Hey everyone,

We are proud to announce Solutions for Dreamers : Season 3, the latest benefit compilation CD from Oniric Records, is now available on iTunes!

All proceeds from the album are being donated to The World Food Programme (WFP), an incredible organization that fights hunger worldwide.  The album features the single “A Step for Mankind” by legendary band The Wailers, featuring Duane Stephenson and Bishop Lamont.  Thirteen great tracks are accompanied with factoids about world hunger and The World Food Programme, showing this album’s strong passion to creating a difference in this world by taking care of its inhabitants.

Pick up the album today and know your donation is going directly to fight world hunger. If you would like to buy the album directly from us, you can do so here!  You also have the choice to download the album in high-quality MP3, Apple Losless, or FLAC. We like high-quality sound. : )

We at Oniric Records would like to thank each of these artists for their passion to fighting world hunger and for their generous time and effort in creating these tracks for our compilation.  Each of these artists is generously donating the proceeds of their track’s sales to WFP, so we strongly recommend you go support these artists and buy more of their music if you enjoy it!

Thank you for listening, and we genuinely hope you enjoy.

Sincerely, The Oniric Records Team

We want you to be able to sample a free track from the album,
click here to download Mr. American by Marc B!

Oniracom created a fun little campaign to promote Jack Johnson’s new music video “At Or With Me”.  In the music video, Jack Johnson and Andy Samberg get into a minor slugfest. 

Oniracom created a splash page that featured a teaser for the music video and also the ability for fans to “place bets” on who they think will win.  In order to place the bet, you simply click on the like button.  The like appears in the Facebook news feed - creating BUZZ. 

This is only Phase 1 of the campaign.  Stay tuned for Phase 2!

The Background:

In Apple’s Keynote this morning, they launched a much needed upgrade to iTunes that includes social integration.

Much like current sites Rdio and Last.fm, iTunes is finally getting a social overhaul that will transform iTunes into a music discovery social network called Ping.  You can now “follow” your friends to see what they are listening to and share recommendations - all without leaving iTunes. 

Initial reports indicate that Ping only displays data for albums purchased, NOT listening data.  I have yet to confirm this first hand, but if true, this is a big disappointment from Apple’s latest social endeavor.  If Ping only displays what albums your friends purchase off the iTunes store, they are missing out on a huge amount of data and interaction with listening data.  Without listening data in Ping, last.fm will still thrive.

What does Ping mean for artists?

Much like Facebook’s News Feed, when you go into iTunes Ping, you will see an activity stream that includes recent activity from the friends that you follow.  In addition, artists will now be able to post updates that are delivered to this news feed for people that follow them.  This is huge.

In the keynote, they showed an example of Jack Johnson posting some recent pictures from his upcoming music video, and Lady Gaga sharing a video blog.  What does this mean?  You now have another outlet to push content through. Time will tell if Ping will be a major player in the social game, but for now, you’re better safe than sorry by being on it.  iTunes has a lot of customers.

I am currently getting access to accounts for our clients, but am unable to disclose how to get access for your artist in order to post.  I will disclose when I am allowed!

iTunes 10 vs. Cloud-Based Music Services (Rdio, Spotify, MOG, etc):

I was really hoping iTunes was going to go “to the cloud” on this upgrade.  These social integrations are great, but I won’t be using them much because I’m sticking with Rdio’s subscription service.  I much rather pay $10/month and get unlimited streaming to an enormous catalog of music on my computer and mobile than start buying albums for $10 a piece on iTunes again.

Until iTunes goes to the cloud and starts offering a subscription streaming service (or until Google beats them to the punch), my loyalty still lies with Rdio.

The Jonas Brothers, that enthusiastic and phenomenally successful tween sensation, has joined together with OfficeMax in a sort of powerhouse Twitter promotion to incite fans to tweet in order to receive a free download off their new album and be entered into a free concert ticket promotion.

The sweepstakes reflects the legitimacy of Social Media promotion tools and the inflow of major artists into such mediums. A far cry from a simple “click Like” type promotion found on Facebook, the Jonas Brother Twitter promotion actually has a unique website dedicated solely to the sweepstakes.

It is a cross promotion twitter site, run by PromoJam, one not only dedicated to the diffusion of Jonas Brother product, but to another promotion associated with OfficeMax. A sort of one-two punch if you will, with Fanscape behind it all. With the incentive of free music, fans in turn promote an OfficeMax free tour ticket contest. No doubt the OfficeMax sponsorship is in relation to “back to school” season,  with the name OfficeMax connected to the Jonas Brothers in hopes to have kids associate the “cool band” with a supplier of much needed binders and notebooks.

This board isn’t really informative at all, but it sure is funny if you’re familiar with the social media landscape!

(We love how Myspace is jail….)

I just watched a fascinating TED talk (read about TED), titled Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world, that really struck a chord with me. 

Here’s the TED description of the talk:

By now, we’re used to letting Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web—building a “social layer” on top of the real world. At TEDxBoston, Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the “game layer,” a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce

Here’s why it’s interesting to you:

Anytime you are looking to get interaction from your fans, you need to think of it as a game.

When I first started watching the talk, I didn’t think it would be that relevant to my work, as I don’t consider myself in the “gaming” industry.  But the point that Seth really capitalized on is that the last decade has been all about ‘social’; this next decade is all about ‘games’.  These aren’t your traditional games that you would play on a board, television, or a computer screen—these ‘games’ are small ideas that capture a users interest and influences behavior.

Example in the music industry:

Let’s take Topspin’s Email for Media widget.  Think of this small widget (click for example) as a game.  The prize for winning is a free mp3.  How do you win?

READ MORE…

Throughout the last decade, I have ventured to hundreds of concerts and music festivals, some great shows, some not so great shows. During this time I have created a mental list of everyone I absolutely must see before I die. At the very top of my list is Dave Matthews Band. Even though they tour almost every summer, I unfortunately, have never had the privilege to see DMB - I’m either too late to buy tickets or in the wrong city at the wrong time. So, Dave Matthews has been on my concert radar for years, and this past Saturday I finally was able to catch the band live in concert at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, California.

Even though the Verizon Amphitheater and venues similar to it (i.e. the Hollywood Bowl) are probably my least favorite due to their massive size - the sound quality projected by this extremely talented band probably topped my favorites list when it comes to overall concert experiences. They kicked the night off with “Minarets” a low key song to get the crowd’s attention and then jumped right into their jam band sessions with songs like “Shake me Like a Monkey” and “Funny the Way It Is” from their latest album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King.

Our staff is constantly reading in order to stay on top of changes in the music and technology industries. Maybe more importantly, we read to stay on top of how those changes affect our industries and their consumers.

In case you are also the type of person who pushes to stay ahead of the curve, I’ve polled our staff to share what we’ve been reading and finding interesting.

Check out the widget below to see what we’ve been reading….

Your Turn:
What else should we be reading??  Comment below!

Les Savy Fav’s long awaited follow up to their 2007 Let’s Stay Friends has been on the horizon for some time now. LSF> has strategically upped the anticipation for their fifth studio LP, Root For Ruin, by releasing the single ‘Let’s Get Out of Here’ this July, followed by the release of the album’s multi-angle mirror/red fishnet cover art and complete track list.