Band artist profiles for those of us that are not U2 or Katy Perry.
I am in a band, Mingo Fishtrap, that has had our music for sale on CDBaby for many years now. When Apple iTunes first started partnering up with companies like CDBaby to allow digital downloads through their iTunes service, we were right on board. CDBaby still controls the content sent to Apple, if I’m not mistaken.
The CDBaby artist does not deal directly with Apple. We are not even able to
create a professional looking artist profile for our music on iTunes.
So with the PING service, I would think all of us artists on CDBaby would like to take full advantage of having an artist profile that we can manage and tell our fans to come listen to our music by “following” us on it.
My guess is that it will still be handled through CDBaby as a means of verification, to avoid fake-profiles and SPAM a la MySpace hell.
If I’m like other musician/artists out there, we are itchin’ to get in on this on the ground floor.
I think us “starving artists” could use the benefit of a “fan-collecting” and “following” function more than U2 and Coldplay need it at this point.
I do hope that CDBaby, the top independent music seller in the world, can help push this through for us hard working bands, musicians, artists.

Ping “seems” like a great idea, a lot of people “see” the potential in it, but from what I see, it seems like apple hasn’t really thought this all the way through, and the vital necessity of all social networks: they are easy for anyone to join create and manage! I definitely appreciate Apple’s intention of keeping out the scammers and junk– but it’s also keeping out the real people!

I think if it takes off it could be a great thing for indy artists. The ability to have potential customers referred to your page based on friends and related music, and also having those customers have a credit card on file so purchasing consists of one or two clicks of a mouse seems like a fantastic idea. Can’t wait for you guys to get it worked out with Apple.

-Horns & The Badge

I was excited…then disappointed. Now I’m hopeful about it. As an artist selling my stuff on iTunes I want to connect to the 100-200 people that have bought my music so far. It’s not a huge number but without that functionality or the ability to import the other fans/friends from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, et al it’s basically “just another” social networking thing without much upside other than selling more of their product. Thumbs down for now…but I’m optimistic and hopeful they’ll give us small potatoes a shot at building our sales and ultimately making them more money in the process.

Yet another product that Apple rolls out without thinking through the logistics of making it work properly. I think that it’s absurd that the only way to get an artist page right now is through invitation only. I also think that it’s lazy of them to make people like the kind ones at CD Baby do their hard work for them. And mark my words, it won’t be Apple contacting all of the musicians on iTunes directly. I’m betting that it will be left up to the digital distributers.

They really should have gotten a lot more artists on board before launch. Everyone I talked to was recommended the same 14 artists to follow. Every band I looked for wasn’t there, even some of their #1 artists.

Looks like Apple was just throwing it out there and expecting us to build it.

Just seems really odd to me. Apple for sure put the cart before the horse on this one. Itunes has the fan base and artist base, and the overall goal is to bring them together in this Music social network… However, only the fan base is allowed to participate and with only 50 or so artist. The very small hand full of artists allowed is sure to make this flop. I’m sure apple is smart enough to know it needs the “user end” to make this fly. Thousands of artist would have been more than happy to setup pages before the launch of Ping.

This should be no surprise. They bought out LaLa.com and it sounds like some of the same social networking they offered. Should be good for artists.

It would be great to be able to make a Ping account as an artist when selling your music through CD Baby.
This might get really big, so I hope CD Baby will be onboard sooner than later.

All the best

Martin Fabricius

If Apple shut out DIY and indie, then that really does sum up their small-mindedness, right? I mean, come, Apple… give us a bite of the cherry!

best wishes
Sean

Do you like sailing in a storm? Here’s the album for YOU. Download Free now. http://www.seantwright.com/calling.cfm

Well, I sure hope CDbaby is able to gain access to ping for us indies. We are the ones who would really benefit from it, and use it.

Yes, please! As a CDBaby artist I would LOVE to be able to get this up and running ASAP!

The question from an artist standpoint that is utilizing CD Baby for Digital Distribution is if CD Baby will be able to get those coveted Artist Profiles for the artists of CD Baby on PING.

Will Cdbaby be providing a way to get an artist account on Ping?

If Apple doesn’t allow indie artists through companies like CDBaby to participate in PING then I think it’s not only a huge mistake, but it will eventually topple the idea like the major labels have toppled in the last 10 years with that exclusive mind set. Get us in there, CDBaby! If anyone on the indie scene can, it’s you!

Let’s get this available for indie’s. come on!

I would like independent artists to be able to get info from Itunes and other digital retailers about who is buying their music.

I agree with Chip Vayenas’s comment at top.
Already with iTunes 10 Ping I think just the ability to type comments right into iTunes pages live is a huge thing.
We don’t want to be left out of the Artist Profiles.
Note: Fancy artist pages (probably designed by Apple) at iTunes are a different thing than Artist Profile pages. I think the Artist Profile pages will all have the same generic look for a while.

i think this is ok if helps bands like mine the stand sell more tunes or advertise the fact that us small indie bands have music available to download it can only be a good thing i keep trying all ways to advertise the fact that the stand have a track called raise a flag available to download on itunes but i tell every one to go to cdbaby .com first as you can create mailing lists as you know who buys it off them and this is a great tool to know who your fans are but the trouble with cdbaby is not many people have heard of it and they prefer to use itunes
but for me its cdbaby every time
the stand raise a flag is only 99c on cdbaby and 79p on itunes amazon etc all proceeds of this great indie track go to the help for heros charity its a sort of war songa tribute to the war heros check it out go to cdbababy.com/standrock

I smell a lawsuit brewing in the near future over Apple’s choice of name. http://www.Ping.fm already exists in the social media world as a way to tie all your social networks together.

Looks like a bit of trademark infringement to me. Somebody at Apple didn’t do their homework.

Ok, ping is great! But there is this fact, which we indie artists are ignoring from the launch day.
If Apple allowed us to set up our pages from the first day, the results would have been catastrophic! Imagine their income?
Tens of thousands of indie artists have been waiting for this, and coldplay or u2 or major signed artists like these wouldn’t have even known this service if Apple didn’t inform them. Imagine 10000 indie artist pages on ping, on the very first day, but not being able to find coldplay or u2? And the economical side of this?

One possible scenario;
I don’t listen to lady gaga. But if her profile was the only profile on ping, I would have “followed” her just to see how good, and interesting ping is. About 4-5 million people joined ping on the first two days. I’m positive, that there are many people doing exactly what I just said. Trying to find out how ping works. Now imagine the advertisement side of this. Of course Apple would put on famous artists first. This way, they’re actually supporting the mainstream, money-bringing artists;)

I totally agree with Ed! Apple is smart enough to know that they need connecting companies like cdBaby, or artists/labels themselves, to achieve the actual thing! (ahem… Ping) Because they have achieved their “1 million artists on iTunes” with the help of cdBaby & indie artists/labels…

I think we will have to wait for a little more while….

people have bought thousands of my records on itunes and i don’t know who they are.

will i know who they are with ping?

if not there is a bit of a pong around here

really not so social, itunes 10. I think us indie-artists should not support apple with our content. ping will stay a boring platform and flop that way. people who really want to follow lady gaga are not what music is really about. I think we have enough options with facebook and myspace already.

big thumbs down on this one, apple.

I was talking to some friends over on facebook the other night and someone asked if i had heard about PING.

I had heard something about it the day b4 but it didn’t sound too exciting.

So i opened my itunes and found out that you had to upgrade to Itunes 10 first so after i did that i made a profile.

I was wondering some of the same things you guys have talked about.

Why can’t we make an artist profile – i already have music up on Itunes thanks to CD Baby.

So what i did was in my list of favorite music on my PING profile i added my own music that’s already up on Itunes.

So that’s cool but i dunno?

I kinda seeing PING going the way of Google Buzz.

Exciting at first but nothing new, kinda cool but no big deal.

Yesterday I wrote a letter to Steve Jobs about the exclusion of Independent Artists from Ping. You can read it at my blog and feel free to share and post around. Maybe if we can get enough buzz he will actually listen to us!

I think this could be a great thing once it has had time to develop into something users will use both within and outside of iTunes. We Indies need to be invited. Collectively, we make up a big share of music sales.

A letter to Mr. Steve Jobs about Ping from an Indie Musician
http://www.natalie-brown.com/a-letter-to-mr-steve-jobs-about-ping-from-an-indie-musician/

Peace,
Natalie

I think it’s no big deal, and it doesn’t seem very social either. From what i’ve seen so far, it is no different from following these people on twitter or facebook.

Funny I went to buy an album last night & this bs about Ping popped up. It’s called big brother. I don’t need everyone knowing my business. Just another way to rape our privacy. I went to Amazon instead. Screw Ping. btw the word ping sounds like a pecker popping out of someone’s pants.

Haven’t looked at Ping yet but my husband did. He had to provide a credit card just to sign up, which to me is not at all like joining facebook or myspace, and I think will put a lot of people off. We currently use store bought vouchers to buy our music via iTunes. He decided against it. I don’t think I’ll be in for it either, especially if I can’t have a proper musician’s account. Would love to see what CD Baby can get going in the future, but for now, I think I’ll give it a miss. Thanks CD Baby.

we think this is a really good idea! Apple ROCKS!

doc
FIREBRANDS

firebrandsrock.com
facebook.com/firebrands
twitter.com/firebrands
myspace.com/firebrandsrock
youtube.com/firebrandsrock

The potential benefit to Ping for indie artists could be the ability to provide a direct website to a page that will by more appealing to potential fans who favor the use of iTunes. The literal reason that indie artists would have boosted sales is fewer clicks for those who might purchase from them.

Those who are just computer-literate enough to “get around” are not going to go to someone’s MySpace or Facebook or CDBaby page in order to find out that they can buy a song, they’d rather just go directly to iTunes and find what they want, and not have to bother with anything else. Ergo, Ping is a good idea ***if it’s handled well by Apple***

I have created a ping account. Follow me and I will follow you. Let’s show iTunes how big of an impact CDBaby artist can have!

It seems to me iTunes is just another of the Mega-Companies who wishes things would return to the “good ole days” of yesteryear when the record labels controlled everything. Because of the level of choices offered by the internet these days, that is simply not the case any longer. These people fail to recognize the fact that a sale of a song is a sale of a song. This is evident by their embracing “signed” artists primarily, while forgetting there are many more “unsigned” artists out there with music to sell. More access to different audiences means more potential sales. How many more ways does the music industry need to push the same over-produced banal mainstream music on an uninformed public? Ping becomes relevant when it represents the music industry as a whole, not just those with major label backing and large advertising budgets.

My initial reaction was that Ping launching without an indie/DIY strategy is evidence that Apple is focused on the dying mainstream market. This made sense as an initial launch strategy, but I would like to think a company with Apple’s resource and commitment to innovation would acknowledge and promote the indie, DIY market. Sort of a Garageband version of iTunes’ business.

Giving the Apple product team the benefit of a doubt (I’ve worked with members of the current iTunes team and can say without reservation they’re smart, good-hearted people who love Music more than money), I can only hope/presume that they’d provide access to these tools for the 35 MILLION indie/solo artists/musicians (on myspace alone, last time I checked). There is absolutely NO reason Apple couldn’t make a profitable business out of this market. They now dominate music sales as a mode of distribution, and the fact is – there’s room in the new music market for everyone. So why not make it possible for anyone to get in on that game?

As an aspiring artist myself, (albeit with some modest success), I’d like to have access to the same tools Zoe (presumed) or Bowie (undoubtedly) would have, and there’s no reason not to.

And if they think they “own” digital distribution (as in being largest distribution channel for music), they have no idea what they COULD be if they created easy ways for indie’s to sell via iTunes. I hesitate saying that on the CDBAby blog, because I LOVE CDB and what they’ve done. Apple should buy CDB and give them full autonomy to direct the indie/DIY iTunes strategy. Imagine that.

‘Cause the fact is, the market ahead will be dominated by indies as a group/segment. The distributed properties of the net demands it. The Internet has essentially given people binoculars. So instead of looking at a sky of a few hundred rockstars, people can now see millions. More and more, people will be able to make a living making music, and there’ll be fewer superstars, fed by cash from the majors.

I worked in Apple’s Interactive Music group in 1995 and 1996. My job was to put the technology and talent together for a network of live venues (Warfield, Fillmore, Fox Theater in Boulder, etc) that broadcast live, remotely controlled audio and video. The vision was a 24/7 network of live, hosted music. Sort of an MTV of live music. I wasn’t directly involved in the legal/business side of things, but my teammates (who went on to positions of serious digital music market leadership) did, and I heard about the conversations with labels at a time when napster hadn’t even been invented yet. We tried telling the labels things were about to radically change for them, but they clung to the old paradigm: command and control. Own the channels. It doesn’t seem like it’s changed that much.

I like the idea of a network that links in with a platorm people are already using to listen to and buy music. Some kind of selection process is good (MySpace has been ruined by “artists” who do nothing but spam), but until Apple deign to let independent artists who aren’t trillion sellers have profiles, it’s pretty academic for the 99.999% of artists whose products they sell., ie us.

I’m kind of sceptical. If it only works through iTunes, then it’s not going to replace any other networks (until Apple buys them all up and forces everyone to use their hardward, software, and social network..) Will it be possible to integrate with Twitter, Artistdata etc?

Until those questions are answered, I’m not sure I need yet another way to “interact with fans”. I do that already with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Last.FM, email, telephone, the postal system, and (shock! horror!) by playing music to them at gigs.

sounds real good i would like to know more

The thing about Ping…anything that will help the starving songwriter will be awesome. Finally I’ve a couple of radio stations playing my music. There are too many avenues to get your music to, and the average songwriter, just hasn’t the means, or the time to do it. So if it works for us, thumbs up for Ping…

So many social networking sites have launched in the past couple of years that it’s hard to keep track. I usually say – stick to the channels that are already up and running, but Apple somehow gets everything working pretty nice sooner or later, so Ping must be an exception I will have to keep my eyes on.

cool!

I feel like a guinea pig of a corporation. Or maybe its because I spent hours on hold after calling my internet and TV provider. When are we going to figure out the fastest ways to get to the people in reality and not on the web. I joined Ping and I got to click I am following U2 big deal. And ya know what . . . If my friends and fans can go on Ping and click they are “following me” then great for them. But when is this all going to boil down to what is necessary for our journey on this planet as human beings yet alone spirits living a human experience. Generations down the line will hopefully laugh at everything that happened after the CD surpassed the record and hopefully had put the digital age behind them for something more fulfilling.

Ping is a nice idea once it can integrate with all the other social networking out there. I’ve had music on CDBaby.com for a while and it’s cool that we get some of these opportunities that CDBaby offers. My old band, The Fashion Smoothies, has had music on CDBaby for what seems like forever. I have new band, Mafia Track Suit, that is about to release an EP. Ping would be nice to promote the EP.

I think profiles like the big wig bands have would be great. I mean, it could only help bands and artists sell more music and then everyone is happy.

@ Chip – Dude. I love you band. I saw you guys in Austin many years ago when I cam to visit. I almost moved to Austin but a dead car stopped me from doing so. Anyways, your band puts on a great show.

ping would never replace myspace because people are used to myspace services.but one thing about ping,with all those apple products like ipads,iphones,ipods and many more accessing ping,many people use apple products to access itunes and ping as well.this would get you a strong fan-base if you are an indie artist but the sad story is they don’t know you indie artists,they only know and give a f**ck about artist like lady gaga them big money famous artists.f#ck ping thats the only world i would say about ping as an indie artist.work hard and get known indie artist get a strong fan-base.one thing which feels good is having a fan-base and geting your support.

Apple is hardware, not software! They make trendy computers, smartphones and other devices, but their expertise is not music content or how to monetize content in a fair way available to ALL creators of music. iTunes is a clumsy piece of outdated programming (released even before the first iPod saw the light) and PING certainly does not offer the type of community paradigms over 500 million people appreciate on leaders like facebook and MySpace. So while continuing to pour Apple hardware into the markets, on the content side they rather schmooze with the biggies to support the majors and major indies’ urge to widely distribute and practice their control-driven business …

The more I look at this the more irritated I get.
We are all on itunes, we shoudl be able to set up pages for our music!

Tunecore is offering Ping Artist accounts. When will CDBaby offer this?

From what I understand, Tunecore has been given a limited amount of Ping account invitations to give away, which is the same as CD Baby. They’ll be granting us a certain amount of new invitations each week, so we hope to get many of our artists included, though it will be a handful at a time instead of a mass delivery of our entire catalog at once. If you’d like to be considered for a Ping account invitation, please write to cdbaby@cdbaby.com and let us know.

Hey all, just thought I’d update that my band,
Mingo Fishtrap, now has a Ping artist profile thanks to CDBaby!

http://c.itunes.apple.com/us/profile/id-15217

@ Billy re:
“@ Chip – Dude. I love you band. I saw you guys in Austin many years ago when I came to visit. I almost moved to Austin but a dead car stopped me from doing so. Anyways, your band puts on a great show.”

Dude! Huge thanks for the kind words, I will surely pass them on to the rest of the guys and I hope your car allows you to move to Austin soon! heheh.
All the best,
Chip