I am the world trade center

What foresight to name your band I Am The World Trade Center before the events of 9/11. Of course, everyone is going to assume you named it that after the event and are capitalizing on the name. I did.

But, they were apparently around two years prior, which makes sense, because their sound is so firmly rooted in the catalog of successful 1980s New Order singles. The band are two people – Daniel Geller and Amy Dykes – who rely much on Geller’s laptop as the source of the music.

The song on their MySpace page – “Future Sightings” – isn’t as compelling as the song Dancing Alone, which is featured on the Kindercore Records website (the record label started by Geller).

Here’s their video for “No Expectations.”

Check out the cover of the record that opens in the beginning. If I’m not mistaken, that’s the cover for the New Order single “World In Motion,”

which was also written for the 1990 England World Cup team, if I’m not mistaken (it sure sounded like it – regarded to be one of their worst songs ever).

media’s desire for disaster worse than expected

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the way Harley Davidson was handling their marketing – a counter to how the media is handling economic reporting.

Today’s headline over at Yahoo Finance: April Pending Home Sales Unexpectedly Rise 6.3 Pct.

And two bullets down from that headline? Oil Prices Fall, but Choppy Path Ahead.

So, even though it appears there is good news, don’t be fooled. Everything is still awful, and if it’s not now, it will be soon.

Well, I was going to purchase the new My Morning Jacket CD, but forget it now…

connecting musicians to fans

NewTunes is about music search and discovery. That’s been covered pretty well here.

What hasn’t been covered so well is that it’s also for musicians. Sure, music fans can enter a song they like in our search and get recommendations based on that song. But that’s just one half of the relationship. The other half is to have the musicians with music to find.

A major part of our experience is going to be tailored specifically for musicians. We’re trying to create the easiest interface possible for an musician or band to upload their music into our database and enable it for discovery.

Sure, there are many sites like Garage Band and MySpace that help give artists a home for their music and an electronic press kit to share with clubs at which they want to play. But those places are not necessarily geared for discovery.

By uploading their music into our database, a musician or band is improving their chances of being tied specifically to a song that one of our users already likes. That means that when they hear that artists song, the user will be in a discover and purchase frame of mind.

If the user really enjoys that artists song, they then become an evangelist for that musician or band. It is our goal to not just be a static home for musicians and bands, but to be a place that proactively pushes their music out to people who we know will like it.

For example, check out this up and coming band – PJ and the Jelly Roll Chaser*.

They sound very much like the “Drums” or “Space Jam” portion of any Grateful Dead show. So, if one were to type a song from the Grateful Dead album “Infrared Roses” – which is a collection of instrumental jams from their live shows – into our search engine, PJ and the Jelly Roll Chaser may have one of their songs served up as a result.

A band will only show up in our search results as often as a user looks for a similar song, but when their songs do turn up, there’s a much greater chance that the user will listen to, purchase and like the song. At this point, a band needs to have quality fans before they can build quantity.

*Ok, PJ and the Jelly Roll Chaser may still need to evolve their work a bit, but you get the point…