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Tag: Indie Music

  • Jason Molina Dies of “Natural Causes”; Singer Was 39

    The record label Secretly Canadian today confirmed that singer/songwriter Jason Molina has died.

    The 39-year-old is reported to have died at his Indianapolis home on Saturday March 16 of “natural causes.” Molina’s record label stated that he stopped touring in 2009 to deal with severe alcoholism. From the Secretly Canadian blog post:

    This is especially hard for us to share. Jason is the cornerstone of Secretly Canadian. Without him there would be no us – plain and simple. His singular, stirring body of work is the foundation upon which all else has been constructed. After hearing and falling in love with the mysterious voice on his debut single “Soul” in early 1996, we approached him about releasing a single on our newly formed label. For some reason he said yes. We drove from Indiana to New York to meet him in person, and he handed us what would become the first of many JMo master tapes.

    Molina is best known for releasing albums and touring under the name Songs: Ohia from 1996 to 2003. In 2003 he formed the band Magnolia Electric Co. Throughout his career, Molina collaborated on and created more than a dozen albums.

    (Image courtesy Anders Jensen-Urstad/Wikimedia Commons)

  • Indaba Music Launches a “Social Contest Suite”

    Indaba Music bills itself as a leading community for independent musicians to show off their talents. The site, through its Opportunity Marketplace, hosts contests that involve composing or remixing music tracks. Indaba’s contest campaigns are designed to promote music brands and artists. The site boasts over 20 million “digital impressions” for each of its contest campaign programs. Today, Indaba is announcing the launch of its “social contest suite,” which is a music marketing platform with a “socially integrated music discovery product.”

    Indaba is aiming its new social integration at brands, which can use indaba to market their artists. The suite has linked indaba users up to Facebook through Facebook Connect and Open Graph. Some user actions on Indaba, such as voting and submitting, will show up in their News Feeds. Also, content in the Opportunity Marketplace is now embeddable, meaning brands can run contests from their own website through Indaba.

    “A common challenge that our music industry and brand clients face is how to connect with a larger audience via digital marketing campaigns. Indaba Music’s Social Contest Suite provides marketers with a powerful engagement solution to create scale by leveraging social networks and the traffic of their own, branded properties,” said J.J. Rosen, CEO of Indaba Music. “With this launch we’re uniquely positioned to painlessly connect brands and record labels with musical talent to create custom, unique content that’s then amplified by millions of socially connected fans.”

    The Indaba website features a board where musicians can post wanted ads for other musicians to collaborate with. Indaba also offers, for $5 per month, a digital storefront where artists can sell physical or digital copies of their music. For that price, 15 songs can also be distributed to iTunes. Artists keep all of the rights to their music under the program.