How To Embed Soundcloud in Tumblr

Soundcloud and Tumblr are leading the way in both of their respective fields, and combining the two by embedding SoundCloud’s audio player is a popular way of sharing music.

SoundCloud is a music streaming service which gives you 2 hours worth of space with which you can upload your mp3s. Posting the streams of these mp3s to Tumblr, the popular microblogging platform, couldn’t be easier.

First, login to both your SoundCloud and Tumblr accounts, simple, I know!

In Soundlcoud go to ‘You’, and then ‘Tracks’ – this will take you to the songs you’ve uploaded. Once you’ve decided what song you want to embed into a Tumblr post, click on the ‘Share’ icon.

This brings up a new module with a piece of HTML code – copy the HTML and head over to Tumblr.

In your Tumblr dashboard start a new post by clicking ‘Text’ and in the clear page, copy the HTML. Hit ‘Preview’ to make sure it looks right, and then publish your post!

A simple yet effective way of sharing your music with your Tumblr community without going over your limited audio uploads.

If you’re on either Tumblr or Soundcloud leave me a comment and I’ll be sure to have a look and a listen!

Will Cheap CDs Lead To More Music Sales?

A poll by Mashable, social media guardians of the web, would indicate that yes, yes they will!

In an article discussing record label Universal’s decision to make deluxe CDs cheaper, when asked “Will you buy “deluxe” CDs for under $10?” Mashable’s community said:

Yes, primarily because I like artwork and other content that’s included with deluxe CDs. 32% (869 votes)
Yes, primarily because price was previously the primary barrier to buying CDs. 26% (702 votes)
No. There’s nothing that would make me buy CDs. I only do digital downloads now. 30% (817 votes)
No. While I might consider buying CDs again, the labels still have to do something more. 13% (361 votes)
Total Votes: 2,749

Nearly two thirds of people would start buying CDs which are cheaper and come with extra content.

To me this indicates that people are not only still willing to pay for music, but that the record industry may have found a solution to its problems – namely slower sales and music piracy.

This of course won’t prevent file sharing but may help to encourage some consumers to dip back into their wallets and start spending money on music again which is something that will benfit everyone.

As ever in the 21st century communications melting pot, getting the balance between giving away content and monetisation of content is key and this is a step in the right direction.

Time to blog off?

Recently, i’ve been considering starting a blog looking at life in Kilburn (that’s in North West London) and I’m in two minds whether or not to shoot.

In April I started, and subsequently stalled, when I tried to keep a regularly updated football blog about Watford FC, with whom I have a loving relationship of nigh on 16 years.

I found that I just didn’t have the time or the means to keep it constant and sadly I’ve not really kept it up to date at all as the season has worn on. Maybe if I had more time I could take a step back and get into it again, maybe even start again at the end of this season.

As a music blogger of various titles in the past, I find it much easier to keep CrazyBeatMusic updated. Writing about music and posting videos to cool new music is something I really enjoy and always seem to find time for. Still, I’d like to dedicate much more time to it because it’s something I dearly love doing.

Now I’ve got an itch to get involved in the NW6 blogging scene and to air my tuppence from time to time. To be of any real value though, I think I’d be looking at posting one or two pieces a week.

I’m concerned that even at this rate, i’d not be able to take time out and considerately construct content that would be of use and value to anyone who would stumble upon it.

This blog has kind of turned from random thoughts, to social media and digital communications, and now it seems to cover a range of topics, all connected by the pervasiveness (or lack of) that digital culture, communities and discussion points in the new communications era seems to have, be it through technology, music or marketing.

I don’t know if I have the time and will to invest in scratching my localised itch at this time and this concerns me greatly. I see Seldom Seen Kid as a notepad that I can try and rationalise my thoughts on, that a small group of people whom i’m grateful for, seem to keep coming back to read, regardless of whether it’s thoughts on football, twitter, or the digital economy bill.

So I might just throw the odd localised thought up on here, to keep everything together, even though it will be semingly off-topic for what is a primarily a digital culture blog.

What do you think?

Facebook Pages

I’ve been playing with Facebook Pages recently for a couple of clients and decided that I wanted to set myself up with one for my music.

I had until a few weeks ago avoided setting up a Facebook Page because I wasn’t sure if it would be of interest to anybody i’m friends with, and didn’t want to spam them any more than I already do.

However, after thinking about the way that Facebook users interact with brand fan pages, I wanted to give it a go and set one up.

We’re seeing a shift in the way people show their support for brands, with a move from buying the product to declaring their fondness via publishing comments about them. This is helping consumers to define their identities, but not be defined by the brands the choose to advocate.

I am of the opinion that people sign up to Pages not to interact, the 100-10-1 rule would indicate that, but more this act is used as a way of promoting their interest, using the text and link that show up on their Facebook profile as a badge.

Facebook Pages allow users to opt-in to being part of a community and this indicates that they are willing to receive information, updates and news, if it is managed in an appropriate manner (ie not publishing one update per hour).

This made me realise that there is no harm in setting up a Page – if people want to join it, they will.

It is now my job to ensure that thecontent I post is relevant and will add some value to their otherwise saturated news streams… eek!

Friends With Benefits: Book Review

I was recently sent a copy of Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook, for review by the O’Reilly Media team in the US.

Written by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo of Capulet Communications in the States, the book is intended to be an introductory walk through the wild west of the social media landscape, providing insight and practical help on how best to start getting your company involved in online discussions.

And, it does exactly that, following a clearly structured process which takes you chapter by chapter through the various elements of using social media as a marketing channel.

Throughout each phase of the guidance, Darren and Julie offer case studies of good and bad practice to help illustrate the wyas in which people have tried, failed and succeeded to successfully engage consumers and communities online.

There are useful indexes of tools to use and places to visit to help you in your quest to master online marketing. Darren and Julie also tackle M&E (measurement and evaluation) to show you how you can attempt to prove whether any activity you’ve undertaken was successful or not, something that many people forget to mention.

One of the most interesting passages was the section on influencer engagement – I’m always eager to put other’s point of view against my own – and I really liked the approach to criticism from one of these key individuals of a product that Darren and Julie take:

So what happens if an online influencer pans your product? Share your point of view. Silence says you’re not monitoring the Web closely enough to know what’s going on, and more importantly, that you don’t care enough to do a Google search on your company name. It also says that you’re not part of the community and that you’re not willing to engage in the online conversation.

This honest point of view is something that marketers new to social media, scared of the impact of negativity online about their company, should defiitely keep in mind.

This book, in conclusion, is an excellent introdcution to social media. It provides useful information, practical help, and examples of what to do as certain scenarios are played out in an easy to floow, friendly manner. If you’re looking for a good guide of all this stuff that’s happening online, this could be a useful book to have on your shelf.

I’m a little late putting together this write up, but I hope you find it useful, and if you want to buy the book itself, you can do so right here on Amazon.

Learning Vocals

When you start out in a band, one of the most important bits, apart from making sure you can at least hold your instrument, is the willingness to be open minded and exploratory. The more you play and practice, the better you become individually at whatever it is you play, and collectively you develop a feeling of how the combined parts of noise you’re making should sound.

Being the singer, it is of course no different. Your voice will gradually get trained to hit the right notes, you’ll work out how to hit higher and lower tones and eventually, you’ll get to a point where you have discovered how to breathe properly inbetween vocal phrases to maximise both.

This is a skill that can be taught, but it can also be learned. Getting the skills and ideas from coaching sesions is useful, but it doesn’t, in my opinion, allow you to find out why what’s important is important, for yourself.

The similarity with this in diplomacy, in PR in particular, is staggering, and is only just dawning on me.

It is important to be vocal and to share your point of view with your colleagues, especially if you disagree and you can justify why you have a conflicting point of view. Where the comparison meets is that the timing and way that a point of view is presented is all important.

If you’re vocal at an inappropriate time, or in an inappropriate volume or tone, there is a real possibility that it will do more harm than good in the long run both personally and professionally.

It’s easy to reach to a snap judgement, air your views and be done with it. It’s easy to write a scathing music review, publish it and move on. It’s easy to shout and scream untunefully over a great guitar solo, move on and eventually get thrown out of the band.

Keeping calm, rational and reasoned is a difficult skill to harness, and like most things, comes with practice if you’re not naturally born with it.

Self-expression I guess is one thing, and self-control is another, but by marrying the two the end result will be more productive and conducive to positive results in the long run.

A big hat tip to Will Humphrey for his insight.

Google Stars

Google has announced the integration of stars, a new feature that will allow you to ‘save’ search results which will then appear in subsequent searches you make in the future.

The blog says:

The great thing about stars is that you don’t have to keep track of them. You don’t even have to remember whether or not you starred something. Simply perform a search and you’ll rediscover your starred items right when you need them. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can always see your list of starred items in one place and easily organize them. Even beyond the results page, while browsing the web you can quickly click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, and those pages will start showing up in the new stars feature.

Stars in search replace SearchWiki. In our testing, we learned that people really liked the idea of marking a website for future reference, but they didn’t like changing the order of Google’s organic search results. With stars, we’ve created a lightweight and flexible way for people to mark and rediscover web content. For people who like annotations, we have Sidewiki, a more powerful way for people to contribute and discover helpful information next to pages across the Internet. All your existing SearchWiki edits will be preserved with your Google Account. You can learn more on our help center.

Stars in search are rolling out in the next couple days and will be available globally for all signed-in users.

I think this is a really interesting move from Google and will make the user experience more interesting and more importantly, even more useful.

What do you think the impact of Google stars will be, and do you think the new feature will be useful?

Twitter Opens The Firehose

Yesterday Twitter published a blog post, Enabling A Rush of Innovation, announcing further partnerships with vendors who will have access to their data:

Today, we’re happily turning the Firehose on for some new partners focused mainly on exploring the incredibly rich field of real-time search and discovery. We are thrilled to announce that Ellerdale, Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup, CrowdEye, and Chainn Search join us as partners. These companies range from funded startups to part-time, one-person operations so we came up with a fair way to license access that scales with their business.

This is important because it means that as well as allowing a wider access to user data, it means that these companies will be able to apply it to their offering and potentially develop new uses for the data stream that we’ve not yet seen.