Waist Deep in the Media Swamp

[this is a continuation of a previous post and other previous posts about my saga with iTunes Ping]

Apple has responded to more of my questions about how our iTunes Ping profile for independent musician Jimmy Z can be best utilized.

I asked, “How can an artist have their page customized (like Jack Johnson’s)?” The reply:

The profiles with different backgrounds are transferred automatically from artists pages in the iTunes store that have artwork and backgrounds applied. This application of art/background is based on decisions by our editorial team and usually occur around a new release.

My followup  – “How can we apply/request to have art added to the Artist Page, etc?” They replied:

You will need to work with your label rep to see whether this is something to consider for the next release.

This was the same gray area we found ourselves in when I initially attempted to get Jimmy Z a profile, so I wrote “We have no label rep. We have digital distribution via CD Baby.”

The person that replied is in the Independent Artist & Label Relations department:

You should route your request for an artist page through CD Baby & they can discuss with their rep here. I can tell you in advance that Artist Pages take a lot of work from our Designers & UI Engineers, so we’re only able to do a very limited number of them.  They are usually reserved for the most popular artists, who have an extensive sales history (Jack Johnson, Kanye West, U2, etc. being examples of the kind of artists).  We’d love to do more, but we just don’t have the resources to do those types of pages for every artist.

So the answer is essentially – you don’t have a chance to get use of our resources unless you make lots of sales.

I replied back that “In my opinion, if Ping if to every really take off (and help) indies, you need to be able to let them do the things you now do for major artists – customizing, event listing, etc. Otherwise, you may be never be more than a “nice’ feature of iTunes – but not very social. It appears that Ping today is simply a vehicle for helping boost sales in iTunes – which is fine – but helping indies sell their products there would also considerably help Apple’s bottom line too.”

There will be more to this story, I’m sure… so stay tuned.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

[this is a follow-up to a previous post]

It is clear now that iTunes Ping could care less about supporting independent musicians with anything but iTunes sales of their products. Their reply to me about having a gig listed with tickets available At the Door is disheartening, but not surprising:

Thanks for sending. We’re collecting information about the shows that aren’t currently included in iTunes so we can better understand which ticketing companies we should pursue adding. We will only list shows that include online ticket sales. At this point we are only able to support shows ticketed by Ticketmaster.com, LiveNation.com and TicketWeb.com.

This adds fuel to my presumption that Apple is taking a cut of any ticket sales listed on Ping.

Since the beginning of the year, Jimmy Z and the ZTribe performed at over 50 shows, only one of which had tickets sold online.

Getting new fans to shows is one of the most important methods to promote independent music – not networking sales through iTunes.

Regardless, we will continue to post many items, including information about forthcoming shows on Ping, as we need to take advantage of every avenue for marketing we can.

In my mind, Ping is far less useful than MySpace is  – even in the abysmal condition it is today. At least they let you list all events easily so that fans can view them.

Until Ping integrates with Facebook & Twitter, there is not much that is social about it. It’s just another way to add to Apple’s bottom line.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

[previous related posts  - Post #1 & Post # 2]

In my continuing quest to configure (and figure out)  iTunes Ping for  Jimmy Z and the ZTribe, now that we have a profile on Ping and a few fans the next hurdle is how to get our shows listed. Featured artists have concert listings, but not independents.

As per an email from Apple, I wrote to concerts@itunes.com and got this auto-reply:

Thanks for your message regarding the concert feature of iTunes Ping. We currently have shows listed for the US iTunes Store from Ticketmaster.com, Livenation.com and TicketWeb.com. We are planning on adding more concerts in the near future. If your show is ticketed by one of the companies above, pls follow up with your contacts at the respective ticketing companies.
If your show is not ticketed by Ticketmaster, Live Nation or TicketWeb, please send us the information below:
Artist Name:
Event Date:
Venue:
Ticketing Company:

Once again, Apple is the gatekeeper, controlling information that gets posted. And if you are not touring major venues, then you have to go through hoops. It makes me wonder if Apple getting kickbacks from the major ticket vendors to do this.

Since most of Jimmy’s gigs are in small venues with no advance ticket sales, I wrote them about what to do and have not heard back (5 days so far).

I also submitted one gig with “At Door” as the Ticketing Company and we’ll see what happens.

Update – I got my answer.

Also, iTunes 10.01 was released and has some Ping related features – a sidebar and a Ping drop down menu button on each song in iTunes.

Are they useful? Where is this heading? It’d be nice to see a blog by Apple on all this …

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

[Update December 13, 2010 - I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.]

After all I went through previously, a few days ago I got official approval from Apple for a profile for Jimmy Z, the independent musician I help with marketing & social media. The email had the subject – Your Artist Profile on Ping is waiting for you.

Summary – The process is simple. The only glitch I found so far has to do with text handling of the bio area. There are no hints on how to customize and add shows. I have written to Apple for further guidance. Jury is still out on usefulness, especially since there is no access from iPhones and no way to group videos together.

The steps and more follow…

I feel like I should print it out, frame it, and post it on the wall – but that feeling quickly passed.

Their first suggestion was to create a separate Apple ID for the profile, so it would not be confused with my own. In a follow-up email I asked how could other people share administration of the profile and they said

“Presently, the only way to have multiple people access the account is to share this Apple ID and password, which is why you will want to make it dedicated to the artist.”

I created a new Apple ID and clicked the link in the approval email:

A confirmation screen followed:

No surprise – a Terms & Conditions Agreement was next:

This is one of the few online agreements I actually read. Nothing onerous or surprising in it. I liked the fact you could email it to yourself.

The Create Artist Profile screen appeared:

I selected Group from the You Are pop-up:

When I clicked the Add Photo button, the iChat image chooser appeared. I browsed and chose Jimmy’s standard head shot:

The About section is limited to 2000 characters, only it was not obvious to me until I had cut and pasted in Jimmy’s standard bio:

I was working on my Powerbook and did not notice that the bottom of the About section had the limit indicated:

I finally got the bio to the correct length, but discovered a glitch – it does not handle carriage returns consistently. More on that later.

Continuing to the My Favorite Music section, I chose one of Jimmy’s influences, the harmonica great – Little Walter (I need to get a longer list from him to complete it), and selected the genre categories:

Done!

Shortly after, I received the following message:

Before beginning to post, I wanted to check how things looked to others. I wanted to first see how the bio appeared – it did not handle carriage returns well. Though I edited a few times a few ways, it did not change:

Since there are no guidelines,  trial and error will have to suffice to attempt to fix this.

Next, I wanted to try the three kinds of posts offered – Photo, Video & Music.

For Photo, I wrote a message about an upcoming gig and added the ZTribe Jaguar symbol – all straight forward (I’d normally add more text, but I simply wanted to see what happened). The results did not appear immediately as the photo needed to be processed. An email was sent when it was completed (5 minutes or so):

Hi Jimmy Z and the ZTribe, You recently uploaded a photo and it has finished processing. To view your upload, go to: http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtistProfile?socialId=xxxxxxThanks, iTunes Ping

For Video, I write a bit of text an uploaded a Flash video of Jimmy playing Missionary Man with the Eurythmics live in 1986, just to see if a Flash video would show up  – being aware of Apple’s anti-Flash position. I clicked Video and immediately it asked me to select the video and then uploaded it:

Like with the photo, it had to process it and sent an email when completed (10 minutes or so). When you play it, it opens a separate area:

Of course, the whole purpose of having a social network in iTunes is ultimately to sell more product. When I chose Music I found I could insert music or a music video:

Presuming the music or music video is on iTunes to being with, I searched for the original music video of the Eurythmics Missionary Man. It came up with 2 selections (both appeared identical):

Since the video is on iTunes, once I clicked Post, it appeared immediately. Note that my screen capture was prevented from showing a video still.

I wanted to see how the Pros did their profiles, so I looked at Jack Johnson’s – what a difference:

I have written to Apple about how I can customize the background color and add Jimmy’s shows.

Note:  It took at least 4 hours before the profile was active and be able to be found via searches.

Conclusion – It was all easy once I got the account approved. I still do not know how Ping will survive as it is currently worse than MySpace Lite would be, especially with no iPhone support.

I’ll be posting a number of videos to the account and moving ahead to try and get Jimmy’s current fans to come on board.

More to come, I’m sure… But with no interactivity, I do not have any idea how useful Ping will be.

Related posts:

Amazon Artist Central Has Easier Profile Creation Than iTunes Ping

Concerts for Indie Musicians on Ping?

Ping Slams Door on Concert Listings for Independents

More Answers From Apple

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

After all the questions & hassles I am having about how to get an independent musician’s profile on Ping,  I’ve now learned that Amazon has begun a new initiative to allow any artist that is being digitally distributed by Amazon to create a profile and page. Since Jimmy Z is on Amazon, I signed up.

Signing up is painless and simple and puts Apple’s byzantine process to shame. All an artist or their rep has to do is go to Amazon Artist Central and follow the very clear steps.

Granted, Amazon does not have the potential social media aspects and reach of Ping, but Apple could take a lesson from them in usability.

I learned about it from an article on TuneCore’s blog.

– Update 9/7 - I received the following from Amazon:

“Thanks for signing up to use Amazon Artist Central. We’re creating a new Artist Store for JImmy Z and the ZTribe. This can take up to seven days. You will then be able to provide content for the new Artist Store.

We’ll contact you again when the Artist Store for Jimmy Z and the ZTribe is ready. Please accept our apologies for the delay while you wait.”

The fact that they are acknowledging every step is good and significantly better than how Apple is communicating.

Related posts:
How An Independent Musician Might Get A Profile On Ping

How To Create An Independent Musician Profile On iTunes Ping

Concerts for Indie Musicians on Ping?

Ping Slams Door on Concert Listings for Independents

More Answers From Apple

Bottom line – Apple is being very careful about allowing the creation of indie artist profiles on Ping, just as they do with evaluating apps, but I think I am on a pathway to success.

[Update December 13, 2010 - I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.]

–Update– we have received some clarification via a comment from Jeff Price, one of the founders of TuneCore (see below)

I assist the legendary independent blues and rock musician Jimmy Z with his website and social media. His music has digital distribution via his membership on CD Baby.

As soon as I upgraded iTunes earlier this week, it became my mission to get his profile on Ping and was very, very frustrated to begin with – like everyone else. No clues on the Apple website.

My first call was to CD Baby and they told me they did not have any solutions as yet.

I started writing Apple iTunes Support early Thursday morning, essentially asking how an independent artist who had his music on iTunes could get a profile created. I got a reply quickly. This person was an  ‘iTunes Store Adviser’ who termed me an ‘iTunes Store Content Partner’ and he suggested I contact my label representative.

When I replied that I had no label representative and CD Baby was the entity that arranged the digital distribution, we went back and forth for a few rounds of emails before my request was escalated.

I finally got a reply Saturday morning from someone who understood the situation and what CD Baby was. They are treating CD Baby, TuneCore, Reverbnation, et al, just as they do major labels – which does make sense – sort of – since faux-profiles have already appeared and going through the label ensures authenticity.

He asked for some basic information from me and about Jimmy Z and assured me that  “this will be in our first CD baby batch” without giving a time-line.

I also mentioned that I had many friends who were independent musicians and asked what they should do.

The reply was that they should “contact their person at CD Baby to get going…” Well, there is no specific contact at CD Baby. We don’t have an assigned rep and I told him that.

He then replied that…

For now, you can give them the address:

itunesping@apple.com

We’re manning that one for inquiries now.

I await more replies and, of course, my ability to create a Ping profile for Jimmy Z.

–Update– on Monday morning, September 13, I sent an email asking Apple for a time-frame for when we might approved. I got an email back an hour later, “Congratulations, you’ve been approved to create your artist profile on Ping.” So it only took 12 days & about dozen emails. I hope other people have a smoother experience going forward.

I have now completed the profile and detailed the step-by-step process.

Related posts:

Amazon Artist Central Has Easier Profile Creation Than iTunes Ping

Concerts for Indie Musicians on Ping?

Ping Slams Door on Concert Listings for Independents

More Answers From Apple