BasBasBas.com

I’m borrowing one of my favourite Twitter memes called Follow Friday, though I hardly ever participate. On Fridays, many Twitter users recommend their followers to follow interesting people that they themselves are following. It’s kind of like networking. Actually, it’s more than just ‘kind of’ like networking!

I always find it really tough who to recommend, but I love the principle. That’s why I have decided to recommend some of the blogs I subscribe to so I stay in the know about developments in the (new) music business. Maybe you can recommend some to me too?

Digipendent
Looks at trends in music & the digital world.

Digital Audio Insider
Describes itself as a blog about the economics of digital music and I think that’s quite an accurate description.

Digital Music News
Definitely one of the best blogs out there on this topic! So I gave it some sweet italic loving!

Digital Noise
A CNET blog about music and technology. Hightlights lots of interesting innovative initiatives in the digital music business.

FileShareFreak
A blog about filesharing, piracy, torrent sites, lawsuits and other fun stuff.

Future of Music Coalition
A non-profit organisation looking at the future of the music business and how artists can cope with the rapid changes.

Hypebot
A blog about the new music business. Hardly misses a thing. Very impressive!

Make It In Music
Artists have to take more and more control of the tasks record labels previously used to take care of. This blog educates them on how to do that. Also interesting for people who are simply interested in the music business, but not as an artist.

me*dia*or
Kind of a monitor of the music business blogs. Everything in one place here, but I prefer visiting the individual blogs / reading their RSS feeds.

Media Futurist – Gerd Leonhard
The blog of Gerd Leonhard, who’s a media futurist. He appears to be touring constantly, speaking at conferences about technologies and how our society could adopt them. He shares many of his presentations, slideshows and ideas on his blog. Great material! Also check out the interview I had with him about the future of music distribution.

MIDEM(Net) Blog
MIDEM is one of the world’s biggest music business conferences. MidemNet is its simultaneous digital music business conference. The blog is filled with interesting analyses by industry experts.

Music Ally
The corporate blog of this digital music business information and strategy company.

Music Business and Trend Mongering
A blog about the great ideas and trends in the new music business.

Music Think Tank
Awesome blog about what works and doesn’t work (and why!) in the music industry. Highly recommended.

MusicBizGuy Speaks
A music business veteran’s view on the new music business. Very impressive track record and highly insightful articles.

Net, Blogs and Rock’n'Roll
A blog about the digital discovery of music and entertainment.

New Music Strategies
The name more or less speaks for itself. Sporadic posts, but high quality guaranteed.

P2P Blog
Lots of news about innovation in peer to peer technology.

p2pnet
About filesharing, peer-to-peer technology, RIAA madness, and innovation in the sharing of digital information.

Remix Theory
A blog about remix culture.

Rocketsurgeon’s Music 2.0 Directory
A listing of all the tools and services participating in the ‘new media revolution’. Very cool.

RouteNote’s Blog
RouteNote’s a company specializing in the distribution of artists’ music to (digital) music stores. Their blog offers a great look into the world of digital music distribution.

Techdirt
About innovations in technology and how this affects government policy and the economy around us. Probably my favourite blog of this whole list.

The Daily Swarm
A bit like me*dia*or, in the sense that it aggregates content from other places and links back to the full articles. Sometimes they catch something I had missed, so I try to keep up with them as much as I can.

The Forrester Blog for Consumer Strategy Professionals
Not necessarily about the music business, but definitely gives great insight into marketplaces that are changing because of technology. These guys are really on top of the trends and give valuable insights into them.

TorrentFreak
Another favourite blog. They ask some very tough questions to the music business about how they deal with filesharing. Also has a lot of news about torrent trackers, politics, what’s hot in the filesharing networks, and much much more.

TuneCorner
TuneCore also specializes in distributing signed artists’ music to digital music stores. On their blog, great tips about music and technology, insights into the new music business, and how to use the web to your advantage.

Wired | Music
Wired is a technology news website and has a music section too. Great read! They have a very talented staff.

ZeroPaid
Another (good) blog about filesharing.

What are blogs you would recommend? Did I miss any good ones?

Recently I released a paper titled the best practices of the online promotion of new musical content. I pushed it through some networks and sent it to contacts I’ve made while studying the music business and the results have been phenomenal. Giving away something good for free really does work! Some highlights.

I submitted it to Techdirt, probably my favourite technology blog, where Mike Masnick blogged about it. This blog post was then mentioned in the daily newsletter of the ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

It was also posted to the great Make It In Music blog, as a guestpost. Students of the music business course at the NYU were given this paper to read. Someone is even making a Spanish version of it to increase the reach of the paper, especially in Latin America. Thanks Pp! I’ve also been spreading it around LinkedIn with some pretty good results.

Wow!

To be honest, part of the strategy of my thesis was to build some momentum, release it, make it go viral and brand myself as an expert on this topic, but even this paper is making some ripples.

The ironic thing is that in the paper I say that giving away something of value for free can be a great promotional tool… especially if what you’re giving away is easily reproduced and easy to share. The reception of the paper proves exactly that.

Extremely motivated to get that thesis done asap and start utilizing the momentum I’ve built! More soon!

P.S. If you’d like to read the paper, click here for the PDF.

As the regular readers of my blog probably know, I’m writing my graduation thesis about the future of music distribution. Due to some setbacks and unforseen circumstances, this thesis has suffered some delays. However, using the knowledge and insight I gained in the past month, while studying my thesis’ topic, I have compiled a paper called the Best Practices of the Online Promotion of New Musical Content.

It looks at artists like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, Mos Def, and Groove Armada, and analyzes what they’ve been doing right and wrong and why they’ve been doing it in the first place.

So while you wait for the thesis and the launch of FutureOfMusicDistribution.com, how about going through this 20 page paper?

To download and read the whole paper, just use this link:

http://www.basbasbas.com/online_promotion_of_new_musical_content-Bas_Grasmayer.pdf

And feel free to redistribute it, it’s licensed under a Creative Commons license!

Love,
Bas

As if the amount of blogs and micro-blogs I have right now are not enough… I set up yet another blog. For my final thesis I’m studying the Future of Music Distribution. While I was studying I realized that instead of saving my notes in a document on my computer, it would be easier to post them to a place where I can access them from every computer. Then I thought “why not make them public?” So that’s what I did. I present to  you my new blog, The Future of Music Distribution.

Don’t worry, I’ll still be blogging here, but instead of posting 5 updates per day regarding this topic on this blog, I’ve chosen to keep it separate. My ‘life’, travels, pictures and views go on here and all stuff related to my final thesis go on there. Visit The Future of Music Distribution now!

BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.