ReverbNation is the music industry’s version of a “Web 2.0 Fairy Godfather”…

If you’re an artist looking to market your music online, but don’t know where to start, ReverbNation is a platform that provides Artists, Labels, Managers and other Industry Professionals with their own set of digital marketing promotional tools.

Now artists have the ability to manage their fan base, create widgets and banners, distribute music on iTunes, create geo-targeted campaigns and send e-newsletters -all from one platform (and did we mention it’s free?)

The most refreshing part about digital distribution on ReverbNation is how they’ve created a business model that puts artists first. For $35.00 per release/per year artists can distribute one song or an album of up to 99 songs – best of all, ReverbNation does not take any percentage of the sales.

ReverbNation offers both a free and premium service. Features include:

• FanReach: fan managements system with customizable and targeted email system

• Widgets & Banners: Music Players, Fan Collectors, Street Team Collectors, Press, Shows, Shows w/ Map, Exclusive Song.  Widgets and Banners are also trackable

• Digital Distribution: distributes music on iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody and emusic

• RPK (Reverb Press Kit): electronic press kit (EPK) that allows the   recipient to access music, videos, bio and photos. Artists also have the ability to geo-target fans and track number of click-thrus

• Fan360: reveals the contact information for emails e.g. name, age, sex, gender, zip code and how many Friends, Fans or Followers on Myspace, Facebook and Twitter

• Street Team Functionality – every artist gets their own Street Team Program to help activate their fans and make every promotion “viral”. These promoters will help artists gain exposure by talking about the artist on blogs, message boards and by posting music, banners, tour dates, etc.  The platform even tracks everything these Street Team members do and creates a Leaderboard that measures impressions, number of plays, clicks and/or conversions

• Facebook and Bebo Applications – the MyBand Application is currently the #1 Artist Application on Facebook.  It puts almost everything from the ReverbNation profile right into the artist’s Facebook Public Profile page.  Artists can also include “Buy links” e.g. music, tickets, merch on their Public Profiles

Currently there are over 400,000 artists using ReverbNation including 50 Cent, Kenny Chesney, Madonna, Pantera, Judas Priest, O.A.R., Natasha Bedingfield, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Sara Bareilles, Lamb of God and Jason Mraz. 

Earlier this week, Blip.fm (a.k.a.“Twitter for music”) launched a YouTube integration feature that allows users to have the option of posting music videos directly onto their Blips.

The Twitter social media paradigm was used as the inspiration for Blip.fm, a platform that’s specifically designed to share rich content media, giving users the ability to make music recommendations (in 150 characters or less), to their network in an easy format, without the use of TinyURLs. With the new YouTube integration, Blip.fm users can now do more than just recommend their favorite songs, but also favorite music videos as well.

“The decision to introduce music videos to Blip.fm is part of our broader strategy to expand our content sources and to introduce all media types to our platform” says Blip.fm Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Jeff Yasuda  “We’re happy with the integration and the feedback from our users has been really positive.”

Artists and labels can take full advantage of Blip.fm’s YouTube integration as part of their grassroots marketing strategy to promote new releases, live performances, or even to become a thought-leader for music recommendations to fans.

“We believe that music discovery is an inherently social process.  In fact, the most compelling recommendations don’t come from an algorithm or a computer… they come from your friends and trusted sources” says Yasuda.

What are your music recommendations? Tell us on http://blip.fm/rockisreligion

Despite his recent tantrum for not getting his way from iPhone, Trent Reznor was honored the title of “Webby Artist of the Year”, a Special Achievement Award at the 13^th Annual Webby Awards.

According to the announcement on WebbyAwards.com the judges selected Reznor for “making his music available to fans for free, Trent Reznor embraced the true openness of the Internet, similar to the release of the album Year Zero, which launched with an award-winning alternate reality game. Trent Reznor’s ability to connect with fans far and wide through the Web makes him a qualified ambassador of online culture, and arguably one of the most-recognized artists harnessing the power of the Internet to spread music.”

Among the social media savvy elite to win this year were Sarah Silverman for “Best Actress”, Film & Video Person of the Year: Seth MacFarlane and Webby Person of the Year: Jimmy Fallon.

Involver is a new application for Facebook that turns your Fan Page from generic to dynamic.

The site touts itself as being ”The first complete marketing suite on Facebook”. There is a premium for the service, but some of the individual applications like the RSS Feed, Photo Gallery, You Tube Channel, Twitter, Poll, Coupon, File Sharing, Slides and PDFs are available for free.

Even though the ability to seamlessly enable a Twitter, RSS, You Tube feed into your Fan Page is nothing new, the ability to brand all your individual Tabs with your own logo on your Facebook Fan Page in a neat and professional looking way is.

The Coupon application is nice if you are a band offering a promotion exclusively on Facebook. You can create e-coupons either exclusively for existing Fans of the page, and/or create a different coupon for new fans (to encourage them to become a Fan of the Page).

However, the product description claims to offer a “set it and forget it” feature, which generally goes against the whole point of “social networking”.

As per the site’s instructions, it’s simple to use and promotes engagement and viral sharing, which enables marketers to take one step closer to being able to find a way to successfully monetize the Facebook platform.

It’s no secret that it’s a tough market for the Auto industry now, and for the auto makers who are holding up, they are aware of how important it is to stand out in this competitive environment.

At last week’s New York Auto Show, Land Rover unveiled their new vehicle, as well as a promotional campaign that incited a lot of talks around the water cooler at ad agencies everywhere.

Using the same concept as a media buy, Land Rover paid 4500 Tweeters to post and comment about “Land Rover” and include a “#LRNY” tag at the end of their posts to optimize their name search. Even though many other car companies like Ford and Honda have a successful presence on Twitter, according to Brand Republic, Land Rover are the first to openly brand themselves on Twitter.

Land Rover have essentially created a new way to sponsor Tweets -but is it in “good taste”? So far no other brands has been reported to follow in Land Rover’s Twitter sponsoring concept yet.

However, suffice to say, if a brand with a loyal following uses the same strategy e.g. an Artist to promote their upcoming tour, it could be an effective alternative to a media spend in addition to a traditional ad-buy to get their message across.

This morning The New York Times ran a story about Pizza Hut’s job posting for their “Summer Twintern”.

Not surprising that Pizza Hut are stepping up thier game in the social media space, after last week’s Domino’s YouTube viral video PR disaster.

What we can learn from this is the power of social media, and as much as some people are yet to come on board the Twitter train, it has proven to be quite a useful  communications tool when you want to get your message out to the public, fast.

And if you’re still not convinced? There’s still plenty of time to post a job ad for a “Summer Twintern” to do all your Twittering on your behalf.

Traditionally, Billboard has been the best (and only) place to find out who topped this week’s Single and Album charts.

But since the distribution of music has changed and media has gone more viral, relying on only one Chart may not necessarily be the most accurate source.

We Are Hunted (Beta) is a new online music chart that aggregate from social networks, forums, music blogs, Torrents, P2P Networks and Twitter to form a daily chart of the Top 99 most popular songs online.

The site breaks it down into four categories: Today, Week, Month, Year.

And if aggreating data from social networks is the way We Are Hunted’s charts work, it seems like a far more fairer way for Artists to get their music recognized.

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?