Music | Cheryl Waller

ZZ Ward’s App Uses Facebook to Plot When Fans Discovered Her Music

May 22, 2013 by Brian Anthony Hernandez Leave a Comment

ZZ Ward, who Fuse TV recently proclaimed as one of 30 must-see artists at South by Southwest, just launched a web app that plots when fans first discovered her. How?

The "365 Days of ZZ Ward" app uses Facebook's Open Graph to browse users' Facebook activity and plot their ZZ Ward-tagged status updates, photos and videos.

The moments will be displayed on an interactive timeline, and fans' social participation with the experience will unlock exclusive music content. At launch, people will be able to earn access to four videos and a free MP3 download of an unreleased song

"The app will actually get better over time as more fans connect to it and new ZZ content is added," Brian Ressler, director of digital marketing at Disney Music Group, told Mashable. The app will add new unlockable content every three weeks or so Read more...

More about Facebook, Music, Entertainment, Web Apps, and Open Graph

Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, entertainment, Facebook, Music, Open Graph, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, Web Apps

ZZ Ward’s App Uses Facebook to Plot When Fans Discovered Her Music

May 22, 2013 by Brian Anthony Hernandez Leave a Comment

ZZ Ward, who Fuse TV recently proclaimed as one of 30 must-see artists at South by Southwest, just launched a web app that plots when fans first discovered her. How?

The "365 Days of ZZ Ward" app uses Facebook's Open Graph to browse users' Facebook activity and plot their ZZ Ward-tagged status updates, photos and videos.

More about Facebook, Music, Entertainment, Web Apps, and Open Graph

Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, entertainment, Facebook, Music, Open Graph, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, Web Apps

Multi-Social Network Adventure Primes Pistol Annies Fans For New Album

May 7, 2013 by Brian Anthony Hernandez Leave a Comment

Country trio Pistol Annies prepared people for the May 7 release of their sophomore album, Annie Up, with a four-week interactive experience that spanned mainstream social networks as well as emerging social platforms

"The Great Annies Adventure" took fans on an online and offline journey propelled by a digital comic book and clues that appeared all over social media — Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, Path, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter and Vine — in order to solve the story's mysteries, win prizes and earn tickets to a secret show.

"I don't think any of us have ever had this much fun promoting an album," group member Miranda Lambert told Mashable. "Watching them dissect clues, chat online about where we're taking them next, and race to each location is beyond cool." Read more...

More about Facebook, Twitter, Music, Entertainment, and Social Media

Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, entertainment, Facebook, Music, search engine optimization, SEO, social media, Social Networking, Twitter

Facebook Music Game GIG-IT Will Let Players Create Virtual Concerts

April 30, 2013 by Brian Anthony Hernandez Leave a Comment

GIG-IT, a new social game coming to Facebook in May, will let players create 3D concerts featuring virtual versions of famous musicians along with music from the game's library or music available to purchase within the experience

Players will be able to customize every aspect of the concert such as the music, backup dancers, speakers, opening act, headline performers, wardrobes, sponsors and venue. They will then have the option to share their creations with their friends and followers on Facebook, turning the game into a music-discovery experience.

"This ain't no farm."

"This ain't no farm." Read more...

More about Facebook, Music, Entertainment, Gaming, and Celebrities

Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, Celebrities, entertainment, Facebook, gaming, Music, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking

25 Songs You’ll Hear at Music Festivals in April

April 1, 2013 by Jessica Fee Leave a Comment

Today was April Fools' Day, which means you probably got punked online (a lot). But it also means that the month of April is finally here, and with it comes major music festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza (the one in Chile).

Artists like The Black Keys, Crystal Castles, Passion Pit and even Nas will all be making their way to various venues and cities around the world as the 2013 music festival season heats up. If country is more your thing, you can check out bands like Lady Antebellum and the Zac Brown Band at Country Thunder Arizona or the California-based Stagecoach festival. The New Orleans Jazz Festival will also bring talent south-bound as the end of the month approaches. Read more...

More about Music, Community, Spotify, Music Monday, and Social Media

Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, community, Facebook, Music, Music Monday, search engine optimization, SEO, social media, Social Networking, spotify

Google Play Offers Over 5M eBooks And More Than 18M Songs, One Year After Its Rebranding

March 6, 2013 by Darrell Etherington Leave a Comment

Google has just announced via its official blog that Google Play is officially one year old today. The actual marketplace itself is older than that, with the Android Market debuting in 2008, but it has been a year since Google changed the store’s branding to reflect its broader purpose, which extends to media and use on platform besides its mobile OS. Google rehashed some of its previous milestones, but shed some new light on the size of two of its media categories: eBooks and music.

The Google Play store now has over 5 million eBook titles, according to Google, up from the four million the company reported via its support site last year. The music store is at over 18 million tracks, a number which is just about on par with streaming services like Rdio. Apple has around 30 million tracks in iTunes be comparison, and Amazon has roughly 19 million, so just above Google Play.

The new numbers accompany existing figures made public previously by Google, including the 700,000 apps that now reside on Google Play, which have led to over 25 billion app downloads. Google also reiterated its 500 million total Android device activations and 1.3 million activations per day in an email, both of which were made public late last year.

For Google, growing the media ecosystem available in Play and making it available to a growing number of customers worldwide is a key element of making sure its ecosystem can compete with those offered by Apple and Amazon, and judging by these latest figures, it appears to be doing well in building the library.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, books, Facebook, Google, Google Play, media, mobile, Music, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

YouTube To Launch Music Subscriptions

March 5, 2013 by Victoria Ho Leave a Comment

YouTube plans to launch a music subscription service later this year, to allow people to listen to tracks online, and to possibly cut out the ads that precede each video for subscribers, according to Fortune.

The largest storehouse of streaming video, YouTube relies on selling banner ads on the site and running short clips before each video, giving a cut back to record companies.

YouTube has released a statement that confirmed it was considering a subscription service, but noted that ads wouldn’t go away:

While we don’t comment on rumor or speculation, there are some content creators that think they would benefit from a subscription revenue stream in addition to ads, so we’re looking at that.

YouTube stepping up the game as a music provider sense to me. It’s is one of the first places I hit up when I’m looking to listen to a new track quickly. Sure, it’s not often the best quality, but it’ll do in a pinch. A proper subscription service is likely to provide higher fidelity tracks, and elevates YouTube to the same playing field as labels such as Warner Music which do rely on streaming revenue.

Google already has partnerships with numerous music publishers. Last November, it struck up a deal with Armonia, one of the largest alliances of music publishers, giving it access to 5.5 million tracks across 35 countries.

And in the larger scheme of things, the company might overlap its new subscription plans into its Google Play music service. In December, it rolled out a free “scan and match” feature that allows users to add up to 20,000 songs from their offline collections to the Google cloud and stream it to their devices on the go.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, Google Play, Music, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, subscription services, TC, YouTube

How Brands’ ‘Harlem Shake’ Memes Fared on YouTube and Facebook

March 4, 2013 by Brian Anthony Hernandez Leave a Comment

Click here to view this gallery

Brands latched onto the "Harlem Shake" phenomenon, quickly creating their own versions of the video meme and posting them on YouTube and Facebook

While these brands' participation may look like fun and games, the social media managers and marketing teams behind them hope that riding the coattails of "Harlem Shake" will pay off in video views, likes, shares and positive comments.

Videos from Pepsi, Red Bull, Topshop, HootSuite and Intel are among the brands that attracted he most YouTube views (watch them in the gallery), while brands such as Beats by Dre, Lego, Ask.com, KFC and Dr. Pepper performed well on Facebook, according to data shared first with Mashable from social media analysis company Unmetric.

Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, entertainment, Facebook, gallery, harlem shake, humor, Marketing, memes, Music, search engine optimization, SEO, shorty awards, Social Networking, Uncategorized, Unmetric, video, viral video, YouTube

66.5 Million Facebook Interactions Occurred During the Oscars

February 25, 2013 by Brian Anthony Hernandez Leave a Comment

LOS ANGELES — Seth MacFarlane's parody of Sally Field's The Flying Nun sitcom during the 85th Academy Awards opening monologue got the show off to a social start

The Flying Nun segment was a hot topic on Facebook and eventually became the night's most-talked about moment on Mark Zuckerberg's social network. In total, the Oscars broadcast attracted 66.5 million Facebook interactions (posts, comments and Likes)

Like on Twitter — where people tweeted more than 8.9 million times during the red carpet arrivals and ceremony, particularly for two Adele moments — Adele garnered significant attention on Facebook for her best original song performance of "Skyfall."

Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: 85th Academy Awards, academy awards, Blogging, Celebrities, entertainment, Facebook, Film, Music, oscar, Oscars, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, Television, Uncategorized

Is Facebook Identity the Key to Concert Ticket Sales?

February 22, 2013 by Lance Ulanoff Leave a Comment

We’ve all had the experience: You favorite musician is finally going on tour and there’s a concert in your area. You want good seats, so you queue up at your computer to be among the first to buy tickets. However, within seconds of the on-sale time, all the good seats are sold out – sometimes the entire show is sold out. You can still find those tickets, but only on the secondary market from ticket brokers who usually charge a 3X or more markup.

What the heck happened?

The practice is called ticket sniping. Think of it as ticket scalping on steroids. It’s where brokers use sophisticated software to game Ticketmaster (and other) systems so they can cut the line and buy huge blocks of high-value tickets. It’s been going on for years and while ticket brokers and others get rich, consumer frustration grows.