New Features

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.

A few weeks ago we announced the alpha release of our RSS Import feature. Today, it's moved out of alpha into beta, and we encourage you to check it out. To celebrate this transition, we're making an important addition to it.

Starting today, when we import your news and blog entries and send them to your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace Status, official news feed, etc..., the links posted will send users to your original post! Initially we had them linked to ArtistData, but our goal is to not get in the way. You can check out an example from an ArtistData user here.


For those who post entries manually into ArtistData, you will see a new field called "Direct Link" where you can enter where you want fans to go. If you don't enter anything, we'll create a page for them to look at.

This addition will be coming soon for shows as well! It's just us trying to get out of the way and let you control what your fans see with minimal effort.

Our goal has always been to make it so you don't have to enter information twice. Today we're building on that, allowing you to sync the existing blog you maintain with your ArtistData account by automatically importing any new posts to that blog. You simply enter the feed URL into ArtistData and shortly after you post to your existing blog, we will import your entry into ArtistData. Once it's in ArtistData, it's syndicated to our network. You can also post it to MySpace by clicking the new "Post to MySpace" button within each news and blog entry page.



Click on your News and Blog tab to see the Import box listed at the top. The first set of items you import will not be syndicated to our network, but anything that follows will.

NOTE: This is an ALPHA FEATURE RELEASE. Especially at the beginning, we anticipate some formatting problems and bugs. Please be patient through the process. This was a heavily requested feature and we wanted to make it available as soon as we could. And remember, this is for news and blog, NOT SHOWS.

We've recently added another small change to the Dashboard that will hopefully keep things much more organized. When entering a show, you can now choose the type of show you are posting. This way, if you are entering studio time (which a lot of artists do), we know not to send that to Jambase or our other live concert partners. You can also define whether the show is a public or private event.

If used properly, this will speed up the time it takes for shows to get to our partner sites. Let us know if you have questions.

For the past few months we've made it possible to have ArtistData post to your Twitter and Facebook profile whenever you added a show, news, or blog entry. It also updates your followers/friends the day of your show, reminding them where and when you are playing. Yesterday, we added support for MySpace Status, which initially had a bug but seems to be working well now.

Today, we're introducing a new way to use these connections. Instead of limiting you to only use this update feature for new blogs, shows, and news, we had added a Status Tab to our Dashboard. Now, you can send out updates to these three sites with whatever message you'd like to post! Just click the tab, enter a message, and within a few minutes you'll see it on all three sites! We hope you enjoy it!

Answers to questions we know you're wondering:

• When will we be able to update Facebook Fan Pages? We are working on this. We had it working last week and then Facebook changed something so we need to re-engineer it a bit. But we're trying to get it out for you.
• iPhone app on the way to update status with? It's in our future, but not anytime soon. We are discussing building a mobile site where you can easily update status. More on that soon.

Enjoy! Expect more features rolled out in the next few days!

UPDATE: Unfortunately, it looks like MySpace is having some issues, and you might see an "Oops" error when setting this up. We are working with them on getting this fixed, and will update you when it is.

UPDATE 2: All is working properly.

As of this morning, you can set up ArtistData to post updates to your MySpace Status, just the way we update your Twitter and Facebook status! This has been a heavily requested feature, and we're excited to offer it. Go to your publish and promote tab to set it up!

This means every time you post a show, news, or blog to ArtistData, we will also update your status on MySpace with the info! And as with the other sites, we'll also post day-of-show reminders to your MySpace friends making sure they know where you're playing each day.

This is the first in a set of feature releases coming over the next two weeks of our donation campaign!

ArtistData is happy to roll out a feature today that has been on the list for a long time: Multi-user support. Now, you can grant access to your organization or artist account and allow other people to log in and add, edit, and view the info for your artist(s)!

All users can be given specific permissions, so for example you can give your tour manager access to only the tour tab. Or you can give your street team blogger access to just the blog, but not to the Publish or Tour tab. It's pretty customizable, and pretty awesome. You can access this feature by clicking on "Users" in the header bar of the Dashboard.

We really hope you guys get some good use out of this. Go check it out, and let us know what you think. As with every feature we release, we push this out as soon as we can so there might be a few bugs left. Just let us know and we'll get it all fixed asap.

Enjoy!

Today we deployed a redesign for the pages users see when they click on ArtistData Twitter and Facebook status links. The most important part of this for our artists is that now when fans click the links from their mobile phones, they are shown a mobile version of the information. A small change, but this should make it much easier for fans to quickly access the info they need.

Check out this link for a Victoria Vox show to see the new design on your computer and mobile device.

Many more improvements to these pages to come.

We've had RSS and XML feeds for your shows available for a while now, and tons of artists are using them to populate information on their personal websites and beyond. Today we've added feeds for News and Blog as well. To access, simply navigate to the Publish and Promote tab and scroll down to "Keep official websites up to date". As always, let us know if you find any bugs. Enjoy!

Starting today, when you post news and blogs in your ArtistData account, not only will that information be sent to Twitter and your official news feed, but also have the opportunity to be posted to your MySpace profile! After you add a news or blog entry, you will be asked if you want it posted to your MySpace profile. You can have it posted as a bulletin or a blog.

We hope you like this addition. Now, we're going back to work continually trying to simply your life in other ways.