FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ROCK IS RELIGION AND PIMPS & PINUPS GIVES BACK TO BANDS WITH “THIS IS SPINAL CUTS” POP-UP SALON PROGRAM

Call Out for Bands to Participate in the “Rock Is Religion Gives Back” Program: Free Haircuts and Styling for Bands Touring Through New York City

New York, NY – 17th December, 2009 – Rock Is Religion (www.rockisreligion.com), the social media news provider of Digital Media news for the Music Industry announces, “Rock Is Religion Gives Back”, its first charity program to help artists on tour. Partnering with Pimps & Pinups (www.pimpsandpinups.com), the London and New York boutique hair salon which combines classic hairstyling with the latest styles, Rock Is Religion will provide artists with the, “Rock Is Religion and Pimps & Pinups’ This Is Spinal Cuts” – a pop-up salon that offers free haircuts and hair styling for bands that are touring through New York City.

The idea of the Rock Is Religion and Pimps & Pinups’ This Is Spinal Cuts program is to help artists look amazing for their shows after being out on the road for weeks. This Is Spinal Cuts is currently looking for bands and artists on tour through New York, NY, in need of free awesome haircuts or styling generously donated by the staff at New York’s premiere fashionable boutique salon, Pimps & Pinups.

To qualify for This Is Spinal Cuts, artists must be on tour at the time of the date they participate in the program, and routed through New York City (with a show, at the most, two days before or after the date of the free service). Artists (or artists’ representatives) must submit a photo of the artist/band to Rock Is Religion. Haircut and styling services is only available for the performing artist/band members.

Rock Is Religion and Pimps & Pinups will arrange a pop-up salon to be stationed at the show’s venue, or artists may wish to receive their This Is Spinal Cuts service at the Pimps & Pinups salon located in NYC’s Lower East Side.

“The objective of the Rock Is Religion Gives Back program is to partner with lifestyle brands to provide free services and products to help artists and bands on tour.” said Emmy Burns, Founder and President of RockIsReligion.com, “Rock Is Religion is incredibly grateful to the prestigious and ultra glamorous salon, Pimps & Pinups for donating their services to artists on tour for the Rock Is Religion and Pimps & Pinups’ This Is Spinal Cuts pop-up salon”.

“Pimps & Pinups as always had a strong affiliation with music and that’s why we are offering our services.” said John Hoad, General Manager of Pimps & Pinups, “After all, any promising band must have a sharp haircut.”

The This Is Spinal Cuts pop-up salon is available now to artists and bands touring through New York City.

For more information or if you would like to be involved, please contact:
Emmy Burns

Founder & President, Rock Is Religion

@rocklisreligion

emmy@rockisreligion.com

About Rock Is Religion

Rock Is Religion was founded in 2008, on the idea to raise awareness of new digital marketing technologies that could benefit the music industry. Rock Is Religion (www.rockisreligion.com and @rockisreligion) is a social media news service provider of Digital Media news for the Music Industry on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. In 2009 Rock Is Religion incorporated the Rock Is Religion Gives Back program to benefit artists on tour.

About Pimps & Pinups

Following the success of its London salon, which has featured in a number of seminal British fashion canons including Vogue UK and Elle, Pimps & Pinups (www.pimpsandpinups.com and @pimpsandpinups) is proud to announce the opening of a second salon in Manhattan’s effortlessly chic Lower East Side at 101 Stanton St, New York, NY 10002.

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

ReverbNation the leading marketing platform for musicians, launches ‘Sponsored Songs,’ a new online music distribution program that will give music fans access to unlimited free song downloads from 1,000 artists.

Sponsored Songs will be available on www.MySpace.com/Windows for free until September 24, 2009, and will feature music from independent and mainstream Artists in the rock, alternative, hip hop, latin, and electronica genres.

The first brand to sponsor the new program is Microsoft. The program is mutually beneficial to both brands and artists: brands are able to position themselves as tastemakers, and artists are able to monetize from their music.

“By participating in Sponsored Songs we are supporting music artists and their fans,” said Marty Collins, group marketing manager of Windows Consumer Marketing at Microsoft Corp. “We’re excited to be a part of an effort that could transform online music distribution.”

Sponsored Songs is an opt-in program for select Artists that use ReverbNation.com as their online marketing platform. Artists are paid for each qualified download, and are shown the exact advertisement for their approval prior to the campaign launch.

“We treat Artists like we would want to be treated,” says Lou Plaia, vice president of artist relations at ReverbNation.com. “We give them the information to determine if Sponsored Songs is a good fit for them. If it is, we equip them with turnkey tools to promote the song to their fans.”

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

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.

Earlier this month, Facebook began the Beta roll out of a new currency system called Facebook Credits. The feature allows users to purchase credits to reward their friends for posting good status updates at the rate of $1 USD for 100 credits. Currently, the system is in Beta mode, and is only available at select colleges only.

Sounds innocent enough: your friend posts a cool status update - you reward them with credit.

However what this means to brands is, if Facebook Credits take off, brands will soon be able to offer their “influential friends” a reward for mentioning their product to a highly attractive demographic (the fastest growing demographic on Facebook being 35).

For record labels and artists promoting their new release or upcoming tours, a “pay per play” strategy can be applied too -but for a price far lower than a traditional ad-buy.

Even though there are no hard statistics on exactly how much influence a status update has on the consumer buying power, we all know from personal usage, how effective music mentions and recommendations can be when we see our own friends make a mention of a band or song on their own updates

Now all brands need is to find the right friends who would be enough of a Fan to actually do it.