What I Want For Christmas
Bob Lefsetz is a music industry observer, and publisher of the Lefsetz letter: ~~~ 1. Spotify In The States Spotify kills piracy dead. Isn’t this what the rightsholders want? As for it being free on the computer… I hate to tell you, music is already free on the computer, ever heard of YouTube? Yes, we’re moving to streaming, and we’re moving to a mobile world. You’ve got to pay to use Spotify o
MTV Launches Music Discovery Tool for Up-and-Coming Bands
MTV launched into the music discovery space today with the unveiling of its MTV Music Meter, which provides music lovers with news and info about up-and-coming acts.Yes, you heard that correctly — up-and-coming musicians, not Justin Bieber nor Lady Gaga (those artists have actually been excluded from the site).For this project, MTV worked with music intelligence company EchoNest to develop an algo
DreamForce Kinect
Sometimes it gets so hard to begin a post. This is not one of those times. Marc Benioff tells the story of how Bill Clinton was delayed coming out here for his session at Dreamforce 2010, was going to be an hour late, 15,000 people ready for POTUS 42, now what? Then Marc noticed Stevie Wonder walking down the hall toward him, taking Benioff up on his invitation to see Clinton speak and then stick
Celebs to Go Silent on Twitter and Facebook for Charity
Millions of people will be deprived of their favorite celebrity musings later this week as the likes of Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and Ryan Seacrest go dark on Twitter and Facebook. The silence will only be temporary, however, as it’s part of a $1 million fundraiser for World AIDS Day, which takes place December 1.The project was organized by Alicia Keys on behalf of her charity Keep a Child Al
App Lets You Score Your Project from Your iPad
video This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.Name: The Jingle Player iPad app [iTunes link]Quick Pitch: Find pre-licensed, musical content from up-and-coming bands on-the-go with a music discovery
Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week
If you fired up the ol’ Twitter machine on Sunday night, you probably won’t be surprised to see Jimmy Fallon’s Emmy Awards nab the number one spot on this week’s chart. Not only are award shows a boon for tweet riffers to begin with, but this year’s Emmys saw a nice marriage of TV and social media, courtesy of the web savvy Late Night host.The awards bumped the long-trending topic of football down
Hey, iTunes Ping: What About the Bands?
Update: Commenter Bruce Hoffman contacted TuneCore about this issue and received this response: “Thanks for writing! Not only will Ping have ‘People’ accounts, but it will also have ‘Artist’ accounts that allow musicians to upload and create their own pages featuring their pictures, videos, tour-dates, music recommendations and a lot more. We were fortunate enough to speak with Apple today to begi
Lady Gaga Topples Britney As Queen Of Twitter
Oh, glorious day. Britney Spears is no longer the Queen of Twitter. She has been toppled from her thrown. A cultural milestone? Perhaps. But wait. The new Queen of Twitter is Lady Gaga. Is that any better? At least she is more entertaining, or at least more self-aware. Sometime last night, her highness Lady Gaga passed Britney in Twitter followers. She currently has 5,777,492 to Britney’s
Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week
Entertainment — of the U.S. and international varieties — takes home the Twitter gold this week, in what was a fairly stable list of trends.The new comic book-inspired film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, starring Michael Cera, jumped from #4 last week, to #1 this week, despite modest returns at the box office. Long-time Twitter trend Inception sank to #4, and the new Sylvester Stallone action flick
Twitter & Facebook Dominate #WinWeekend for Favorite Mobile App
This weekend, we asked readers to finish the statement, “My favorite mobile application is…” for a chance to win this week’s #WinWeekend Sweepstakes (in partnership with Live Nation): an awesome Lady Gaga prize package. The dominant winner was Twitter with Facebook in a close second, and Foursquare in a distant third.Congratulations to Hellen Araujo of Fort Lauderdale, FL, who is the winner of thi
#WinWeekend Sweepstakes: Lady Gaga Remix Edition
Mashable is excited to announce that in honor of Lady Gaga’s upcoming new remix album, we’re giving away a prize pack with some exclusive merchandise for this week’s #WinWeekend Weekly Sweepstakes in partnership with Live Nation. Last weekend, we gifted two awesome electric guitars to two lucky winners.The package includes: CD Copy of Lady Gaga’s The RemixLimited Edition Vinyl Copy of The RemixLad
Like.com And Glamour’s What To Wear Is The Quora For Fashion Advice
Digital shopping and fashion empire Like.com wants to solve a problem for anyone who has ever stood in front of their closet and wondered what they should wear. The startup that has brought us visual shopping engine Like.com, shopping personalization engine Covet.com; street style social network Weardrobe, and visual styling tool Couturious, launched its live personal stylist and wardrobe consulta
Lady Gaga’s Manager: We Make Music Videos For YouTube
At TechCrunch Disrupt this morning Troy Carter, Founder & CEO, Coalition Media Group and worldwide Manager for pop star Lady Gaga sat down with Scooter Braun, Founder & Chair, SB Projects and worldwide Manager for fellow pop star Justin Bieber to discuss the digital era’s implications for musicians. The hot topic of the conversation was YouTube and Twitter. Carter said openly that he and
Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week
This week’s list of trends illustrates the enormous international breadth of Twitter and its users. The Korean music group Super Junior, a popular trending topic for many weeks, has finally toppled Justin Bieber and claimed the number one spot. Whether this is due to sheer number of tweets, or a change in Twitter’s trend-identifying algorithm, remains to be seen.Take a look at the interesting s
Foursquare Snags A Deal With The Today Show
Foursquare is striking deals left and right with mainstream media companies. The mobile social network just signed partnerships with The Wall Street Journal, VH1 and The History Channel. And today, Foursquare is linking up with Matt, Al, Anne and Meredith for a deal with NBC’s The Today Show. The deal centers around the show’s yearly Concert Series that brings big-name artists like Lady Gaga and J
Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week
What do Twitter users care about? Based on this week’s most-tweeted trends – pop stars, the environment, Easter, sports and Lady Gaga.Our weekly roundup of the most talked-about Twitter topics delivers few surprises over the past 7 days … teen idol Justin Bieber leads the chart once again, while March Madness makes an appearance. Ricky Martin is new to the list, having made an announcement abou
The New Bing Box, A Foursquare Map App, And Other Search Goodies
Today, Bing is announcing more refinements to its search engine. The most noticeable one is what Bing director Stefan Weitz unofficially calls the “Bing Box.” For popular search categories such as celebrities, cities, companies, musicians, movies, places, and sports, the top result will be the Bing Box, which will pull in an image and a link to the official site, along with some relevant data.
DIY Lady Gaga 'Pop Music' shades: so magical, you'd be so fantastical
Next time you're out at a Lady Gaga tribute concert, leave the crowd speechless with your very own "Pop Music Will Never Be Low Brow" glasses. All it takes to give off that "Creative Director of Polaroid" vibe is just the touch of your hand, two keychain digital picture frames, and some garage glamorous sunglasses you don't mind seeing destroyed. Love the shades, baby? You won't be able to see st
The 40 Best Branded iPhone Music Apps of 2009
Music apps are a huge category of apps, and 2009 was a huge year for music apps. Music Ally sums up the year's biggest music apps for us here. 2009 was the year of the App Store, as Apple passed the two-billion downloads milestone for its store. The year also saw labels and artists jumping onto the bandwagon with their own branded iPhone apps. The most successful, like Smule's I Am T-Pain (picture
Musicians on Twitter: 100+ Artists That Tweet
This post was co-authored by Cameron Chapman, who writes a blog at Cameronchapman.com and is @cameron_chapman on Twitter, and Alec Feld, who authors a blog at alecfeld.com and is @alecfeld on Twitter. As the industry changes, so have the methods by which music is promoted. Traditional marketing is being replaced by artists and bands using social media sites like Twitter to engage fans, promote th