September 2009

Sep 30

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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.

 

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Sep 30

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Good news for people who like good news.  One of my all time favorite bands - The Black Keys are teaming up with Damon Dash and a slew of other amazing hip hop artists for a new hybrid musical endeavor called Blakroc. 

So far, the one track that I’ve heard featuring Mos Def and Jim Jones is pretty much epic.  I’m especially looking forward to hearing the contributions by Q-Tip, RZA, Raekwon and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard (not sure how they pulled that off). 

The self-titled debut LP comes out on November 27th (“Black Friday” - how fitting).  In the meantime, check out their website www.blakroc.com.  I would highly recommend watching the full length trailer.  Get ready and stay tuned. 

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Sep 29

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I’m diggin’ on this blog, Copy Cat, where people can upload covers of songs. 

Not only can you find your favorite songs covered but you can also find some of your favorite artists taking a stab at other peoples songs. 

Their tagline says it all: “No Original Content Here!”

So far we like Beck covering The Flaming Lips, Norah Jones covering Wilco, Elliot Smith covering The Beatles and Oniracom’s client Zee Avi of Brushfire Records covering Interpol.

You can check them out at copycats.tumblr.com or have your covers delivered right to your door step by following them on Twitter.

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Sep 28

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Today I thought I would share a quick tutorial on how you can make a hand drawn myspace header image and then show you a way that you can quickly add that header image to the top of your myspace.  (If you are only looking for the code that adds an image header to your myspace page, see step 10 at the bottom).

McAvene_MyspaceHeaderFInal

To see the Header in action go check out Myspace.com/MatthewMcAvene

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Sep 28

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Mason Jennings was featured and interviewed on CNN today.

On the interview he reveals a bit about how the new album “Blood Of Man” came about and what inspires him to write.

Effortless melody, dexterous wordplay, tight compositions—they come easy for Jennings, whom Rolling Stone recently dubbed “one of the best songwriters you’ve never heard of.” But his new album, “Blood of Man” (Brushfire), goes deeper than his previous work, which presented a more affable side of the Honolulu-born, Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter.

Read the full article here.

Also don’t forget to check out the website we did for him.

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Sep 28

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How to: Get Your Band’s First Press

Author: brendan
POSTED AT 08:09 PM

It’d be nice if all you had to do was send CDs out to the big magazines and they would eventually be reviewed, but this hardly happens anymore.  In fact, not much gets done by blindly sending CDs to people—we get tons of them each month, and yes although we do listen, we have no context or connection for any of the bands.

Take an approach like one of the artists we signed to our record label: Marc B.  He heard our company name and did some research to find out how to get in touch with us.  He found an address and a phone number.  Advice: pick the phone number.  Make a connection with whoever you meet on the phone, and ask them if you could send them your CD.  When Marc’s CDs arrived, it wasn’t addressed to “Oniric Records” like all of the others, it was addressed to a single person, who was expecting his CDs.  The package was immediately delivered to him, and the listener had a context and connection for who sent him the package.  At the very least, it had his name on it, so he was going to pay more attention.

Take the extra step to make a relationship with the company you are going to send your CD to.  Don’t address anything to “Demos” or “(Company Name)” if you want your music to be taken seriously.  You worked too hard on your CD for it to be stacked in a pile with the rest of the demos.

Also, before you start sending out your CDs to Rolling Stone and SPIN, gather some press in your local market.  For a smaller city like ours in Santa Barbara, our biggest publication, The Santa Barbara Independent, comes out with an annual comprehensive list of bands in Santa Barbara.  You can check it out here.  See if your local publication has one of these, and make sure you are included.  If they don’t have one, suggest it, but at the very least, make a connection and address your CD to a person, not a company.

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Sep 25

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From SmashingMagazine.com to DesignBump to Magazine sites like Print and CMYK, there are tons of great design resources out there. But lately, there is one resource that has been providing me with more exciting content and educational articles than any other, Design-Newz.

Design-Newz, which was built and is run by the guys over at Spyre Studios, is an invaluable resource for any designer.  It hosts a virtual library of design blog posts.  Basically, they search the web for the latest and greatest design articles and then post links to those articles on their project website Design-Newz.com.

To help promote the blog posts, they employ twitter.  I follow them on twitter and get their regular tweets linking to hundreds of different design blogs with high quality articles that offer free brushes, photoshop tutorials, and inspirational collections of work by designers.  Thus far, they’ve been a wonderful and welcome source of inspiration as I’ve worked on our company’s websites.

Their work and their site exhibits four things that inspire me: A unique idea, Fantastic quality, Regular and consistent updates (they commit to at least having 5-10 updates a day), and a humble attitude that seeks to promote great work over purely personal gain.

Go follow them on twitter and start learning.

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Sep 25

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I got the chance to head out to West Beach Festival to support two of our clients, G. Love and SOJA.  Both of them played great sets to a barefoot crowd of thousands who were hanging out on the beach and loving every second of the festival.

It’s always great when you see great music come to your hometown, especially when you know it will happen again the next year.  Many thanks to Twiin Productions for putting on the successful event.  Can’t wait to see what the lineup is like next year.

Below are some pictures I shot while at the Festival on Saturday (many more coming!).  Double click on the picture to see a larger version.

Ben Harper

Ben Harper

Bravery

The Bravery


Festival

The Festival Grounds in Santa Barbara, CA


G. Love

G. Love & Special Sauce


Rey Fresco

Rey Fresco

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Sep 25

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One of Oniracom’s newest clients, indie rockers The Middle East, got an honorable mention on Pitchfork today.

Check out the write up and listen to their first single, “The Darkest Side” of their new EP

The first track is called “The Darkest Side”, a simple, finger-plucked acoustic affair with alternating and harmonizing vocals that lend the hushed track a sense of beleaguered hope. (Pitchfork)

Also stay tuned for a brand new website for The Middle East coming soon!

 

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Sep 25

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We recently launched the new Jack Johnson Music for his upcoming “En Concert” release.  The launch includes a brand new website layout, updated online store complete with digital downloads (integrated with physical merchandise shipments) and a social media campaign to promote the products.  Billboard.biz covered our Twitter widget:

Jack Johnson is harnessing the power of his Twitter followers to promote his new live album. Users send a form letter (form tweet?) to their followers and in return will get a free MP3. Nice. It’s simple, probably cost next to nothing, and will most likely be very effective. Oniracom, the company that runs Johnson’s website, offers a case study on its efforts to increase Matisyahu’s Twitter following and improve his Twittering. (For example, Matisyahu generated buzz by inviting five Twitter followers to his band rehearsal). (Mashable)

Read the Billboard Article

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Sep 24

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MySpace has launched their sync service to many of their users world wide.  Right now you can sync your MySpace status update with your Twitter. 

The beta service was originally only available to celebrities and musicians like Oniracom clients Lenny Kravitz, John Legend, and Matisyahu.

The service is another great way for musicians to be able to update once and publish to several sites much like several third party Facebook apps that publish your Twitter updates to your profile wall.

We have been able to keep fans updated about new tours, album launches, and special opportunities through Myspace Sync. (Sizlocore)

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Sep 24

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We recently launched the new www.jackjohnsonmusic.com for his upcoming “En Concert” release.  The launch includes a brand new website layout, updated online store complete with digital downloads (integrated with physical merchandise shipments) and a social media campaign to promote the products.  Mashable.com covered our Twitter widget:

It’s really simple: just head on to twitter.jackjohnsonmusic.com. There’s a premade Twitter message there (you can add 24 more characters if you like) that promotes the new album, titled En Concert, and all you need to do is login into your Twitter account and send it. The download of the promised tune (it’s a 192 kbps MP3) will start automatically.

Read the Mashable Article

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