Live Music Gets Smart
Earlier this week San Francisco based JamBase released their iPhone App V2, creating an “instant mobile connection between you and live music,” according to their site.
JamBase has a rich history of progressive moves in live music and online fan culture. Starting as a database built by Andy Gadiel and Ted Kartzman to help Phish fans find shows (and each other) in the late 1990s, JamBase grew into a property serving fans of genres spanning rock, classical, jazz and beyond.
In 2011 JamBase continues to evolve alongside the behavior patterns of live music consumers, developing fundamental mobile tools for music lovers. With the largest, cleanest concert database in the world, JamBase serves up more than 30 million API requests a day.
Version 2 of the application lets iPhone users sync the library on their phones and subscription services with the JamBase database to display when a favorite band is coming to town.
GPS integration is great for travelers like me – the app displays live music that fits a user’s taste within the radius of wherever she is located. Tap on a show, and the app provides all necessary venue information, tickets and maps.
While the JamBase motto instructs “Go see live music,” JamBase has dealt with indie rock bias for most of its existence, thanks to the word “Jam” in the company name. A quick look around JamBase.com makes it clear, however, that live music is not genre specific, nor is the JamBase database.
For show goers and music festivals from Bonnaroo to Bumbershoot, it’s the longest existing company of its kind, continuing to build products focused on encouraging fans to see live music. The JamBase app is free.
Facebook Likes Ads
With rumors of an upcoming IPO, March seems like the right time to increase the cost of facebook advertising to targeted networks. February brought unexpected changes to the functionality and layout of business (and artist) pages. And on March 1, Facebook unified “like” and “share” in the social network dictionary, giving both words the same definitive meaning when clicked.
Comments on Hypebot’s post about the matter reveal how their readers are reacting, and it’s not very positive. Why this sudden change – and what does it mean?
Now, when you land on a website, blog post, song, or even an online advertisement, if you click the “like” button, you will share the item with all of your friends. In the past, a feed announcement might simply say “Corey Denis likes Toxic, by Britney Spears ” – now instead of a simple sentence, it appears as a news item with a small paragraph and a few buttons encouraging you to comment and (re)share.
Alterations to linguistic syntax enhance the value of ‘like’ and increases the cost of facebook advertising for businesses who use facebook to hypertarget their audiences.
Facebook is a business. While Movie-Zuck’s dream of connecting people to change the world still seems real after watching Fincher’s The Social Network, these shifts are clear moves to further monetize you as an online property.
Your mind, your intellectual property, your attention, your music picks, your content; these are all tools for another business’ not-so-avante social syndication marketing plan. Truth is, nobody knows the value of a “like” or “share” on facebook, but many businesses and governments would like to figure it out.
With the definition of ‘like’ and ‘share’ valued in equal measure, the worth of your opinion is under constant financial scrutiny; even if that value has yet to be defined. Whether or not you want to share the item, or simply like it, the cost of your click is going to the highest bidder.
Want more news, sent to your inbox every day? Then how about subscribing to our email newsletter? Here’s why we think you should. Come on, give it a try.
