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.