Brenden Mulligan

As you all know, we announced Monday that ArtistData had been acquired by Sonicbids. As a welcome gift, Sonicbids has made all the features on ArtistData free for the entire summer! Until September 1, you can use the entire site for free, so get in there and install the ArtistData Platinum bundle, which has all our features included! You won't be asked for a credit card or anything. You just get the goods, all for free.

So what happens September 1?  At that point, you will have the ability to choose whether or not you want to keep using the premium features. The free features will stay 100% free. The premium features will be offered as part of Sonicbids' premium upgrades, but will be offered at a substantially reduced cost. Seriously, it's going to be a hell of a deal.

So get in there an add some bling to your ArtistData account, courtesy of Sonicbids!

I'm thrilled to announce this morning that ArtistData has been acquired by Sonicbids! My note about the acquisition can be found here, as well as details regarding a summer of free ArtistData!

As we approach the milestone of sending over 3.75 million updates on behalf of our users, we wanted to make sure we were giving all our amazing partner sites the credit they deserve. There were a few missing on our network page, and today we updated them. The ones we added are Bandzoogle, LiveMusicMachine, Mobbase, MobileRoadie, Scout66, SeeJoeRock, Songkick (descriptions after the break).

We have a lot more sites working on integrating ArtistData and also have a really special announcement in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

We've known these guys for a long time, and we're excited to announce that today our integration with Mobile Roadie went live!

Mobile Roadie, "The simple and inexpensive way for anyone to build and manage their own iPhone and Android Apps" has been making great strides in the mobile space. It's a small team with a focused product, which is the best way to do it. I could go on, but the video below sums it up best:

I recently did an interview with Chris from Bandzoogle, one of our content partners, about social networking tips for musicians. You can read the whole interview on Bandzoogle's blog. Some excerpts are below:

Can you share some tips for how musicians can best use social networks (and ArtistData) to engage their fans?

(Readers, I swear that I wasn't paid by Bandzoogle to say this.) I think the most effective use of social media right now in the current landscape is to go to where the fans are (Facebook, Twitter) and engage them there in a way where you can bring them back to your website, where you can make them a real fan by capturing their email address and engaging them on a deeper level. Post news on Twitter that a new track is available for listening on your website, not your MySpace page. Drive people to the property you own, not someone else's network. Post part of a blog on Facebook that links back to your site for the complete version.

As far as how to capture them when they're on your site, the best way is give them something for free in exchange for additionally loyalty (that could mean for them to tell their friends about you, give you their email address, etc...). It's okay to give away a few tracks. You need to give them something to chew on. When they're more interested, you can monetize them through buying more music, merch, and concert tickets.

This doesn't mean you can't spend time nurturing audiences on these social networks. Artists should spend time on there meeting fans, posting gigs, encouraging fans to share information to their friends and followers, etc... The connection is made on these networks because that's where the fans are and they're already talking. But when the time is right, take that next step and get them to connect with you outside the walls of the networks.

Oh, and one other piece of advice. Only do what you want to do. Some musicians don't like the concept of Twitter and have no interest sharing more about themselves. If that's how you are, don't do it! Don't fake it, don't ask someone to tweet for you, etc... It's important that the musicians are real on these channels. If they try to fake it, it'll do more harm than good.

Read the whole interview on Bandzoogle's blog

ArtistData is happy to announce that Bandzoogle has been added to the network! Bandzoogle recently announced some major upgrades to their platform, and allowing artists to update their Bandzoogle websites from ArtistData was one of the new features. Wahoo! We're happy they've embraced our platform and look forward to making it even easier to manage your official site! Welcome Bandzooglers!

To activate this connection, just go to Tools > Profile Sync > Bandzoogle and enter your BZ Site Identifier. Here are instructions on how to find it.

The other day we relaunched ArtistData, along with a set of screencasts to help everyone understand how to use the new site. One area that we didn't cover well enough is music organizations. Today, we put this video together that gives a general overview of music organization accounts. It's embedded below, as well as available on our screencast page.



We have gotten a lot of requests for discounts for music organizations. We're going to design a solution for that and release it later this year. Thanks so much for all the feedback!

Today, we're happy to welcome LiveMusicMachine and Scout66 to our network. More info on each site is below.

LiveMusicMachine
LiveMusicMachine's booking widget can easily be placed and shared almost anywhere on the Internet including your MySpace profile, Facebook fan page and YouTube videos. Our widget includes a calendar with three distinct, interchangeable views: gig list, interactive tour map, and artist availability calendar and enables fans to check schedules, buy tickets, get directions and, most importantly, book bands directly. Our agent account dashboard allows you to manage multiple artists’ calendars and offers with a single username.

Scout66
Scout66 premiere site for live concert reviews from the most decisive component in the performing arts – the audience. Never before has the relationship between the audience and performer been so important. This is a back to the future concept, a grassroots movement empowering the audience and the performer, prolifically illustrating that indie music is for all ages and all styles of music.

Today we released the single largest revision to the ArtistData platform. For the past few months we've been reworking and improving the user interface to develop a framework that will allow us to drastically expand our site's capabilities. We are thrilled to share it with everyone today.

Our old user interface was suitable when we initially launched in 2008, but we quickly outgrew it. Today's release is an interface that has a stronger foundation to support future growth, and we believe it is an easier site to use based on your valuable, ongoing feedback. 

So, what's new at ArtistData.com?

That's right. We've finally done it. Starting today you can use ArtistData to post events directly to Facebook Fan Pages!!! We wanted to roll this out for the holidays, but remember it's still in beta and you might encounter some bugs. And stay tuned .. in early 2010, we'll be releasing some big changes to ArtistData. We can't wait for you to see what we've been working on. We wish you a happy, safe holiday season. And as always, thank you for your support.