Music Related Links
Sunday, April 12th, 2009 | Education, Entertainment, Music Related Links, Social Media Networking, Tips / Learning, Useful | 9 Comments
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Last Updated 2010-02-08
The South African Music Industry community, is slowly waking up to the powers of internet marketing and starting to utilise the services that Twitter has to offer.
By Following¹ these musicians on Twitter, you can read about their upcoming gigs and last minute cancellations or venue changes, band website updates, their new blog posts, new music releases, studio sessions, new music they are working on, concerts and touring, get their links to free downloads and to the minute news updates.
I can’t think of a simpler way for bands to keep in touch with their fan-base. . .
List of South African music-related Tweeple² on Twitter thus far (including artists and bands that have relocated elsewhere):
- The Rudimentals: Afro-Ska Reggae Band (Cape Town)
- GoldFish: Electronic Duo
- 7th Son: Rock Reggae Band (Cape Town) › Continue reading
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 | Celebration, Friendships, Fun, General+Life Stuff, Music Related Links, Opinion, Personal, Relationships | 2 Comments
My inbox rolling with party invites and reminders for events happening around Cape Town for New Years Eve.
What’s the big deal anyways? I used to be big on the celebrating – guess I have outgrown that now. I used to go to Synergy parties that used to be held at the River Club in Observatory. Those were fun parties. Kinda like what Vortex is doing these days having Bands, Trance etc – many options not just one genre.
Synergy used to › Continue reading
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 | Music Related Links, Opinion, Questions, Rants, thoughts | 1 Comment
If you love listening to music, and if you really are quite in touch with the music industry, if you’re an artist or part of a band, even if you just have gigs and gigs of music saved to your hard drive, please take a moment to just read through my thoughts …
Do you :
- support local upcoming artists
- purchase their original releases
- own any of their branded clothing items
- pay the required fee to gain entrance to their gigs
- make illegal copies of artist’s music
- love finding music available for download and its free
So which would you prefer if told to opt for either Paying a Hefty entrance fee just to see a band that you actually just wanna hear and brag to your friends that you saw them/that artist OR staying home, using the entrance fee money, get more bandwidth, download the music free off the internet.
err…
I am curious about your thoughts…
I was reading through this blog post that says “the plan to distribute music from the Big Four major labels — Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music — plus Ioda, Naxos, The Orchard and about 150,000 indie labels and bands, all for free…”.
Prepaid digital music accounts
I have/had an account online, I purchase(d) credits/points, browse through the album lists, chose what I wanted to buy but had the option to preview the songs before I finally decided to purchase the album using my prepaid credits/points. I then download it, save to HD or disc and legally own it?
So yes you will argue about bandwidth costs if you are like me a living in South Africa, the place with crap internet connection. You will probably also be arguing about the quality of the sound? Psshh! Some free tracks online are waaay better than some gigs I have attended with the poorest sound engineering out there! This initiative is a good one. You still get to listen to the artist’s music before purchasing it? That’s a good thing not so? At the same time the artists gain more exposure this way.
Sharing online
How else would I share the artist’s link to ‘a preview / the full track’ with my 300 online friends or share it to my feed; how would I if I am sitting with an original CD and its glossy cover in my hands. No one mass mail’s this info to their friends? No I love my gigs; I love the crowd atmosphere at the gigs; I love the fact that four of the biggest music label companies have decided to distribute new albums by streaming entire tracks, for free, online and actual CDs, and satisfying the needs of both artist, label and listener 
Freedom of choice
I feel almost like my independence has been given back to me? As in, choice to purchase the original CD, steal from a friend better known as making illegal pirate copies of the CD, freely download or minimal online payments for tracks or only recently, just stream the entire album … for free!
The Universal label has just released Kaiser Chiefs‘ album Off with their heads on last.fm . Yes it is only a stream but at least the sound gets out there!
I was thrilled to read that Oasis was also planning to release their latest album for free; I was not so thrilled to read that the CD entitled Dig Out Your Soul was available on their Myspace page.
Last.fm
Are the founders of last.fm fulfilling their mission TRULY to have every track out there available to the listener for free? If you give it for free, there won’t be any piracy statistics to worry about?
What’s the catch?
Exposure to the world and being exposed to advertising … surely you can figure the rest for yourself. The more people know of you, the higher the number of people would take an interest in you, the higher the need would be to see you live, and then thats the catch…for the fan that is…
Catch the fans
Fans (in my opinion) would then pay any amount of money to see you live. So you make your money back by charging ridiculous amounts at the entrance to your gigs?
Reality
A typical example for South Africans:
Most and probably in fact all artists from South Africa has a profile page on Myspace. Most artists and bands in fact only have a profile there! Yes fair enough if you not from here then advise from this site saying “Get your music heard by fans…on a social networking site like Myspace“ would not be in vain.
If viewing this page from South Africa, given the crappy bandwidth we have, I wait no less than a minute to see the entire page. Next time I won’t go view your page cause I know it takes so long to load? No what means does that band or artist now have to inform me as the fan of anything let alone let me hear their latest song produced? None!
The value
The value is not in the amount of money the fan pays for your music, its not how many overseas offers you get or how many record deals come your way, the value is the amount of exposure you can get. The internet should not be used as a medium to sell more albums but rather to attract new fans for live shows… after all, the bands and artists are meant to entertain?
An after thought for the opposer of my thinking above … This link is only for people who think that free music is taken without the artist’s consent and therefore considered illegal. It is for the narrow minded that do not believe in free music because they will not be rewarded for the efforts!!! Have fun!
Sunday, October 26th, 2008 | Celebration, Entertainment, Fun, Music Related Links | No Comments
After a miserable day yesterday where nothing was going right, I made
my way to the ‘Fresh ta Death’ party in Woodstock. If you are familiar
with the size of Don Pedro’s in Roodebloem road; you’d be a bit worried
about pulling such crowd of friends into such a tiny place especially
if its a farewell party to a well known person! Controversy leaves the
Cape for USA later this month and hip hop heads, and the crowd that
tags with those people all joined in to bid her farewell.
I’m not feeling so fresh right now and I do feel like I am dying; head
sore, eyes still tired, nausea etc – yes too much alcohol. The party
was SO much fun and I saw all the familiar faces I normally see on
Facebook and bumped into friends that I forgot about (honestly).
The music selectors included:
- Eazy – Faculty of HipHop
- Azhul – Beatbanger extraordinaire
- Earl Scratch- Battle king
- Erefaan Pearce – Mixology master
- Tyrone Paulsen – GHFM
- Intelligent Design – USA
- Phax Mulder – Germany
There will be loads of pictures posted later … pictures up on my Facebook profile only.
Monday, October 20th, 2008 | Fun, Music Related Links | No Comments
Went to a gig last night in Palmer Road Muizenberg – thanks to openstreetmap, we were able to find the place. The motivation to get to that particular road was to see Blaqpearl live… My, my, my! Yes that expression means that I am/was blown away.
It’s similar to lower main road in Observatory crossed with a bit of Kalk Bay, trendy, tiny, little (I could have sworn) cobble road, neatly tucked away behind those horrid looking buildings when driving along Beach Road, in Muizenberg…
I must go there again some time but during day time!
The gig was held at the Wellbeing Cafe’ / Coffee Shop, that’s no. 37 in Palmer Road. My understanding is that this is an organic food store. They also offer massage therapy sessions, herbal teas and much more. Upon arrival, me, dressed in my three quarter pants, my summer takkies, a hoodie half zipped down, a peak cap and my hair hanging down lose and big and curly – I then compared myself to, I swear, every female in that place.
They were all wearing a scarf on their heads – the type that gypsies / rastafarian females would wear. Tied into a knot at the back of the head…I still don’t get it; there was however quite a bit of foreign Greek type sounding lingo all around me? The granny in the lounger convinced me that the neibourhood must be of some greek or something decent? Loads of victorian style buildings.
There was another store that I also wouldn’t mind checking out called Organics Alive at no. 42.
I found a picture of Palmer Road to give you an idea…
- Palmer Road in Muizenberg -
Picture courtesy of:
http://muizenbergdaily.blogspot.com
Saturday, October 4th, 2008 | Celebration, Education, Fun, Music Related Links, Rants | No Comments
So… my leave has finally come to an end. I never take my leave for durations of longer than two weeks at a time. I just get SO bored the last few days even if it is just two weeks; also I fear not being able to get back into the swing of things when it’s time to return . See, Anastacia enjoys her sleep and would like nothing other than waking up at 11am daily, chill in bed on my laptop until say 12pm when the hunger kicks in, eat something and then go chill outside, lay in the sun, in my hammock, surf the net on my laptop until say 2pm…do you see where this is going? Nowhere yes. Unproductive, Inactive, Idle minded, Wasted.
Today is Saturday 4 October 2008; to think that today was the first day I started working at the university back in 2002. Six years of accumulating half my annual leave left me with some compulsory leave to take this year. Which explains my feelings of boredom now because I already had my leave in May this year to visit my mother up in Johannesburg.
I remember that day, Friday 4 October 2002 as if it were just last week. They wanted me to start working earlier but I already had a hike planned for that week. The ‘Die Hell‘ trail was my last BIG hike that I done since and I really wish to get back into that.
So Monday its back to the hell hole for me. I was contemplating whether or not I should get the preparation work started or not but instead I chose to have some more me time.
By the time that you read this post, I will be rocking the daisies out of their roots in Darling. This is the second annual eco-friendly music festival but it will be a first for me to attend. The bands/artists that I look forward to seeing are 340ml, 7th Son, Eagle Eye Cherry, Tidal Waves and much more.
On Monday I went shopping with @ch00n to Builders Warehouse and picked up all sorts of crafty things there. This included mosaic tiles, the glue, clear varnishing paint, wood, paint brushes, fabric. . .you will have to wait and see what ideas have been sparked hence the urge for all those materials…
We also popped in at Game Stores to pick up the much needed camping gear for the Rocking the Daisies Festival. Had this been a Vortex we were attending, I don’t think we would have opted to buy an eco-friendly camping stove. The Bio-ethanol gel is poured into the stove and lit and is flammable but eco-friendly.
As any other blogger, geek, web addict on this planet would do (assuming), if they were to go to a camp they take along their laptops…so then these questions would be raised:
1) How do you power it up if your laptop if the battery life has depleted? an inverter of course
2) How would you connect to the internet? #Skyrove wifi connection …
3) How would you charge the cell phone, (flip stop asking me SO many questions!) Wind up torch and cell battery charger if need be
So enough of this blogging thing already cause this post is making me even later to get to the festival … I’m posting at 4pm so that I can really be there by the time you read this … We taking the Elantra so wish us luck in actually getting there cause I hate this car! AND IT JERKS! but its taken us to Durban and back many times…so ya…crossing fingers..
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 | Entertainment, Fun, Music Related Links, Review, Social Media Networking, Tips / Learning, Useful | Comments Off
I was messing around on last.fm looking at all the various APIs , badges , charts etc when I found this little treasure…
It is called Last.fm Spiral and gives you a visual image (chart) of your weekly artists you have listened to…
I always knew that I had very little compatibility with half my friends on my last.fm list. All the years I was never able to answer the question: “So what music do you like” and the usual is: “A variety” and these days I just refer people to my profile … so I thought I would spend some time there today pimping it up. . .
My Spiral:
2008_10_2_anaschoons.jpg (JPEG Image, 790×819 pixels) – Scaled (72%)
You can then paste the url of your spiral into Your Account Settings in the section ‘
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Dan Gilreath
malgalin on 
