That’s right homey, if you already have some kind of web cam and a high speed connection, get your mates together and perform live on your MySpace profile (or anywhere else you can embed a video player on The Internet) tonight without spending one thin dime… Mogulus, baby… It’s the only thing I’ve seen that could give YouTube a serious run for their money as far as video hosting sites go. If you have any idea how to work a web cam, this should be a piece of cake… The Mogulus MeeTube Channel was up and running in about 10 minutes…

So what makes Mogulus different? Easy… Tons of stuff, starting with live feed capability. The people at Mogulus (who knows who they are, it’s still in Beta and there’s very little background info on the site) have in essence taken a full functioning broadcast studio and condensed it down into a Web application that you launch from your browser. Instead of just posting your videos in a list form like YouTube, MySpace and every other Internet video platform you can think of, Mogulus lets you take it to the next level actually program your channel just like on a regular network. The Mogulus UI allows you to upload videos like you would on any other video sharing community, rip videos directly from YouTube or any another web server, and schedule a “playlist” just like you would in your iPod. To top it all off, you can cut into your pre-programmed content at any time with a live feed from a web cam. It really is the sickest thing I’ve seen to date as far as Web media platforms go and yes, it’s completely free. As someone who’s old enough to remember a time with 4 clear TV channels and no remote control (gulp), I would say this is some truly revolutionary technology.

Another truly sick feature (and trust me, there are just too many to list here) Mogulus supports multiple logins to your studio. This means multiple live feeds are available simultaneously and you can switch between cameras just like a real studio.

This is it, sonny Jim… To ALL the bands out there who thought that all they needed was a break to make it big, your break is here. Watch out YouTube, Mogulus has arrived and thanks to them, you really can be performing live for your fans on MySpace and anywhere else, TONIGHT. In fact, I wouldn’t surprised if at some point YouTube either adopts, or buys this technology outright. It’s gonna be HUGE.

MeeTube will still continue to tape live shows and make videos the “old fashioned way” because our videos are made in post production. However; we’ve already added a Mogulus Channel to our site because live feeds will be a nice addition to the taped live performance videos. In fact, we’ll be testing the MeeTube Live Feed on and off over the coming weeks by letting a web cam run behind the scenes here at MeeTube (my living room) so you can see what goes on. Boring, yet at the same time, fascinating. Check out our live feed page… If you look right now, you just might find me there hammering away at my computer…

Go forth and do likewise my children…

Ahh, old school networking via The Internet… I mentioned a million times throughout various posts that meetube started out as the420channel. Anyway, the whole time we were experimenting with the420channel brand, there was another entity known as the420network lurking about watching our every move. Long story short, when I abandoned the420channel brand, I was contacted by DJ @ Merkaba Productions in New York (the 420 network) regarding key profiles I created with the420channel moniker… Primarily MySpace and YouTube (duh). Naturally, he was interested in these profiles so he asked me if he could have them. Of course my immediate reaction was, “Have them?”… You must be kidding…

After wading through a couple of… “tense” introductory e-mails (copyright infringement, etc.) I’m pleased to report that DJ and I both decided that we could do more damage working together rather than against. After all, we’re pretty much hitting on the same demographic here. Maybe not everyone’s down with the 420 but, you don’t have to be to be down with the 420 network. Granted, it helps though

What is The 420 Network? It’s a multi-media Internet/TV/Radio communication distribution platform with several divisions like, The 420 Channel, 420 Radio, 420 News, 420 Music and The 420 Gallery. They specialize in film, TV, video, animation, music, arts, humanities, environment, and socially, politically, and religiously conscious satire. The ultimate goal of The 420 Network is to migrate from The Internet to cable television on The 420 Channel, as well as 420 Radio on Sirius or XM. At least that’s what DJ tells people… We have it on good authority his real purpose is to ultimately make contact with aliens… And I don’t mean the kind from Mexico…

Anyway, the end result is that meetube.com now has contacts/promotional affiliates in New York, and Merkaba now has the same in California. And while we here at meetube focus on the Web, Merkaba is aiming for cable and satellite. Who knows? Maybe somewhere down the road, we’ll have the opportunity to conquer all three together but for right now, we’re content to not get involved with any litigation over names and have simply decided to swap some promotional space and pimp a little for each other.

Let this be a lesson to any newbs out there… If there’s something you want to accomplish and getting people’s attention will help, hang your junk out on The Internet as often, and in as many places as possible. Sure, you run the risk of collapsing under the sheer weight of spam build-up that you’ll likely experience but eventually, if you’re doing things right, like minds will come to your aid. If you’re insane, that could be dangerous, so watch out… ;b.

As work continues on code issues throughout the meetube.com site, we often use browsershots.org to check the consistency of the site’s appearance across every browser and platform imaginable. There are OS’s and browsers out there I’ve never even heard of (Yeah, hello tech support? I’m running Seamonkey 1.1 on BSD and my e-mail isn’t working…) but one browser in particular caught my attention because it showed up in my site statistics… That would be Flock…

Now before you get crazy and accuse me of being in someone’s pocket for mentioning another “product” in what is supposed to be an indie music video blog, just hear me out a second… First off, I can assure you I’m in no one’s “pocket”… If I was, I’d have some money and this site would be a lot different :b. Secondly, after spending just two days messing around with it, I can see that Flock really isn’t just a browser. It’s literally a social networking control center, the likes of which I’ve never seen.

Technically speaking, it’s a Mozilla based browser but it bears no similarity to any Mozilla products I’ve seen in the past. It certainly functions like any other browser and has been smooth and glitch free since install but that’s just the half of it. If you’re doing any social networking online (if you’re in a band, you damn well better be) this browser puts every social networking entity at your fingertips with the notable exception of MySpace. Why it’s not “plugged in” to MySpace I don’t know but everything else integrates right into the browser itself. Blogger, WordPress, Xanga, Twitter, Facebook, Flicker, YouTube… All of them, and many more have widgets and plugins that apparently let you control all of your social networking activities right from one customizable surface. Like I said, I’ve only been working with it for a couple of days so clearly i don’t know everything, but even if you don’t use this thing as your default browser you should give it a try. If you want to make the most of your time pimping the band online, Flock 1.0 puts all that social shit right in front of you…

Just a reminder that it’s that time of year again and The Del Mar Fair is rapidly approaching. With it comes The Battle of The Bands and it’s not too late to get your bid in… If you’re a local SD artist (CA residents only) you can find all the details and sign up information right here but ya probably should act fast. The deadline for submitting entries is May 23rd. The “Battle” begins on June 20th, round two is on June 27th and, the winner will be crowned on The 4th of July.

Joel (AMP) and I filmed some bands last year for our own personal edification but I can’t for the life of me remember who they were. That might be a shameful thing to admit but I think it’s a tribute to the mediocrity we were fed (at least while I was there) last time. We shot some video of a couple performances which Joel has up on his YouTube Channel. I think some of the acts were chosen as “novelty acts” because #1) I had never heard of quite a few of them… Granted, I don’t know EVERY band in San Diego but I’ve been gigging around here for the last 7 years… I should at least have heard your name before if you’re playing out… #2) Many of these same bands looked good but didn’t really execute very well. I realize that The Del Mar Fair can be a big deal but a show is a show… You need to get your nerves under control if you’re going to play for crowds. I’ll bet a lot of these bands had killer demos and press kits that they put a lot of time in on but lacked experience and couldn’t deliver the goods when the time came. Just speculation mind you…

There is one band that I do remember from last year but unfortunately I didn’t get to see them perform. That would be our boys from Soundescape. I think I even have an interview with the band where they talk about last year’s battle. Come to think of it, I’m going to have to dig that up and see if it’s worth posting… It seems to me that while they were very much being gentleman about the whole thing, I think they were a little disgruntled at the outcome. Now, I have absolutely no inside knowledge of the goings on with The Del Mar Battle of the Bands and it’s sponsors. What I do know is that as a general rule, it’s a good idea not to underestimate the power of relationships when it comes to these kinds of media sponsored events. It’s just one of those situations where the “best man” might not always win. Either way, take your shot. Go, do, get dirty… Sign up for The Del Mar Battle of the Bands… Eventually the cream always rises. If you’re it, we’ll know it…

Well now, in case you missed it a couple of posts back, I was giving props to Radiohead for their “rebirth” as an indie artist. In Rainbows, their latest release was available as a free digital download before you could even buy it in the store. I also mentioned that if I wasn’t mistaken, Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails weren’t far behind… I love it when my powers of clairvoyance actually work… You can get a free download of the single Discipline if ya click on this little link here. Don’t say we never gave ya nothin’…

I was in the car the other day and one of the local DJ’s was talking about the change in the record industry and wondering aloud how it was the record companies were going to be able to continue making money. With the likes of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails bringing product directly to our computers, I’m sure there are board rooms all over the country wondering the same thing. If they have any brains at all, they’ll realize they somehow have to harness the Internet in a fashion that just isn’t affordable to the average Joe. Let’s face it, The Internet is becoming privatized right under our very noses. Record labels, if they’re smart, will become miniature film companies and instead of releasing a new CD, the new music will be released on a DVD with videos for every track, live performance clips and maybe some behind the scenes shenanigans. Release a few singles as free digital downloads, leak a few videos onto YouTube, and then just buy up exposure online like they would with any other media outlet.

No matter what happens, we the consumer have more choices than ever on where to find our music. If record labels want to hold our attention, and more importantly our money, they’re going to have to step up and offer us more.

So the final word from Technorati was to validate the code in the meetube blog… Apparently there are some errors that are creating trouble for the spiders. Why I didn’t check this going in is completely beyond me… When it comes to Word Press (aka, this blog), I don’t know how to do anything from scratch. I typically go get a theme that has the layout I want and then gut the CSS and restyle it. Because I always get my themes from the Word Press site, I just assumed the code was clean. Isn’t there some old saying about assumptions? Anyway, I went back and checked the validator and it appears the php (scripting language that powers Word Press) is generating some bad code because I can’t locate any bad html in the Word Press design editor. So yeah, I spent hours styling out a theme that won’t index correctly with Technorati. How fucking SWEET is that?

A fan(?) who will remain nameless kinda ripped me via e-mail because I write about the above type situations in what is supposed to be an indie music video blog. I can sorta see his point but, I think the point that he, and others might be missing is that everything I do in building and promoting this site are things that you can do to build and promote your band. I go through all these trials and tribulations and write about them on the slim chance someone will benefit and not make the same mistakes. I might have a BS in digital media but school just scratches the surface. The real education comes from going out and getting yourself dirty and I thought perhaps someone might actually appreciate a little information at my expense. Sean from Revenge Club once told me about a gig they were playing in SACRAMENTO (500 miles away) for FREE… Let me tell ya somthin’, that’s the kind of motivation you need to make it in any industry as far as I’m concerned; but if you apply that kind of energy to The Internet, you’re going to get the attention of more people then you ever would from one night in Sacto… Ya feelin that, G?

Oh, and also to the flamer, to answer your question, Technorati is like a MySpace for blogs. Maybe you can grasp that concept…

So you can see by the previous post that I finally got around to setting the blog up on Technorati… So dig this… The Technorati spider indexed ALL the pages that I thought were lost in the upgrade (see post #1 in this blog) and NONE of the pages since the upgrade to Word Press 2.5… I’ve got a ticket open trying to see what’s up… Either way, my hat is off to them because they saved me the trouble of having to become a mySQL guy to figure out what happened to my old posts…

Nice one…

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/skhm226nvr” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

With so many irons in the fire, sometimes finding time to mention them all can be a challenge. Finding an alternative to the YouTube embedded video player falls into that category. Quality control has always been an issue with YT and I’ve been searching for alternatives since day one. Alternatives that don’t require a dedicated server and a CMS (content management system) costing around $2400/mo. I live for the day that I can afford something like that, but it sure ain’t today. Enter Revver.

My buddy Joel at AMP works with me shooting and producing many of the videos found here on meetube. He recommended Revver to me while I was still on a quest to set up my own delivery platform so I put it aside. When I found out the actual dollar amount attached to setting up my “dream platform”, I conducted a hasty retreat and dialed Revver up on my browser. I dug the look of the player and it had all the expected features, including the full screen capability. Normally full screen capability is something I don’t even care about because videos on YouTube are encoded at 320×240. You blow that up full screen and the pixels start congealing into hunks as big as a kid’s wooden building block. It looks like crap. Not so on Revver… Hmm, this was getting interesting. I came to find out, a real live person previews every video before it goes up online. I was impressed but wondering what that did to processing time. I mean, how long was it going to take for a video to go live after upload? As it turned out, not long at all. Granted, not as fast as YouTube but the video was still up the same day despite the fact that since I was a brand new account, I real person e-mailed me for a copyright statement. I was liking them more and more all the time.

So anyway, I uploaded a copy of Soundescape’s Volume as my test case. I must admit, I was a little reluctant because I just didn’t like the idea of “commercials” getting injected into the videos. You see, thats where the name comes from… Rev is short for revenue… They put a short ad in the beginning of your video and you get paid after a certain number of views. It’s actually one of the reasons I wasn’t interested in them in the beginning… I mean, I’m constantly looking to make something here and there to cover bandwidth and production costs but commercials? My conscience started mocking me the minute I hit the upload button. After all, wasn’t the Internet about not having to deal with commercials? I was having second thoughts and they must have known it because they sent me a perfectly timed e-mail letting me know that they loved the video and it had been approved. So I looked at it… Then I looked at it in full screen mode… Really f’ing nice right out of the gate. Not only that, the little ad that came first was actually funny. Suddenly my conscience wasn’t so loud…

Okay, now the downside because you know there had to be at least one. Revver’s embeded player works off the script tag as opposed to the object and embed tags used by YouTube and some others. What does that mean? No Revver on MySpace… MySpace doesn’t allow script tags so as of right now, I don’t know if the Revver player is going to work there. I’m going to look at the documentation and see if there’s mention of it and get back to ya in another post… In the meantime, you might want to check it out for yourself at Revver.com.

While I’m sure many people who frequent this site are either accomplished at, or unconcerned with booking gigs, there’s always some new aspiring young musicians out there who dream of one day making it big. As I’ve mentioned previously, a broadband Internet connection can help you build your audience without even leaving your own home if you’re so equipped. That doesn’t negate the fact that to fully develop your craft, you need to get out and do your thing in front of other people. Where does one start?

Obviously the first thing you have to do is not suck… Unfortunately, many never get over that one little piece of the puzzle for reasons too numerous to mention. Secondly, be prepared to play a 45 minute set minimum. It’s better to have too much material than not enough. Now, assuming you’ve got yer shit straight, the next thing to do is get your band a Web site, or at the very least, a MySpace and make sure you have some decent mp3’s of your stuff up. At least 3 songs. Once that’s done, PIMP YOUR PROFILE. I say this knowing that I don’t spend enough time on my own MySpace profile but in the beginning, I was all over it. Get friendly with similar bands, the clubs that book those bands (most of them have MySpaces as well) and just spend some time online getting a feel for the landscape. Note how many bands appear on any one bill to get an idea of how long of a set people are playing.

Once your comfortable (or just can’t wait any longer), start hitting up clubs online to find out about booking if it’s not already spelled out somewhere. Don’t be surprised if this doesn’t get you very far but you never know. It doesn’t hurt by starting with the easy road, just be prepared for limited results.

The next thing to do is get on the phone with the venue (assuming e-mail doesn’t work) and get the name of the person who does the booking. Find out when the best time is to see this person at the club. It’s not normally top secret information so someone will usually offer it willingly. Write this information down. If you’re serious, you’ll start a file with club names and contacts that you’ll be updating constantly.

Go to the club at the optimum designated time with a demo CD at least, preferably a full blown press kit with head shots, bios and any information about the band that will help you get booked. Many times a CD is enough but make sure that thing is clearly marked with your contact information on the disc itself. Sharpies are fine if you’re not going to put an actual label on it. Show up clean and sober, don’t mumble, be friendly. Even though you’re a musician, in this instance you’re trying to transact business so act accordingly. If for some reason the booking person is unavailable, DO NOT leave your demo stuff with just anybody. When the time comes for the follow up phone call, nobody will even know who you are and you’ll just have to go back with another kit.

If you do get in front of the booking agent or person, don’t over do it. Introduce yourself, reference the person by name who gave you their name, and simply express interest in playing at their club. These people can be a little self-important at times because in many cases they’re getting CD’s on a daily basis and they start feeling… powerful. In a sense, they are so the best thing to do is let them do the talking and you should just be ready to field questions. If they want to give you a tour of the venue, take it. Be aware of where power is on stage, etc. so you’ll have extension cords or strips if you need them. If they’re preoccupied and seemingly in a hurry, give them your material, thank them for their time and tell them what day you will be calling them to follow up, THEN DO IT. Once you’ve made contact, persistence is the only thing that stands between you and any gig. People will hem and haw, dodge phone calls, ignore e-mails… You name it… Just always remember to be pleasant and no matter what happens, stay on them until you either get a date, or they flat out tell you no.

Good Luck!