Ticketfly Adds Union Transfer (Philly), The Foundry (Phoenix)
— Ticketmaster may be resigning its top ticketing clients, but other ticketing companies are actively picking up smaller venues and promoters. San Francisco-based Ticketfly has recently added Union Transfer in Philadelphia and The Foundry Phoenix. Both clients are using Ticketfly’s suite of tools that includes email, social marketing, website and ticketing.
The 1,000-capacity Union Transfer is a collaboration of New York City-based Bowery Presents, Sean Agnew of R5 Presents and Avram Hornik of 4Corners Management. It is set to open Sept. 21 with a performance by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The Foundry is a new music venue that launched July 9. Located in a historic warehouse in downtown Phoenix, the venue can hold up to 1,500 people and is being booked by Danny Zelisko Presents.
In the last month or so, Ticketfly has announced the addition of a handful of other clients as well: the Congress Theater (Chicago); the Cotillion Ballroom (Wichita, Kan.); The Baltimore Soundstage, a collaboration between New York City’s Highline Ballroom and Bourbon Street Management; San Francisco’s Sunset Promotions, the organizer of North Beach Jazz Fest and other events; and the Hotel Utah (San Francisco).
(Fly Blog)
Klout Adds Five Social Networks
— Klout, the site designed to measure social media users’ influence, has added five new social networks. Bringing its grand total of networks measured up to 10, the site has added Last.fm, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr and Blogger.
Klout began measuring online influence through only Facebook and Twitter but gradually expanded to include LinkedIn, YouTube and, most recently, Four Square. There is no word on how Klout will quantify influence on the newly added networks but medium-specific networks like Instagram, Flickr and Last.fm should provide an interesting dimension to users’ Klout scores. Social network No. 11 should also soon be on the horizon for Klout as CEO Joe Fernandez has previously expressed his desire to integrate Google+ into Klout scores.
The company has a strong team. In January Klout announced an $8.5 million funding from the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer sFund with participation from Greycroft Partners. It had raised $1.5 million in 2010 from a handful of investors including Mayfield Fund, Lucid Ventures and Zelkova Ventures. (TechCrunch)
Music Services React To New Apple Rules
— How are music services responding to Apple’s new rules for in-app purchases from its iOS apps? The Music Machinery blog runs through services’ updates to their iPhone apps to show they have removed buy links and links to outside web pages where consumers can purchase content or subscribe to a service. While services can charge a different amount for in-app purchases as out-of-app purchases, Apple will take 30% of any in-app purchase.
What Music Machinery has found is a long list of services not intent to give Apple a cut of their revenue. iOS apps from Spotify, Pandora, Sirius XM, MOG, Playme and Rhapsody do not allow any in-app subscriptions or purchases. Rdio allows the user to register for a seven-day free trial. Napster used to allow for a seven-day trial but recently removed the link to the outside Napster web page. Last.fm allows the creation of free accounts. Amazon removed the “Kindle Store” button from its Kindle app, so a user cannot either purchase a book from within the app or be sent directly to an outside web page to purchase a book.
Consumers could very well have in-app purchasing capabilities in the future. Rdio is testing an iPad app that allows users to subscribe to the service within the app. But Rdio is charging $14.99 per month for in-app subscriptions. After Apple’s 30% cut, Rdio keeps $9.99 — the price of the service when purchased at Rdio.com.
(Music Machinery)
Barsuk Taking Wait-And-See Approach to Spotify
— For some labels, the honeymoon with Spotify is over. As Billboard has reported, a few U.S. indie labels — Century Media and Mode Records — have criticized Spotify in the United States because of low payouts for streams of songs in their catalogs. Century Media may post label samplers to use Spotify in a purely promotional way.
But Barsuk Records co-owner Josh Rosenfeld has told the Seattle Weekly the label is taking a wait-and-see approach to Spotify. “The jury’s out from my perspective on whether those [services] should be a part of what we do or not. We are collecting data. We will examine those data and make a decision about whether to keep our catalog available in those places.”
(Seattle Weekly)