The 2011 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) took place last night, August 28, 2011 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. This year marked the award show’s 28th year. While the show did not have a host, it was nothing short of surprising and entertaining.

Many artists and celebrities strutted down the red carpet in fabulous garments while Selena Gomez hosted the VMA pre-show. The most memorable appearances were from Nicki Minaj, who wore metal, stuffed animals and pink hair, and Beyonce, who showed off her baby bump and announced that she and husand, Jay-Z are expecting a baby! Cobra Starship and Sabi performed as part of the pre-show.

What started as the first successful online marketplace selling music and related media, has recently been focused on establishing new pop-icons, leveraging their traffic with co-branded promotions. iTunes is still the titan of online media, but while the Apple-run marketplace has been focused on film and television sales, new media technology platforms have been innovating and perfecting music release campaigning. Musicians use sites like Justin.tv and Ustream.com to host CD Release, and private listening parties prior to releasing their albums to market. These and similar techniques have been very successful for artists, generating plenty of social buzz and blog coverage, surrounding their album release….

Epitaph Records reached out to us to create a cool splash page for their band Falling In Reverse:

We developed a custom media player (built on SoundCould‘s API) that allows users to listen to 3 songs and then prompts them to enter an email address or sign on with Facebook to unlock the full album.

We invite you to check out   FallingInReverse.com!

We recently launched a site for the Music Preservation Project.  Music Preservation Project is working to preserve endangered music collections by digitizing them, developing curriculum for educators, using the collections and allowing free access for educational purposes.

You can watch an intro video and learn more at musicpreservationproject.org.

Reggae artist Duane Stephenson is one of our amazing clients. He’s currently touring all throughout summer and hit recent single “Better Tomorrow” is generating some serious buzz and airplay, along with the song’s music video. Duane and his team have truly been a pleasure to work with. If you haven’t check it out yet, head over to duanestephensonmusic.com to see what we created and learn more about this fantastic artist.

Oniracom is proud to be working with the David Lynch Foundation Music on an innovative marketing campaign through PledgeMusic.

DLF Music brings together the world’s top & emerging recording artists to support the good works of the David Lynch Foundation’s stress-reducing, meditation-based educational programs.

Featured artists of our Pledge compilation include: Arrested Development, Au Revoir Simone, Ben Folds, Peter Gabriel, Mary Hopkin, Moby, Maroon 5, Neon Trees, Ozomatli, Heather Nova, Iggy Pop, Carmen Rizzo, Salman Ahmad, Slightly Stoopid, Dave Stewart, Andy Summers and Tom Waits.

When you Pledge for the 17-track compilation download, or any of the other unique items and experiences during this 6-week Pledge campaign, you gain access to Pledgers-only updates from participating DLF Music artists. Each week you will receive 2 or 3 of DLFMusic’s featured tracks … PLUS receive exclusive video, photo and blog updates, giving you an insider’s view into the artists lives and experiences.

Great Artists—Artists and musicians are standing up in support of The David Lynch Foundation by donating their creativity and music for a…
Great Cause—Download for Good and all profits from your support will benefit DLF’s educational outreach programs — all based on the theme, “Change Begins Within.”

Great Artists + Great Cause = Music That Changes the World

Marie Parie is a new client here at Oniracom! She presents a different genre than we normally work with and we are excited to start working with her. She is a Parisian pop artist that moved to the United States in 2005, providing her with a unique view of American society. Marie is fascinated by the process of dating and is motivated by the power of futuristic music. Her full length album, Alien Victory, is aimed to be released early this year. Watch her first music video, Dating, here! Follow her on MySpace and Facebook to stay tuned for the release of her album!

With the 30th year anniversary of his death, Bob Marley remains the most well known reggae musician. His music is credited for spreading not only Jamaican music, but also the Rastafari movement worldwide. A truly captivating and challenging performer, we remember his music that remains timeless and universal.

Now here’s a brilliant album release campaign. UK songstress Adele, grammy winning “Chasing Pavements” singer, is releasing 21 (XL, Columbia) the much anticipated follow up to her debut album, 19. To generate buzz and increase fan engagement with the record in the weeks leading up the it’s US release, team Adele has set up quite a creative splash page:

Music licensing has become stricter and stricter due to the immense amount of untrustworthy and illegal music sharing stations there are across the net. Last.fm has provided their members with tons of free radio stations with limited listening, as well as offering subscriber-only radio stations such as the Loved Tracks Radio, Playlists, My Neighbourhood, and Personal Tag Radio Now that we all are familiar with and love on our handy dandy scrobblers. Unfortunately, beginning November 17th, Last.fm has been forced to omit some of these subscriber-only stations in order to direct their “energy on improving our most popular features, developing new and innovative stations, and offering the best music discovery service to our global audience,” says the members at Last.fm themselves.

“At the MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco, Eric Tseng said that Facebook “really sees mobile as the future,” and that we can expect to see Facebook’s “Like” buttons in mobile applications soon.

Tseng used geolocation as an example to illustrate the power of the mobile Open Graph. If you were to walk near a coffee shop and get a location-aware notification that there’s a happy hour going on there, you’ll probably be even more inclined to visit it if the notification comes bundled with recommendations from your Facebook friends.”

We have compiled a list of what we find to be the most interesting and informative music blogs on the web. The list amounts to 21 music blogs, but is divided into four categories; Music Blogs (general reviews of up-and-coming music), International Blogs (reviews up-and-coming music from specific countries and around the world), Entertainment Blogs (covers news and reviews of a variety of art forms), and Music Industry Blogs (covers the latest happenings of what is moving and shaking in the music industry).

Music Power Network, or MPN is a new online resource available to up and coming musicians and aspiring music business professionals. MPN was started in November 2009 by music industry guru Dave Kusek. Kusek is the Vice President of Berklee College of Music, and founded their online music education program.  He also co-authored the best-selling book, “The Future of Music, Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution” years before the advent of the current digital music business.

Read more

The dominance of the web has changed the way people work, live and stay informed. For now, I’m going to leave aside a discussion about what the internet has done to the average person’s experience of life and the way people relate to others (though they are certainly worthy subjects for reflection and consideration).

What I want to share with you today are the tools we at Oniracom use to help us stay on top of the rapid shifts and changes which we encounter daily.  As a company that works primarily on websites and social media, every new application, every new site, every new contribution to the field of design, development and social networking has the potential to rearrange the way we go about business.  This means that it is a necessity to stay flexible, because you will encounter challenges and you will be expected understand the new developments and rise to the occasion (or risk being met by a client asking, “well they did that over their; are you not as capable?”).

So with all these changes and rapid sharing of information, what is the trick to staying on top without driving yourself crazy?

The solution is finding good tools that bring you the most relevant information and allow you to communicate easily and work efficiently.

Click Read More to See The Tools We Use on a Daily Basis and leave a comment about the tools that you use!

Rumors are starting to fly about Googles new music service.

It seems as if the service will be going after Bing who is trying to offers users a better search engine.  Google’s music service would simply be an upgrade to their search results for music.  If you search for an artist like Jack Johnson it would now give you a small list of some of his most popular songs and videos pulling data from music services such as LaLa, MySpace, and iLike.  You can stream the music right there on the same search results page, watch the video and even click a link to download and buy it.  While nothing is official yet we have been working on updating some of our clients on those music services just in time for press release.

Check out the sneak peak at what the service might look at over at TechCrunch.

Oniracom will be well represented at this weekend’s New Noise Music Conference and Festival, held in Oniracom’s backyard of Santa Barbara, CA.  New Noise Santa Barbara is a three-day music and digital media conference that will showcase emerging and established bands, host educational panels on the music industry’s hottest topics, present esteemed experts from all aspects of the business, and serve as a place for players big and small to connect and plot the future of music….

The music industry is in a pit.  The future is uncertain, and people just aren’t paying for music anymore.  Thats what the RIAA will tell you as they sue, sue, sue in full panic mode.  The industry is scrambling for a way to make money off album sales, something they say is vital to the future of music.  How and why would record labels produce albums if they don’t sell?  How can bands create music if there aren’t any labels around?

Noise Trade is a service that offers music for free to anyone willing to give them five email addresses. This is another thing to add to your list of “stuff you must know if you like music.”  You know you have a list like that.  You know it.

Noise Trade was started a few years back by Musician/Songwriter Derek Webb.  The principle is simple.  People want music without paying.  Musicians want to get their music out there for people to listen to.  Noise Trade makes all of this possible.  The theory behind Noise-Trade is that grass-roots promotion is far more valuable to independent musicians than album sales.

Although early on Noise Trade’s catalog carried just Derek Webb and local Nashville-area artists; their list of bands has grown dramatically. Currently one can find indie-artists from all over the U.S.  We recently placed Oniric Records Artist Marc B on noise trade…check out the widget at http://marcbmusic.com/freemp3/

5) Panels, Panels, Panels
-Valuable for anyone interested in the music industry at all levels of knowledge.  Some awesome panelists and topics lined up!

4) Shows, Shows, Shows
For $40 you can see 46 bands over 3 days.  Pretty remarkable, right?  Here’s the lineup and schedule.

3) Michael Franti & Spearhead at the Arlington Theater
Pay a little extra cash and you can check out Michael Franti at the Arlington Theater, just like he did for our SFD Festival!

2) Jacob Tell of Oniracom will be speaking on TWO panels!
Check out “The Green Concert” and “THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN: Exploring The New Frontier In Music” panels to hear our Jacob Tell (VP of Oniracom) speak!

1) World Premiere of Jack Johnson’s New Live Movie: En Concert
What better way to see Jack’s new film then with 2,000 other fans in the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara??

For all the details, check out newnoisesb.com.