Small Social Media

It seems more and more that it is imperative for businesses to start using social media to enhance their business models. From a story on seachenginewatch.com, apparently the number of small businesses using social media is supposed to double in the next year. Currently about 5% of all small businesses use social media and in the next 12 months about 600,000 small American businesses are supposed to start using social media in their business platforms. Not only is social media convenient and can be done from anywhere there’s an Internet connection but its also cost effective. Especially with the economy in the toilet, businesses need cheap ways to gain business and advertise. And as we all know advertising in print media is way to expensive, so now is the time for social media to emerge and help propel are economy.

Awesome Music Site

Whoa!! I found a really cool website called last.fm. It’s basically MySpace on steroids. Not only can bands make profiles and put their music on the Internet. It also is a radio station and lists shows in your area and I gotta say that the radio feature is amazing. You can essentially find any artists you like and listen to their music for free through last.fm. It’s like being your very own music programmer. I immediately started listening to Guns and Roses songs, and was amazed at the amount of songs they have for you to listen too. They also have videos for each song ,too! Check it out you won’t be disappointed.

The process of creating a video on a social issue for our class was definitely a daunting process. Though I had a lot of fun creating the video, figuring out which program to use was a nightmare. I first started using Jay Cut, which seems to be a very simple and perfect program to use. But when I began to try and upload my song to it, it turned into a nightmare. I then tried Sprout Builder, which seemed to be more for photos than anything. At 2:00 AM I decided to try and learn the program but once again uploading a song was super annoying. I started to upload the song but after 20 minutes it was at 8% so I got frustrated and moved to the next program, Animoto. Apparently, Animoto is supposed to be a really good program but if you want to make a video over 30 seconds then you have to pay and I ain’t paying! So I finally found Jump Cut (music plays Hallelujah). After about 20 minutes I had Jump Cut figured out and began to start having fun making a video.

For my video I decided to do it on cheating and it’s influence on American marriages. To me there’s always tragedy in comedy and I felt that by making this movie funny it could help ease the pain that many of us have once felt. So here it is, have a laugh:

An Indication Of How President Obama Will Use Social Media

We have all recently blogged about the extensive use of social media for Barak Obama’s campaign for presidency. After his win, we all sort of wondered how Obama would use social media after he officially becomes the president of the United States. In the article Obama White House to Broadcast Weekly Radio Address on YouTube, found on mashable.com by Adam Ostrow, apparently President Obama will be putting weekly video addresses on YouTube. The videos will also be posted on change.gov. The Obama administration is also likely to launch their very own YouTube channel. It seems as though we were all right to predict that he would continue using social media to communicate to the American people. It’s also noted in the article that Obama hasn’t used twitter since November 5th. Come on Barack, tweet it up!

Obamitter

As we all know, Barack “The social media guru” Obama is the new president of the United States. It’s been well stated and observed that Obama used social media tools like Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and barackobama.com to lead his campaign, raise money and motivate the public to get out the vote. But know that he’s in office what will his social media sites focus on now? You would think that with all the people now attached to his social media heal that he would appoint the first social media position in the White House. Who knows, social media could be the new form of nuclear weaponry for the United States. Maybe the way to kill Osama Bin Laden is to tweet him to death.

But realistically does this mean that we, citizens, will be directly connected to congressmen and women through social media. Maybe congress will twitter in their votes and use it organize community service. But one thing we do know is that it will be used heavily in 2012 for the next presidential race. And if Obama plans to run again then he will be getting started in 2 years and who knows what social media tools he’ll be using then.

Poverty: Social Video Awareness

After discussing our web video assignment in class I was interested in watching some videos to help me brainstorm. I decided to see what kinds of videos were produced on poverty. After watching several videos the best one I found was Poverty The Numbers. This video does a great job at presenting facts with disturbing and realistic depictions of poverty. The video is obviously not done by a filmmaker or someone with a budget but is a good example of amateur video social awareness. It also has the Peter Gabriel song, “Don’t Give Up” which is an awesome song and it fits perfectly with the mood of the video. Here are some of the facts presented in the video, check it out:




35 million Americans live in poverty
18 percent of children live in poverty
45 million Americans live without heath care
1 in 4 American immigrants children live in poverty
1 in 3 minorities live in poverty
3 billion people live off of less than $2 a day
1 billion people can’t read or write
121 million children out of education
30,000 children die of poverty per day and 210,000 per week
America ranks last in a UNICEF report on child well being in developed nations

Music On Podcasts

As we began to work on our podcast the idea came up about using an actual song instead of a jingle. Funny thing is up until recently it was absolutely illegal to do so. In the article, Music Industry Changes It’s Tune On Podcasting from the Wall Street Journal, writer Ethan Smith explains the relationship between the music industry and podcasting. In fact, recently the industry has decided to embrace licensing for podcasting but still really hasn’t found the proper way to collect royalties on it. Currently there are only a few ways in which one can use a song for a podcast and that idea is centered on the podcaster paying a flat fee.

In the ever-changing world of the music on the Internet I find it funny that the music industry is still so far behind in letting their products be represented on the World Wide Web. It always feels like the industry is at least 10 years behind on everything. Instead of embracing illegal downloading and changing their business models they choose to prosecute it. Why must they move so slow on these issues? The sad thing is that podcasting is just another lucrative business venture for artists to explore but still the industry doesn’t want to embrace it. The record industry is so caught up on control that they have let their selfishness get in the way of taking advantage of these great ways to expose artists. Come on big corporate music big wigs; figure it out cause as usual your just holding artists back from making money from their music.

Covert Curiosity, A Good Music Blog

If you don’t know by now, my “job” is recording and producing bands. I have made it a huge priority to try and use these social media tools we learn about in class to find more clients (bands) in the local Austin music scene. As I have been exploring the Austin music scene’s blogosphere it seems that Covert Curiosity is the leading blog voice about music. Based in Austin, Covert Curiosity does a great job at providing an entertaining music related blog. Not only do they update their blog daily but they provide their audience with a look at unknown bands around the world with mp3 samples and intellectual insights about music. They also have tons of links to other blogs and a calendar highlighting some of the great shows to see in Austin.

The only thing I wish they would do more, is blog more, about local bands. I imagine their interested in having a larger fan base than just Austin, so that is hopefully why they don’t spend enough time on the scene. But for someone who knows that there is an abundance of great music in Austin, it would be nice for someone to inform the public about bands other than the Austin Chronicle.

But all in all, it is a good blog and I recommend it and it’s “ad free” too. Also I recommend checking out our fellow communication major friend Ian Morales’ blog, Ian’s Music Blog. Ian is honest and has a great love for music.