The full interview is available at this location, read few excerpts from it below (the most practical ones, in my opinion):

What sort of tips can you give to new music bloggers and new musicians looking to establish the direction of their own blogs?

As Seth Godin recently warned, “the Internet is almost full”. Picking readers’ attention is harder and harder and harder each year and even month or week. I don’t think you need to afraid to fail though, remember that it’s all about fun (good luck if you began blogging to get rich). Experiment, try things that no one or only few have done before, see the results and either stick to the new direction or try something new again. Your goal is to stand out against the crowd of blogs in your niche, so experimenting by itself will do a lot for you.

If you are a musician, of course just blog in any way you can, even if your grammar skills suck. Don’t do it for the sake of being trendy, do it for fun. Keep your posts short if you are not wordy (most readers will appreciate that!), but say something cool each time you leave a post. You are a rock star, and your life IS interesting to others by default. What seems boring to you will sound spicy to others, especially your fans.

Did you do any research to learn new and more effective ways to establish and promote your blog? If so, where did you receive the best information from?

I had been spending hours reading dozens of blogs dedicated to that, like Copyblogger, ProBlogger, Blogging Tips etc. They are all great, that is fact, but these sites are mostly recycling the same information over again. I’ve learned absolutely essential things from such blogs, but also understood that there is no need to constantly keep up with each of them to get your website running great. Instead of falling into the learning trap, like I love to do, just open your online editor and write a new blog post!

Did blogging present new avenues for networking and establishing connections with people that may not have been available to you through social networks?

Yes and this is one of the most amazing things about blogging to me. Owning a blog gives great opportunities in finding new connections in your industry. Most of the people nowadays realize the influence of blogging, so you’ve got very strong chances to get a response from a high profile person even if you blog is young and small.

How can a blog network benefit new bloggers looking to establish their own brand?

If you want to build a name in your niche (and I know that you do), you should find as many blogs of the same topic as possible and start not only reading them, but constantly leaving comments in their posts, contacting their founders, asking to do guest posts. And if you do a guest post, share the best stuff you’ve got!

Networking is crucial for establishing a successful blog and spending more time on networking is one of the top priorities in my to-do list for Dotted Music.

How long did it take you to establish a ‘voice’ within your writing? Do you have any tips for new bloggers looking to find their own voice?

I think I’m still establishing my voice! Writing in English is an exciting challenge by itself, as I’m Russian. But I have to note that expressing ideas in a language different from your native one proved to be healthy. You don’t have a too wide scope for writing unnecessary stuff, and so this is my advice to everyone – keep it clear and to the point.

If interested, read more over here, and be sure to check out other articles from the series – very inspiring.

Also, using a chance, I want to apology for writing here so rarely lately. You will see a lot of interesting stuff on Dotted Music very soon, so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading :)

Photo by: Steve Wampler on Flickr

Thankfully for the more corporate enterprises, though unfortunately for the independent musician, the aforementioned big guys have started to see the benefits that can be reaped using the internet. Public broadcasting is a much wider option on the internet than it is in more conventional methods, such as television and the radio. General view counts will usually be lower on the internet, but only as long as popularity is limited. Once a broadcaster reaches a reliable, wide-reaching audience, the potential for reaching even higher view counts than television. One of the main reasons for this is that your chosen piece of music is constantly available, rather than being singularly broadcast. Much less money can be earned by showing off your music online, but once you reach a certain level of popularity the income begins to fly.

In taking advantage of this, some rather interesting stuff has found it’s way on to the internet. My main example here would be things like ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’. This is a web broadcast musical, forty-two minutes long and released in installments. Rather than just music, the internet allows the perfect tool for anything that can be created, regardless of budget, cast or preparation. Advertising in these manners is usually done entirely through word of mouth. However, since the company making the video or music file already have a considerable amount of capital behind them, they can put their work out for all sorts of international syndication. While they will undoubtedly spend much more money putting their work onto television, it could easily garner a much reduced reward when it comes to the outcome.

Creating music videos, at a low budget, is an incredibly common thing for any band or musician to indulge in. While some promoters are internet based, and can thus advertise your work all across the internet, but there are still limits to it. On the internet, everybody is on an even playing field. You put your work out there, usually in the same places as most of the more popular content, and hope that it draws attention. From there though, it’s out of your hands. The content can be passed, traded and downloaded, regardless of file size or type. This, though, is where the independent musician has an advantage.

For the independent musician, peer to peer file trading is the absolute best thing for their continuing popularity. If it’s just one or two people pooling together to throw out a track, it’s no big loss to have it traded for free between a few dozen people. For the big company throwing it’s weight around, they’re looking at a gigantic loss between the flight of thousands of free copies.

In a digital economy, big business still loses millions, while the independent musician has nothing but gains.

Tom Colohue is a fiction writer and music instructor from Blackpool, England. Though his main works are in the realms of fantasy, he also writes modern fiction for multiple websites, as well as theoretical and practical music lessons for magazines.

Read also: Effects Of The Internet: Musical Mobility, The Effects Of The Internet: Contract Giveaways, The Effects Of The Internet: “Making It”, The Effects Of The Internet: Music Distribution

After viewing the “Teutonic Terror” video, a Turkish fan entered “ACCEPT pwns” into his update box on Twitter, only to find out that someone named @pwns was now following him on Twitter. Both the Twitter story and the video spread like wildfire across the internet as the unlikely worlds of metal music and technology blogs including Gizmodo, Mashable, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times and Blabbermouth picked the story up and spread it faster than a heavy metal guitar riff. Gizmodo and Mashable detailed very simple explanations telling their readers how to exploit the security hole, while Twitter went into panic mode and to fix the “Accept Bug” by resetting everyone’s followers back to zero. Even Ashton Kutcher had as many friends as most of us… for a couple of hours.

Accept

Ashton Kutcher posted at around 1 p.m. EST, “twitter is being hacked by some turkish hacker. haha I have 0 followers.” Stacy Keibler saw the bright side of things, tweeting, “People are freaking out about Twitter followers going to zero. I look at it like this: Right now, I have just as many followers as @aplusk!” Kim Kardashian was one of the many stars who had trouble dealing with the Twitter bug aftermath, writing, “Someone hacked my twitter account and direct messaged me! They have added over 200 new people! Ughhhhh.”

The hacker certainly got an earful from celebs like Justin Bieber who sent a fair warning, “u have now pissed off over 2 million teenage girls. They are more dangerous than Navy Seals.” Elsewhere, Jim Carrey pondered, “Imagine if this hacker put his/her talent 2 some worthy use. They could 1 day have more than a false sense of superiority.”

More celebrity woes from:

@chriscolfer There has been a twitter glitch, also known as a twitch
- Chris Colfer, Actor (“Glee”)

@michellebranch Is this all part of the finale of Lost?
- Michelle Branch, Musician

@sarabareilles Oh my gosh! Twitter’s been Hacked!!!!! CALL IRONMAN.
- Sara Bareilles, Musician

@joejonas Wait.. So this means I have to “talk” to my friends… :^/
- Joe Jonas, Musician

@iamdiddy I feel so lonley!!!!! Lol :) come back soon. I can’t live without yall!!! :( can somebody send me some followers pls lol :). Let’s go!!!,
- Sean “Diddy” Combs, Rapper, Actor (“Get Him To The Greek”)

@jordansblog I semi feel like I’m back in Middle school with no friends…
- Jordan Pruitt, Singer

@markhoppus People freak out more when twitter crashes than the stock market. Next up: Senate Hearings on the Great Crash of 2010.
- Mark Hoppus, Musician (blink182)

If you are curious, Blood Of The Nations, Accept’s twelfth full-length studio album, is scheduled for a September release in Europe & North America.

The interwebs is very much a vast ocean when it comes to what can be accessed, what is out there, and how there are sites upon sites that I have yet to discover. Now as a publicist for the past six or so years, I have come a pretty long way. I was once naïve and felt that no blog could matter, no chance, no care, don’t tell me about your blog and please do not ask me to cover my artist – it won’t happen. Humans are evolving now to have one eye, as all the computer screen staring is starting to fit into natural selection. I can’t cite where I read that, but I assure I did not make it up or see it on The Simpsons. More people are reading news and gaining their information via the net, then people are reading hard, tangible media.

Photo credit: qwz on Flickr

Circa 2003, I read lots of print publications, from my university newspaper, to the local newspaper, and of course many music magazines (in high school, my walls were plastered with pages of Hit Parader). It seems in about seven years, I obtain just about all good tidbits of info – news – sports info – arts & entertainment scoops – all from the internet. Print has not completely gone the way of the buffalo though, as my reading of countless print publications has dwindled down to like three or four, including my town’s local newspaper.

Nowadays, I am happy to work with blogs in an effort to get my artist exposure. My recon will never cease in trying to find more neat music blogs on the internet now. Hell, I pitch them now. I hold them in high regard, and I have completely dropped my “any kid can have a website” attitude. Having been on a slew of blogs over the past few months, I notice all of them have a heart in common. Blogs are rather passionate, I mean case in point here, as I type this. I don’t know if this will reach one person, but you know I will finish my thoughts before wrapping this up. You know what blogs do not ask for, ads and money. Maybe they do, I don’t know, but my guess is they will be much more keen to cover an act, ad or no ad.

Rutgers University and Comm. 102 taught me about the outlawing of payola, yet, it runs rampant in so many aspects of life today. Will I provide an example here… no. But back to blogging, you know where else I have been learning about cool bands… yup… on blogs. I don’t really have any favorites but all and all, I am now a sound believer in the importance of the interwebbing of the interwebs. It’s the little guy that actually gives a shit and wants to say something – who cares if someone hears the message, it is out there and it will eventually be found.

Brian P. Rocha is a co-owner at Fresno Media, handling publicity for some heavy bands. When he is not working 25 hours a day, he dreams of taking a subway to Venus.

Originally, the website was going to be launched on January 10th, but was delayed due to technical issues. The blog, which was launched this month instead, is now up and running and is already loaded with posts on the industry and music in general. What I checked out in the first place, though, was the About and Take the Tour sections.

What the hell is it?

Tunited logo

The platform is aimed at music lovers and musicians alike, at this point being more of interest to independent artists. “It will be a level playing field where artists are not judged on which label they are signed to or even if they are signed to a label at all, but they are judged on the quality of their music and how they engage with their fans,” the description says.

Tunited promises 100% of profits from musicians’ music downloads and maximum transparency. “We’ll let you know the why, where, how and who of everything on our site and give you a context to place it in. For example, we will be showing you where every penny goes of a 79p download.”

The site is based on four cornerstones: Create, Collaborate, Promote and Enjoy. Here’s a description for the Promote section:

Now this is the section to be rinsed for all it’s worth. Tunited has a pool of industry experts, A&Rs and producers poised to give advice and feedback on Tunited’s artist roster and scout the latest talent to sign. Add to that some marketing advice, a facility to produce merch and press up CDs at a low cost as well as a contacts list for industry people and you will be set. Listeners can promote the new music they love too by recommending bands and uploading tracks to playlists and widgets.

Sounds kind of familiar, but still not bad huh?

Asked if Tunited gives any priorities to particular music genres, the service’s Managing Director Matt Stanley told Dotted Music: “Tunited will be multi genre and we will attempt to cover as many genre within the editorial as possible.” He added, however, that Indie, Rock and Dance Music are expected to be three of their biggest categories.

And here is why you may care, if you are an artists yourself: you can become one of the first 100 profile artists featured on the website when it launches. Just submit your details (and upload a demo mp3) at this page. The competition closes at midnight on 31.01.10.

If you are not a musician, this service – self-proclaimed “a music lover’s paradise” – might be your destination as well. Head to the blog for more info.

Conclusion

It’s too early to praise what haven’t been launched in full yet, time will tell. But Dotted Music stays tuned. I might get a bit more of useful comments after meeting the company at MIDEM next week.

PS: I love how Tunited is impregnated by powerful mottos. Remember I mentioned Midge‘s loud statements at the beginning? Check this out:

“With Tunited, we’re not just opening doors for new artists – we’re blowing the doors right off, Italian Job-style!”

Then MySpace came along and blew the net apart. It had been around a few years with a modicum of success, but it wasn’t til 2005-06 that it really started to earn its corn. What was different? Well, it had a music player, for a start. That meant that bands could sign up, whack a few demos or samples up there and urls were basic and easily-searchable. The simple page also featured gig dates, release news, contact information, blogs, pictures, video and crucially the ability to add the band as one of your “friends”. Befriending a band meant nailing your colours to the mast; you were not just a fan but a mate, and you could even email the group directly. That removed the record company/webmaster/management barrier in a swathe.

MySpace Music

It reached its peak in 2006, when playcounts were still a reasonably reliable indication of how popular a band was, and before spider programs were set loose to spam as many potential friends as possible. Everyone spent hours on MySpace, adding friends, listening to music, participating. MySpace is a facilitator to bring like-minded people together and people feel incredibly passionate about their favourite acts. You had stories of bands breaking just through MySpace (all untrue, Arctic Monkeys toured their arses off before getting to the top). It was a huge story and it was essentially the first time the music industry as a whole took the internet seriously as a marketing – and sales – tool.

Now, MySpace is clunky, slow, old-fashioned, and usurped by the new kids on the block. And as everyone’s on MySpace (they still are), it’s nigh-impossible to find anything interesting without an hour-on-hour slog. Facebook’s modular customizable functionality was attractive to a net-and-tech-savvy generation, Twitter’s strangely compelling basic 140-character format is used for minute-by-minute updates by everyone from Lady Gaga to Stephen Fry. It is an instant insight into the sharp-sudden thoughts of those who create our music, and as such is somehow more valuable. When Gaga talks of a favourite designer and adds a link, she’s acting as Google for us, as a gatekeeper, an arbiter of taste. We like her style and her music so we trust her judgment.

Whose Space Is It Anyway?

Ultimately, this is what it boils down to: our bands are now performing the same role that once was the highly-guarded one only of A&R and record companies. What this has shown more than anything is that the net is impossible to navigate successfully without trusted guidance. It’s not only musicians getting in on the act, either: things with peer/self-recommending routines like Last.fm and Amazon.com are so useful because, based on our own previous preferences, they make recommendations to us that we’re free to turn down. And as our own preferences develop, so the recommendations are refined, a bit like checking friends of a particular MySpace act to see what else they were listening to.

The exciting and somewhat scary feature about the internet is that it is developing purely based on the requirements of its users, not the other way around. The implications for music are enormous: embrace it, or lose it. Technology is only useful if it is necessary for a human experience, and MySpace was the pioneer of a much wider discussion of which the ripples are still being felt.

Joe Shooman’s “Whose Space Is It Anyway?: An Unofficial Guide to the Sites That Changed the World” is available through Independent Music Press (US Amazon).

Assuming that you haven’t been on a charity tour across Africa without an internet (and TV) access during the past two years, I won’t be telling you how Twitter works (if you are a beginner, you might be interested in checking out 9 Twitter Tips for Artists first). Below you will find a dead simple, up-to-date collection of advises from experts all around the web aimed to help you get maximum out of Twitter.

1. What To Tweet

Image credit: board.milkboys.org

Of course just rushing into Twitter client / website and starting “twittering” some random stuff right away won’t work, as won’t work leaving faceless promotional messages once a week. Read this article to understand what behavior should be avoided.

Think how to engage your followers to prove that you are worth their attention, and to neatly promote your brand and your products. I’d suggest looking into what others do. Remember that there are professional PR agencies behind popular artists, so there is nothing wrong with borrowing some ideas from them – just make sure you don’t become a slowpoke in the internet marketing race (like Homer in the pic below).

Here are few recent examples off the top of my head… Muse used Twitter to announce a track listing for their new album, tweeting titles track-by-track; Dashboard Confessional promised fans to put up a free song online once their Twitter page reaches 16,000 followers; I’m sure you’ve heard Amanda Palmer’s story, etc. You will find hundreds of such examples if you want.

And don’t forget that Twitter is about communication. Spend some time on it, listening to others. There is a good feature called “retweet”, and it shouldn’t be ignored. As this useful post called “Retweet Smarter” states, “retweeting in a proper way will develop followers loyalty.”

2. Give Away Your Music

As (I hope) you already know, giving away the music without asking anything in return is pretty stupid. You don’t have to ask for too much, but must have a plan developed and your goals set. Ask for an email address to rise a database for your newsletter, ask fans to spread the message among friends so more people hear about you, ask for a re-tweet, after all!

With Twitter, it’s a good idea to use existing tools for freely distributing your music. Like these:

• Tweet For A Track
• Tweet My Song
• TwtMuzik

Let me know if you have tried any of them yourself, really curious to hear pros and cons of each one.

For more reasons on why you should be smart giving away music on Twitter, read this great post at WayCoolJnr.

3. Use Twitter Lists

Lists is a new Twitter feature allowing you to combine multiple feeds in a single stream. For example, here’s a Twitter list I created to keep track on music / media news from pros who I trust and respect. What’s good about lists, you can follow them just like any Twitter account (which I invite you to do with this one!)

Use lists at your advantage, easily checking the fellow bands’ activity, looking for important updates from venues in your region, listening what most loyal fans of yours talk about. Find more ideas at this Indie Music Tech blog post and invent your own!

If you want to track specific phrases appearing in your lists’ feed, try this service (it’s like Google Alerts for Twitter).

Conclusion

Image credit: edwheeler.deviantart.com

So, what have we got?

If you think you don’t have enough time for Twitter, read how others spend just 7 minutes a day on social networks. Then think again.  In fact, any mobile phone can handle Twitter work, though die-hard fans might even consider buying a special device like TwitterPeek.

What about musicians like Kid Rock or Taylor? Basically, they don’t have to be on social networks themselves anymore. Are you one of them? Nope (most probably).

After reading this post, you still don’t get what Twitter is for? Hmm…

If you are concerned about the number of your Twitter followers, be sure – using advises above along with some promotional work and common sense will make you a social media rock star (but always remember about the common sense part).

The bottom line: there is no excuse for a musician to ignore Twitter.

PS: A bonus tip from The New Rockstar Philosophy blog. Try Twibbon, “a tattoo for your twitter avatar.”

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Luthier Society

But first, about the white paper…

Dubbed The Social Media 3.0 and Future of Viral Marketing, this work discusses the changes of social media and key concepts behind cutting edge emerging technologies that are helping to shape the short-term and long-term strategies behind viral marketing.

What’s truly great in my opinion, the material is based on a real company’s successful social media campaigns. Clients of Luthier Society range from Universal Records to Sony. Among the achievements of Royal and his Los Angeles based agency are the pairing of Michael Welch with iNDELIBLE’s creative branding campaign for AcZone, the eTeam aggregation for rock band Pop Evil and the recent participation in a feature film release of FIX, starring Olivia Wilde.

The White Paper on Social Media 3.0 also includes further detail on Luthier Society’s proprietary ROI weighted value metric analysis software, Archimedes 1.0, which is set to launch in 2010.

Check out their cool demonstration video.

And this is what the notation says:

Inspired by the theories of Charles Henry Dow, Archimedes 1.0 uses a proprietary Tracking Technology Metric (TTM) that has effectively created the world’s first online market index for websites. Archimedes 1.0 users will be able to determine the depth of their outreach efforts, saturation rate, geo-spatial location of their audience and value of online positioning, giving the first true, monetized value for Return on Investment in social media marketing.

All in all, I’ll keep an eye on this thing for sure.

I have known Johnny for several years now, and can say that this man is extremely good at what he’s doing.

The White Paper is available at this location.