The bad news first… So you’re freaking out cause you went to your handy TWITTER mass unfollow API TRS (twitter related site) and found out that in 2010, Twitter banned automatic mass Unfollow and mass following in an attempt to slow down the Spam complaints and junk in Twitter accounts (Porn, Gambling, Affiliate programs…)

Not only will they ban you if they catch you mass following or un-following but they will ban you if you send out too many messages with automatic software, aps, sites… So forget those for managing your account. YES even sending out auto-replies that thx people for following are now against their TOS (those messages were never a good idea anyways, they just annoy people)

The Good news is that there are tools out there which you can use in order to data-mine your Twitter followers and then manually follow and unfollow people, target followers, dump un-reciprocal followers and so forth.  A new breed of TWITTER management tools called semi-automatic social bots! (At least I am naming them that for now). They carefully fall into the grey area of black-hat marketing, a social marketer’s safe haven where happy clients are able to build accounts quickly without the fear of  suspended or deleted accounts.  Best one out there?  TWEEPI by a long shot… You’ll check it out for yourself, but TWEEPI is amazing. It organizes your Twitter followers faster than a secretary on crystal. With: Geeky follow, Flush, Reciprocate and Cleanup, you can spring clean your account within minutes.

10 Ways to get your account banned on Twitter:

1. Mass follow or un-follow which is automatic (Select all- a block at a time)
2. Mass message, auto-replies too
3. Sending out more than 1 link in a row! (spacing suggested is 16 minutes from an insider)
4. Having too many links in your tweets – TWITTER wants to see your characters getting filled with text.
5. Having a very un-equal ratio between followers and following like 1,500 following but just 82 followers
6. Being annoying – posting tweets every minute, too many @, too many re-tweets will get Tweeple to report you
7. Having an Adult account xxx
8. Having an on-line gambling themed profile or talking about on-line gambling too much
9. Having a hate group
10. Trying to sell stuff directly from your tweets, keywords like: BUY this! $$$, SAVE%

That’s it folks, happy tweeting

Some day soon I hope the Social media communities will realize that if everyone wants to use management software it’s because THEY didn’t build any good enough database communication functionality…

While we were not working on our client’s campaigns and hitting the winter music fests we had a peak into some of the things that are really making Japan’s music industry a fruitful avenue for North American bands trying to get a slice of the Yen. In particular, their trendy mobile technology is starting to pick up elsewhere in the world and as the worldwide web brings foreign industries closer and closer together, we think 2010 will be the year that getting distribution deals, bookings and press from our Japanese friends will be easier than you can imagine…

How to get BIG IN JAPAN? I think we’ve cracked it here:

With websites like TOPMUSICJAPAN allowing one to quickly get a .jp music page and promo package, bands can try their luck at selling both music and merch to the Japanese music fan market place.

Japan is enormous, with over 127,704,000 people living there, and a huge entertainment industry, you can imagine how many music fans there are.  It seems like they have really mastered interactive advertising as well and if you think Facebook is the web’s biggest playground think again! In Japan – MIXI is their virtual hang-out and home to over 25 million users and if their steady growth continues we’ll have reached 31 million users by 2011.

Music magazines! This is a great way to get your band out there. In Japan, they are genre obsessed and instead of having a few magazine that cover mostly pop music, they have hundreds of magazines for many many genres of music and styles. The easiest way to find some reliable agencies is asking the new media buyer of a popular major like SONY JAPAN. If you are are fluent in Japanese, go ahead and call the magazines yourself!  Some genres do particularely well in Japan like :Metal, Visual Kei and electronica.  If you have a glam-rock style band SHOXX would be a good mag to advertise in.

Poster downloads and concert promo! if you are touring in Japan you will not be able to resist this service. It enables the mobile population to literally get free downloads and concert info off of a poster via bar codes, augmented reality symbols and what is known as air tagging! (visuals that are linked to your GPS allowing users to seek wireless hot spots, cool new restos, clothing specials and of course concerts!

Before creating your plan of action, study the country and the culture, read some blogs, Google is your friend! Below are some of my favorite Japanese videos that will hopefully help you get a feel for this bustling stylish & entertaining Metropolis and how bands can make it BIG IN JAPAN!

“Japan” from Felix Urbauer on Vimeo.

10 BandMark  Music Industry predictions for 2010:

``I see... me and David Bowie having sushi! but more importantly...``

1. Venture capitalists and big named brands will further finance musicians

As record labels merge and swallow up partners, (Warner+EMI? Like when Polygram merged with Universal in the 80`s) marketing budgets will be slashed once again so the once 100k budget which got cut int0 50k last year, will likely be cut again to 25k. This wont be as tragic as it seems because big named brands and the film industry will gladly spot these artists with some nice budgets for appearances and brand vanity and  smaller artists will opt for their own investors. This will force bands to be doing a lot of hands on marketing to stand out in what has become a huge sea of new music and very tough competition.

2. Fan clubs and street teams will come together as direct-to-fan platforms evolve

As a music fan, you can sign up to newsletters, fan-clubs, VIP offers, the record label store, Street teams, mobile alerts and the list goes on. Well with more and more artists selling directly to their fans, it is inevitable that a solution emerges that handles everything. Fan logs into the ultimate Direct-to-Fan club and specifies purchasing habits, street team activities, news alert delivery options etc… and everything after than is one cleverly marketed click away where fans interacts with band offerings, demand new versions and get rewarded with prime goodies like shout outs on stage for sharing content. I see the monthly and yearly subscription fee model popularize itself in these clubs as well as in on-line music stores.

3. Artists will make more music on demand

With more and more bonds being built via web 2.0 technologies, the artist and fan relationship will continue to grow and I predict that fans will start to create their own mini EPs by directing the artist to get re-mixed by producers they like, release acoustic and live versions and even integrate raw studio cuts and include tracks from talented fans  as well. A sort of Choose-Your-Own-Audio venture with all the emerging remix and interactive technologies at the forefront.  I`d like to see these mini EPs come in a digital bundle, return of the 45 vinyl and have basically 3 songs: fan made re-mix, fan demanded acoustic version and raw studio cut.

4. Music will be seen less on a CD rack and more in the clouds…

CD sales will continue their steady decline and the music population will turn into digital and vinyl heads for the most part.  Watch as vinyl reach out to the hardcore fans who want the immediacy of digital AND the physical fix. Subscription based streaming music stores like Grooveshark and Spotify will become a serious business model for labels to consider. Grooveshark`s traffic has a really healthy up-and-to-the-right metric line and really if you think about it – it`s the perfect compromise for the majority of the digital music community.  Faster than utorrent, cheaper than Itunes and trendier than Twilight, these subscription based stream stores are clearly making their mark in the music market place.

5. An artist`s database will turn into a fairly measurable currency with social metrics

The more time we spend on-line, the more valuable a musician`s database will become (users are expected to be spending EVEN more time in 2010).  All artists will experience an increase of virtual fans simply by putting themselves out there but also the clever musician, management and label will be harvesting and analyzing fan data with the new social metrics coming out.  The simple: enter email, tweet, share this for a track models will only amplify this virtual currency.

6. Interactive touch screens will start showing up at concerts

I don’t mean the kind you see at music festivals with SMS streams and the next band info with sponsors and ads. I mean a truly interactive experience where one can sign up to fan clubs,  shop,  join a contest request shout outs (I know I’m obsessed with shout outs and honestly think it’s the best way to reward and keep a fan loyal). In my perfect vision of the future, one that my inner geek truly adores, the interactive touch screens are so paper thin and huge and now after having seen AVATAR they are probably 3D as well!

7. MySpace will offer musicians a lot more options and will not go away

I was honestly laughing when respectable journalists were writing about “The Death of MySpace”  ”Facebook will take over MySpace”. Look, no matter how much you have a hate on for Tom and no matter how fk* irritating that damn CSS is to code around – MySpace is still the #1 place online that music fans go to check out an artist’s music. If you don’t care about all that and you are just looking at the numbers, well their actual traffic has been pretty stable for the past 3 months (Oct-o9 to Dec-09). So although things look promising, we`ll have to check the numbers again in the next 3 months…

“Indie musicians now have a new way to make money online by adding their songs directly to MySpace Music in exchange for sharing in the ad revenue with the service.” Original post by Elliot Van Buskirk @ Wired.com click MORE for further information.

8. Facebook will release a highly customizable new version

I have to say that I am not impressed with the rate in which Face book releases new versions or fixes bugs… the only reason why I use Facebook (and I likely speak for most)  is that everyone is on it and I really have little choice.  At least MySpace has an excuse for it’s bugginess - it was built in the dinosaur era with some lame programming language.  I am hoping that with a huge fan page community, Facebook steps up to the plate and actually pimps up the code a bit so that one can customize way more and turn their fan page into highly interactive music fan playgrounds of stuff to do, purchase and without error messages with apps not working. Recently, either the ilike app had a bug in it or the steps to add it to your fan page were totally convoluted cause almost every music client of mine was calling me about it!  So Crackbook, I’m unliking you a bit until you impress me with a new version…

9. More street stars like G-Funk RED will be discovered

I think after over a decade of really wimpy commercial rap, hip hop and urban beats it’s time to get back to the simple stories and sounds of the untrained street songs BEFORE the musician has someone else writing their rhymes and picking their outfits. Who says teenagers need cheesy synthesized effects and big studio sound to make them happy? O.K well they sort of do BUT unlike our grandparents, kids are growing up on decades of classical, blues, rock, electronic and are totally into experiencing new stuff – although there will always be at the perfect age for pop. I was lucky, I had an older brother making sure between Madonna and Wham I had Led Belly, Chet Baker, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bob Marley, Iggy Pop…  well tell u what, these kids have a realllly big brother called the internet allowing them to discover more music than ever before subjecting people like G-funk RED and others to get international exposure from sites like YouTube.

10. America will have a full year of discovering more oddities like Susan Boyle

It really doesn’t take a genius to figure out that after Susan Boyle, America’s Got Talent is going to experience both an increase in unusual auditions from older and oddball performers but will also be prioritizing them especially after seeing Susan`s popularity skyrocket and set new standards for discovery.

Generally Andre is the ultimate vid candy hunter and then we pick from the prey pile – but he is in Cali hopefully soaking up sun rays and hanging out in some real waves! So we did our best to pick your Xmas Edition.

Kef Muon – sound reactive installation – Santa how cool is this?!

Lady Gaga – Speechless Royal Variety Performance – pitch perfect.

Pointer Sisters famous Pinball song from Sesame Street –  NUF SAID

Jingle Bells Performed by U900, a Japanese Ukulele Duo

web truffles brought to you you by Fresher*
& BandMark

Man in a Chicken suit plays “What is Love” on Pianica

 Box animation

Massive Attack Paradise Circus

web truffles brought to you you by Fresher*
& BandMark

I compiled my fave top 3 for the week NJOY! (We have lots of cool links and pics but I’ll just put up vids until we get a domain.  If you would like to add coolness to our wave,  just add your …@gmail.com in the comments and we’ll add you to the wave!

It is almost a given that a majority of these people are your best buyers of everything else (physical, digital music and merch) yet a lot of people do very little to start conversations with these fans and reward them on the spot.  Here are 3 EASY WAYS to capture fans at your concerts:

Merch tags

I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen this even being done yet so if you go forward with the idea, you would likely be one of the first. I proposed it to one of my fashion clients: GROGGY and then instantly realized how every band could benefit from this extremely inexpensive way to turn show attendees into a virtual fan base.

Chances are at every show you will have a little merch like T-shirts with your latest EP art or whatever. Well on those T-Shirts just add a little sticker or paper tag that has the directions for a free music download to get into the fan club. If you do not have a fan club, list your social media profiles like “Friend me, Follow me, Face me with the MySpace/Twitter/Facebook Page urls.  Imagine, you are now keeping track of your MOST valuable fans, those who went to a show AND purchased band wear!

Mobile Fanclubs

With the rising popularity of smart phones,  why not use mobile technology to communicate LIVE with your fans at a show.  In some cases they will have to pay to receive the text message but they just paid to see your show, the 0.75 cent fee wont freak them out, plus you’ll be giving them a free song so it will more than balance out.  You can do this in 2 ways: As part of your live visuals, you can have a message in between songs and the singer could actually let people know as well to send a text to a particular number in order to get a text back with the promo code or URL for the fan club or download.

There are mobile clubs like Broadtexter, which can set a lot of this up for free!  If you are not able to integrate the graphics into the visuals or the band does not wish to push their own fan-club, you can have a small table (could be the merch table) set up with a few net-books where people can join the fan club on the spot.  We have actually done this for clients like SOUNDCAGE at music festivals and it works very well. People are generally in a great mood, a little tipsy and are more than willing to give you their information. The conversion is great too – those people are typically up to 85% receptive to future communications.

Download cards given at the exit

Having the band toss out a limited number of cards is key to bring awareness with the singer mentioning that everyone will have a chance to get one when they leave. Not everyone will make it to the merch table, some people will not want to line up, others will prioritize all their money buying beer but everyone there is a fan. Therefore making sure to capture them all would be getting them on the way out. At some point, everyone of them will have to leave!  Hiring a presentable young and dynamic person who looks very much like a fan of the band, to thank people for coming and handing out a download card is money well spent. He or she will cost you nothing (especially if they’re are part of your street team) and the download cards will not hurt your marketing budget either.

There are many services which provide this service, like FizzKicks but ideally you should have your own Fan club set up and get a cheap local printer to make you cards since really all they have to do is direct your fans to the free music download page. You don’t really have to get into promotional codes etc.. this will save you money in the long run.

I wont bore you with too much content today but I’ll give you the highlights for the week. This week we are going to M for Montreal to attend some really cool panels, we are seeing some awesome shows like DJ CHAMPION & THE G-STRINGS, FUCKED UP, ORANGE ORANGE and many more! We will also be producing a short video clip showcasing the best footage of the 4 day music festival and we will be asking many bands and fans what they think of Social media and Direct-To-Fan marketing and web solutions

Nov 14- SKINNY PUPPY @ CLUB SODA
Nov 18-  YOAV @ CLUB SODA
Nov 20- TWO HOURS TRAFFIC @ THE STUDIO
Nov  21- ORANGE ORANGE @ CAFE CAMPUS
Nov 21- CHAMPION ET SES G-STRINGS @ METROPOLIS

MTL Events & Festivals

M for Montreal

CD Releases/Top Press picks

Midwinter Graces- by Tori Amos
Hello Hurricane- by Switchfoot
The Circle -by BON JOVI
Backtracks -by AC/DC
Live At Royal Albert Hall -by The Killers

Montreal EP staff pick
VESTIGE by FEMME (Click to buy)

ORANGE ORANGE LIVE SINGING “ET JE PLEURE”

At first, when I first saw them perform at the Excentris during the M for Montreal Media conference, I was like O.K they look sort of like candy ravers, they like the color orange and they sing through old school cord phones – silly or superb? Well after hearing the full song, I must say SUPERB. This duo produces some neat beat boxing, re-mixes and pretty cool Pop/Electro/Melodramatic tunes. We are hopefully going to get the chance to interview them at the M!

Contest & Giveaways

For those of you who didn’t get enough candy on HALLOWEEN, one of our sponsors: SKULLCANDY has some sweets for your head!  The BASS on these babies is enough to want to buy the plain black originals but they come in all sorts of neat fashion prints. The giveaway one is courtesy of our sponsor SKULLCANDY and it is in TOKIDOKI print! ALL you have to do to WIN this awesome DJ envy gift is follow these simple instructions:

1-  Make a comment to this blog post with why you need these headphones!
2- Email: lee@bandmark.com by Thursday Nov 19th by midnight with your contact info!

I think this image is so wrongdeful I need not provide other links this week, just the one! ENJOY:

Hello Kitty & Rainbow brite’s very insane child? luvs u WALLMART!

What is the significance behind your latest album/project/style?

The New Album I’m working on will be very different from past work that Mansion had released.  A more polished and experienced sound. It’s Mansion’s first official album and because it’s my first I have focused on making it full of singles and no filler tracks. We have a lot of guest vocalists on it such as Isis from Thunderheist, rapper Bless, Vitaminsforyou, Steven Taetz, Gentleman Deluxe.  All the songs are different ranging from pop to trance to tribal to Prog House to commercial. We want the album to appeal to a wide range of electronic music fans and also to show that Mansion doesn’t just make house…I love all kinds of music.

How do you define yourself, personally?

I like to try out different things all the time in regards to my music. I don’t like doing what everyone else is… I find we are in a world of quick cheap productions…the “NOW” generation. I’m studying a lot of older music for inspiration, a sort of getting back to my “roots” type method. I don’t like labeling myself as a person or as a dj…I like what i like and that’s it.

What do you think characterizes your general appeal to others?

Its not about me! I never make it about me…I make it about you! You’re the one that pays to go to a club you’re the reason I was booked! I organize my sets according to what i think you will like and dance too. I try to pay as much attention as possible to the crowd. I cant tell you how many times I’ve gone out to see a dj that i think will blow me away and its the most boring set ever. Dj’s such as boysnoize I love….he is always staring at the audience grooving to his music and just knocks you down track after track…its awesome, its like seeing Dj Sneak back in the day…5 hour sets of pure dancing…and I never dance. I look up to dj’s back in the rave days such as Barry Weaver and Terry Mullen, Felix the House Cat…they just knew how to rock a party and keep it tight the entire time.

If you were to die tomorrow, what would you want to be remembered for?

Bringing the party, always having a good time, plus I’m not gonna die tomorrow I’m also sort of a hippie and don’t believe in putting the thought out into the universe at all….and when I do die I hope I’m remembered for making people dance.  I want to make music that will be the setting for all kinds of stuff, walking to work on your ipod, getting ready to go out…making out with your girl, getting fucked up at a club….

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Due to the average size of a wood chuck and the general density of wood (not including cork) if a wood chuck could chuck wood it would probably get through about 6.573 pounds per day, assuming the wood chuck is functioning correctly.

How To Find A Masculine Halloween Costume For Your Effeminate Son

Scary faces with a twist!

You might wanna turn down your speakers unless you like death metal or whatever the f*ck this is!