Music raj

Music

Twitter Inspires K’NAAN Song

This could be an April Fools joke.. but on the other hand, it could be a successful campaign. I’ve been on Twitter for some time and have seen the emergence of hashtags (or inserting the hash (#) in front of a subject keyword) as a powerful way to find stuff on a specific topic.

Now, K’NAAN has taken the idea of the hashtag to a whole new level with the idea of his new song (as publicised by the lovely Emmylou Benson at Universal Music):

K’NAAN TO RELEASE ‘TWITTER SINGLE’

ASSEMBLED FROM FANS’ TWEETS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(TORONTO, April 1, 2009) – Somali-Canadian musical trailblazer K’NAAN is about to collaborate with his fans in an unprecedented way –assembling a new version of his song “People Like Me” from their tweets on Twitter. On April 1, K’NAAN will invite his Twitter followers to download the special instrumental version of the song, created specially for this promotion, and submit their own lyrics for the story via his Twitter. All fan tweets tagged with #knaansong will be considered for inclusion in the final song. Deadline for submissions is May 1. Following that, K’NAAN will assemble the best tweets and record the results. The final track will be made available to fans via free download on K’NAAN’s Twitter page at http://twitter.com/thedustyfoot and his official site at http://knaanmusic.com. This will mark the first time Twitter will be officially used for the creation of a song.

K’NAAN’s latest album, Troubadour, was released on Feb 24 and debuted at #1 and #3 on the digital album charts in Canada and the United States, respectively: sure evidence of the electronically-oriented nature of many of his fans. This Twitter song collaboration is a logical extension of the new relationships being forged by artists and their audiences in an increasingly interconnected world.

More information can be found at http://www.amoctone.com/knaan/plmtweet/

knaanmusic.com
myspace.com/knaanmusic
getmusic.ca

For those not familiar with hashtags, Sudha Krishna recently pushed out some details via Twitter, HERE. You can read the Ultimate Guide to Twitter Hashtags, HERE.

aside 23 May

Upload. Get Famous. Get Paid.

Lumiere, one of the world’s finest restaurants, is slated to close soon and undergo a major transformation. Part of the transformation includes the installation of a DB Bistro Moderne which will open up next door in the space formerly occupied by Feenie’s. In the meantime, under the watchful eye of Chef de Cuisine Dale McKay and some input from super chef Daniel Boulud, Lumiere is still leading the pack with multi-course extravagance in the dining room and a nice set of tasting bites in the lounge.

A couple weeks ago, I took the opportunity to sit down for dinner at Lumiere with my wife, Mona, friend, Robert Delamar, and his wife, Midori. This was the second time in a month that I had a chance to enjoy the food at the famed restaurant and as usual I was impressed with all aspects of the dinner – from the company to the service and understandably, the food.

My friend Bob, talks about Lumiere’s history and our friend, David Sidoo on his blog, at Urbmob, HERE, in a posting titled ‘A True Baller.’ If you haven’t been to Lumiere yet, take the opportunity to at least enjoy the tasting bites before they close – the press release is at the end of this post.

Bob labels David Sidoo as a baller but one of the reasons we likely enjoy each others’ company is simple – Bob travels alot to LA, NYC and Japan on business. Having lived in Japan for a couple years, we definitely have a connection. Running a record label is definitely great for the jetset lifestyle.

Back to getting paid, Bob’s company is Urbmob – think Urban and Mobile. The company is a social network which allows artists, models and fans to share in revenues from the sale of ringtones, wallpapers and more with Urbmob’s trademarked Talent Rank service. Upload music and photos – they get transformed into ringtones and wallpapers for download. Pretty simple really, check out the blurb, below:

So you’re an aspiring artist, model or a fan hell bent on promoting your own stuff and you want to know how to monetize your insane talent. You also want your audience to recognize your talent and put you on TV, Radio, get into Magazines, and do your own events… Well you came to the right place. Welcome to Urbmob.

For artists, they post their stuff up, much like a MySpace profile and can sell their wares. Brilliant, unique and definitely defensible intellectual property. Check out the quick video blurb on their corporate site, HERE.

—

You can also check out the press release from Lumière with details on hours of service and special cocktails, after the jump.
[read more…]

aside 15 Oct

LOVERBOY Just Getting Started CD

Announcement

LOVERBOY returns full-force with the in-your-face new CD release JUST GETTING STARTED, the band’s first studio album in more than a decade. RockSTAR Music Corp. www.rockstarmusiccorp.com Loverboy’s label completed the exclusive deal with Wal-Mart for United States national hard copy distribution for the November 6 release. The CD will be available on all major online retailers.

Below is the link to the Loverboy-Wal-Mart EPK for the upcoming November 6 release of THE FIRST STUDIO.

http://video.clipstream.com/…

Please forward this to your friends

Michael

Michael Hektoen
RockSTAR Music Corp
Direct Line: 604.960.9880
MHektoen@RockSTARMusicCorp.com

www.rockstarmusiccorp.com
www.myspace.com/rockstarmusiccorp
www.myspace.com/loverboyrockstar
www.loverboyband.com
www.myspace.com/eliseestrada
www.eliseestradasource.com
www.liveonarrival.com
www.myspace.com/liveonarrivalband

aside 13 Apr

Rosette at Sonar

Rosette plays at Sonar on the 29th of April, 2006

94.5 The Beat and NewMusicWest is proud to present Rosette with guests Syria and Marika

Check out the event details at Urban Mixer:http://vancouver.urbanmixer.com/events/rosette-at-sonar

Sonar
66 Water Street
Vancouver.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Time: 8:00 PM
Picture this, you turn on the radio and you hear an infectious song. The vocals are sultry; the soul is reminiscent of your favorite Motown artist. The song ends, but you keep singing the chorus. The melody won’t escape your head.

More information about this event…

aside 8 Sep

Rosette – Crushed

Rosette, my buddy Adam’s latest project. He’s been working the radio stations hard as of late – I’m sure you’ve heard this new release by now. If not, I’ve got a sample in store for ya!

Rosette – I recall getting the demo cd when Delirous came out. As always, the songs are getting better and better. This one’s a hit. Click here to listen (I’ve trimmed the original down to a minute and a half for your consumption).

Update: (2005-11-03 09:27 AM) Site’s been really popular since I posted up the MP3. It’s great to see but what I can’t stand are people who are so rude to link directly to the MP3 and post the song as the background sound for their personal sites, etc. I don’t mind paying the extra $1000/month it takes to support the bandwidth of the song so long as the listening is legitimate and tied to my blog. I’ve had to change the song’s URL as a result – the song is still there, just new link to get at it.

Update: (2005-12-11 04:15 AM) Sorry folks, a few people have been abusing the download of the MP3 so I’ve had to remove it. You can thank the top two bandwidth hogs (last month’s bill was approx. $2k) for the removal (the rest pale in comparison but I have seen instances of people playing the song 15 – 20 times in a row): http://www.tdotwire.com/profile.php?user_id=51071 and http://www.zuup.com/mzxtee.

Below is the information off the promo sheet. Original here and you can visit Rosette’s website at http://www.rosetteonline.com http://www.rosettemusiconline.com.

[read more…]

aside 5 Jun

NWA un-radio edit versions

Okay, so when they edit music for the radio, they usually either remove or bleep out the explicit lyrics. After all, we don’t want to offend the general public and lose advertizing, do we?

Well this site does the opposite: http://www.ni9e.com/

Instead, they’ve decided to remove all the non-cuss words from NWA songs. Quite content rich, I’d say. Take a listen for yourself.

aside 3 Jun

Okay, so I took a break…

I took a break – a long, well needed break. Busy season kicked up and my blogging got left in the dust….

Okay.. so I unequivocably promise to blog again… To all my adoring fans, I’m back.. spread the word!

[read more…]

aside 3 Feb

Today, I am the king of blogs!

Okay, well, I’m not really the king of blogs but I’ve been holding off on doing this for so long that it has been building up but no more!

Firstly, I’ve consolidated some of my blogging from Asian Avenue and Black Planet from 2002 and 2003 onto this site so if you look really far back, you’ll see some really old content.

Secondly, I’ve been catching up on stuff for the month of January. At least I didn’t leave it to June this time!

[read more…]

aside 3 Feb

Adam H

Adam H is one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. He’s at the top of his field as far as I’m concerned and we share the same tastes when it comes to quality. He gave me a buzz out of the blue, presumably to update me on what’s going on in his world and to find out vice versa.

We initially started in Adam’s place – he’s turned it upside down and into an editing studio. He’s been really busy lately with Univesal Records and Banana Toonz. They like the way he puts things together when it comes to his producing and editing plus the way he relates to radio programmers and DJs when it comes to radio tracking. Adam’s been doing so well that he’s been able to steal someone as senior as Gregor Heieis (Roxy, Shark Clubs, etc.) away to work for him.

[read more…]

aside 9 Dec

Reminiscing with Music

Usually when I join a company, I try to leave a lasting mark on the organisation – in most cases, creating marketing that lasts. In the case of Clear Choice and SSID, we created a soundbyte that people could relate to. I was listening to the voicenotes in my phone today and came accross a studio session that I had with Adam H when we created the SSID soundbyte.

Adam Hurstfield (aka Adam H) is one of the most talented artist/producers around. He’s worked with music greats such as George Clinton and Max-A-Million and has toured to the far corners of the globe with top selling albums in Japan, Europe and South America. You can read his bio (probably outdated by now) by clicking here. I’ve always enjoyed his music, his great attitude and overall, his comraderie. When I asked him to create a soundbyte for Clear Choice a long while back, he met the challenge by throwing back some concepts to me in a matter of minutes.

To hear the chimes, you can click on the links below:

Clear Choice Technologies Chimes wav file
SSID Chimes wav file
SSID Chimes (vocal) wav file

I got more than I could ever ask for during the creation of the SSID Chimes. Adam, the consomate promoter and workaholic gave me a little taste of what Adam’s up to next. Here’s the working session (approx. 15 minutes) as well as a more polished version of the track (approx. 2 minutes) he was working on. He also showed me the stuff he was working (approx. 2 minutes) on for with Banana Toons. You’ll probably hear J.Lo spin this out in the future as some of it was written with her in mind.

Next Page
Page 1 of 2

Music

Twitter Inspires K’NAAN Song

Upload. Get Famous. Get Paid.

LOVERBOY Just Getting Started CD

Rosette at Sonar

Rosette – Crushed

NWA un-radio edit versions

Okay, so I took a break…

Today, I am the king of blogs!

Adam H

Reminiscing with Music

Recent Photos

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Categories