Name: RootMusic

Quick Pitch: RootMusic is all about making musicians’ professional lives better, be it through building software or building community.

Genius Idea: RootMusic’s debut product is called BandPage, and it makes MySpace-like band page features possible inside a Facebook fan page.

At present, Facebook fan pages are laid out in such a way that you can’t share your music with your fans while letting them continue to browse for information. You can deploy a music player tab, but as soon as your fans click on the Photos tab to see pictures of your band, the music stops.

Myspace continues to streamline their Web site to try and keep up with features on other social networks. The latest update is the “Share” function that now allows you to apply a link and video to your status updates.

Instead of having to choose a “Mood” to update your status, Myspace has updated their design to match the rest of the profile’s home page; while adding the options to apply a photo, link, video and mood to your status.

This is just the latest in updates and moves by Myspace to stay afloat in social media. The site recently updated the “Stream” of your status posts and bulletins in an attempt to organize their many features.

BandCentral will be showcasing at two of spring’s highest profile Music-tech events – Music 4.5 in London on March 4^th, and the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator event at SXSW Interactive 15-16^th March, 2010.

Following on from their recent success in the MidemNet lab, BandCentral are one of 8 companies who will battle it out in the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator program to be crowned “Most Innovative” company in the entertainment sector. Having been pipped to the post by Holland’s Sellaband at the recent Eurosonic Interactive Company of the year awards, BandCentral have their sights firmly set on first prize. Fellow nominees include: Amulet Devices, AnyClip, Are You Watching This, Gendai Games, Khush, Pocket Tales and ShopSavvy.

Supernova.com is a community that grew out of the largest Battle of the Bands operator in Canada, and into the ‘web 2.0’ world by building the most active Canadian social community dedicated to music. They currently have over 21,000 independent bands and artists, and over 200,000 total community members including fans and industry.

The site’s mantra is to provide new / undiscovered musicians with the same caliber of experience as a rockstar would get.

The Battle of the Bands shows put these young acts up on big stages, provide professional sound and staffing, and DO NOT take any payment from the bands. Instead, they front all the costs and provide bands with the tickets to sell (or return, if unsold). They also coordinate industry and media attendance at the events, and have seen some really impressive acts play on our stage: Billy Talent, Sum 41, Three Days Grace and many others have played the Supernova stage.

Featured Blog:
Indie Today
http://indietoday.wordpress.com/
A blog dedicated to featuring and reviewing bands that will be famous one day. They take submissions from anyone, and then pick and choose who they want to feature.

Featured Podcast:
RobKast Radio
http://blog.robkast.nl/
RobKast Radio is a great podcast located in Holland and is a Dutch spoken show. Rob plays PodSafe music only, and loves to collaborate directly with musicians. Robkast has more then 400 subscribers, per episode. Robkast Radio is downloaded all over Europe, The Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden Belgium, Great Britain,Russia, Japan, and Italy.

Koolhaus Games Inc. is pleased to announce the release of the latest updated version of iMP: Surf the Music, a new music game created specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

New features include:

* Two new levels for a total of ten fun packed playable levels

* New exciting gameplay features

* Hot new music tracks

BandCentral is excited to confirm their invitation to showcase at the inaugural MidemNet Lab, at the MIDEM music conference in Cannes, France, from 23rd – 27th January 2010.

The MidemNet Lab will shine a spotlight on 15 of the brightest start-ups bringing innovative digital solutions to the music industry.

Hand-picked by leaders in the field, including Music Ally, Spotify, Seesmic, SoundCloud, Topspin and Hype Machine, the MidemNet Lab will serve as a ‘form guide’ for the start-ups set to make waves in the digital music industry in 2010.

ReverbNation has created an application to showcase your music on Facebook to your fans. It is an easy app to download and utilize. The application can be applied to your personal and music pages. Obviously, you need to have a Facebook profile, and having a ReverbNation profile also helps to download the app faster.

The app displays like a profile that shows your music, fans and tour dates to name a few features.

This app really enhances the artist’s experience who want to add Facebook as a legit marketing resource to their band’s portfolio.

Or could something even more sinister be going on…

Imeem users got an unpleasant surprise last week when they clicked on their favorite music site and found themselves redirected to MySpace. Seemingly overnight, the imeem API had been completely absorbed into MySpace Music. The social networking dinosaur bought the once-promising imeem platform for less than $1 million.

The Breaks

The first disappointment comes when you realize that MySpace has not transferred your imeem playlists over to their site. The redirect page contains a vague promise that they are “working to migrate your imeem playlist to MySpace Music. We’ll email you about that once we have more details.” Yeah. You do that, MySpace. You email me.

Sign up and be a part of the first social network – music directory!

Categories include: Musicians, Artists, Labels, Bands, Venues, Stores, Producers, and the list goes on!!

Enjoy the features and online exposure that Gighive will offer its member from: news features on TheBuzz, advertising space, and the key features that strengthen your online presence.

The current directory is only the beginning of what the vision for the movement will become…

Featured Blog:
The Fire Note
http://thefirenote.blogspot.com

The Fire Note features music reviews for indie, alternative, and rock artists.  They include the tracks they consider “Key Tracks” as well as artists/bands they think have a similar sound.

Featured Podcast:
RockRoll 360
http://wlso.fm/wordpress/archives/category/rockroll360

Michael J. Andrade presents RockRoll360. An eclectic, intelligent rock program. Hear a cross between Classic Underground and AAA Radio format. Along with the great music you’ll find strange oddities- sound bites, radio station I.D’s, jingles and comedy.

Featured Station:
Euterpia Radio
http://www.euterpia-radio.fr

Euterpia Radio is a 24/7 webradio playing rock, blues, country, but also jazz, pop, in short, a little bit of everyting, all the time. Visit http://www.euterpia-radio.fr to know which tracks are added each week to the playlist.

A key feature that caught me by surprise is the ability for bands to easily share  their music all over the world. Swift.fm allows bands to upload their own tracks, demos, mixes and mashups. “Swift.fm is your portal to worldwide exposure on Twitter.”

You do not need to find new ways to send new big .Zip files, or trying to cram those files in an email anymore.

The service is layered on top of Twitter, so if your signed up on Twitter then your network is on Swift.fm.

If you thought playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero over Xbox Live and Playstation’s network was cool, then  jamLink  will blow you away! JamLink allows musicians to do the same thing, but with actual instruments.

Technology has now provided us with a product that allows musicians to practice with their band members, collaborate with other artists, or even audition over the Internet.

I know getting the whole band together can be a hassle in itself, so having such an innovative tool is pretty cool.