.

The social network announced a new feature Thursday called “Listen With” that gives users a chatroom in which to share songs. They get to DJ the tunes they are streaming via services such as Spotify and Rdio.

Real-time sharing from such services was introduced with Open Graph in September. Users can already see in that chat sidebar what friends are listening to, and click on those songs to play them, but they don’t have the option to listen together in a unified virtual environment.

The new feature, as Facebook’s introductory blog post puts it, makes it so “when your favorite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you’re jamming out at a performance or dance club.”

Read the full story at Mashable.com

by Francis Bea

The inclination these days is to throw up a blog for the sake of owning your own blog. Your label or peers may be egging you on because “everyone else is doing it,” but really what are the benefits? As I’ve mentioned in the article about why you should represent yourself on Pinterest, the majority of music blogs are Instagram images thrown into a collection of Tumblr posts, with a few sentences interspersed here and there. If you think about it, does your blog influence fans more than Tweeting photos from your last tour, or sharing on Facebook, Coldplay’s defiance against Spotify? Unless you’re monetizing your website, would you really have much to lose by moving from one platform to another?

For some time I’ve had my suspicions about Google’s strategies, fueled by the plethora of articles – that is until my suspicions were realized by the announcement of Google’s latest groundbreaking search and social hybridization known as “Search+,” an integration of the public data shared by those in your circles with their search engine. For SEO and social media professionals, the change is overwhelming, not to mention migraine inducing. But Google’s social search integration is a critical re-imagining of why you share and how you discover or acquire information. For the laymen, think of it as an open door for an increased chance for discovery.

Changes to Google search

The first change under personal search includes Google+ profiles (if they’ve signed up for a Google+ profile) in Google Instant’s search box.

When you search for a query on Google, what you’re graced with are the traditional SEO results interspersed with content from the individuals from your G+ profile that you’ve added to your circles.

In your social search results, on the far right column of your screen, you will notice “People and Pages,” a recommendation of Google Plus users and brands, who you can browse or follow, related to the query you’ve entered into the search box.

Of course if the aforementioned is too much social for you, you can always turn off “personal results” with a simple click.

How Search+ affects you and why you must maintain your Google+ profile

The likelihood of Google+ related content discovery, thanks to Google, has been enhanced exponentially. Any content publicly shared on your G+ page is fair game to be listed in the search results and will contend in ranking with other blogs and websites. How well your shared content ranks in the results page itself will likely be fueled by the number of +1s, volume of traffic, and degree of separation between yourself and the searcher, whose results you show up in.

For example, to highlight the importance of these changes, when searching for the query, “music,” a fan may decide to peruse the “People and Pages” related to “music” and click on Alisha Keys’s profile. Upon landing on a profile page, fans will typically read content and information that embodies the persona and artistry of a band in their bid to garner an understanding of the artist. That in itself should be reason enough to maintain your G+ profile. In a similar fashion, fans after hearing about a band in a magazine or radio will take to Google Plus to further their discovery of that band, with which Google inevitably displays the band’s Google Plus profile.

Note that now it’s even more important for your profile picture to be captivating. I personally have been compelled to “discover” musicians on a whim upon being lured by their album cover or profile picture.

What’s astounding is that the importance of your Twitter account as a destination find out about a band has decreased. In light of Twitter crying “antitrust” after the Google Plus integration with its search engine, Alex Macgillivray revealed an important point in the changes. A simple search for “@wwc”, which prior to the integration would have resulted in WWC’s Twitter page ranking number first, now appears below the fold.

What’s to be realized with Google+ is that the platform is targeting a new niche. Facebook, often seen as a close network (for most) of friends and family is befitting for networks of people withing a comfortable degree of separation. On the other hand, G+ is transforming into a hub where users, who many not be friends or even acquaintances, can follow, meet, video chat live and collaborate on the basis of common interests, at the expense of its search quality, thereby improving chances for bands to be discovered online, accidentally.

The weight of Google Plus’s integration should ring some alarms for some of you. So while Tumblr may be the best social network infused CMS out there, it falls far behind, in the frequency of content sharing and discovery, Google Plus’s newsfeed. After all, social networks are one of the leading reasons for content discovery.

With such tools that incentivize the use of Google+ in place, an inveterate movement toward a hybridization of blogging, combining microblogging with its longer form cousin, and self-promotion is inevitably, whether hated or loved, a necessity. Still not convinced? Just ask the high profile Google Plus “bloggers” including Kevin Rose of Milk and founder of Digg, Robert Scoble, of Rackspace, and Tom Anderson, founder of Myspace.

Francis Bea is a New York City based writer, PR person, and tech junkie who’s solving the music industry’s woes with his start-ups, Musefy.com and Proptone.com. You can find him on @francisybea and @musefy.

As a result of my Music Industry Survey, an acquaintance who participated in the survey told me about music video startup he’s been helping out called Cull.TV.

At first glance, it was extremely overwhelming especially with the autoplay videos (perfect for people with ADD), but I poked my head around the site and saw what they had to offer.  I agreed to have an interview with Katherine de León who is the site’s co-founder.  Here’s what she said:

1a.  Do you see Cull.TV as filling a void in the industry?  Why?
Yes. Music discovery online is disjointed. You can browse YouTube, but the chance that you’ll find your next favorite artist that way is minimal. Most music discovery services utilize a single approach to help artists find new audiences. It’s usually a critic on a blog or top 10 charts. Our method is unique. We look at what’s trending on social networks, what’s happening in your friend graph, draw from machine learning algorithms and top it off with editorial programming to deliver the most relevant music videos from emerging artists.

b.  On that note, do you see it as competing with Vevo?  Why or why not?
No, we don’t see ourselves competing with Vevo. Vevo is the go-to website if you want to watch the latest music videos from Top 40 artists but there’s so much more out there to discover! The sheer amount of great new music coming out is staggering. I’d say Vevo’s focus is a lot narrower than ours.

2.  How do you plan on monetizing the site?
Most consumer websites monetize through some kind of advertising or subscription model. We have tons of opportunities to monetize, but for now we’re focused on building our audience and providing a killer music experience. Our approach to monetization will be thoughtful and deliver value to our audience. In other words, we’re not going to rush it.

3.  What are some plans or goals for 2012?
Become the go-to resource for new music discovery! We also plan to roll out a mobile version in 2012. Look for Cull TV on tablets and phones soon.

Please be sure to check out Cull.TV.  You might discover your next favorite band that you didn’t even know existed.

by Kyle Mammarella

Twitter has become an increasingly important tool for artists to communicate directly with their online fanbase.  Now, their tweets could be popping up in discovery apps and streaming music services.

On Tuesday, Twitter announced new deals with Gracenote and The Echo Nest that will allow third-party developers to incorporate material from Verified Accounts into their services and apps.

Jason Costa, Twitter’s developer relations manager, tweeted that these partnerships will “give music and entertainment fans the opportunity to interact with Tweets from their favorite artists, directly through the media services use every day.”

Gracenote powers music data for the world’s leading music products and services, including Apple iTunes, HTC smart phones, Ford SYNC, and Sony BRAVIA TVs.  With this partnership, they will integrate Twitter Verified Accounts into their database of music and video information, which includes music and video metadata and cover art for millions of artists and albums.

“Gracenote’s broad reach across media sectors and consumer devices will amplify Twitter’s power to bring artists and fans closer together,” said Glenn Otis Brown, Twitter’s director of media business development.  “This partnership opens the door for all of Gracenote’s media and device partners to weave Twitter into their core experiences.”

Rara.com – launched in December by British music firm Omnifone – will be the first online music service to feature Twitter Verified artist feeds powered by Gracenote. “rara.com is super excited to be the first music service to use the Gracenote Twitter integration to bring real time artist Twitter feeds to consumers,” said Rob Lewis, chairman of rara.com.

When a fan is listening to an artist through an online music service, Gracenote can deliver the artist’s Twitter @handle and public profile information in combination with their collection of music metadata, cover art, and song recommendations.  Users can view and interact with the artist’s Tweets and engage with other fans without leaving the media service or launching another screen.

The Echo Nest, the leading intelligence platform for music content, will incorporate the immediacy of tweets directly into a recording artist’s app.  The Echo Nest will connect Verified Accounts to its Rosetta Stone service, allowing individual app developers to integrate tweets from musicians.  The Rosetta Stone service helps music services “speak the same language” on a data level by translating unique identifiers.  App developers will be able to include tweets from a currently-playing artist alongside music, lyrics, blog posts, photos and other media from Rosetta Stone-compatible services.  Australian startup Filter Squad, which makes the Discovr Music app, will be The Echo Nest’s first app developer to leverage the partnership.

“The Echno Nest’s cutting-edge music data platform will enable thousands of developers to build new ways for music fans and artists to connect on Twitter,” said Brown.

Currently, The Echo Nest powers over 200 apps and services including Spotify, iHeartRadio, Nokia, Rdio, EMI, and MOG. Its music intelligence platform offers over 5 billion data points on over 30 million songs from over 2 million artists.

Verified Accounts are given to high-profile people and those who suffer impersonation issues, or to advertisers that spend a minimum of $15,000 over a three-month period.  Their verification process recently fell under scrutiny when they authenticated a fake account purportedly belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s wife.  Updates now ensure that fans are getting legitimate tweets from “true” celebrities and other high-profile accounts.

There is currently no way for individuals to apply for the small blue checkmark.  This seemingly puts smaller, independent artists at a disadvantage.  With neither the fame nor the resources for verification, independent artists have less opportunity to leverage these technologies to connect with fans. According to Costa, however, we can expect to see Twitter announce new partnerships and expand existing ones as the pilot program begins to grow.

Kyle Mammarella is a New York based artist manager and music enthusiast.