All’s fair in love and advertising? Tons of people forwarded me this ad that’s been appearing on Facebook. Mitch (Joel) was the first of course:) Think about it, that’s pretty good marketing. He’s able to get directly to the crowd he wants to reach and people he thinks will love his music. By using the keyword “David Usher” when he sets up the ad Daniel can targeting my audience. Lots of you emailed me saying “what the hell, can he do this?”. I think he can. I’ve emailed Daniel to see how the campaign worked for him.

What do you think?

Well the auction is over.

CBCNews.ca “Fiddler Ashley MacIsaac, as known for his attention-seeking stunts as his musical talents, has launched an online auction to sell half of his future revenue. In an eBay listing, the 33-year-old musician says he’ll share 50 per cent of his future receipts with a winning bidder until the day he dies. The deal also includes a concert a year for the next decade, located wherever the winner chooses. As of Wednesday afternoon, one anonymous eBay account holder has met MacIsaac’s starting bid of $1.5 million. The auction ends July 7.”

As far as i can tell the one bidder has disappeared and the auction has been taken down. Im not sure if its brilliant or sad.

Did anyone hear more on this, how it ended?

Don’t underestimate how important it is. Make something you love. It doesnt always work out but the point is to try. I was listening to Margaret Atwood on CBC and she was talking about if the point of poetry is to be active or passive. She said something one of her old teachers use to say was “is it alive or dead”. You may not always succeed but who cares. We try to make things that are alive. The internet allows us to do things we couldn’t before. Freedom. Thats why i love it.

Chris Brogan, an always read on my Google Reader writes a great post of blogging essentials. If your blogging or thinking about it, its a good read. There really is a method to the madness and Chris helps sort through it with A Sample of Blogging Workflow.

Chris Penn wrote today that Twitter has limited the number of people that he can follow. We all know they are having their problems over there, maybe this is a way of trying to put limitations on their service while they play catch up.
But lets talk honestly for a second. Does it matter? How many people can you really follow, I mean really follow. Chris has over 2000 people that he’s following. I can barely keep up with returning my emails, never mind write my 2 blogs, voice mails etc. Can anyone really follow 2000 people on twitter, or a 1000 or even a 100. For myself and from my conversations with many of you thats not really what we are doing with Twitter. Most of us scan it when we can. We use Tweetscan to check out what people are saying about us. So the # of people you are following is more about the # than the value of all those conversations.

Maybe Ive missed the point of following. What do you think? How many people do you really follow?

Ps you can follow me on Twitter here, if you can handle the noise:)

Note: Chris Penn commented
“I can definitely say I don’t know what all 2,000 are doing, but I can also definitely say that with a river of stuff that broad, there’s always an interesting conversation to jump in to!”

Im doing most things on my mobile because I travel so much and am rarely at a desk, so i think its harder to surf the river, but Im going to try and think of Twitter following that way for a bit to see if it changes my interactions.

A picture is worth a 1000 words. Remember where the music at Starbuck use to sit. Apparently teddy bears in bee suits bring in more revenue. Not a cd to be found in the place.
I need to go into the bear business:)

This video was posted on my forum. It really is how i think we should work online. You have to open up and share things that you care about, that have value for yourself and your community.

How do you interact? What else should we all be doing?

My friend Neil made this really great mashup video with my new single and “the Batman”. Im a big fan and the new movie looks like its going to be amazing!

Here the Digg link

At NXNE a lot of musicians were asking the question: What should I do?

Here’s my 20 cents:

1. There are no gatekeepers, don’t wait for that deal. They are few and far between these days. Try and get your music out to as many people as possible. That means building your community on the web. That’s were everyone goes to discover, listen and buy music. So that’s were you need to be.

2. Forget the traditional website. Think about the sites you visit everyday. Do any of them have content that’s 6 months old? No, so…

Move to a blog based platform where your blog is front and center. Use blogging and micro blogging (your Status) to keep your page fresh and always updated. No more old news, old photos, old videos, old tour dates. Make it about what your doing today. Open up your creative process to your audience. It’s a bit frightening at first but once you start it can become addictive. Trust me, this can lead you to being even more creative.

Note: you can get a simple blog page at wordpress.com or blogger, there are lots of free alternatives. You can use them with your own URL. Pay a designer by the hour to help customize the look and feel. I shouldn’t cost a fortune. Because blog platforms are built like social networks, they have a simple backend and you can easily do all the updating of your content yourself.

3.Hub out your blog page.
The idea is to blog and micro blog in one place, and then have that information feed to the rest your social networks automatically through RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Your goal is to have a simple system so you can upload once and get your art/process out to as many places as possible on the web.

Note: Start with Flickr, Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, Ilike, LastFM and Twitter.
That it in short form. I’m on a flight to Calgary so more later☺_

Remember. Go where the people are.

Thoughts or questions?

I had a great time in Toronto first with my good friend Mitch Joel speaking at the Canadian Marketing Association, From Mass To Grass . And then, at NXNE where we were joined by another friend Michael McCarty,, President of EMI Music Publishing Canada for a discussion on the future of the music industry and the Internet.

If you made it out to either event I’d love to hear your thoughts or feedback.