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15
May
Imagine that you are twenty years old and you have just been deployed to Uzbekistan at a staging area for military incursions into Afghanistan. You are in the most alien environment imaginable and still trying to get your bearings. You have been trained by the Air Force to maintain military […]
03
May
Marshall McLuhan (Wikipedia) Fifty years ago Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase
02
May
Stage-it is innovation at its best - a simple, clever spin on live streaming, and an incredible way to engage your fans. WHAT IS STAGE-IT? It’s essentially a platform that allows you to perform concerts for your fans over the Internet. They watch from the comfort of their couch and you perform from
22
Apr
Human Demand, the mobile ad technology company partners with TRUSTe to standardize TRUSTed Mobile Ads , the industrys first and only unified privacy management platform for mobile advertising.
12
Apr
What if your smartphone was actually smart enough to know the exact product you’re standing in front of in a store, without any help from your part? Or what if it could automatically receive offers related to what you’re watching on TV?
It’s possible to do those things today, but it requires more work than most brands want to deal with. New York City-based Sonic Notify thinks it has the best solution for marketers and consumers alike.
02
Apr
Ready, Set, Baby! is a brand new e-book for iPad and Kindle that provides an interactive guide for everything you want to know about a baby’s first year. It features chapters on topics from feeding to bathing to car seat installation to sleeping (should such a thing be a part of your newborn’s schedule) and much more
Open Air Publishing today announced the launch of its tenth how-to e-book and app, “Ready, Set, Baby! The Watch and Learn Guide to Your Baby’s First Year.” Written by award-winning author and producer Maureen Connolly (Unbuttoned, The Dr. Oz Show), “Ready, Set, Baby!” will be available for the iPad, iPhone, Nook, and Kindle, and via the web.
It is great to see a modestly resurgent music industry after so many consecutive years of decline. Music consumption is stronger than ever and the bulk of it is in the form of streaming. Spotify is the current poster child for on-demand streaming but it is worth noting thatVevo, an on-demand music video site, is the top video publisher on the web behind YouTube and Facebook. Recommendation based music streaming is equally robust.
26
Mar
Human Demand, the revolutionary mobile ad technology company that provides advertisers and developers with a transparent view into their campaigns, today announced that it closed its Series A round of capital, led by New York-based Digital Entertainment Ventures (DEV) and the ARC Angel Fund. Additional investors who participated in the round include Empire Angel Group, Blackgate Ventures, TJNS Capital, active angle investors, and Howie Schwartz , CEO of Human Demand.
Human Demand, a mobile ad startup whichlaunched last summer targeting the long tail of app developers, has since expanded its focus to brands, and is today announcing having raised an additional $900,000 in new funding. Some of that new investment is founder money, while the others leading the round include the DEV fund andARC Angel Fund.
22
Mar
Imagine a service that allows you to see your favorite acts in concert without ever leaving your home, let alone changing out of your pajamas. Stageit, a Los Angeles-based online company, does just that.
21
Mar
The two-year-old service allows performers to play from just about any location with paying fans watching the show and even interacting with the artists between numbers. ThinkSkype meets pay-per-view.
R&B-pop singer JoJo recently put on a show from her vocal coach’s Leimert Park living room. Though the singer couldn’t see her virtual supporters on the laptop she was performing in front of, she did see their song requests, conversations with one another and questions they had for her. She was also able to keep track of a virtual tip jar.
PHOTOS: Iconic rock guitars and their owners
One fan tipped the equivalent of $400, another one who won a 15-minute Skype call with her tipped $795. The jar ballooned past $5,000 by the time she sang one of her biggest hits, “Too Little Too Late.”
Not bad for 50 minutes of work.
“It was cool to be able to give my supporters, [especially those] in other countries that I haven’t been to, an intimate setting to just let them hear my voice,” she said.
Stageit’s Chief Executive Evan Lowenstein, formerly known for the 2000 hit, “Crazy for This Girl,” wanted a way to engage with fans without the clutter that comes with most social networks.
“What you have is people playing music next to mortgage ads and free iPod ads,” the 39-year-old said from Stageit’s Hollywood office. “It’s not a necessarily conducive environment for an artist, and there’s no way to make any money.
“We want the particular fan who understands the value of an artist’s time is worth something,” he continued. “It wasn’t just about getting the artist paid, it was about enabling the fans to give money directly to the artist.”
Since its 2011 debut, Stageit has been host of shows by marquee acts including the Indigo Girls,Jason Mraz, Trey Songz, Sara Bareilles, Korn, finalists and winners from “American Idol” and “The Voice,” and Jimmy Buffett. Anyone can sign up to perform.
Buffett, a longtime friend of Lowenstein, helped launch the site with a demo at South by Southwest in 2011 and, along with Napster founder Sean Parker, has contributed to the $3.5 million raised in venture funding.
Lowenstein asked another industry friend, Jason Scheff of veteran pop-rock outfit Chicago, to test the idea with a private show in 2009.
“It was just a box and a chat room and I’m watching him take his laptop through his house. He goes to the piano and starts playing a Chicago song, and then Elton John,” Lowenstein recalled. “I had goose bumps. He’s looking right at you, and everybody in the room feels like he’s looking directly at them.”
That intimate approach has translated to public kudos for the company. Stageit was named one of Billboard’s best startups of 2012. Fast Company named it one of the world’s most innovative companies in music last month. And Stageit took home an award at Midemlab’s 2013 competition.
“We’ve invested so much as an industry in likes, followers, subscribes and friends and it hasn’t yielded revenue like anyone had anticipated,” Lowenstein said. “If you buy a $1,500 package to seeKaty Perry, she doesn’t know you exist. If you buy a Jason Mraz record, he doesn’t know you exist. We are finally letting fans give money directly to their favorite artists and be recognized in real time.”
The real payoff, though, is for artists. Stageit concert ticket typically run about $3 and fans spend on average $13.40 per show (including tips). Stageit’s largest show, a benefit that included Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne, drew 11,000 viewers.
Top tier acts can make about $15,000 to $20,000 per show, Lowenstein says, with mid-level acts making roughly $5,000. The across-the-board average is about $460 per show, with nearly 60% of revenue coming from the virtual tip jar.
Musicians made $1.2 million through Stageit in 2012, but that figure could top $4 million this year. As for the company? Artists take 63% to 83% of the profits, with the rest going to Stageit. “We’re not profitable right now, what’s more important for us is the artists are making money and proving that fans out there will spend money on artists,” Lowenstein admits.
But his confidence in Stageit lies in its exclusivity. Shows aren’t archived so if fans miss out, tough. Besides, as he says often during conversation, you can’t pirate intimacy.
“We say Stageit is a front row seat to a backstage experience,” Lowenstein added. “The front row seat is the most expensive in the house, but everyone wants to be backstage. All we’re doing is putting a camera on that experience.”
30
Jan
New York City has a thriving start-up scene and now is firmly established as the number two innovation center behind Silicon Valley. The ramp in momentum can be felt across the city landscape from the mayor’s office where Michael Bloomberg is cheerleader in chief for the New York tech economy to the real estate industry where brokers are trying to keep up with demand for open-seating office space in the Union Square and Flat Iron districts.
15
Jan
Remember Tom Cruise walking through a mall in Minority Report. Cameras mounted in strategic locations zeroed in on his eyes, did a quick retina scan to identify him as John Anderson, and transmitted this information real-time to talking Billboards. “John Anderson, you could use a Guinness right about now!” The film is only ten years old but already seems quaint by today’s standards. Most people are already walking around with a portable personal billboard that also texts and if they are really retro, can be used for phone calls. (click link above for the whole story)
06
Dec
Talk about running with a crowd. There are now 700,000 apps available toApple users and close to 550,000 for Android. That doesn’t include the new Microsoft Windows 8 platform which will gain market share over time. The only way to make sense of what seems like a bottomless ocean of mobile apps is to divide them into more manageable categories. (click link above for the whole story)
