Dani 3.0

Pandora Just Got Better for iPhones

// February 4th, 2009 // Comments // iPhone, mobile

Pandora has updated their iPhone app.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

// January 28th, 2007 // Comments // Dani Happenings

Always remember, dear band boys and girls, BE NICE. It (usually) doesn’t cost you anything extra and can go a long way in getting you that next booking.

I happened to overhear an exchange between two booking agents today that had worked together to package an out-of-state show. The show went well, and the bands that each contributed did great, but they were less than impressed with the professionalism of another band on the ticket. These two agents – who both happen to be influential in the inter-state booking niche – have, I’m sure, filed this information away for future use and the band, has quite probably, eliminated a few juicy bookings in at least three states. The worst part is that the band’s not even aware of it, so there’s nothing they can do to correct it. Way ta go, Idaho!

Even if things aren’t going your way, and trust me, there will be a lot of gigs that won’t, suck it up and be professional. Remember, the ass you save is most likely your own.

Getting the word out

// January 18th, 2007 // Comments // Tech Reviews

Band promotion is almost always a chore, although it’s not as bad as it was ten years ago when we were all still stapling Kinko’s-created flyers on telephone poles. Still, the poor band sap that gets stuck with the promotion duties generally isn’t thilled about it.

The Internet, and in particular, email, was rightly viewed as a communications coup, and opened up new opportunities for reaching, and interacting, with larger fan bases. Regrettably, too many bands rely only on slapping a date on the website and sending out a ton of email to people that already have too many emails in their inbox, anyway. And don’t even get me started on MySpace. Baby, this is 2006 and we’re in the second generation (nearly the third) of the Internet. It’s time to catch up.

Here’s the deal. The second incarnation of the Internet (referred to as Web 2.0) is all about being social, see? It’s not that email and websites don’t have their place in promoting your band – they do – but you need to get your gigs out there for everyone to see, and that means posting them where they’re searching – at event sites.
In addition to thousands of viewers being exposed to your event, listing with the major event sites bring other advantages. These sites are all bleeding edge and have advanced features such as driving directions, RSS susbcriptions (by band, venue, or both), email to a friend, and export to calendar functions. (Google, Outlook, Yahoo!, AOL, Eventful, iCal, 30 Boxes, and Rabble are some of the calendars supported by these sites.) You can tag event listings with keywords, add photos of the venue and/or band, add links, and even make custom badges to add calendar information to your site. (A badge is a little HTML snippet you can paste into your website’s code.)

• Eventful.com

If you only register your events with one site, register with this one. Eventful.com is the grandaddy of event sharing, and is powered by EVDB, the events database. (Lots of cool Web 2.0 apps use the EVDB to display events, such as Atlas.) Another benefit of using this site is that it will automatically submit your event to Del.icio.us and Upcoming.org. It’s also supposed to submit to Technorati and Ping-O-Matic, but I have yet to have success with those two.

• Upcoming.org

This site is Yahoo!’s event sharing site, and while it’s fairly robust and has a large user base, I’m deducting points because you can’t add photos. Besides, if you submitted to Eventful.com and chose to submit to other websites, it’s been added here for you already.

• Tourb.us

Now this is an event site just for bands – well, actually, their fans, but how else will they know about your shows if you don’t tell them? Tourb.us offers a band signup, but you’ll want to check that you haven’t been added already during one of their Internet fact-finding missions. If your band hasn’t been added, it only takes an email to rectify that situation. The site is easy to use, supports RSS, iCal, photos, tags, maps, and even sends show reminders to your fans. They also provide badges to add some bling to your site.

Where were you last night?

// January 14th, 2007 // Comments // Dani Happenings

If you were any kind of smart, you were at FBI seeing one of the best shows to grace our town in a long time – thanks to local music promoter RockNHouston. RNH arranged a great lineup of classic rock tribute bands, including Abbey Rode, a Beatles tribute, Already Gone, an Eagles tribute, and Black Dog, a Led Zepplin tribute.
Lots of Houston rock luminaries were in the crowd, including the entire Straightfork lineup, Bobby Blotzer of Ratt, Gregg Gill and Rob Howl of Midnight Circus, Jeff Clifton, Chuck McFadden, and Trey Gadler of Azrael’s Bane, Randy of Shining Force, and Todd Lee and Kevin Smith of Assylim. Capital Volume was also represented. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all the photographers that were in the crowd, including Jackee Clifton, and took-the-night-off shutterbugs Allison Gil and Alpha Settle. Oh, and me, natch.

I took a ton of pictures, and it looks like I’ll have plenty of time to work on them since it’s strongly rumored that we’ll be having an ice storm here in Houston. And since I am Southern (Yee-haw!!) all the way, I have no clue how to drive on ice, so I’m keeping my fellow Houstonians safe by staying off the roads and in front of my computer. (Provided we have electricity.) Will post more photos soon.