We Made a Movie

You've got to check out Adva Mobile Man and how he explains why bands and recording artists need a mobile web site, and mobile App, and mobile strategy to connect with fans. It's cool, fun, only about 3 minutes long.

Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/advamobile

What's Going On?

We've been really pleased lately to see an escalated pace of Artist sign ups to our mobile marketing service. We're on the verge of a major milestone (hint: 1K bands) and we're also preparing to launch a new feature set with exciting new capabilities. Our Facebook page also has many new "likes", so you're finding us there also.

For new Artists, you might be wondering "What's Going On". Mobile is new, mobile is early (congratulations on being in front!), why am I doing this?

When we started Adva Mobile, we were thinking that Artists had a way of reaching fans on the web - for most, it was MySpace - but nothing was available to help you reach your fans on mobile phones. So our platform lets you reach fans and create closer relations with fans on their mobile phones. Fans that have a good relationship with you will support you - send you money. There's a three step process to this:

• Acquire Fans


• Engage Fans


• Monetize Fans

That's "What's Going On". For all you new Artists, you should spend time gathering your fans and having them join your mobile club. When you have a group and something to say to them, engage them. In a year (or less) when you have hundreds or thousands of fans, you can engage them - in commerce.

First though, you need to get them to become mobile fans.

New Apple Ping User Manual

Apple Publishes a Band’s Guide to Ping

You're inundated with Artist tools to reach your fans, including mobile tools from Adva Mobile, so another web service to update is the last thing you need. But it will be hard to ignore Ping, Apple's iTunes-linked, music-based social network.

Ping has been something of a challenge for independent bands since the service launched along with iTunes weeks ago, when only a handful of internationally renowned artists were on the network — people like Lady Gaga and bands like U2.

As it became apparent that Ping lacked a deep and wide network of artists, we found out that many artists were struggling to figure out how to create Ping profiles. Distribution services such as TuneCore and CDBaby have stepped in as third parties in this process, communicating with Apple and helping bands set up artist pages.

Still, there were tons of unanswered questions regarding the types of content and terms of service that would be allowed on Ping, and most bands working through distribution services will still have to wait a while before their Ping pages go live because of Apple’s meticulous quality control processes.

In the meantime though, Apple has published suggestions on how bands and other artists can use Ping. They include tips on uploading videos and images and lay out some key content policies, as well. We fould a copy of it on scribd, you can view it here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/39207378/Artist-Best-Practices-1-0

MP3 or M4A (AAC) - Now Your Choice

We've made an important change to your Adva Mobile service. Now, you can upload MP3 files to your mobile web pages.

Since we started, we've always required uploaded music to be in .m4a format (also acalled AAC) - the format used by Apple and iTunes. Most phones played .m4a, and it was easy to convert most other formats, including MP3, into .m4A using iTunes on your computer. Not all phones played MP3.

Some new phones now accept MP3 and also allow you to save the music as a song or a ringtone. This is a great way for you to offer ringtones to your fans by uploading MP3 files of short duration - 30 seconds - and have fans save the file as a ringtone. Phones that allow this automatically save the file in the right ringtome format and in the correct folder.

One issue is iPhones. The iPhone only plays m4a. Most of your iPhone users know that you can't save a song you uploaded to your mobile site - you can stream it, but can't save it. So one drawback to this new MP3 format choice is that many phones now have flexibility with how you save music, but it doesn't work on iPhones.

Over time, all these incompatibilities will dissolve. Remember early PC days, when you had Windows Media, Quicktime, Real Player, etc. You needed the player for each file type. Right now, phones play only specific file types, but this will standardize.

Mobile Merch Sales - Get on the Train

“In the last twelve months, customers around the world have ordered more than $1 billion of products from Amazon using a mobile device,” he said.

“The leading mobile commerce device today is the smartphone..."

I was amazed to read this statement from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos last month. And, what's more amazing is that Amazon mobile sales are not even in the lead! EBay is already on record projecting between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in sales closing on mobile devices. Last year, the auction platform posted some $600 million in mobile commerce, 75 percent of that from iPhone and the rest through other mobile devices.

This is an important benchmark for Adva Mobile music artists, since our services gives you the capabilities to sell your music and merchandise on your phone. Whether you link to your iTunes or Amazon pages or sell directly using our PayPal supported system, don't let the opportunity to make money from mobile pass you by.

Adva Mobile's Blog: Making Video Work on Mobile

Adva Mobile's Blog: Making Video Work on Mobile

Making Video Work on Mobile

Most musicians are correctly focused on making their music and thinking about the many possibilities to share that music to fans. Music videos are becoming increasingly important as a way to get fans excited about your music, and YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the web because of that. In the mobile space, according to a recent survey, nearly a quarter of smartphone users watch video on their phone at least once per day. Here at Adva Mobile we know that presenting videos on your mobile websites is a very popular activity and we know that fans really use this feature and watch your videos. Unfortunately, not all phones are alike, and many do not support certain video formats or player types. Adva Mobile is working to solve that, so every member of your mobile fan base has the ability to experience your awesome videos right on their phone.

Delivering video to mobile phones is complex, and until now we have been limited to linking to YouTube videos. Many of you are creating higher-quality, professional grade videos than what's typical on YouTube, and new web services like VEVO, Vimeo, Metacafe and Brightcove offer professionally created video on your PC. You are probably aware that Adva Mobile renders your mobile website correctly for most of the world's 5,000 phone types, but this also needs to be done correctly for your video. Each model of phone has its own requirements for web site display and each has unique requirements for showing video, since not all phones use the same video player. Video needs to be sent correctly for each type of phone, otherwise they miss out on seeing it.

We recently solved this problem through a test with Nellymoser. Many of you know that, for audio, we require you to upload audio in m4a (iTunes) format, because we know it is the most widely-accepted format for phones. But the video world is different. Each phone has its own player, which means you have to send the video to each phone type in its particular format in order for it to play on that particular phone. Nellymoser does this. Nellymoser provides a single point of entry to easily reach the mobile marketplace across the multitude of mobile networks, devices and content formats. Especially interesting to Adva Mobile is their ability to provide video content, in whatever format it is provided to them, rendered correctly for whatever phone type that receives the content.

For established bands, this is important because you now know that your high-quality video can be displayed to your fans on their mobile phones in the high-quality you expect. For emerging bands, it's important that you know that, as you migrate from user generated content typical of YouTube to more professional quality video, your mobile website is competent to serve up video to your expectations.

If any of you have this need today, please contact us and we will facilitate getting your video onto the Nellymoser platform and creating links to it on your mobile web site.