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.