Music Arsenal Blog

After the announcement that Ozzfest will be "free" for concert goers this year there has been much discussion on how this will affect the artists playing the shows. One thing I have not seen discussed much is how this will affect the fans.

Although the event claims to be free, the press release states, "To gain entry into the event, fans will go to www.ozzfest.com or www.livenation.com to find links that will direct them to special sponsor sites where tickets can be secured." I wonder what this means? Will fans need to register on LiveNation.com to get tickets in order to boost Live Nation's rumored upcoming social network? Will they need to watch a 30 second ad before they get tickets, similar to SpiralFrog's business plan?

I will be keeping an eye on this to see how this rolls out. Rocket From The Crypt did a free six week tour in the mid-90's footed by Interscope and from what I understand it really helped the band grow in popularity.

If Ozzfest is done correctly, without over commercialization, I believe this could change the way not only festivals are presented but also smaller, one or two band tours.

Jimmy Winter, founder of Music Arsenal, has been named to Business Week's Best Entrepreneurs Under 25 list. The list features an impressive group of young people in all areas of business. Aime Street and Musicane, who were named to the list, are also in the music industry. This group of people demonstrates a lot of hard work and dedication at a very young age. Congratulations to everyone on the list and we wish the best of luck to all of these new companies in the future.

Click here to read the story.

Employees of Music Arsenal will be attending this years CMJ conference in New York City. We will be in town from Tuesday the 31st of Oct until the evening of Saturday the 4th. If you'd like to talk with any of us face to face regarding the Music Arsenal application we'd be glad to meet with you. Just let us know on the contact page what times would work best and your ideas and we'll get in touch!

Also, Music Arsenal is sponsoring this years AAM Party. We'll be there all day Saturday so if you happen to be around stop by and say hi!

Last week we were treated with the new Weird Al song "You're Pitiful" (A take on James Blunt's you're beautiful) and this week The Digital Music Weblog has written a story detailing why Mr. Yankovic prefers CD Sales to Digital sales of his albums.

Weird Al Yankovic Says Digital Is a Raw Deal For Some Artists - Not only does this quote Weird Al's feelings for digital downloads from an April interview but the article also does a good job of breaking down the distribution of money made off of a digital download. A must read for those looking for more information about digital sales.

We're happy to announce that Music Arsenal's tour management module now integrates with the Eventful and Podbop websites. When entering a tour date into Music Arsenal the data is automatically sent to Eventful which PodBop then accesses and uses on their website.

Eventful is a website which allows users to post about upcoming events they care about and want others to know about. Once concert information is in Eventful, PodBop takes it and posts it in their concert pages. Artists and Labels can also upload photos and edit their bios on the Eventful performer pages.

PodBop, which recently won First Place at Mashup Camp, is a revolutionary concert discovery site that posts upcoming tour dates and music from touring artists. For example, if you search Omaha, NE on the PodBop site, not only do you see upcoming shows but you can also hear songs from those artists. This helps users discover and hear new bands that are coming to their town. You can also sign up for an RSS feed for the city to have tour dates automatically delivered to your RSS reader.

Currently there are over 60 labels using PodBop to promote their concerts. In order for PodBop to display your artists, you simply need to add them to the PodBop database.

We're very excited to have this enhancement available to our users and hope you can take advantage of these two new and growing methods of concert promotion!