Tag Archive for 'fuzz.com'

SanFran MusicTech Summit 2: Guestlist Wish, Artist Activism, and Label Survival

Brian Zisk has done it again. After the wildly successful SanFran MusicTech Summit last February at Hotel Kabuki, he rallied the troops for round two of what I hope will be a regular event going forward. The first Summit, which I reviewed here, set the bar high. What a brilliant meeting of minds from the music and technology industries!

Through a mix of thought-provoking panels on new technologies, heated group discussions about the future of (online) music, and lots of giddy lobby schmoozing, this event provides its very diverse attendees with a plethora of opportunities to learn, contribute, and meet resourceful people.

SanFran MusicTech Panel

Photo by Crazywanda. Some rights reserved.

For the virtual comment box, here’s a suggestion: How bout a list of attendees on the website? (Yes, there was a Facebook page you could RSVP on, but not everyone on the planet uses Facebook. Silly planet.) A simple list of attendee names, companies, and titles would be great.

The Web 2.0 Expo brilliantly utilized Crowdvine to set up a social networking site for their event. Here, you could create a profile, view other attendees and ping the people you wanted to meet. Consequently, my first day at the expo was consumed by meetings with some very cool people. Though randomly networking is great, it would be awesome to knows who’s gonna be there beforehand. Brian, whadya think?

My co-worker had the idea of placing RFID tags in everyone’s nametags so you could track people’s whereabouts throughout the day and find those you need to meet, but eventually we all agreed that would be too creepy…”Hey man! Saw that you were in the bathroom, so I thought I’d come introduce myself…” Ha.

At the Artist Activism Workshop Mike Relm, Chris Skarakis (founder and VP of Music at Fuzz), and moderator Erin Potts (Executive Director of Air Traffic Control) discussed how artists can be activists using new technologies. Very inspiring.

Mike Relm, whose live shows feature audio/video mashups “manipulated in real time with a turntable-like device” [Wikipedia] showed us a powerful Katrina video with vivid images, music, and video clips that he made to raise awareness of the disaster.

I so love where this trend is going. There are obviously a ton of ways to get involved in your community or on a more global scale, but musicians are in the perfect position to make a real difference due to their visibility. As much as we (and especially Actual) hate on American Idol, I have to admit I was impressed by how much money they raised during their Idol Gives Back special ($65 million or something, right?). At least they are doing some good with the massive captive audience they have…

But no matter how big or small your reach, there are always ways for musicians to get involved. And organizations like Air Traffic Control, Project Noise and Axis of Justice to help you on your way.

At the Record Labels and New Technologies panel, I walked in anticipating an hour of (big) label bashing, but was quite mistaken. Rather than harping on why big labels are evil and how they are all going to disappear, the consensus seemed to be that record labels are not going anywhere. They are, however, changing. Drastically. Whereas a new artist used to need a label to even get started, now the label has a very different role to play. Turns out that independent labels are actually doing quite well – at least the ones that have found innovative ways to market their bands online. Dave Allen, of the Gang of Four, pointed out that artists and their labels should keep the end user in mind and what most end users want is at least 1 free mp3, not DRM, and the ability to play music on different devices. Dave also has a great music blog, Pampelmoose. Check it out.

In between panels and meeting new people, we also ran into our friends Todd Tate (co-founder of Angry Coffee and now one of our rockstar MixMatchMusic beta testers), Hannes Hesse (the Bubblegum Sequencer guy), and my hero Tom Conrad (CTO of Pandora) among others. One of our guys was chatting with Vince Wilburn, Jr., nephew (and spitting image of) the late Miles Davis (and accomplished drummer and producer)! Seemed like a very cool guy.

All in all, another rockin Summit. Great job, Brian!

Sure, You Can MixMatch…But Can You Mix?

In what can only be called an avalanche, the world wide web is being buried under the stampeding snow of social networking sites. Myspace, facebook, hi5, friendster, linkedin…all of these seek in one way or another to organize your many relationships, quantify and qualify them, then help you make more by spying on the profiles of all the people you know or would like to know through a friend of yours. This way, you can not only be friends with the people you know, but you can stalk them effectively too!

As we’ve been over numerous times, MixMatchMusic carries the goal of introducing musicians to each other through the site, and then allowing them to share, swap, compose, compound and create new music using not just the power of collaboration between musicians, but also harnessing sequencing abilities to use all the music on the site to make what you want to hear. The primary and important goals of MixMatch revolve around introducing people to new sounds and musicians and allowing them to create new music and ideas using 2.0 infrastructure and the power of new sounds and ideas.

Also coming out of the Bay Area is the new start-up, Fuzz.com. Luckily for all involved, Fuzz’s goals do not conflict with MixMatch, but rather supplement them. I bring you Fuzz.com today because they have a very interesting new tool that could be a lot of fun to use…the virtual mixtape. Remember when we all used to make mixtapes for each other? Then it was mix CDs, and now it’s like, “here, try my playlist!”…well, the good folks at Fuzz.com have created a way for you to upload your mp3s, make a mix tape (complete with customizable mixtape artwork!) and then send it to friends who can also download your music. For someone who was a huge mixtape maker back in the day, this tool is not only very neat, but also, in my mind, a wonderful juxtaposition of old school style with new school techmology.

The idea behind Fuzz is a site that allows musicians and friends of musicians to interact in a social network atmosphere through uploading music, blogging, reading and writing reviews, talking about upcoming shows and sharing music. It’s basically Myspace for music lovers, whereas MixMatch is like an online collaborative GarageBand. I see a beautiful future where artists from all over the globe come to MixMatch to find other like minded musicians, creating new and interesting collaborations of genre and sound. Following the release of their MixMatchMusic based CD, they trot happily off to make a profile on Fuzz.com as a full and complete band, spreading the word of their release and upcoming concert tour through the musical social network. Of course, by that time, MMM will have most of the same components in place AND allow you to create music online, but they’re great people for trying, and just the type of website that the MixMatchers see working with in the future.