One of the interesting things about the internet is having to be careful with how you approach your social media from a naming standpoint. As a musician I’m using my name as my brand. Thus when I sign up for a service, I make sure to grab my name. While my name isn’t wholly common, I do want to make sure I’m in control of it. Recently I’ve stepped up my diligence for getting all services on the same page so to speak with the vanity urls.
Vanity URLs On Social Media
Most social media platforms tend to allow for what are known as vanity URLs. That means you can choose the URL on their dot com space that leads back to your little portion of their service. For example on Twitter I have twitter.com/jodywhitesides which makes it easy for people who learn of my music to find me on twitter by using my name. Same goes for other sites as well. Some are kinda backwards, like Tumblr where the vanity URL is actually in front like this: jodywhitesides.tumblr.com.
YouTube Vanity URL
Because of a new string of singles I’m going to be recording and shooting videos for, I wanted to ‘fix’ my YouTube vanity URL. Back in the day, for some reason that I no longer recall, I chose jwhitesides. Which made my YouTube URL youtube.com/jwhitesides. Not bad, but certainly doesn’t fall in line with being consistent on the brand. I am a YouTube partner, and I’m working on getting further into the YouTube system. However, the process of grabbing a vanity URL and having YouTube mask it was beyond silly. I went through the necessary steps to get it done, yet somehow it didn’t work. To rectify the situation I started a whole new channel as a new user under YouTube.com/jodywhitesides. My reasoning on it is – with the old channel, which I’ll keep, I’ll do goofy personal things. With the new channel it will be my official music channel with consistent branding. Of course I’m essentially starting from scratch with gaining subscribers, but as the French say “c’est la vie.”
Facebook Vanity URL
Of course I’m focusing on the biggies, twitter, youtube and Facebook. In the last paragraph I mentioned the YouTube issue. The last bastion to getting all of this consistent was Facebook. When I first got on Facebook, they didn’t have anything but personal profiles. So when they offered vanity URLs, I snagged Facebook.com/jodywhitesides not knowing that in the future of FB they would offer Pages that were more band and career oriented over the personal page. When pages came along, I essentially stuck my head in the sand and kept my personal profile rather than switching the whole thing over to a page and starting a new personal page. Don’t ask me why, again I don’t remember and thinking about it, it probably had more to do with a lack of really using FB.
The big issue with Facebook is that they make nothing clear about how to do certain things on their site. I think they do this on purpose because they make their money on people being stupid and not being in control. It is what it is. I did figure out that you can change your vanity URL on any Facebook address – but only once! My thought process was, hey, I can change my person page to a new vanity URL and that should open up my /jodywhitesides URL so that I can then have the Page for my music grab it and be done with it. No need to ever change again.
So I created a new vanity URL for my private page. Something utterly useless from a social media standpoint and something I did on purpose as I’d rather not be adding people to the private page. Thanks Facebook for announcing that privacy is now no longer possible as of today. The switch in URL on the private page worked and I thought great, now I can go to the Page and make the switch there to – complete my trifecta.
Wrong!
Facebook was telling me that the /jodywhitesides URL was taken! WTF?!? Because if you tried going to Facebook.com/jodywhitesides it led to a URL not valid page. Meaning it was empty. My quest took another step where I attempted to submit the issue to their help center. What a gigantic waste of time that was. Multiple submittals resulted in nada, zip, zero. Could friends come to the rescue? I posted about my dilemma and bingo two friends of mine were friends with people who work at Facebook. Both contacted their respective friends in an attempt to get my issue to the appropriate channel to fix it. Person 1 from FB to step forward provided me with an email address to send my request to.
Off I went explaining the whole issue to this email address and cc’ing the guy on. Waited and unfortunately no response. I messaged him again and he said – I’m guessing they didn’t respond. Nope.
Person two originally came back to my other friend saying – I don’t work there anymore. Then out of the blue two days ago I get a message from my friend who got a message from person two saying. Got it, the issue should be fixed in 3 to 4 working days. I did a little internal victory dance. In less than 3 days, two actually, I got the vanity URL thing fixed with Facebook. Now I’m consistent across the board on all my social media.
Next Step
My next goal is to get the silly verified thing at Facebook. Not sure how that happens yet, but alas – at least I have two friends that know somebody that could get me the info. Hell I’m verified at Twitter – would seem that alone would be enough for Facebook to say Ok cool you’re already verified on one social service, we should verify you too. I suppose I’ll be writing a post about that when it happens.
I’m happy with the current situation and it makes it hella easier in interviews to say I’m at blah blah service dot com /jodywhitesides. Bingo. Done. Move on.
A couple of years ago I was privy to a little trip that involved myself, my mother and my sister. We attempt to make at least one trip a year as a little familial unit. The particular trip I’m thinking of was down highway 12 in the state of Utah. On this particular trip we stayed in a little B&B type place in Boulder Utah, not Boulder Colorado. It’s a very small farming community on the south side of Boulder Mountain. While staying at the B&B I was sitting out in the yard around a fire pit. Up walked a local who sat down with a guitar and started up a conversation. He found out that I’m a musician and asked me to play a couple of songs. We had a little fun talking music. This trip also happened to be the first time that I had heard the song Little Bird by Annie Lennox. I enjoyed it so much that I used it as a soundtrack to a slideshow of pictures I made from the trip. There’s something about her delivery on this song that just smacks me inside and makes me want to hear the song over and over any time I happen to play. That’s dangerous.
Little Bird
I look up to the little bird That glides across the sky He sings the clearest melody It makes me want to cry It makes me want to sit right down and cry cry cry I walk along the city streets So dark with rage and fear And I… I wish that I could be that bird And fly away from here I wish I had the wings to fly away from here
But my my I feel so low My my where do I go ? My my what do I know ? My my we reap what we sow They always said that you knew best But this little bird’s fallen out of that nest now I’ve got a feeling that it might have been blessed So I’ve just got to put these wings to test
For I am just a troubled soul Who’s weighted… Weighted to the ground Give me the strength to carry on Till I can lay this burden down Give me the strength to lay this burden down down down yeah Give me the strength to lay it down
But my my I feel so low My my where do I go ? My my what do I know ? My my we reap what we sow They always said that you knew best But this little bird’s fallen out of that nest now I’ve got a feeling that it might have been blessed So I’ve just got to put these wings to test
For most people there are only the biggies in the music app world. That would be apps like Spotify, iTunes Radio, iHeartRadio, and Pandora. I can’t forget the biggest purveyor of music video discovery as a means to find music, YouTube. None of these services suck. None of them are fulfilling a perfect music need either. However, being the forward thinking musician I am, I went hunting for some more music apps that tread paths off the beaten road. All because music junkies need to fuel their appetites. I found 5 music apps cooler than Kanye West. Because according to Kanye, he is the biggest thing in rock. So here we go:
5 Music Apps Cooler Than Kanye West
In no set order, the first app on my list is:
Lisnr
To start with, you can tell they’re taking a cue from Tumblr for their app name. I can roll with that, but I’m not sure dropping letters is the best way to title a service. What do they do?
From the Lisnr website: “Lisnr gives artists a new way to connect with their fans. By installing Lisnr on your mobile device, you’ll unlock exclusive content created by the artists you love, just by listening to your favorite music. Lisnr works at live events too, dynamically responding to your environment, and giving you a secondary experience to share with your friends.
Lisnr only ‘hears’ the ultra-sonic frequencies embedded in Lisnr-enabled tracks. Once this frequency is picked up by your phone’s internal microphone, you’ll receive a push notification if any content has been unlocked.“
As I’ve been checking out the app a vast majority of the artists jumping on the service are rap and hip hop types. Though I’ve also come across some singer/songwriter types too.
It’s a very forward thinking concept that requires your phone & the app to unlock content from the app. This app provides a cool way to connect already eager fans to new material using a watermarking technique. Content can range from messages from the artist, show tickets, videos, bonus tracks and more.
Personally I’m not a big fan of watermarking music files. I’m more of the mindset that audio fingerprints of the music itself work much better and don’t alter the content in the slightest. If Lisnr could make their app work with an audio fingerprint then the service becomes a major boon to both the artist and the fan. As it stands – it’s still really cool and the idea is there.
Stereomood
Listening to music based on the mood you’re in. Novel concept right there. How often to people just put the radio or some other streaming service on to be background noise to their life. Well now you can enhance that by picking the music to fit the mood you’re in at any given moment.
Where do they get their music? As per their website “Stereomood’s songs are all aggregated from the best music blogs across the net and filtered by music aficionados, so you never know when you’ll discover something unreleased and unheard!“
If you find a track that you really dig on Stereomood they have direct links to iTunes and Amazon. I’m unable to find information about whether or not they pay out streaming royalties. But they do have a way for artists to submit music to the service and a way to serve a take down notice if something has submitted your music without your consent.
I really dig the idea of the way it uses mood to help you find new music. Every song I heard on the service was something I had never heard before. Better yet, it was good music too. That’s a great quality to have.
MPme
Welcome to another app that runs across multiple devices and platforms all syncable. That’s a great thing for our modern world. Means you don’t have to be locked into a particular thing like iOS (which I’m a fan of). MPme scans your library and then goes out and creates stations based on the music you already dig. If that’s not enough for listening to music, you can also search for artists or songs and it will curate stations based on the search words. Plus it has the social network factor so that you can share music discoveries with your friends.
Another plus is that it has direct purchase links so you can purchase the music you come across that you instantly love. That’s something that should be standard on all music apps.
As I’m sitting here grooving on music from the app, it’s playing tunes that carry on my own musical thing of making my head bob. Something stuff I write does to others. That’s an awesome thing.
8Tracks
The service with the ancient defunct media’s name. 8Track tapes were all the rage a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Well before my time anyway.
What sets this music app apart from many others is that the music is curated by actual humans and not algorithms. Take that big boys like those mentioned at the top of the post.
One of the most beautiful things is that directly on their website they have a full page dedicated to how they pay royalties to SESAC, Sound Exchange, BMI and ASCAP. That’s music to my ears. Transparency in it’s best form.
Most of what I heard on the service was EDM – but it was EDM that I enjoyed. That’s a great thing.
exfm
Another socially oriented music player. It works like this: Create a profile and click on the heart icon when you hear a song you really like. It’s basically that simple. You can also follow other people, tastemakers, etc. They also feature hand curated playlists.
They don’t say how they pay artists anywhere on their website. That’s a little disappointing, but I’m going to assume they’re doing the right thing.
All the songs I heard on the service were by widely known acts that are already popular. Thus I’m going out on a limb and say that it’s not really about music discovery for more obscure music or by those without bigger marketing budgets behind them.
In Closing
There are a ton of new music apps coming out all the time. Taking a look at 5 of them being cooler than the greatest rockstar, a.k.a. Kanye West has been a fun exploration into the forefront of music tech. The one thing I’ve noticed about every one of them is that not one of them has solved the ultimate riddle of being the end all solution for music services. Got a favorite music app, let me know so I can check it out.
