Atlantic Records Time Capsule is the ultimate collectors limited edition box set. The set includes a full-color book and reproductions of backstage passes, handbills, posters and tickets stubs accompany the main event: one 7″ vinyl record and 8 CDs with 130 tracks spanning six decades of crucial releases! These include hits from Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Bobby Darin, Sonny & Cher, Led Zeppelin, ELP, Yes, INXS, Genesis, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Bette Midler, Stone Temple Pilots and countless others!

The Atlantic Records Time Capsule widget (powered by Widgetmatic) tries to capture the nostalgia behind the Atlantic Records Time Capsule by trying to replicate a turn table complete with scratches and needle drops. We also incorporated a “Dial-N-Time” slider that lets user “dial” into their favorite time period and a library of artists included in the capsule. You can check it out for yourself here or online at www.atlantictimecapsule.com/widget

Video has always been a key component on widgets. With their growing popularity, online videos quickly and easily be integrated into both custom and prefab Widgetmatic widgets. Our new video panels support most popular online video formats including Adobe FLVs (FLV, F4V, H.264, i.e.), YouTube, and Vimeo.

People in the U.S. have steadily increased the amount of time they spend watching videos online. More than 75% of U.S. Internet users watched videos online according to comScore Networks Inc.

Video content is usually a key component of most of music and entertainment industry client’s widgets! (Think music videos, movie trailers, video game footage, i.e.). Retail and consumer brands also make use of video in widgets by running commercial clips, customer testimonials, and TV press footage as part of their social media marketing mix.

To see example of Widgetmatic video in action, you can checkout the AAAnswers widget (YouTube example) and the Winder Wonder Slam widget.

While many people use Adobe Flash-based widgets on the Web, dashboard widgets (such as Yahoo! Widget Engine, Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets, MacOS X gadgets, i.e.) have allowed users to access the same widget functionality on their own desktop. While many of the desktop widget plaforms have decent (but varying) support for Flash, Adobe’s AIR SDK makes it possible to run Flash widgets as native applications on your desktop with a lot of the modern conveniences found in Microsoft Windows-based applications.

Widgetmatic’s W600 series now has Adobe AIR support that makes both web and desktop deployment possible. The W600 continues to support Yahoo! Widget Engine, Microsoft Vista Sidebar Gadgets and MacOS X Gadget deployments for the desktop, but its new AIR support gives it the unique ability to deliver a broad range of advanced features which include:

• Local file access
• Encrypted local storage
• Abillity to launch/run at startup
• Seamless installation on multiple platforms
• Drag-and-drop desktop support
• Web-to-desktop communication and integration
• Digitally signed widgets
• Web-based installer

You have about 100 days left till April 5^th, 2010 when your Clearspring widgets will stop working (unless you switch to their AddThis platform, Gigya or another widget sharing provider).  In general, deprecating (or doing away with) your APIs in this way is not a good idea to grow your customer base! A lot of widgets “in the wild” will quit working on April 5^th and will only serve to irritate users who want to share widgets and publisher who don’t have access to the original widget source code or who simply cannot upgrade them. You can consult the Clearspring transition guide for more information. But here is a high level summary:

• Clearspring hosted widgets: Widgets that user Clearspring hosting will be most adversely affected. After April 5^th, they will simply “disappear”.
• Clearspring In-Kernel API: Widgets that were developed correctly (with support for error handling) may continue functioning correctly but sharing and reporting will no long work. Many widgets without proper support for error handling will hang or generate errors.
• Reporting and Analytics: This will go away entirely with no planned future support. According to Clearspring: “AddThis does NOT offer analytics for widget views and widget interactions.” – Clearspring suggests you use Google Analytics or Omniture – good luck people!

Recommendations:

• Switch to Gigya: Based on what we know, AddThis is NOT an adequate replacement for the existing Clearspring API since reporting, analytics and the Launchpad are all going away! Gigya provides the same level of sharing support, is easier to implement and has comparable reporting capabilities.
• Host your Own Widgets: Avoid “solutions” that promise “free” hosting, either host it yourself or pay your social media or widget developer to host it for you. Don’t be fooled twice, there is no “free lunch” on the Internet (at least not for very long).
• Build or Buy Better Widgets: Most of our widgets and widget platforms are XML-driven and built to allow clients to switch out or replace their widget sharing and analytics provider on the fly. Most widget running on the Widgetmatic 600 platform, for example, will automatically switch to Gigya with no re-work, re-deployment or re-adjustment necessary. In the future, consider a similar “plug-n-play” sharing approach that will allow you to switch out widget sharing providers.
• Start Implementing a Migration Strategy: Music labels, publishers and entertainment companies with a large inventory of widgets need to starting thinking about and implementing a migration strategy for their widgets, or your investment in “viral marketing” is simply going to go away come April 5^th! Contact us if you need help in putting such a plan in place. We’ll help you identify and inventory your widget assets, and work with you to transition them over to new sharing and analytics provider.

The Widgetmatic 600 Series (see TobyMac Winter Wonder Slam example) is one of our flexible widget content management and deployment platforms.  W600 series widgets are used externally (on the web) by clients in a variety of industries including music, entertainment, gaming, as well as more vertical industries like pharma, hospitality, education, real estate and auto.

An increasing number of clients, however are using our widgets internally (desktop widgets running on their Intranets) for a variety of purposes. Some of these internal widget applications include:

• Social media tracking
• Executive widget “dashboards”
• Network monitoring and maintenance
• Marketing research and brand monitoring
• Communication and collaboration

The W600 series supports any number of modular tabs that can be “plugged” into the widget framework. We currently have over 100 tabs in the Widgetmatic 600 tab library. These include common tabs such as text, HTML, RSS, images, video, audio, as well as complex tabs that provide support for 3^rd party systems such as Radian6, Salesforce, SAP, Cisco IP Phones and other enterprise and business systems.

Recently we have added a family of web analytics tabs which rely on both public (Alexa.com, Compete.com) and internal web analytics (Google Analytics, Omniture) information that can be incorporated into a Widgetmatic widget.  The newest addition to the family is the Quantcast Analytics Tab.

Like other members of the web analytics tab family, the Quantcast tab providers users will useful traffic, demographic and psychographic information about their (or their competitors) visitors. Will cover how clients our using our Widgetmatic family of widgets to solve internal marketing, technical and productivity problems over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!

Here are two cool widgets we recently deployed for our friends at Warner Records.

The Michelle Branch Playlist (live at http://www.michellebranch.com and around the web) is designed to enable users to create custom playlists of their favorite Michelle Branch tracks.

The LIGHTS Keytar Widget (see http://www.iamlights.com/downloads) combines a custom game with our Widgmetmatic 200 Series of tabs. Both widgets use Clearspring for sharing and reporting.

Almost every artist has his or her own website, and they should! Websites, however, are expensive to build and perhaps more expensive (and time consuming) to maintain. So what are the different options and approaches available to music artists and bands when it comes to deploying a website to:

Different Approaches and Options:
Most artists would prefer to focus on their music than moonlight was a webmaster (although that is sometimes required).  Here are some of the approaches music artists are taking to get and maintain a presence online:

• The Music Label’s Multi-site Platform:
  Artists signed up with major music labels such as Warner Music, Sony and Universal can take advantage of their labels’ multi-artist web platforms.  Warner Music’s Artist Service Platform, based on Drupal, powers the websites of My Chemical Romance, Randy Dravis and many of their over 200 artists. Sony BMG Records’ artist web platform is also a Drupal-based multi-site that host such artists as Daughtry, Kelly Clarkson, Paula DeAnda and others. Drupal also powers BMG’s MusicBox. The benefits of this multi site approach are obvious: a shared codebase allows labels to deliver enhanced value-add functionality across the board with minimal incremental cost. Code and content reuse and sharing come into play, mixed in with common community. Obviously multi-sites are expensive to build and maintain, but music labels are ideally suited (the big ones that have a large IT department) to this approach. Over time, their investments are amortized across their portfolio of artist resulting in lower overall cost per artist than perhaps other approaches.
• The Music Label’s Mini-site:
  In the multi-site scenario, every artist gets their own site with their own ARTIST.com domain (Yipee!). The mini-site option is not quite as nice. Artist get relegated to just a sub-domain – ARTIST.LABEL.com (so are you the master of your domain?) or worse – a page. Ultimately it’s the artist’s choice – take the easy route or do it yourself. For example, some artists at Sparrow Records (a Christian music label and a division of EMI) use the mini-site as their official website (Avalon, Britt Nicole), while other don’t (Chris Tomlin: site and sub, Steven Curtis Chapman: site and sub). Many labels (including Sparrow) have robust artists sections complete with blogs, events and news, so living on the “sub” is definitely a option, especially if you are trying to cut cost.
• Blog-Driven Websites:
  Have become extremely popular in recent years. The relative easy of setting up Wordpress and huge SEO benefits associated with blogged have spurred companies like Skorinc and Ideaden to use Wordpress to power the websites and blogs of many Christian music artists like Natalie Grant, Addison Road, Michael W. Smith, MercyMe, and Phil Wicklam. If your label does not provide multi-sites, going BLOG is probably your best option (or at HAVING a blog). Wordpress works fairly well for building websites (after all our Widgetmatic site runs on Wordpress) and with the right set of plugins, themes and customization you can set with easy to maintain solution.
• Traditional and Proprietary Platform Websites:
  Before blogs and social networks and Twitter, there were good ole websites, and yes, these still exist. Some were build by hand (ouch!) and many run on proprietary platforms put together by webshops in the Web 1.0 era. Most of these proprietary (aka legacy) platforms have been updated to add features such as blogging and community, but unfortunately some of these implementations are lacking – blogs without RSS feeds, that sort of thing. No, I will not name any names, nor give any examples of any artist so as not to incriminate the guilty.
• MySpace is My Website:
  Once a popular and acceptable option (during MySpace’s peak), this option is becoming less and less attractive (as focus is shifting to sites like Facebook), but still some artists use and consider their MySpace page as their primary websites. Yes, its free (but MySpace gets to put their ads all over your page) and all you need is a custom template but unfortunately (other than traffic) MySpace doesn’t afford you too many features. Their blog is sub par, their music player is okay, and you have decent control of the pages. MySpace should be part of your online presence but it should be the ONLY part.
• The One Page Un-Website: Some artists have gone totally minimalistic, using social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube to “house” their content and community and providing a single page with link and widgets that serves as a “jumping point” for visitors. Artists like Marvin Winans Jr (M2 Entertainment) have used this approach, focusing their efforts on using social networks and communities. I expect these to become more and more popular with new artists given the shifting focus from websites to Facebook, Twitter, Widgets, i.e. especially give the growing cost (and time) associated with building large websites.
• Hanging Off a Community
  This is not as bad as it seems, ask Britney Spears, who’s “primary” site is powered by Buzznet. Buzznet is a social media/community site that hosts a number of celebrity blogs and sites.  Free for the artist, a traffic draw for the site, and they promise traffic and community in return – you decide. Artist that use Ning (another popular option) for their sites/communities, take a similar approach. The biggest problem I have with this approach is “ownership of fans” – who “owns” your fans and can you take them with you when you leave (and exactly how)…or are you locked in? The value to companies like Buzznet and Ning is obvious, artist bring users with them. Fans can be monetized through ads. The value to artist is….for the time being you don’t have pay rent (but one day it may come due).
• Pick One, Pick Two, Pick Three
  Everyone knows that one of these approaches are exclusive. You can have a multi-site, sub-site, spicy blog, obviously a large MySpace, with a little Twitter on the side, all to go (oh, and don’t forget the Facebook)! After all, the more content you have on the web, the better, so this is the best approach! Obviously cost and time are key consideration.

Recommendations:
Obviously we recommend most of the above, by that I mean (as I mentioned in the last approach) generally speaking more is better. So here are a couple of suggestions:

• Start Here: If your music label has a multi-site, you may want to take advantage of it.
• Get a Website! If you need to, pick one of the other approaches above – but get an online presence preferably with your own domain! Websites are not yet dead, so you probably still need one.
• Get a blog! It’s the best way of getting content out to fans (and they love it). Whether your blog is also your website is up to you (there are pros and cons that I won’t get into) but regardless, you NEED a blog.
• Get on Twitter! Twitter is not a substitute for blogging (think writing 140 character posts vs 3000 character posts) but its the FUTURE! Thanks to Time, CNN and Fox everyone is now on Twitter! Be sure to integrate your website (RSS feeds, Twitter widget, i.e.), your blog (Twitter widget, tweet your posts, i.e.) and Twitter!
• Get a Widget! A widget is “a website in a box”! Users can take it with them, and they can virally spread your widget in the process. The Widgetmatic platform, for example, allows an artist or band to quickly aggregate their news, blog posts, Twitter, photo  gallery, videos, music and any sort of content into ONE single widget (see examples).
• Get on Facebook! Get a fan page, get a custom URL, add Facebook page appliation from folks like iLike or Metablocks. Consider having your label build a custom Facebook appliation as well. While most of the music apps on Facebook are for fans, more and more artist are using Facebook as a release and promotional tool (same idea behind our SuperFan application).
• Get on MySpace! That a given, the again you are probably there already!
• Get Mobile! Most of your fans have a cell phone, so do you! Look at Mozes and other solutions out there.
• Get Working! So you have a website and a blog and Twitter and Facebook and everything else, no you only need content, some good music, and some great ideas on how to monetize the whole thing.

Checkout today’s post on Music Artists and Widgets on the Metablocks Sound and Pictures Blog that examines how artists can use widgets for: Fan Acquisition, Information Distribution, Fan Retention and Digital Music Sales.