Archive for June, 2011

Each week Topspin’s CEO, Ian Rogers, and VP of Product and Marketing, Bob Moczydlowsky (Bob Moz), have been doing live webcasts with interactive chat for current and prospective Topspin users. Usually it is the ‘Ian and Bob Show’, but they often have guest hosts or others making quick appearances. It is a great way to get to virtually meet the Topspin team , hear the latest news and announcements from the management team, and be able to ask questions directly via the chat.

Watch the webcast via the archive.


News & Announcements

Product Development

Partnership and Facebook Integration with Root Music
Gives you the ability to put a Topspin store inside a Root Music Facebook Band Page. Rolled out this week. If you notice any bugs, please email Bob.

Page Gate Technical Specs
Parker wrote up a “how-to” and posted it in the forums.

Expression Engine Topspin Module
Has been submitted by Oniracom and is being reviewed by Topspin. Keep your eyes peeled on the Topspin blog for news as to its upcoming release.

Topspin is Hiring
Topspin is looking to hire the following positions:
Software Engineer (RAILS and BDD-nerd)
Software Engineer
User Experience Designer and Creative Director
Director of Marketing (SEO, SEM, DSP Expert Required)
Fan Support Specialist

Artist Spotlights and Features

Artist Facebook Pages That Integrates Root Music Band Page and Topspin
Pixies
Beastie Boys
Matisyahu


Topspin Community Q&A

Q: How does one style the purchase flow white
A: This is done when you are creating the buy button in the Topspin app.

Q: Who developed the Drupal/Topspin integration?
A: 80 Elements

Submit Your Questions for Next Week’s Webcast

Topspin encourages us to submit questions, in advance, whether or not you can attend the web cast, live. You can submit your questions via this Topspin Community Forum Topic.



Music Geekery
Back in 2005 Chicago-based musician, Devin Davis, released his debut album “Lonely People of the World, Unite!”. The story was that Devin recorded most of this album in his basement apartment. The well-crafted pop songs bring to mind Brendan Benson, The Raconteurs, Sloan, and even Elliott Smith. I even hear some Neil Young influence, at least in the guitar tones and the shaky tenor vocals. I discovered the album in the summer of 2005 and I played it a lot. The album kicks off with “Iron Woman” that will certainly have you singing along before the end of the first chorus, trust me.

I saw Devin open up for Smoosh at Schubas and was impressed with how well he pulled off these carefully crafted and orchestrated songs in a solo setting. In April 2006 I had the honor of mixing sound, and recording, another Devin Davis solo show at the private venue Hotel S n’ S in Chicago. It was part of a Jeff Tweedy charity benefit house concert weekend. Amidst a large crowd in a packed, dark basement of a condo in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, armed only with his acoustic guitar, Devin had the crowd singing along to these awesome songs. I still pull that recording out, every once in a while, and give it a spin.

Do yourself a favor and seek out this album. You can stream tracks on his web site and some of them are up on YouTube. If you like what you hear, please seek out this album and buy it. There is no current information on his web site, wiki page, or anywhere else that I can find as to what happened to his planned 2007 album or what he’s up to currently. If I find out, I’ll let you know.

Music Geek Services is an artist services company based in Chicago and Nashville. Headed by brothers Jay and Chandler Coyle, Music Geek Services is a Topspin-Certified Marketer that specializes in helping artists achieve deeper connections with their fans through digital media. We provide a full suite of artist services including web development and design, Topspin platform consulting and execution, social media consulting, project management, and full-service artist management.

We have worked with Sloan, Barenaked Ladies, The Zambonis, The Odds, The Movings Label, Walter & Wendell, Dick Prall, Mike Evin, Dolly Varden, Steve Dawson, The Carter Administration, Broken: a Musical, and Callann Lane.

Each week Topspin’s CEO, Ian Rogers, and VP of Product and Marketing, Bob Moczydlowsky (Bob Moz), have been doing live webcasts with interactive chat for current and prospective Topspin users. Usually it is the ‘Ian and Bob Show’, but they often have guest hosts or others making quick appearances. It is a great way to get to virtually meet the Topspin team , hear the latest news and announcements from the management team, and be able to ask questions directly via the chat.

Watch the webcast via the archive.


News & Announcements

Product Development

New Streaming Players Launched This Week
New players have fill-frame setting. May need to adjust your existing installation of these HTML5 players if you adjusted your size settings to preserve aspect ration. In the near future you can set the aspect ratio when you are creating the player in the publishing interface. Another upcoming piece that will be added is more customizability (skinning/styling). The skinning stuff will be launched the week of 6/6, hopefully. Then the following week there will be deeper XML customization (targeting the player controls).

Partnership and Tech Integration with Root Music
Will be announced and launched on Monday 6/6.

iFrame Embed Codes vs. Flash Embed Codes
While some users love the old Flash embed codes, the web is really not Flash-friendly, especially on mobile devices. Of course, MySpace doesn’t like iFrames. But Topspin is siding with the web masses (including the YouTube way) and moving away from Flash embed codes.

Artist Spotlights and Features

Randy Travis Custom Gating Stream Behind e4m
Chris Carlson wrote a blog post about the recent Randy Travis use of an e4m gating a full album stream.

Kevin Smith SmodCast
Bob mentioned some cool things being done by filmmaker Kevin Smith on his podcast SmodCast web site. They are starting with really basic, but great deal. What is worth watching is that each week things are going to change with that offer using some creative ways of using Topspin.

Topspin Community Q&A

Q: We’re still not able to get a widget on our Facebook fanpage.
A: Check out this thread in the Topspin Community forums

Q: International billing (Brazil???), how is that going?
A: Still something they need to move forward, but no new information or progress as of now.

Q: How about changing the time to ship [for products]?
A: You can only do that, right now, via the pre-order functionality. Under normal circumstances you shouldn’t sell when you can’t ship right away. But, Topspin understands there are certain circumstances where this is unavoidable. Put the question in the Community Forums as there are other concerns surrounding this that need to be discussed before this can be considered further.

Submit Your Questions for Next Week’s Webcast

Topspin encourages us to submit questions, in advance, whether or not you can attend the web cast, live. You can submit your questions via this Topspin Community Forum Topic.

Webcast Archives
Each week Topspin archives these webcasts on their site. You can check them out here.


Music Geekery
The webcast opened with a sampling of the classic album Desolation Boulevard by Sweet. Ian and Bob discussed that they were essentially a ‘Backstreet Boys’ of their day in the U.K., a pre-fab band produced to sound like Bowie and T-Rex. I, personally, don’t think it was that contrived and that Sweet were unfairly painted as ‘bubblegum’ or compared to The Monkees due to the pairing with the songwriting team of Chapman-Chinn, who often brought in session musicians.

The U.S. version of Desolation Boulevard was released one year after the U.K. version, and was actually a combination of tracks from Sweet’s prior release Sweet Fanny Adams. One side contained all Chapman-Chinn songs, the other side was all Sweet originals. Another interesting bit of information – the version of “Fox On The Run” included on the U.S. L.P. was the 7″ variation which was much different than the original (U.K. album) version. The original version didn’t have the synth parts we’ve come to know and love and definitely has a rawer sound. The U.K. album also included a cover of The Who’s “My Generation“.

Music Geek Services is an artist services company based in Chicago and Nashville. Headed by brothers Jay and Chandler Coyle, Music Geek Services is a Topspin-Certified Marketer that specializes in helping artists achieve deeper connections with their fans through digital media. We provide a full suite of artist services including web development and design, Topspin platform consulting and execution, social media consulting, project management, and full-service artist management.

We have worked with Attwater, Twenty Ten Music, Sloan, Barenaked Ladies, The Zambonis, The Odds, The Movings Label, Walter & Wendell, Dick Prall, Mike Evin, Dolly Varden, Steve Dawson, The Carter Administration, Broken: a Musical, and Callann Lane.