Na zijn doortocht in Oslo, werd Me & My Guitar al meer dan 2 miljoen keren op YouTube bekeken (via verschillende versies). In verschillende Europese landen kent ‘Me and My Guitar’ een groot succes op iTunes met chartnoteringen in verschillende landen tot gevolg.

In Duitsland staat de single al een week op 5 in de iTunes chart. Voor Duitsland, Oostenrijk en Zwitserland zal SonicAngel samenwerken met b1recordings (een subdivisie van Universal Duitsland) voor de lancering van de single en zijn album. b1recordings, dat ook Eurovisie 2010 winnares Lena begeleidt, lanceerde eerder de Belgische toppers Milow en Stromae (‘Alors on danse’) in Duitsland, maar ook Werchter headliner Rammstein en Tokio Hotel.
Tom zal de tweede helft van juli gedurende 2 weken een promotour doen in Duitsland.

Ook goed nieuws uit Nederland. SonicAngel zal daar samenwerken met CNR en NL Management. Op 23 juni wordt Tom Dice zijn album voorgesteld tijdens een optreden in de legendarische rocktempel Paradiso in Amsterdam, en in September 2010 volgt een 12 daagse clubtour doorheen Nederland.

Voor Tom Dice en SonicAngel betekenen de sterke resultaten op Eurovisie een versnelde uitrol in Nederland, Duitsland, Oostenrijk en Zwitserland. Maar er is ook interesse uit Scandinavië, Ierland en Engeland, Frankrijk en Griekenland

Ook goed nieuws uit België, waar de single opnieuw op 1 noteert in de Ultratop en het album binnenstormt op de zesde plaats!

www.tomdice.be * www.sonicangel.com

_

See us (the VRT and SonicAngel delegation) celebrating starting 1min40…

Quite some unforgettable moments.

Also, we’re looking to hire some people at SonicAngel. This week we start interviews for:
– a label manager with a focus on discovering, developing and releasing talent
- a senior PHP developer to further develop our platforms (we’re fully LAMP and cloud oriented)
- a product engineer to imagine platform design, artist concepts and partner relations (such as topspin, soundcloud, mxp4)
- a designer and producer for audio/video and social media

If you’re a techie who loves music, or a music passionata fascinated by tech – that’s already step 1. Because we want to combine the best in music and the most efficient in tech to empower talent, you need both. The team is now mainly in Herselt and Los Angeles, but the Belgian part might move to Limburg (or Leuven) at some time. You’d be in for an amazing ride.

Shoot me a message if you’re interested (bart at sonicangel dot com).

And enjoy the concert below (Radiohead and Thom Yorke are kindof favourites of the entire team – just so you know)

bart

I’ll try to control my enthusiasm, but I must say that the trip is just amazing. Since the landing in SFO, a packed 2 days in San Francisco and the landing yesterday in Los Angeles it has been one gathering, meeting, negotiation or discussion after the other. I did most of the official trip, but took a side-track visiting Cisco, eBay, Apple and a twitter based startup. After the first 2 days, I already made a huge contact for SonicAngel in San Francisco, found an agreement with a marketing partner, had help from a fellow entrepreneur in the financing of our venture, and some other great connections.

The trip is also an eye-opener on the functioning, approachability and committing of the other people on this rather small mission. There are about 30 people on the mission, of which the Prime Minister and the Minister of Innovation and Media, their chief of staffs and some members, the heads of all the major research institutes, entrepreneurs and managers and about 10 members of the press.

This kind of visit also creates a great helicopter view, even if it may be in areas that are not even directly related to our company, such as renewable energy or other grids. For example, I found an interesting parallel between a Belgian company that is achieving steep growth globally named Enfinity, and their approach to financing projects. Their CEO Hans De Backer gave me an insight in one of the issues we were facing (thx a lot Hans!).

I’ll share some learnings and insight in the companies and organisations we have visited at a later moment.

Now I’m off to an entrepreneurs gathering at the Consul’s hous, 1 late evening meetup, a briefing and discussion with the developers in Belgium (who should be up by then) and hopefully for the first time in 4 days more than couple hours of sleep.

bart

Expected release in April 2010.

More iPad

1. Shitty Name

There’s a linguist somewhere who can explain why the hard “a” sound in “Pad” is unappealing. “iSlate” was better. So many of the Web prognostications were better. And if the original hard drive iPod can be renamed the “Classic”, maybe the iPod Touch can be renamed the “iPhone For Verizon Subscribers” and the iPad can gain its rightful title, “iTouch”.

2. Narrative

Steve Jobs understands it’s about story. Whenever you try to sell something, facts and emotions need to be woven into a fable, starting here and ending up there. Presentation is key.

And speaking of presentation, the Keynote effect of dust being blown up whenever a price descended was genius. Kind of like when lasers were first introduced in rock shows.

3. No Fakery

Jobs was actually using the iPad, you could see what he was doing on it transferred to the big screen, it lent credence to the product, to the whole proceeding. When you drape your music in effects, it actually undercuts the music itself. Then again, if the music can’t stand on its own…

4. A&R

The presentation needed to be shorter and needed a hit single.

Got to give Jobs credit, when no one was clapping, he didn’t lose his cool, he didn’t speed up, he stayed to the script. If you do live presentations, you know this is almost impossible to achieve. Which is why bands will tell you one show is better than the next, they can feel the energy of the audience, the audience was with them. Steve started out with the audience in his hand, then he lost them, minute by minute.

5. Hit Single

Jobs needed the one killer app that would make us rush out and buy an iPad. He was so busy focusing on album tracks, he forgot the home run. Sure, the iPad can surf, display pictures, create presentations, but what can it do that wows us? The iPad is like a blank CD. The technology is marvelous. But you get over that. Because the music is what you’re truly interested in, even if the sound ain’t that great, you get the magic of “Satisfaction”.

One can argue that iBooks is the killer app. If so, Jobs should have focused on that, convinced people why they needed the iPad for books. Talked about inventory, prices, readability. But he did none of this. So busy trumpeting elements we didn’t care about, he buried his message.

6. Saving The Media Business

I think Jobs tried. But he shouldn’t have introduced the product until he had partners. Hell, he’s not shipping for 60 days anyway. It would have looked better if there were more desirable ways to consume films and tv shows and magazines, all the elements the media speculated about. But these were completely absent. It was like launching a new record company without product. Sure, you might have some legendary executives, you’re getting me to pay attention, but now what?

7. Buzz

Now this is the modern music business. Where the anticipation is at a fever pitch, and the product is wanting. And by telling us how great the iPad was, Jobs just made us uncomfortable. He would have been better off underselling it. Talking about hopes and dreams.

Again and again, Jobs has delivered. Met our expectations, even exceeded them. This time, he did not. Proving that everybody can fuck up.

But if you know your rock history, Bob Dylan finally released a clunker known as “Self Portrait”. Reviews were scathing. What did Dylan do? He immediately went back into the studio and recorded “New Morning”. Because when you’re pissed and you’ve got something to prove, you refocus, you can do great work almost instantly.

Steve… How about another presentation the day this product actually ships?

And how about a Verizon iPhone? Yeah, I know it’s incompatible technology, that only a few countries use CDMA, but trumpeting AT&T is like the music industry trumpeting slotMusic and the Digital Compact Cassette, lame formats that work for the businesses purveying them, but are considered a joke by the public.

2010/01/28 | Apple | Trackback |

Like always, some good and true arguments, probably somewhat overshooting.

May be a gamechanger for publishing; TC covering this more in detail
Not everyone convinced: bob is giving some criticisms, some of them here

Also – the audience at the presentation wasn’t overly enthousiastic, steve didn’t loose his cool (though I did find this presentation wasn’t his best) – so I expect another presentation in 2 months when delivery starts with apps and media that will blow us away. For me: I’m buying

A cool live demo