I was reading a blog post about the Social Media Release Template, version 1.5 on PR-Squared, and it made me think about these emails I keep receiving from bands, record labels and booking agencies. It’s really annoying to get hundreds of emails each day, saying “Hey! We are some random band, you should check out our Myspace page, book us and buy our cd”. I would be happy to listen to your songs and have a look at your pictures and live videos, but I don’t have the time to go to 5 different websites to do it.

What I think bands (and record labels / booking agencies) should do is easy: send a quick press release by email, and provide a link to a social media release (SMR), or, in other words, a page aggregating the various items you want to share (music, pictures, videos, blog posts, tour dates, etc.). To know what you should include in that page, ask yourself what people want to know about your band:

1. People want to listen to the band
   The first thing you want to do when a band contacts you, is to listen to the songs to know who you’re dealing with. So, include a Myspace player and the embed code so people can listen to the songs, and share it with their friends or contacts.
2. People need background, booking and contact information
   A quick biography and discography are mandatory, and you should also add any relevant information about your record label, booking agency and past tours / shows. Provide clear contact information; who is taking care of booking your shows, who is in charge of management or distribution, etc. The contact information should include your blog, Twitter, Facebook pages and groups, Youtube channel, Flickr, etc.
3. People want to see some action!
   Listening to the songs is great, but live performance is also important. Don’t forget to share pictures and videos (you could do this by using a Youtube channel or a Flickr pool).
4. People want to see the band playing live
   Now that we know how your band sounds like, we would like to see you playing live! So, try to include a listing of the upcoming shows and tours. This list should also include links providing more information about the shows, the venues, or how and where to buy tickets.
5. People like to have recent news and updates about the band
   If you have a (myspace) blog, a tumblr page or a Twitter account, show their feeds on the social media release page! People love to read more about bands, especially when they’re on tour or in the studio recording their upcoming album.

So, that is basically what I would put in a social media release for a band (but it could easily be used by record labels and booking agencies to promote new releases, upcoming tours and booking offers). Some last quick thoughts:

• Don’t forget to include logos from the band, the record label, the booking agency, sponsorships and any other (relevant) endorsement .
• If you have great reviews or interviews, share them in the SMR and / or highlight the best quotes.
• List some relevant selling points.
• Provide quick links to your online presence: Myspace, Facebook (pages and groups), Last.fm, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, etc.
• Make the whole thing easy to share and embed. Use ShareThis, RSS feeds and widgets.

Feel free to comment if you have any idea or suggestion, I’d be happy to update this post with your thoughts!

Well, my answer is yes. But don’t worry, music ecards will survive because iPhone applications remain a niche  (iPhone users) communication tool. I think bands and labels should still use both iPhone apps and flash ecards (combined with a proper Myspace page, Facebook page, Twitter account, etc.). Mobile Roadie is a good example of what a band can do with such iPhone apps: share songs, pictures or videos, allow fans to leave comments, publish tour dates, etc.

As I said earlier, these applications won’t replace flash ecards, but they bring a whole new set of features that will seriously compete with the simple “preview trailer-tiny animation-mp3 player” kind of ecards. I think the major change is that these apps are mobile and help the fans to interact with the band. Old ecards were, most of the time, nothing more than an flash animation or a video and a player or, in some cases, a mini-site with news and tour dates. The iPhone applications we are talking about have a stunning number of new features: streaming music (with links to buy the tracks on iTunes), pictures galleries, Youtube videos, lyrics sharing, tour dates (with links to services and sites where fans can buy the tickets), blog or Twitter feeds import, fan wall (fans can leave comments or interact with the band), news, bio and discography pages, Facebook or Myspace profile import, etc. And last but no least: a full CMS and statistics system.

Of course, you can find these kind of features in flash ecards, but it’s unusual to have them all combined. Moreover, these flash ecards can’t be viewed on the iPhone (and most of the mobile phones). And that’s the interesting part about these applications: they have all these features and they’re mobile. I think this is a real shift in the way bands (and record labels) can promote their music, and I’m curious to see how the music industry is going to use that kind of tools and services in the future.

(Spotted on Springwise)

I see more and more bands (indie or not) appearing on Twitter, and that made me think about how I would use it if I had a band myself. As usual, I’ll share my insights from the indie/Do-It-Yourself music industry point of view, but it could probably apply to mainstream bands too.

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These last weeks, I keep receiving “follow notifications” from underground record labels on Twitter. I thought  it would be interesting to take a look at how they use this tool. So I choose to observe nine “major” underground compagnies that have a Twitter page:  Deathwish Inc., Earache, Epitaph, Facedown, Reflections, Relapse, Think Fast!, Trustkill and Victory Records.

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The program for the Belgian Usability Day 2008 is finally announced:

• Taking social networks global: design patterns & tips (Peter Van Dijck)

  Social networks are growing all over the world, but how are the IA’s of these networks managing this? What patterns and strategies do they use? What are the challenges? What works and doesn’t? (…)

• Digital identity and self-representation in social networks (Amandine Feix-Villain, Groupe Reflect)

  When one speaks of social networks, we necessarily think about people who interact and try to find a meaning for themselves and the community in which they evolve and structure their digital identity. Having a digital identity means that you deliberately manage several facets that corresponds to specific objectives, needs and self-valorisation (…)

• Travel Experience: Brussels Airlines case study (Audrey benoit, Brussels Airlines & Raphaël de Robiano, Emakina)

  This is the story of a total user experience mission for Brussels Airlines. The mission consisted to live the experience users make with the product of our client (…)

• Traffic congestion. What can the designer do but despair? (Joannes Vandermeulen, Namahn)

(…) A lot of congestion is wholly unnecessary and avoidable, if only the design of the interface was right. Aren’t traffic signs the user interface between the driver and the road infrastructure?

More information can be found at http://usabilityday.be.

This is the translation of yesterday’s post about my dissertation. So, my research is focused on the transmission of electronic rumors and how it evolved from the web “first generation” to the so-called “web2.0”. What I call an “electronic rumor” is any unverified information spreading on the Internet (emails, forums, blogs, microblogging platforms, social networks, social bookmarking sites, video sharing services, mobile web, etc.).

So, It’d like to compare the transmission model from the web1 (mainly through email and BBS/messageboards) with the new model I’ve developed for the web2.0. Afterwards I’ll have to evaluate and test this model on several case studies, and that’s why I need you!

It would help me a lot if you could suggest me some rumors, and tell me why you find them interesting (length, multiple channel used, different versions of the same rumor, use of new channels such at mobile web or microblogging tools, etc.). The theme or topic isn’t relevant for my research, so it can be anything except marketing related rumors (no viral or buzz campaigns).

Those rumors don’t have to be specific to the Internet but MUST be spread and transmitted on the web. You can think of some examples such as the strange things you can find about Barack Obama’s religion, the rumors around the Iphone 3G before it was launched, etc.

Thanks in advance for helping, I really appreciate it! You can leave your rumors in the comments at the bottom of this post, or send them by email at . It would be nice if you could spread the word about this research to your bloggers or microbloggers friends, or any person using social media on a regular basis.