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Outside Lands Remix Contest: Remix Gogol Bordello, My Morning Jacket, Rebirth Brass Band & Beats Antique For A Chance To Perform At Outside Lands!

In anticipation of their 3rd annual music and arts festival, Outside Lands has teamed up with MixMatchMusic and URB.com to host a badass remix contest featuring songs by Gogol Bordello, My Morning Jacket, Rebirth Brass Band and Beats Antique. Using MixMatchMusic’s Remix Wizard, anyone can have a crack at remixing and the winner will get a chance to perform at Outside Lands in front of thousands of festival goers! How cool is that?

The Songs
Gogol Bordello – “Trans-Continental Hustle”
My Morning Jacket – “Highly Suspicious”
Rebirth Brass Band – “D’s Hips”
Beats Antique – “Merry Go Round”

How to participate?
1) Choose a song to remix
2) Download the song stems, its free and easy!
3) Create your remix using the stems and any additional music or beats that either you have created or have a creative commons license for. You can also make your mix online by clicking on the MixMaker button of the widget.
4) Upload an MP3 of your remix via the same widget you used to download the stems. Enter as many remixes as you like!
5) Share the track with your friends and ask them to comment, rate, playlist your mix and share it with their friends on twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and their blogs, etc.
6) Once you have finished and uploaded your remix, judges will select a winner for each track and one grand-prize winner!
7) Contest ends at 11:59pm on August 5th, 2010. Winners will be notified on August 6th, 2010.

Prizing
Each song will have one winner who will receive two general admission passes to the festival and a prize pack of CDs from the artist they remix. Each of these winners will go on to compete for the grand prize, which includes two passes to the festival with artist credentials, a custom MobBase iPhone app and lifetime subscription from MixMatchMusic, $500 for travel expenses, and a one-hour set in front of thousands of festival goers at Outside Lands!

About the bands
Gogol Bordello’s Trans-Continental Hustle, the group’s American Recordings debut, is perhaps the most ambitious undertaking in the group’s already remarkable decade-long gypsy punk career and it’s the result of an inspired, year-length collaboration with famed producer Rick Rubin. Gogol Bordello is arguably the hardest working — and hardest rocking — group of our discordant new century, maintaining a touring schedule and an onstage energy level that would send the average combo running for the emergency room.

Kentucky-born My Morning Jacket formed in 1998 and has been going strong ever since. Their fifth full-length studio album, “Evil Urges” is the most far-ranging, surprising, and satisfying record of the band’s career. Have a go at remixing the freak-funk electro-slam of “Highly Suspicious” for your chance to win.

Rebirth Brass Band, a New Orleans institution, evolved from playing the streets of the French Quarter to playing festivals and stages all over the world. Committed to upholding the tradition of brass bands, while at the same time incorporating modern music into their show, their signature brand of heavy funk has been winning over hearts for almost three decades.

Beats Antique is an Oakland, CA based group forging a curious alliance between middle eastern traditions and potent west coast circus, underground hip hop, breakbeat brass band, downtempo, glitch and dubstep. Their paradoxical brand of electro-acoustic music is perfect fodder for the savvy remixer.

About Outside Lands
The 3rd annual Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival takes place in beautiful Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on August 14 and 15, 2010. The two day festival is a celebration of music, food, wine and art that benefits the San Francisco Recreation & Park Department. It features over 40 bands, including Kings of Leon, The Strokes, Phoenix, My Morning Jacket, Further featuring Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, Wolfmother, Gogol Bordello, Al Green, Nas and Damien Marley, Tokyo Police Club and more! For complete, up-to-date information about Outside Lands click here. To start remixing, click here.

Root Music: BandPages on Facebook

Remember when the tables turned and MySpace went from being the coolest social networking site around to a shady place for scantily-clad teens in questionable photos and, well… musicians? Despite the seizure-inducing animated gifs and glittering madness that came with the pimp-your-profile craze, MySpace somehow still maintained its role as THE place for musicians. Your band maybe had its own website if, you know, it was all fancy and stuff. But your band definitely had a MySpace page!

Then Facebook came along and soothed us with its minimalist design and all its tangible real-world benefits, and rocked our collective worlds. And yet, the musician was always left to fend for him or herself.

Enter Root Music. Musicians now FINALLY have a home on Facebook. This clever little San Francisco-based startup has created a way for musicians to share their stuff right from within Facebook. The BandPage is a tab just like your photos, info, or wall tabs. While they browse your page, fans can listen to your music from the embedded SoundCloud player. Want to place a banner on your page? Easy! Just upload the picture you want to use. No need to create a custom one. Every section of the BandPage is easily editable. Just drop, drag, and customize as you wish.

What you end up with is a sexy place within your Facebook profile, which you already use and people are already looking at, to share all your stuff (info, photos, shows, twitter feed and much much more) with your fans. In the place where they are already hanging out! It’s an elegant solution to an obvious problem, and Root Music has done it with aplomb. Once you setup your Root Music Bandpage on Facebook, be sure to set it as the default landing page so that it’s the first thing fans see!

MobBase Speaks To Label 2.0 Members In Music Marketing Training Session

Last week, MobBase co-founder Alan Khalfin led a music marketing training session with Greg Rollett for Label 2.0 members. Alan shared some great music marketing strategies and explained how mobile apps are one of the best ways to engage with the modern music fan. He gave a thorough overview of the MobBase platform and shared some best practices on how to create iPhone apps for artists.

While the training session was limited to Label 2.0 members, you can listen to it here:

If you’re not a Label 2.0 member or don’t know who they are, you should definitely check them out! Label 2.0 is an interactive learning community for musicians that empowers you to build your own music business and keep all the profits. When you sign up for Label 2.0, you will receive monthly, interactive training programs that guide you through all the steps of managing your music business online.

You will get interactive screen cast videos, where you will learn how to setup marketing campaigns, manage online accounts, and utilize a plethora of resources to build a passionate fanbase. They also do white board training to deliver concepts and show processes of moving fans through buying and sales cycles. And just like they did with MobBase, they do live calls and sessions that give you the opportunity to ask questions and get feedback on your efforts. All from some of the digital music industry’s brightest minds. Check them out here.

How To Use Email To Grow Your Fanbase & Drive Music Sales

This is a guest post by MusicNomad, a musicians advocate organization that researches, reviews and ranks thousands of companies in the music industry to filter out the ones that help musicians the most.
Your relationship with your fans has never been more important. They hold the money and are the ones that want to buy directly from you. They love your music and are the people you need to develop an intimate relationship with if you want your band’s career to grow. If used right, email and email management is a powerful tool that can make the artist-fan relationship grow stronger. Email can be used in a range of ways, such as a personalized messages to give fans an update or a call for action to buy something from you. Here is a list of what we believe are the best ways to use email to connect with and grow your fanbase:
  1. Bands (and not management or interns) should always write their own emails to be authentic.
  2. Noon Eastern time on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday is the ideal time to send broadcast emails to your fans, as people are at work across the US and Europe.
  3. The ideal frequency of emails to fans is about every 2 to 4 weeks, with updates on your tour, merch and music announcements.
  4. Negotiate upfront if you leave from a record label that you keep your email list and you own it.
  5. Give great deals through email offers for pre-orders, such as a $50 package for $25.
  6. Don’t put links to iTunes and Amazon in your emails. Fans want to buy direct from you so always link them directly to your website (or Bandcamp).
  7. In each email, make sure you have direct and separate links to buy merch, buy tour tickets and buy music. Don’t be afraid to have a big “Buy” button in the email.
  8. Sell email exclusive package offerings around holidays such as Christmas, Halloween, Cinco De Mayo, etc or just give some music away for free that day in exchange for an email.
  9. Your fan email lists are gold and building them up is huge! Collect emails and zip codes from your fans at shows or ask for them in exchange for a free download.
  10. Pay someone to go around and collect emails and zip codes at your shows. It’s that important.
  11. Ask your merch company for the emails and zip codes for the fans that bought your merch.
  12. Send emails by zip code so that you can target emails to promote upcoming shows. The best time to send a show announcement is 30 to 45 days before the show date. The ideal time to send an email reminder about an upcoming show is 5 days before the show. Offer fans something special like a $5 off coupon at your merch table. In the subject line, be sure to put the name of that city, such as “New Tour Date announced in Chicago”. This will personalize the email and increase its overall open rate.
  13. Don’t go overboard in graphics and special effects in your email, but make it look nice and spend some time designing it.
  14. Before you send out a fan email, send a test email to you and your band members to see how it looks. Fix any issues before sending.
  15. If you have only a fan’s email and no zip code, give something away for free (like a live show recording or free album download) in exchange for it and tell them it will help you more effectively communicate with them about tour dates or special appearances in their city. It’s the truth.
  16. Don’t cut and paste blanket emails to your fans. Be authentic even if it takes you longer — you will be much more successful this way. Fans will tell a friend about the personal email they received from you and viral marketing will begin. Split up the emails and get everyone in the band involved.
  17. Send an email to fans in a city you just played in and thank them for their support. Have a local connection in your email to those fans and tell them what you did in or thought about their city besides your show.
If we missed something that you have found to be successful in your email marketing experience, please comment below!
About MusicNomad
MusicNomad is a musicians advocate organization that tries to make sense of the vast and fragmented music industry through researching, interviewing, reviewing and ranking thousands of companies in the music industry and filtering the ones that can really help musicians. They then do write ups on the companies, rank them and give you a direct link to their website. There are also tips, news and articles for musicians to explore. The website is free to use and focuses on fighting for the underdog, independent musicians!

IRIS Announces Partnership With MobBase To Create iPhone Apps For Indie Labels & Artists

We’re happy to announce that IRIS Distribution, the digital music distribution and marketing company that represents many of the world’s leading independent record labels, has partnered with MobBase to provide affordable and cutting-edge iPhone applications to its labels and their artists. MobBase is the new service that makes it easy for musicians and record labels to create an iPhone app.

“IRIS is always looking for new ways to help our labels get music in the hands of fans, and to enable artists to build audiences and careers,” said Bryn Boughton, chief marketing officer. “Mobile applications are quickly becoming a ‘must have’ part of the label and musician tool kit, and MobBase provides one of the best, fastest and most inexpensive ways for our labels to create a custom iPhone application.”

MobBase, a service of MixMatchMusic, is a low cost way for musicians to share music, photos, videos, tweets, news, information about shows, merchandise and other content with fans on their mobile devices.

“IRIS presents labels and their artists with a fantastic array of tools and services to help them connect with fans,” said Charles Feinn, CEO and co-founder of MixMatchMusic, MobBase’s developer. “A custom MobBase iPhone app is a perfect complement to these tools and services – it will help labels promote their acts and help artists engage fans and ultimately, get their music heard and tickets to their shows sold.”

Mobile music marketing
MobBase gives artists a mobile, interactive fan club, storefront, merchandise table, and more.  The MobBase application is highly customizable, so artists can pick and choose the content they offer to fans and also the way that content is presented.

A custom iPhone app for as little as 50 cents a day
MobBase is priced to be accessible to any artist. It costs just $20 to get going and many artists will never pay more than $15 a month to deliver music, photos, videos, tweets, info about gigs, merch and more to hundreds of fans.

About IRIS Distribution
Founded in 2003, IRIS is the only remaining independent digital distribution company in the US. The company operates a wholly owned branded entertainment and music marketing agency, BlinkerActive.  IRIS boasts a strong roster of leading independent labels from all genres and distributes to over 450 digital outlets in 85 territories around the world.  Distribution and marketing clients include Ninja Tune, kranky, K Records, Palmetto, Scion A/V, CMH, BYO, Surfdog, Chemikal Underground, Metropolis, EMI, Projekt and more. The company is based in San Francisco and New York City.