Universal Music are to drop the price of CDs and other major labels will more than likely follow their lead. The hope is that this price drop will bolster CD sales, which have dropped year on year for the past five years.

The news of the price drops came within 24 hours after a report commissioned by GetJar – the second largest app store to Apple – was published. The report looks at the expanding app market and the key finding is that the app market will be worth a potential $17.5 billion by 2012. This would mean that the value of apps sold would be greater than the value of CDs sold in 2012, at a predicted $13.83bn.

We at Poker PR are always waxing lyrical about the potential of the ‘album app’ and can see that when the big record companies take this on board, they will finally realise that, as a format, the CD is dead. The possibilities of the album app are endless, allowing interaction with your fans on lots of different levels, connection to social media, offering exclusive (paid) content, and allowing user generated content (remix competitions etc.) to name only a few. A CD simply does not allow these capabilities.

If you are looking to produce an app and get on board with this rapidly expanding market we at Poker PR are here to help, contact us here.

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YouTube have used SXSW to announce that they’re expanding their partner program to include independent musicians. Everyone is invited to submit videos although not all of them will be featured.

Independent musicians who are accepted by YouTube’s “Musicians Wanted” section will be able to make some money from the partner program if their music videos and live musical performances draw enough views. The artists will receive ‘a majority’ of the advertising revenue from the overlay, pre-roll, and text advertising.

The group of you YouTube employees who will select the artists that get accepted will be on the lookout for indie bands. Once the artists are accepted, they will be able to add links to buy their music, list their tour dates, and they will also have more control over the look of their YouTube channel. Artists will also make money when the videos are embedded into their own sites, blogs or social media pages.

Poker PR likes the idea of YouTube gathering all these artists into a browsable and searchable area that will feature only independent artists, meaning ultimately more money will be making its way to the artists.

There is one restriction in the new program – albeit a positive one – you must submit a video. What this means is you are not able to submit a MP3 over a selection of static images. This will be great news for all the up and coming videographers and animators out there, and we at Poker PR are look forward to seeing the results of this excellent program.

By Justin Pywell

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The SXSW (South by South West) festival in Austin, Texas starts tomorrow, running for nine days and encompassing many forms of media making it the festival that leads the way in interaction over many platforms.

SXSW really show others what is possible when it comes to using social media, utilising Facebook and Twitter amongst many other platforms, to bring up-to-date information to delegates and those attending. You can also use your Facebook and Twitter accounts to connect with other services such as the (unofficial) guide to the event on sched.org.

The festival, of course, has an iPhone app and it looks great. With schedule and maps as the more basic functions, it also includes some special features for the badge holders including a card feature that allows you to send your contact details to other delegates and a messaging feature that allows the badge holders to communicate away from the festival’s own social network my.SXSW.

It would be great to see some of the UK festivals embrace these types of technology; fans love to interact and connect in every way possible and we at Poker PR can offer all the services to make this happen.

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By Justin Pywell

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We at Poker PR have previously blogged about the ‘Album App’ and now US firm Metatron gives us a new digital film format: the ‘appMovie’. It describes a package containing HD video, audio and images.

Available to download from the iTunes app store for £2.99, the first appMovie is a documentary called Bob Marley: Spiritual Journey. It includes 14 rare tracks, and a 30 minute interview, hundreds of images and the one hour documentary, with all video content in HD. Metatron intend to make the app available on Blackberry, Android and HD TV.

The appMovie is based around the movie but at Poker we can see no reason why this could not be switched to music creating an appAlbum, featuring a full album of music, sleeve notes, choices of artwork and videos of the top tracks. This could be a great way to reignite the fans desire to buy artist albums and not just download the odd track.

By Justin Pywell

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Yesterday’s Music 4.5 event in London featured many panels covering a wide collection of subjects relevant to the music industry. The aim of the event is to bring together the tech geeks and the music geeks, both innovators and creators, with the aim of inspiring a new creative discussion focusing on innovation, revenue and business model opportunities, disruptive technology and social content.

Panels included the TechCrunch pitches featuring 10 tech start-ups explaining what they do, who they are and why they are the future for music. These included two that Poker PR found very interesting:

Psonar a cloud-based music service that lets artists upload their music to its servers and the music is then accessible from anywhere you can connect to the internet. Other users can listen to 30 second clips of your music and can be sent to Amazon to buy it or can share recommendations over social media.

CloseCall Music ever wanted the track you have just heard live at a gig? Then this excellent bit of tech is for you. CloseCall Music allows fans to purchase music from an event on their mobile phone and collect it on a USB or CD as they leave the event. If some rights issues are addressed it could allow the music to be downloaded direct to your phone.

Both of these solutions have the ability to create revenue for the artists and where applicable, the labels, which we at Poker are sure will be greatly received by both.

By Justin Pywell

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Two new additions have been added to the ever-growing line up of this year’s V-Festival. The event takes place on Saturday 21st and 22nd August 2010 at Hylands Park, Chelmsford, Essex and Weston Park, Staffordshire. Calvin Harris and Doves have both been added to the 4Music stage and will be joining headliners The Prodigy and David Guetta, supported by Florence and the Machine.

The main V stage headliners over the two days are Kasabian and Kings of Leon with support from likes of Stereophonics, Faithless, The Kooks, Paul Weller, Paolo Nutini, Pet Shop Boys, Cheryl Cole, Madness, Editors, White Lies, Mika, Groove Armada, The Courteeners, The Charlatans, The Temper Trap, Amy Macdonald, Goldfrapp, Shed Seven, Newton Faulkner, La Roux, Skunk Anansie, Passion Pit, Ellie Goulding, Paloma Faith, Plan B, Sugababes, and Pixie Lott also confirmed with more acts still to be announced.

Tickets go on sale at 9am tomorrow morning so be sure to get in there quick. A list of official ticket outlets is available here. Festival officials are warning that there are a large amount of scam websites out there and also recommending that festival goers do not use secondary ticket sellers to avoid disappointment.

Poker PR has attended V Festival for many years and if this year’s event can come anywhere close to last year’s sun kissed event then we are in for a real treat.

By Justin Pywell

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The UK based Spotify rival, We7 has launched a new music streaming mobile app, available as a free download from the iTunes store. The app appears to be working on the We7’s Premium account, although from the 1st March it will only work for those who sign up for the £9.99 a month Premium+ account.

We7’s product allows users to take advantage of an offline mode where in areas of little or no reception, they will still be able to listen to music that has been cached to the handset – a feature similar to that of the Spotify app.

There is a special offer on We7’s current Premium PC based service that is advert free and is available until the 1^st May for £3.99 a month (normal price £4.99). The Premium+ service will feature ad free listening on both PC and mobile and will be available on both the iPhone and Android devices. We7 say they will be making the app available to Blackberry devices at some point.

Following Warner Music’s comment that steaming services were “clearly not positive for the industry”, Poker PR believes it will be the premium services that will be used to keep the record companies happy and provide the money to keep the music industry alive.

We7 website

By Justin Pywell

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Poker favourites SoundCloud will be among many companies taking part in the Music Hack Day in Stockholm, Sweden on the 30th/31st of January.

The main goal of Music Hack Day is to explore and build the next generation of music applications. It’s a full weekend of hacking in which participants will conceptualise, create and present their projects. Music + software + hardware + art + the web. Anything goes as long as it’s music related.

These events massively influence what we will be doing with music on web in the future, with big players like Spotify and Last FM taking part in the European event. Poker PR will be watching out for the results with eager anticipation.

Check out this nice 3D visualiser built with the SoundCloud API… SOUNDCLOUD+TV …

and don’t forget to check out Poker PR’s SoundCloud page… Poker PR’s  SoundCloud

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