Cool Websites or The Evil Witch of the Right

I've discovered several new websites which could serve as major tools or resources for music marketing. And by discovered, I mean I just found out about some cool websites, only after a couple million people before me. I'll list these sites below, along with some helpful examples of how they might be employed.

www.stumbleaudio.com
This site is an even more eccentric version of Pandora Radio, which has already introduced me to dozens of artists I've never heard of.

www.twitter.com
Twitter operates on the same concept as a blog, although posts are limited to 140 characters and designed for mobile consumption. For example, if I text "Show tonight @ The Go-Go bar... a benefit concert for the Sarah Palin Is The Craziest Gun-Wielding Wench in Politics Foundation" to my Twitter account, then everyone who has set their account to follow mine will receive the update. They can all come to the show, see my band, and support the above cause!

www.mashable.com
Mashable is not a social networking site like Myspace or Facebook, but a news service that is dedicated to coverage of sites like these. I understand how geeked-out this sounds at the outset, but part of music marketing, or any marketing for that matter, is staying on top of the breadth of options to promote your product.

www.playinghere.com
One thing that impresses me about Playing Here, versus other online concert listings, is that Frogs Gone Fishin' shows up at every major venue we are playing at, without anyone in FGF updating or submitting anything. I especially like the tour map that pops up, so even I can know where we are going to be in 3 weeks... Props to the people at Playing Here for making musician's and fan's lives easier!

ping.fm
This is a site that I don't even understand how to use yet, but it looks to be the cat's pajamas of social networking. Apparently, ping.fm lets you update all of the sites you have an account with, without visiting each site individually. So if I post, "It is appalling that the GOP would choose a candidate who is completely unqualified to be the VP, yet perfectly suited to capture the vote of the religious right..", then the comment will appear on my Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Blogger pages. If anyone out there has some instructions as to what to do with the beta code ping.fm gave me... please help!

You can see that I am by no means competent with (most) online sources. I do know that overlooking these newer sites or old staples like Facebook/Myspace, would be musical marketing suicide. Internet usage will only be going skyward in coming decades, so those of us entrenched in the archaic poster/handbill/word-of-mouth way of doing things might as well embrace what's coming. Then again, nothing will ever replace the impact that word-of-mouth has. Like when words come out of Sarah Palin's mouth, the impact is truly nauseating.

I'm excited to play music at Wash Park Grill in Denver tonight. The gig will keep me away from one more minute of vomitous politics and keep me around what matters: funky music and funky people.