February 2, 2010

  • Redesign Coming

    Very shortly we will be rolling out a redesigned layout that focuses on simplicity, ease of use, and a clean presentation. We are making a deliberate effort to stay out of the way and let the artist’s personality shine through.

    But it is always a balance. MySpace gave artists a great deal of control over their page layouts, but the number one complaint I hear over and over from listeners and artists is that MySpace is at best inconsistent and at worst, junky.

    Contrast with Facebook, which I think forces artists into too narrow of a box. Facebook pages are devoid of personality or visual impact, which I believe is crucially important in presenting yourself and your art.

    Today, we automatically import an artist’s Twitter background image and Twitter/Facebook profile pic when they log into bln.kr.

    As we build out our premium feature set, we are interested in more ways to provide a professional, consistent way to customize bln.kr.

    What customizing options would you like to see from us?

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    January 24, 2010

  • Video

    Brand new feature!  Now, artists can create “Facebook/Tweet to download” music campaigns with http://bln.kr.

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  • Video

    Check out how easy it is to share a track from http://bln.kr over to facebook.  So easy, even a caveman could do it.

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    August 13, 2009

  • QR Codes

    So we enabled QR codes, which are a form of barcode, on the desktop and mobile versions of bln.kr.

    For me, this is more of an experiment than anything. We believe in giving artists the tools to share the music they make, and I’m curious if any of our artists can come up with a creative way to use scannable QR codes to share their music.

    Off the top of my head:

    Artists could copy and paste their track’s QR code and put it on a show flier or business card.

    Venues could print a QR code of each artist performing that night on the playbills they post.

    Music magazines could print a QR code of the artist they are featuring.

    Artists could incorporate their QR codes into a t shirt design.

    On mobile, listeners could easily share songs by scanning the QR code.


    I fully realize that the current state of scanning on smartphones isn’t that great. The cameras don’t always capture the codes, the code analysis is slow. By the time I fire up a scanning app, scan the code, and wait for it to push me to the track on bln.kr, I could have just typed in the short code in my browser and be listening to the track.

    BUT, the pace of mobile computing advancement is staggering, and we can see a time when scanning is immediate and actually more convenient than typing.

    So we are providing QR codes to our artists in the hope that they can be used creatively today and just in case we all end up living in a barcoded world someday.

    I would love to get your thoughts on QR codes on bln.kr. Are they useful? Are they in the way?

    And while we are at it, what other emerging technologies can we leverage to make sharing your music more innovative?

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  • Image

    This was one of the first versions of bln.kr. We’ve come a long way in 3.5 months and we have a long way to go.

    This was one of the first versions of bln.kr. We’ve come a long way in 3.5 months and we have a long way to go.

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    June 19, 2009

  • Video

    This is how it feels building bln.kr and how I hope it feels for all the musicians we are trying to help.

    Be unstoppable.

    All thanks to Derek Sivers for this amazing feeling.

    http://sivers.org/dance-lessons

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    June 8, 2009

  • to twitter or not to twitter, that is the question

    An interesting discussion on the pros/cons of musicians promoting themselves on twitter sprung up over on the Ableton Live forum about a month ago, so I had to interject.

    So I’ll give my (biased) $0.02.

    For me, Twitter is the way I want to communicate.

    I do most of my daily “computing” on my iPhone, which primarily consists of connecting with my friends and staying up on the news.

    I want all of this info in short, succinct bursts because I’m on the run, I’m looking at a small screen, and I’m on a relatively low bandwidth internet connection. I like that Twitter forces folks to be brief.

    I follow my friends, several news agencies, and a couple of bands that I dig. When used in this way, it almost makes checking Facebook, my Google Reader RSS feed, and MySpace pages redundant. Twitter is the closest thing to the real-time web, and is an excellent tool for spotting trends and breaking news.

    Of course there is always a need for long-form info. I want to be able to read an in-depth analysis or blog post. And if the info is important, one can link to it on Twitter using one of the many URL shorteners.

    I won’t touch on the amount of crap on Twitter and Facebook. Just like every media channel, there is a lot of garbage. There are countless bad videos on YouTube, 100s of worthless cable TV channels, and endless garbage blog posts. I’ve probably written a few myself.

    What’s important about Twitter and social media in general is that it levels the playing field. The tech is out there to record and produce amazing music at an affordable price. Write your song, put it out there, and if it is good, folks will share it. There are so many great ways to find good media now, and so many tools at a musician’s disposal, it really comes down to what makes sense for you and your fans.

    I wanted to share my music on Twitter and I also wanted to make sure my music would play on smartphones. So I built http://bln.kr to let me do that. It’s in beta and if any folks are interested, I would love to get feedback on how to make it better.

    The conversation is here:

    http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=114138&p=897191&hilit=+twitter#p897191

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