by stinson on May 19, 2010
by stinson on April 21, 2010
I‘m a fairly regular reader of Hypebot, and today I came across post there, Skybox Offers Their Fans An Alternative to Filesharing, which covers a dialogue Skybox opened with their fans offering a win/win proposal to those who download their record from filesharing sites.
They suggest that anyone who likes the album pick a favorite song, and email it to 10 friends. On their website Skybox supports this request by including share buttons on all the music players on the site. Here’s the original post on the Skybox website: http://skyboxmusic.com/2010/04/filesharing-ok-cool-but-do-us-a-favor-too/
I had never heard of Skybox, but any band who understands fan engagement and puts their fans first (which Skybox is clearly doing), always gets me intrigued. So I popped over to their site to listen to some music. The first track I came across was In a Dream, which they were offering as a download in exchange for an email address. I did, in fact, like the song, so right then-as I was completely inspired by what the band is doing on a fan engagement level, as well as backing that up with good music-I decided that I needed to take them up on their offer and help them share their music. At the bottom of this post you will find the music player embedded. [continue reading…]
by stinson on March 30, 2010
So you look at all these bands who have had hit songs through the decades. And how often do you come across a band from years ago that you really didn’t know about? Not only that, but come to find out that this band had a significant hit that you also didn’t really know about?
So how does that happen? How can a band have a hit, but you never knew about it? And if that’s the case, who exactly determines that this unfamiliar music is a hit?
Take the artist Aretha Franklin for example. Certainly she had some huge hits (Respect, anyone?). But Aretha Franklin’s music may not be your thing.
Or maybe it’s Nirvana that you don’t like, but they certainly had hits too.
Then there are bands which are a little more obscure, like Catherine Wheel or The Chameleons. They had huge hits (Black Metallic and Second Skin respectively), and a huge following.
So if either A) you knew about a particular artist all along, but didn’t care to pay attention, or B) it slipped through the cracks and you simply never knew about it before, then just how did it become a hit, and who determined that it was a hit?
[continue reading…]
