art is the new religion

Why I love Amazon mp3's Twitter account

The subject of how businesses are using Twitter in a smart way is one that's near and dear to my heart.  I can count on my fingers the number of times I've ever clicked on an online ad, yet as a consumer I'm voluntarily following a few Twitter accounts used by companies to promote their products.  Yeah, it's surprising to me too.

One of my favorites is Amazon mp3's Twitter account.  They tweet once a day in the form of a Daily Deal.  Each tweet lists an artist and album title, the regular price of that mp3 download, a one-day-only sale price, followed by the link to buy.  Genius!

Their tweets put the title of an album in front of my eyes each day (a bonus for someone who is busy but obsessed with music), then give me incentive to buy right away.  And what a tremendous promotion for the artist!  The albums are often older ones, so I'm not sure how many artists pay for this kind of promotion, or whether labels are cutting deals with Amazon to promote their artists.  Either way, it's a win-win-win: for artists & their labels, for Amazon mp3's business and for mp3 buyers.

I rarely purchase music these days - my Rhapsody subscription pretty much has me covered - but today's deal inspired me to grab Dolly Parton's Little Sparrow, a spare, bluegrass-inspired release from 2001 that features some interesting covers, including Restless Heart's "Tender Lie".

The people who are using Twitter creatively and successfully right now in these companies are true pioneers.  I can just hear their higher ups, both in corporations and even in independent businesses, questioning the benefit of using Twitter and threatening at any moment to pull the plug on their "experiment".  Right now only 5,487 people are following Amazon mp3's Twitter account, but if the plug isn't pulled, that number will only grow as more people inevitably catch on to Twitter.  I hope they don't give up, because their efforts actually are influencing my purchases.

Related reading:

• I follow Powell's Books' Twitter account (read about why I love Powell's)
• My post about Restless Heart
• My post about why I love Rhapsody
• Follow Amazon mp3 on Twitter

SNORGLLL: BitchBuzz.com

Stop what you're doing and click over to BitchBuzz's Snorgle Alert! Our Favorite Dog Sweaters on Etsy.  The cuteness therein is so intense that it's almost stressful.  I think the little bee-dog is my favorite.  Laurie, Ollie may need one of these hoodies. 

On Etsy: Buzzy Bumble Pure Wool Sweater & Small Hound Hoodie

The Buzzy Bumble Sweater comes from Mr Soft Top's Etsy shop.  I have to commend Mr Soft Top's choices in models.  If I can't fulfill my dream of someday getting a French bulldog, I would gladly take a Brussels Griffon as a second runner-up.

 
Cheers to my girl Cate Sevilla on her recent launch of BitchBuzz.  Please hop on over to check it out for smart, funny posts on everything from lists of snorgly dog sweaters to love advice to tech talk from a female perspective (and not in that "I'm talking about tech to get attention from dudes" kind of way).  My favorite posts are currently coming from the BitchBuzz Style page.  Great work, Cate!!

Guitar Hero Roadies

Fightin' fire with fire

When it comes to listening to the radio and discovering music, for my money I'm choosing subscription, on demand and online.  This is not just because I've had two stereos stolen out of my sad little car.  It's because it's the only way to hear music that's programmed by people who love music, and not essentially by advertisers who need to sell Axe Body Spray to 16 year old dudes.  Or whatever they advertise on commercial radio these days, I wouldn't actually know.

Live from the archives

Anyone who has read this blog before knows that, while I love discovering new music, lately I'm as much or more interested in discovering older stuff.  Music blogging and online radio stations are generally associated with breaking new bands and starting trends, but I'm glad to see there are some sources to rediscover older music online as well.

For instance, Sippey clued me in to another good thing happening in the world of internet radio:  New York's legendary WNEW is broadcasting on HD2 at 102.7 and streaming online.

This station isn't going to help you discover new music, but you can hear pretty amazing interviews and live performances from their decades of archives.  I just heard The Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed" (yay!) sandwiched between two of the more annoying songs by good bands - "The Weight" by The Band and "Elevation" by U2 (a mole in a hole, really?). But then I heard a snippet of an interview with Billy Joel from over 20 years ago, followed by a live performance.  Since I've been listening they've run a clip of Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull talking about smoked salmon and also a fantastic live performance of "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads from '83.  See, I find that interesting.  They're also doing a good job of updating their blog, talking about new and older bands from Billy Bragg to Tokyo Police Club.

Hot off the presses

Looking for a fun way to discover new music?  Add new_music on Twitter.  It's a feed of Pitchfork and Metacritic reviews rated 7 or higher, courtesy of Michael Young.  He was inspired by an old New York Magazine article that talked about people who only “Listen To Anything rated over 8.0 on Pitchforkmedia.com.”  Michael Young, I like the way you think.

Blog It

I'm interrupting my usual stream of music ramblings and dog photos to tell you a little bit about what's going on at my job.

Over here at 6A HQ lots of folks have been hard at work on the creation and launch of the new Facebook application Blog It Powered By TypePad. In fact, I wrote this while I was logged into Facebook, and was able to post it to my Vox, my TypePad and my Twitter all at once. Pretty neat.

Read all about it: http://www.typepad.com/features/blogit.html

"480 Minutes": Every Friday on BAGeL Radio

Hands up if you're in the market to discover some new music!

Lucky for you, every Friday you can tune in for eight hours of new indie rock and noise pop courtesy of DJ Ted at BAGeL Radio.  He listens to hundreds of CDs each week and hand-picks the very best to play on his internet radio station BAGeL Radio, and on Fridays he presents a live broadcast curated with the freshest stuff he's got to offer.  All of this is free of charge!  Can you even believe it?  Here's what he's got in store for you today:

"Today's '480 Minutes' show will feature new songs from The Breeders (Dayton, OH), The Wombats (1st US release, Liverpool, UK), Tapes 'n Tapes (Minneapolis, MN), The Black Keys (Akron, OH), The Black Box Rebellion (Brussels, Belgium), R.E.M. (Athens, GA), Finest Dearest (San Francisco, CA), Doctors & DealersFoals (Oxford, UK), Mono Taxi (London, UK), Cut Copy (Melbourne, Australia), Eric Avery (of Jane's Addiction, Los Angeles, CA), Moby (New York, NY), Neva Dinova (Omaha, NE), The Parlor Mob (NJ), plus Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (UK) and The Raconteurs (Detroit, MI)."

Here's Ted recording a station ID with one of my favorite humans of all time, before the X show at SXSW (more X, Ted, John & SXSW on my Flickr):

No idea what he's pointing at.  Caption, anyone?

"480 Minutes" runs live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time, and is rebroadcast on Saturday if you missed it.

• Tune in to "480 Minutes"
• Visit the BAGeL blog
• Read why SF Weekly calls Ted "the John Peel of internet radio"

That little girl is going to break that little boy's heart

The South by Southwest rock & roll and internet drama circus is coming soon to a town near me.  I've been going to SXSW for over a decade now, and it's always a very intense time.  At this point it's a convergence of past, present and future, where iterations of myself and my former lives collide in a frenzy of free beer, more music than any two ears could ever hear, and so many old and new friends all together in the same city.

One of my favorite people who I met back when I lived in Manhattan, David Poe, is arriving soon, not for the music festival but to do some of the film and political stuff he's got his hands in.  Poe's one of several people I'm excited to see, but I thought I'd share his music with you in case you hadn't heard it.

Listen to "Childbearing".  Pay special attention to the lyrics, Poe's a storyteller.

• "Childbearing" appears on David Poe's The Late Album which you can buy on Amazon.

Dschinghis Khan & Diamond Dave

On a lighter note from yesterday, here are two things that have amused me over the past 24 hours.

Will the Real Diamond Dave Please Stand Up?
Every once in a while after I write something here I'll be contacted by someone who's related to what I wrote about.  I wrote about Wainy Days and someone from My Damn Channel commented, I wrote about the CBC and someone affiliated with the station commented, Ottmar Liebert commented, and so forth.  I find this really fun and gratifying, and I'm always curious who I might hear from next.

You might recall I wrote about Diamond Dave, aka David Lee Roth, last week.  I also happened to update my Twitter page with the following:

"Discussing the differences of DLR-era Van Halen vs. the Hagar years via IM with my friend Chris in Ann Arbor."

For those of you not familiar with Twitter, it's a super simple application that lets you send very short updates to your friends telling them what you're doing.  The updates can be as mundane as "I just got back from dance class - yay!" and therefore usually not very interesting to people who don't know you.

Which is why I was delighted and amused to get this email notification in my inbox yesterday:

Clearly this is one of my friends or acquaintances having some fun with a fake account, but the Twitter notification still made me smile. 

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha - Hey!
The other thing that made me laugh was something I ran across while working this morning.  Did you know there's such a genre as historical-themed disco?

Dschinghis Khan's Wikipedia entry says the German pop group disbanded in the 80's but "has enjoyed a recent resurgence in popularity on the Internet due to the discovery of a video of them performing their hit song 'Moskau.'"  Thanks, Wikipedia, for pointing out that pretty much everyone with an internet connection has already seen this video besides me.  Well, I saw the video for the first time this morning, and it totally brightened my day and inspired an impromptu dance party here.

Ha ha ha ha ha - hey!

More Bands Should Use Twitter

I just read that the band A Fine Frenzy has been using Twitter to post updates while they're on the road.

I think this is a great idea.  It's interesting enough content for fans and it's a really low maintenance way for artists to keep in touch.  It's often difficult for an artist to find a regular and reliable internet connection while they're on the road, but everyone's got a cell phone or mobile device handy. 

I checked out A Fine Frenzy this morning and, while she's really pretty, I found the music a bit underwhelming.  Plus, the chorus to this song reminds me too much of James Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover", and I really resent anyone or anything that makes me think of James Blunt.

Google IM

Back from the dead. Actually I've just been posting to my LiveJournal. I've been meaning to transfer this blog to TypePad but I can't seem to find the time. Oh, work.

I just had to rave about Google IM. It works like any other IM, except if you have a microphone (I have one built into my laptop at work) you can call and talk to people live! So far I've tested it out with my coworkers (which is stupid because I can just walk over and talk to them in person) but I'm excited to try it out with people long distance. I'm sfist.music on Gmail so look me up, friends! You need a gmail account to join -- let me know if you need an invitation.

More later, I promise. That is, if anyone still checks this blog. (crickets)