Gerd Leonhard's Blog on The Future of Music, Media & Entertainment

"Music promotion democratized" - Sonific Music Network launches, offers record labels, artists and music producers free access to SongSpots music widgets and syndication platform

Here is the press release I am publishing with Sonific tomorrow. This is something that literally 1000s of emails from labels and artists have asked for - I think it's a big step into Music2.0 (if I may say so myself;).  What do you think?  Send your comments and / or questions !

San Francisco / California, Basel / Switzerland, June 13, 2007
Sonific LLC, a leading provider of licensed music widgets and free music applications for social media, today announced the launch of the Sonific Music Network (SMN) at www.sonific.net. SMN allows any record label or artist to instantly, and at zero cost, add their music to Sonific.com's catalog and make their own streaming music widgets available for any non-commercial use on blogs, social networks, photo-sharing sites, personal web-pages, web2.0 applications and online portals.

Web widgets are cut & paste flash-players that can deliver streaming media content to almost any webpage or web property. The use of widgets – in particular, those that offer music and video - has recently emerged as a very popular trend, and the viral syndication of media content via widgets is quickly becoming a crucial marketing tool. With today’s launch of Sonific.net the tools of syndication are now available to any and all music / audio rights owners and creators.

Once approved by the Sonific team, all SMN submissions will be instantly available on Sonific.com, in addition to Sonific's already existing catalog of over 150.000 titles which include music provided by CDBaby, IRIS, IODA, DRA / DMGI, Big Fish Media, State51, Cooking Vinyl, V2 Records, KillRock Stars, Delicious Vinyl, Ninja Tune, Phonefile.dk, Nettwerk Music Group and many others.

Sonific’s SongSpots(TM) music widget currently works on, and supports, 42 platforms, such as Google Gadgets and Google Pages, Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, Friendster, SmugMug, Slideroll, AIM Pages, Facebook, Xanga, Piczo, Ning, FreeWebs, Myspace and many others, allowing any user to instantly add a music component to their personal web presence.

Sonific does not charge for joining SMN, nor does an artist or label transfer any rights to Sonific; any song or album can be activated or removed any time. Using Sonific, any content owner can now provide free promotional streams to any non-commercial website, worldwide, and find new audiences by letting the users themselves do the marketing for them. Sonific's SongSpots can already be found on over 30.000 websites, generating 100s of 1000s of impressions per day, exposing Sonific's content providers to new audiences and driving sales of digital music products and services. Sonific generates revenues from affiliate commissions such as from iTunes, Emusic, and Amazon; in addition the company will roll out advertising supported premium content widgets shortly.

Gerd Leonhard, Co-Founder and CEO of Sonific, comments: “Music production and music distribution have already become democratized because of new, disruptive technologies, and now Sonific.net democratizes music promotion, as well. Just like any visual content creator can already virally distribute his videos via YouTube, Revver or VideoEgg, a record label or artist can now use Sonific’s SongSpots platform to make their music widely available as a full-length audio stream that can be embedded into any website. A fan can now instantly promote any artist's music on their own web-site – the power of content syndication is finally available at a click of the mouse. Sonific’s business model is based on the fact that the future of music marketing clearly is in a ‘Pull Not Push’ approach, in spreading the word via the users, and in making your music available as widely as possible - and then lead back to multiple points of transactions.”

About Sonific
Sonific’s SongSpots (TM) music widget provides free music for use in blogs, personal homepages, photo sites and social networks. The company is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and was founded by Gerd Leonhard (Music-Futurist, Co-author of “The Future of Music” and noted Digital Music Visionary) and Gunnar  Ostergren (CTO), in 2005. Sonific is funded by a group of well-known angel investors. For more details visit www.sonific.com and  www.sonificblog.com.

--------- And here is one of our first Sonific.net submissions: GoodBooks from the UK

eBay: yes, people DO like Music on their ebay auction pages (Sonific SongSpots Music Widgets)

Amazing use of Sonific's music widget.
Link: eBay: PROVO CRAFT CRICUT JASMINE ZOOBALLOO FONT CARTRIDGES (item 140126235287 end time Jun-07-07 10:13:52 PDT).

Soon, you can add your own content to Sonific, and also use our SongSpots as Podcast Widgets!

My company Sonific will launch a new site next week, allowing record labels, artists and other creators / rights-holders (yes, such as pod-casters) to upload their work and make their own, free, instant SongSpot widgets that can be used on social networks, blogs, personal homepages etc. Sonific now supports 42 sites, btw - see the details here.

Check out this cool preview, below. This is what you can do with the new site we are launching next week: All I need to do is sign up as Content Provider, add my track data and upload the file, wait for approval by the Sonific team (in my case... that was instant ;), and then go and search for my own tracks, generate the code, and add in to my blog post or side-bar - 10 minutes to get your own widget with your own music. Let me know if you want to alpha / beta test this with us...!

Web, computer "widgets" offer branding opportunities (Washingtonpost) - The Wigdetization of Media

Good article on Widgets and Media.
Web, computer "widgets" offer branding opportunities - washingtonpost.com.
I like this definition of Widgets:
"Web widgets are designed for blogs, social networking profiles or personal Web sites, enabling users to display personal or third-party content and services without moving to another site. Examples include embedded YouTube videos, movie trailers, audio streams and photo slideshows set to music. Desktop widgets are downloadable tools that provide access to information, content or services without requiring one to launch a Web browser."

swing_set's Xanga Site: how to add music to your Xanga Profile

Good example of a Sonific Songspot on a Xanga profile - and a great song by The Submarines, too!
Link: swing_set's Xanga Site.

Entrepreneur Magazine: All That Jazz (Music for your website)

Sonific mentioned in Entrepreneur Magazine
Link: Entrepreneur Magazine: All That Jazz.

Web music: Want to add a little music to your website? Sonific allows merchants and consumers to select tracks from its library and create their own "SongSpots" that can be downloaded onto their site. The library contains thousands of songs, and users can even upload music they've created themselves. SongSpots are basically Flash objects that stream the selected music and can be quickly pasted onto websites, blogs, social network profile pages, eBay auctions and so on. Visitors not only hear the music, but can also click on the SongSpot logo to find out more about the artist or purchase the song from affiliates such as iTunes. Sonific is a free service--it makes money by offering targeted and strictly contextual advertising and by collecting commissions from e-commerce transactions that are generated by people clicking on the SongSpots.

Music Widgets for Friendster - adding music to your Friendster Profile is now even easier

My company www.sonific.com is one of the leading provider of music widgets for blogs, social networks and web2.0 sites, and we just launched a campaign with Friendster, introducing our SongSpots Music Widgets to the Friendster community. Check out the example, below, for how people are using our music widgets (the SongSpot is all the way at the bottom of this page).  Definitely interesting to see that 1000s of people are now selecting 'auto-play music' as an option for their sites and profiles - the web is going multimedia very fast (guess we were way too early in the late 90s)!  One big plus for us: our music is actually licensed (as opposed to some other players that operate in this turf..;)

Also, if you want to try this yourself, check out Sonific's friendster profile (and add us a friend or become a fan), check out the Sonific / Friendster FAQ and user guides, as well as the 'SongSpots on Friendster examples.  Lastly, here is the link to my Delicious bookmarks showing some of the latest updates on Friendster-Sonific users...
Sonify the web!
Featured example: Friendster - Alice See.

Sonific SongSpots Blog: how to use the free SongSpots Music Widgets on your Friendster page

Link: Sonific SongSpots Blog on Friendster

 

Harriet Devine's Blog: example for adding a music widget to your Typepad blog (sonifying your site)

We have 1000s of people who are now adding music to their blogs, using Sonific's SongSpots Music Widget. This blog, below, is a nice example of how people use just the right song for the context that fits them. Auto-play is fine if it really fits! Harriet Devine's Blog.

www.myspace.com/sonific: how to make your widget links work on myspace

Myspace has been barring outgoing links from widgets for some time now; this has also affected Sonific - the player works fine but you can't click anywhere. So we just launched a new widget that will include the links underneath the player (rather than in it) which sort of solves the problem ;). Check it out. The Sonific MySpace guide is here, btw.

www.myspace.com/sonific.