Nick Edelstein

Posts Tagged ‘itunes’

Creative Twitter Hurdles Simfy on FB

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Creative Commons guidant les contributeurs

Some very interesting things happened online today.Twitter launched a photo sharing service. Simfy beat Spotify to Facebook. Facebook’s behavior re: Pages brought some artists to reconsider their methods of fan interaction. Creative Commons is now on YouTube. Overall it was a great day of progress, introspection and optomism.

The Twitter photo sharing thing doesn’t suprise me, honestly. NPR did an exposé on Twitpic’s Terms and Conditions clause recently, which generated a bit of negative buzz. Even Ellen DeGeneres announced she would never TwitPic again. So naturally Twitter has seized an opportunity to play hero. More suprising is Simfy! Talk about the underdog. Nobody predicted this: German music streaming service Simfy launched their Facebook player just a week after news broke that Spotify was working on FB integration. Awesome.

So, is Facebook commandeering mid-level artists’ Pages? Some successful, non-major-label artists such as Zoe Keating noticed their Pages have been reclassified (not replaced) as “Community Pages.” The official status they previously held has now been granted to a new, Wikipedia-fed Page. While it’s not clear whether the Wiki Pages were auto-generated or made by FB staff, this mystery doesn’t stop at reclassification. When I type “Zoe Keating” into the search bar, her Page doesn’t even show up! That’s right. When I do a blanket search for her name, select “show all results” and narrow the search to Pages, it does not appear. Since it’s been a few hours, this is unlikely due to propagation delays. Weird. Unsettling.
Update: Keating’s Page was restored to “Official” status hours later, after hundreds of emails and tweets and comments had been published. Other affected artists are still struggling. Luckily this did not affect any of the Pages owned by NESS Records.

In other / better news, the creative commons license - first discovered by this artist via the European community Tribe Of Noise – has now become so mainstream that YouTube offers it as an alternative to standard copyright. YouTube announced today that it now supports Creative Commons licenses and launched a huge library of 10,000 CC videos (read the official press release here). Awesome, yes. In no way do I wish to diminish the awesomeness. However, this illustrates one HUGE way that major-label artists, major news orgs, etc. will be and have always been separated from us independants. Those 10,000 videos in the library. They are from major networks. Part of the launch, the coverage, the hype. With me? No? Look at iTunes: major artists get iTunes Exclusives and other special extras. Major artists get first crack at major breakthroughs in social media and tech. Dave Matthews had a custom Page and vanity URL before any indie artist, for example. This will forever be a hurdle that indie artists attempt to jump.

I fondly remember the days when being on iTunes was impressive. It was brand new … most people still didn’t have iPods … smartphones were only found in the hands of businessmen. Telling people your music was on iTunes gave you instant street cred and often times, before you could finish uttering the sentence, you’d converted strangers into fans. Now, everyone and their brother has their music on iTunes. Who knows if an opportunity like that will present itself again?

… now, who doesn’t wanna watch Bill Cosby playing piano on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno?!? http://bit.ly/cosbyonleno

Tags: Bill Cosby, Creative Commons, facebook, itunes, Jay Leno, piano, player, Simfy, Spotify, streaming, The Grooves, The Tonight Show, tribe of noise, twitter, video, YouTube, Zoe Keating
Posted in Press | No Comments »

YOTO on iTunes

Saturday, September 18th, 2010

cover art by David Sherer Excited to announce that my new record, Year Of The Ox is now on iTunes. Click here to purchase!

It can also be had on Bandcamp, CD Baby and via most other retailers. If you subscribe and/or use a service that does not carry my music (and you wish it did) please notify me using the Contact page of this website. Thank you!

Tags: Bandcamp, cd baby, itunes, ox, year of the ox, YOTO
Posted in Studio NEws | No Comments »

New Release: Low Scene Woman

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

My friends, I am not one of those artists who is afraid to praise “the competition.” I know good music when I hear it, and I give credit when it’s due. High Tone Shelter is one of the best (if not the best) Funky Bluesy Rock bands. Every member of the band is extremely talented – OK, they’re my friends - but this isn’t bias talking. Click here to see for yourself. I was invited to play Hammond organ on “Low Scene Woman,” the 9th track on Redemption Day (iTunes). I urge you to download, listen five times over, burn copies for friends, and join their mailing list. It’s that good.

Tags: arts, band, Blues, funk, Hammond organ, high tone shelter, indie, itunes, low scene woman, music, organ, redemption day, rock
Posted in Press, Studio NEws | No Comments »

iPhone Game Soundtrack

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

Life is full of suprises, indeed!
I learned on Sunday that my song “Happy Trail” was used as the soundtrack to a Flash puzzle game The game is Colorous: A Color Odyssey by Fabio Cristi and is available in iTunes App Store.
There is also a free “lite” version for those who like to try-before-buy.

Tags: Adobe Flash, App Store, colorous, Downloads, fabio, game, iPhone, ipod, itunes, Puzzle, Puzzle video game, Soundtrack, Video game
Posted in Press | No Comments »

iPhone app is public!

Friday, August 7th, 2009

After much anticipation, and waiting FOREVER to be “approved” by Apple staff, we proudly introduce …

“NEbula Music” – FREE app for iPhone and iPod Touch!

Lots of folks have asked, “what does it do?” to which I reply, “it’s sort of like a mini portal into the band’s universe. It has photos, videos, audio (er, songs!) and GPS directions to every gig we play!” Dig it: