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 rules are dead simple. You have two options to enter the giveaway:

• “Like” the Dotted Music page on Facebook.
• Share the message about the sweepstakes on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow me).

Or do both ;)

The winner will be announced later in June (the end date has been pushed back).

1,2,3

Confetti 7" Cover

A little background on 1,2,3, signed to almost as much young Ooh La La Records, a boutique artist development company and record label from Brooklyn, founded by producer Theo Aronson.

The outfit consists of Nic Snyder (vocals, guitar & keys) and his long-time pal Josh Sickels (drums). 1,2,3 hail from Pittsburgh and are late of the well-known power punk outfit, The Takeover UK.

“I’m really excited about this new band,” Nic proclaims, “It’s what I’ve always wanted a band to be.”

1,2,3 is the platform for some very smart songwriting, for example, “Confetti,” a tune about death that quite happily sounds like the orgasmic collision of latter day Beatles (definitely a Lennon tune), Gram Parsons and Big Star, and “Can’t Bribe God,” a kind of slow, Gospel shuffle that finds Snyder displaying simply the most viciously visceral vox work this side of Prince Rogers Nelson with a middle eight that feels curiously like ELO… in a good way.

Both songs were recorded last Fall at Aronson’s Brooklyn recording studio. Inquiring minds can expect to hear them very soon, followed by a full album in early 2010. Check out the band’s MySpace page for a sneak peak. “Confetti” is available in the Ooh La La Records online store.

Ultimate Guitar Tabs iPhone app #1 in App Store’s Music category

Obviously, this is the most important news of the current week for me. Ultimate Guitar Tabs, an iPhone app for searching and viewing guitar and bass tablature from Ultimate-Guitar.com, made it to the first spot in the Music category of the App Store in the US and four other countries, displacing the infamous I Am T-Pain app (UPDATE: after the price increase, UGT is again at 2 – I think this is temporary :)). UGT was also on the 8th place in the general top of the US App Store, which is neat.

Ultimate Guitar Tabs iPhone App

Gorillaz release an addictive online game

Gorillaz announced a simple, but quite well-done online Flash game, Escape to Plastic Beach. “‘Escape to Plastic Beach’ is the first game of its type merging numerous levels of Flash and Unity formats along with a new single MP3 to create an audio, visual, graphical and gaming experience to expand fans’ experience of an album. Increasing the experience beyond traditional album release – the game features original artwork, voiceovers from the band and numerous other tracks from the new Gorillaz album.” This is a part of the act’s broad marketing campaign, which was greatly covered over here.

Noisia spread the Infection, an online music game

And another online game, this time a rhythm based one – from Dutch producing trio Noisia (one of the best drum&bass acts in the world). Noisia have released a Flash music game to coincide with the release of their new single “Machine Gun“. Check it out, pretty interesting experience.

The Chemical Brothers prepare films for their iTunes LP album

The Chemical Brothers are set to release their seventh studio album, called Further, on June 8, 2010 on Freestyle Dust/Astralwerks. This album is said to be the band’s first to be released with corresponding films made specifically to match each of the 8 audio tracks. The films will be included on an iTunes LP and special edition DVD. If the Chemical camp will keep creating and adding worthy content to the iTunes LP, similarly to Gorillaz, then this is definitely an album I am looking to myself.

And last, few cool links from Twitter:

• How to make a great music app (via Forrester Blogs)
• Plastikman launches innovative iPhone app for live gigs (via Sandbox.fm)
• Lou Reed’s New iPhone App For Aging Eyeballs (via Hypebot)
• 8 people you’ll find hanging out in a music store (via Guyism)

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.”

Liked the article? Subscribe to the RSS feed!