As album sales are down 50% since 2000, radio is breaking less new music than ever in history. Record companies are signing fewer and fewer new artists and artist development budgets continue to shrink, artists and labels need to all find a new way to get music out there. 

The 2009 New Music Seminar NYC is an action packed day of power players in the “new” music industry presenting ideas on how to keep up with the latest technologies, network with others to build your own music business foundation at “The Schmoozatorium”  and most importantly, how to monetize your relationship with your fans in the digital age.

The seminar will kick off with President of Myspace Music, Courtney Holt as the keynote speaker, as well as industry individuals such as:

• Mathieu Drouin, Equator Music
• Mark Ghuneim, Wiredset
• Bruce Houghton, Skyline Music/Hypebot
• Peter Wells, Tunecore
• Steve Greenberg, S-Curve Records
• Terry McBride, Nettwerk
• Tim Westgren, Pandora
• Emily White, Whitesmith Entertainment
• Nick Catchdubs, Fools’ Gold
• Sam Hollander, Fresh Kills Music
• Mickey Factz, MC
• Saint Louis, GFC New York Brand Strategic Management
• Martin Atkins, Tour: Smart/Invisible Records
• David Cooper, Foxman/Direct to Fan
• Marty Diamond, Paradigm Agency
• Lisa White, 9:30 Club, Washington DCWashington DC)

Tickets are available on the day for $150

http://newmusicseminar.biz

It’s confirmed. Former Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, Owen Van Natta is now the newly named CEO of Myspace (who replaced MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe last week). 

Adding to the “new changing of the guard”, The Wall Street Journal confirmed yesterday, Myspace officially announced two new appointments, former AOL exec Mike Jones as COO, and Jason Hirschhorn (former Chief Digital Officer at MTV Networks) as Chief Product Officer.

“I am so fortunate to have the opportunity to build upon the successes of the company’s founders and am eager to work with Owen and Jon and the rest of the incredible management team at MySpace as we enter this exciting new phase in the company’s already revered history,” said Mike Jones in Myspace’s official press release. Jason Hirschhorn continued, “MySpace is one of the most alluring innovations of our time and I am honored to collaborate with Tom Anderson and the rest of the MySpace team to take what is already a stellar product into its next evolution.”

The changes in Myspace likely indicates the desire to be more technically savvy, like its competitor Facebook, which means Myspace won’t be counted out in the social media space just yet. 

Facebook has now hit its 200 million members mark… to put that into perspective, that’s like, the population of Japan.

In less than eight months, the social networking site doubled its membership numbers, surpassing its competitor Myspace. Over 50% of its users log on to Facebook at least twice a day, with the fastest growing demographic being 35.

To celebrate its 200 million milestone, Facebook have created Facebook For Good, a page devoted to user-generated stories about how Facebook has helped people give back to their communities.

In many ways, social media has become the anti-establishment version of the mainstream media. The way information is distributed is through a less hierarchical channel (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace) centered around short bits of information (e.g. Blogs, Tweets, Updates). And like Punk, it also embraces a DIY ethic where self-publishing and grassroots marketing is the key to getting the message out there.

Makes you think, if Twitter or Faceboook was a punk band, which one would they be?

New Facebook brand pages, (now referred to as “Public Profiles”) is the best thing to happen for artist promotion since the introduction of Myspace.

Why? Because you can now totally customize your profile to direct your fans to a landing page of what you’re trying to promote right now! Also with this new version of FB, when brands post news, it will appear directly in your fan’s news feed (seamlessly integrated with their other “real” friend’s news). Oh, and let’s not forget the Status Updates option (i.e. room to insert friendly humor here).

It’s like having your very own “mini website” in the world, wide web of Facebook!

Now that Facebook has relaunched their new Fan Page, it means that artists can now do even more promotion on the platform.

The redesign that occurred last Wednesday (3/11) not only allow artists to create their Fan Pages to resemble Personal Profile Pages, but also the ability to include more info in a user-friendly tabulated format (i.e. one tab for band info, one for Tour dates, one tab for Merch etc) to even a Twitter-like live news-feed so fans can get up-to-date info on all the latest news. 

Facebook urges all brands to change their existing Fan Pages in the next week to give them the opportunity to customize their Fan Pages before it gets automatically changed over to the new redesigned format. But don’t fret if you don’t get a chance to… all your info on your existing Fan Page will not still be available and carry on into the new format. 

Facebook is currently approximately 175 million fans-strong -that’s 75 million more than rival Myspace’s 100 million users.