Iggy quits. Except she doesn't.

Oh, say it ain't so, Inquisitr:

Iggy Azalea Leaves Social Media: Pop Star Deletes Her Instagram Account

Really? Her Instagram account deleted? Really?

Erm, not really. She's just handed the keys to her management. For a "break".

You'd think that 'artist whose image is built around being outspoken no longer controlling her own Instagram account so that her management can control what messages are put out under her name' is actually a far more compelling story than 'artist deletes account', wouldn't you?

One Direction want you to put Twitter down

Liam Payne is fretting about connected kids:

The 'Story of My Life' hitmakers are all avid users of social networking sites such as Twitter and Instagram but Liam Payne thinks their younger fans shouldn't be using them and that they should be focusing on having fun instead.

He said: ''When I think about it, I do start to worry about this whole social media thing. It does make me uncomfortable; kids should be out, living their lives, getting out and enjoying themselves.''

I imagine if I got 37,000 tweets every ten seconds saying "LIAM OMIGOD FOLLOW ME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE", I'd probably want Twitter to be banned for anyone yet to reach puberty, too.

Eminem doesn't do social media

You won't find Eminem on the social networks, you know:

Asked if he is on social media platforms, Eminem jokes: "I am on social media all day. In front of a computer, blogging constantly. Yo, does someone got my laptop?"

He then explains that he tries to avoid social media in order to avoid confrontations. "I really try not to pay attention," he says. "Put it this way, I want to keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on, so I don't want to be ignorant in that sense. But at the same time, I can't pay attention to what everyone is saying. I would never be able to make music, I don't think, if I got caught up in that. Because I would probably get caught up in some ugly arguments with people. 'Yo, drive to my house now.' It would consume a lot of my time and it would be very counter-productive for me to do that. But I still do, and that's what's fucked up."

Yes, if there's one thing we know about Eminem it's that he hates having his arguments in public.

Here's a philosophical question, though: There's an Eminem verified Twitter account which is quite busy. But if Eminem happily admits that he doesn't get involved in social media, in what sense is the identity of the Eminem account "verified"? If someone takes that blue tick as a sign that it's really Eminem, are they being misled? Ought there to be a different symbol to show it's really the brand, not the man?

AkOnLine

Remember the heady days in the past when we could barely get through a week without Akon dry-humping children on stage, or throwing children off stage, or upsetting Sri Lanka.

He's been quiet for a while, though.

Okay, we've been ignoring him for a while.

In fact - along with most of the world - we'd missed him attempting to launch a social networking site. It was going to be called Fantrace, and it was going to allow "fans" to interact with "celebrities".

Oddly, perhaps because that's what all social networks (apart from BliberdergFacebook) already do, it never took off.

He is still getting messages from the service, though - mainly angry demands for thousands of pounds from the people who built the site.

Oh, Akon. We've missed you.

The Ping is dead! Long live the Ping!

Over at Cult Of Mac, speculation that Apple is going to try a social-network-music thing again.

Oh, sure, they got burned by Ping, but this time it'll be different:

Apple’s social service would no doubt give people the opportunity to establishing lasting connections, but the default will likely be to erase connections and dissolve the networks when everyone leaves.

More importantly, Apple could achieve what Ping never could, which is to give people the means to share and socially discover music and other content, always with the added benefit of offering a path to purchase for that content.

The USP seems to be that Apple won't store your data forever - Cult Of Mac describe this as "consequence free sharing", which would probably be useful if you find your curiosity driving you to listen to the Barron Knights one more time.

The Ping is dead

Apple is planning on putting Ping out of its all-to-apparent misery, according to All Things D.

Since its launch in 2010, nearly everyone who uses iTunes has celebrated Ping as the most "woah, let's switch that shit right off"-y off all the social networks. It took the idea of Last.FM, and made it as horrible and avoidable as LinkedIn.

From the next major version of iTunes, you'll no longer have to pretend that Ping isn't there, begging you to activate it; Apple will be joining you in wishing they'd never gotten drunk and invented the bloody thing.

Still, at least there won't be any problems about how to shift user's data over to them when the service closes; I believe the entire Ping database consists of the words "Tim Cook is listening to the audiobook of Steve Jobs' biography" over and over again.

Zune uses Winehouse death as a marketing opportunity

Presumbly, now there's a post mortem scheduled, Microsoft thought the official mourning period was over and it was okay to try and sell few downloads off the corpse. The Wall reports:

The @tweetbox360 Twitter account, which is run by the Microsoft UK PR team, tweeted this morning: “Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking ‘Back to Black’ over at Zune”.

The account has since been inundated with complaints accusing it of being opportunistic, of feeding on Amy Winehouse’s corpse, of appalling taste, being a “scumbag” and of shocking marketing.

It should be pointed out that iTunes also pulled a similar stunt, and much more quickly, when it splashed Winehouse all over the store front on Saturday night. Arguably, acknowledging people would have been searching the store for her music anyway and making it easier to find is slightly less ghoulish than using her death to try and market your entire store as a way of "memorialising" Winehouse, but it's a slim distinction and neither Microsoft or Apple have come out of this with their dignity intact.

Your Face in MySpace?

After MySpace declared it was no longer fighting Facebook for the social networking crown last week, we're starting to see the first fruits of peace. MySpace and Facebook are in talks which could allow content hosted on one site to be shared across the other.

Good news for bands and labels who currently home on MySpace and have to create separate profiles to attract Facebookers. Less good news for Bebo.

The ghost of a Tweet

There is, of course, a distinction between having Twitter ghostwriters and paying someone to update your social networking profiles. The former is what 50 Cent does, the latter is Britney Spears' approach.

It's one thing to openly make it clear that it's someone from your team who is sticking up the messages: when you read "Britney is doing something really cool", you're going to know that it's a minion doing the typing.

But what about when the Tweets are constructed to make it seem like they're coming from the person in whose name the account has been established?

For instance, say you're one of the 200,000 people signed up for 50 Cent's feed, and you saw his eloquent March 1 post in which he opined, "My ambition leads me through a tunnel that never ends." Deep, right? But prompted the savvy businessman and beef-addicted rapper to write such a line? Apparently you'd have to ask "Broadway" (a.k.a. Chris Romero), the director of 50's Web empire, who tweeted the thoughtful comment after reading it in an interview.

"He doesn't actually use Twitter," Romero told the paper about his boss. "But the energy of it is all him." The energy, huh?

If you can't manage to come up with 140 characters worth of something to say, you might wonder if you should be doing the job, surely?

After all, what possible argument could there be against a musician actually writing, for themselves, the material through which they connect with their audience?

Oh... hang about, I'm just getting a text... let me just read this... hmmm... let me just try that final paragraph again then:

After all, what possible argument* could there be against a musician actually writing, for themselves, the material through which they connect with their audience?

*Except for Courtney Love on MySpace.

Do you like iLike? Like to buy i?

iLike, one of the smaller music-centric social networking which relies mainly on its Facebook presence to keep going, is seeking a buyer. It's hoping that Ticketmaster or Real might be interested, although Facebook could take the service in-house to better compete with MySpace music. Although given that Facebook tried to buy Twitter with nothing but ridiculously overvalued stock, the iLike team might be hoping they find someone with some actual money.

Now make your phoney one-on-one connection with your fans even phonier

Thanks to Hypebot for bringing ArtistData to our attention. This is a service which allows bands - by which, of course, we mean whatever intern the label has charged with going online pretending to be the band - to automate their social networking posts.

Yes, yes, I can see the appeal - why go and change tour dates in ten different places when you can get a machine to do it for you? - but the side-effect is to remove the 'social' from the 'networking'. Surely what made MySpace a big attraction for music fans in the first place was the chance that you could go on line and write 'OMG I LURRRVE YOU LIL KELLY!!!1!!!!' and know there was a chance that Lil'Kelly (or at least one of his proxies) might see the post.

It's slightly less thrilling when you know that the closest anyone associated with artist ever gets to their MySpace is giving its password to a robot, isn't it?

So, then, the internet has come along and, for the first time since recorded music started, it's possible for the artist and audience to be intimate, regular contact, and ArtistData have come along to try and save the artist from this nasty threat.

And is the outsourcing of contact such a sweet deal for the artist anyway? The company promises 'Post once, publish everywhere' but offers neither Bebo nor Facebook as part of the 2.0 realm in which it operates. So you'll still need your interns, cutting and pasting, cutting and pasting.

What's most fascinating is the last line of ArtistData's pitch:

With all the time you saved go do something more useful and move your career forward.

Because, of course, there's no way interacting with the people who buy your records and come to your gigs could possibly be considered career development, could it?

Radioheadfacebook

With a shake of a designer's wand and a spot of coding in the background, Radiohead's website sprouts a social networking add on.

Just like Fifty Cent has.

We're still puzzled as to the marketing value of this, though: don't you want your uber-fans elsewhere spreading the word? Evangelising on Facebook rather than locked in to your cathedral.

Houseparty mum no longer blames Tong, Mail grudgingly admits

Considering all the trumpeting the press made when Pete Tong was being blamed for the Bovey Tracey gatecrashed party, it's surprising how little attention has been given to Rebecca Brooks realisation that the problem lay elsewhere. You have to scroll quite a way down the the Daily Mail's latest story to discover this:

Rebecca says: "I did blame Pete Tong at first, though now I realise that it was internet social networking that is the real culprit. It's incredible. I am struggling to comprehend the power of it."

Of course, there's a suspicion that the Mail is running the story again for one reason, and one reason only. Can you spot what it is?

Her mansion was trashed and her daughter paraded as a dominatrix
[...]
Standing there in her PVC dominatrix dress, thigh-length boots and whip, Sarah was completely helpless.
[...]
Rebecca dismisses criticism of Sarah dressed as a dominatrix, saying it was only a 'costume'
[...]
Sarah has been stung by comments that she is attention-seeking (that dominatrix outfit)
[...]
"I wore a nun's habit at my 16th party, so it seemed a nice contrast to dress up like a dominatrix," she explains.
[...]
"As for dressing like a dominatrix, it was a costume for goodness sake. I thought she looked great."
[...]
It was all too much for Sarah, who was feeling the full weight of responsibility on her scantily-clad shoulders.

Not, of course, that the Mail is obsessed with an 18 year-old girl dressed up as a dominatrix or anything. It runs a picture of her in the outfit, too, just so that readers who might have missed the mention that she was wearing a PVC outfit in the article itself.

EMI shows off its digital plan. Oh, dear.

Hopes that Terra Firma were at least grasping the future for music companies is providing content under licence, embracing the idea of an arms-length world where it doesn't need to be the distributor any more have just died. Not simply died, but died in a horrible way. With a nasty noise.

EMI has decided that it actually wants to be a webpublisher instead of a music company.

No, really. It thinks that's a good idea.

'EMI has long been a pioneer in the digital space,' said a company spokeswoman. 'We will unveil more of our digital strategy as it develops.'

The thing is, they probably believe this, although if you asked EMI to name any evidence of this pioneerng spirit, they'd have to spend a bloody long time before they could come up with something. "One of the first companies to sue Napster", perhaps?

Plans are at an early stage, but EMI is believed to be developing a series of branded social networking sites to provide consumers with fresh platforms for interacting with artists across its labels, which include Angel, Addictive, Parlophone and Relentless.
[...]
The decision is intended to allow EMI to replicate the success enjoyed by stars such as Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen on MySpace and Bebo.

Now - leaving aside the question of how far the Monkeys and Allen were dependent on the existing social networking sites - what sort of logic is it that looks at the propostion 'The kids hear about new music on MySpace and Bebo' and concludes the best idea is not looking to get your artists onto MySpace and Bebo, but instead to try and build an inhouse version of MySpace.

We could just about see it almost working, if there was something unique about the access this EMMySpace could offer to, say, Kylie. But if all we're talking about is a couple of ghostwritten blog entries and the odd remix download, it's impossible to see why the company is wasting its money when, for about one sixth of the price, they could put the same content in front of a much bigger audience by using the existing networks.

The overriding logic of the music industry: never take a scheduled flight if you can get to the same place, at the same time, by chartering your own jet for ten times the cost.

HMV embark on expensive, futile wheel-redesign

HMV is bravely pushing on with its attempt to revive its brand by building its own social-networking site, that will allow people to "connect with like-minded fans", reports PaidContentUK. This almost willful decision to ignore the existing social networks and hope that, instead, people will create new accounts on an HMV sponsored, locked-down site, would be quite touching if they weren't a public company in whose stock pension funds and insurance companies have vested your futures.

No, they really do think that despite Bebo, MySpace and Facebook all having acres and acres of chatrooms, groups, lists and widgets for people to explore all facets of their cultural life, that there's a gap in the market for an only HMV, highstreet-retailed music-DVD-games network. Heartbreaking.

Presumably Peaches Geldof was busy?

Times are tough at the BBC, but not - apparently - so tough there's not money for Lily Allen to make a programme about social networking:

The audience will be made up entirely of Allen's online friends, while viewers will present parts of the show and put questions to celebrity guests.

Guests will include chart-topping bands and unsigned acts.

An entire audience of people who are Lily Allens "friends", eh?

I suppose the desperate bid to turn a TV programme out of new technology makes this the 21st Century's Buzzfax, although that Teletext-based entertprise had a slightly more charismatic presenter.

BBC Three controller Danny Cohen said: "I'm delighted... she's one of the hottest acts around and an important voice of her generation."

An 'important voice of her generation'? Really, Danny? Obviously, everyone is valuable in their own way, and everyone's voice is important, but is Cohen really suggesting that Allen is, in some way, a Che Guevara for the Heat Kid Generation they might want to ask the Secret Diary Controller to come back and suggest to Danny that it's time to step down.

KySpace

They're describing it as a "social networking site", although really KylieKonnect is more of an old-style message board trussed up as Web 2.0 experience. It also looks horrible - like, truly, truly, horrible, considering how well-designed Kylie-related stuff usually is.

It's been launched alongside a denial of claims that she's pulled her 2008 tour. Parlophone deny there's been an axed tour, sniffing that there was never a tour in the first place.

EMI wants you to do their A&R for them

In a move not-entirely-unlike Sony's Vox initiative from six months ago, EMI are inviting bands to use a service which will sort-of-somehow-function as an A&R operation:

The Scoutr feature offers a service for musicians to create profiles, upload their new tracks and have them rated by other users using a similar system to as music recommendation site Last.fm.

This is either BTgetoutthere all over again, a brave attempt to democratise decision making, a weak company that's lost faith in its own abilities to predict what people will like, or all of the above.

The twin weaknesses here are that there's little demand for yet another unsigned artist site, where - by the very nature of bands - most music will be made by acts who don't have a record contract for a very good reason; and, more dispiritingly, if you leave decisions about where to put your budget to a popular vote, you end up with a world of Will Youngs and Girls Alouds, rather than more specialist tastes that could serve a smaller audience, but over a longer period. Would, say, The Cure, or even U2, have got a deal if they were required to please a mass, undistinguished audience?

Sure, Scoutr could have be a useful tool, but it's not clear what it can discover that getting an A&R guy to spend some time surfing MySpace or Bebo couldn't work out.

Still, EMI have already announced some bright, new talent: John Birt's just joined the board.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

Dave Haslam shows the LA Times around Manchester:

Because of its head start in the Industrial Revolution, its access to Lancashire farmland and its train lines and canals to Liverpool's port, Manchester long ago became an indie city.

"Within the first decades of the nineteenth century," Haslam writes, "the city's merchants had worldwide contacts, with no dependency on the largesse of London. They had created their own wealth, become economically self-sufficient....

"In the era of rock & roll this would be just as crucial as in the days of cotton and coal."

The closure of Fopp sees Scottish musicians delivering eulogies in The Sunday Herald:

"It was great for vinyl," said Aidan Moffat, formerly of Arab Strap. "I remember I bought the first Belle And Sebastian album in there before I'd even moved to Glasgow.

"If I was bored during the day I'd have a wander in. And every time I would come out £30 poorer."

Famous for no-nonsense rounded prices, Fopp was "a bit of an anomaly", according to Moffat. "They started out as this indie shop where you could get bargains, but as they expanded they became something else, because they had to compete with the HMVs of this world.

"I think there's still a place for wee independent record shops, but in the end, that wasn't what Fopp was."

The Future Of Music shares Gerd Leonhard’s Open Letter to the Independent Music Industry:

Today, we have the paradox situation that any startup that wants to use music will not even try to go legal right from the beginning, since there is no reasonable way of doing so. Look at the biggest exits in this turf, during the past 2 years: myspace, youtube, last.fm – either they did not bother with proper music licenses, or it was unclear if and where and when they would even need one. Non-compliance succeeded and was handsomely rewarded.

The music industry must admit that it has failed to act. Their leaders’ clueless-ness, incomprehension and general lack of willingness to embrace true change allowed the paying for music to become voluntary. Congrats.

Don Tapscott points at the year 2006: the losers built digital music stores, and the winners built vibrant communities based on music. The losers built walled gardens while the winners built public squares. The losers were busy guarding their intellectual property while the winners were busy getting everyone’s attention. Warner Music Group’s stock nose-dived from $30 to $14 in less than one year; Google rose from $323 to $526, Apple went from $50 to $127.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

Dave Haslam shows the LA Times around Manchester:

Because of its head start in the Industrial Revolution, its access to Lancashire farmland and its train lines and canals to Liverpool's port, Manchester long ago became an indie city.

"Within the first decades of the nineteenth century," Haslam writes, "the city's merchants had worldwide contacts, with no dependency on the largesse of London. They had created their own wealth, become economically self-sufficient....

"In the era of rock & roll this would be just as crucial as in the days of cotton and coal."

The closure of Fopp sees Scottish musicians delivering eulogies in The Sunday Herald:

"It was great for vinyl," said Aidan Moffat, formerly of Arab Strap. "I remember I bought the first Belle And Sebastian album in there before I'd even moved to Glasgow.

"If I was bored during the day I'd have a wander in. And every time I would come out £30 poorer."

Famous for no-nonsense rounded prices, Fopp was "a bit of an anomaly", according to Moffat. "They started out as this indie shop where you could get bargains, but as they expanded they became something else, because they had to compete with the HMVs of this world.

"I think there's still a place for wee independent record shops, but in the end, that wasn't what Fopp was."

The Future Of Music shares Gerd Leonhard’s Open Letter to the Independent Music Industry:

Today, we have the paradox situation that any startup that wants to use music will not even try to go legal right from the beginning, since there is no reasonable way of doing so. Look at the biggest exits in this turf, during the past 2 years: myspace, youtube, last.fm – either they did not bother with proper music licenses, or it was unclear if and where and when they would even need one. Non-compliance succeeded and was handsomely rewarded.

The music industry must admit that it has failed to act. Their leaders’ clueless-ness, incomprehension and general lack of willingness to embrace true change allowed the paying for music to become voluntary. Congrats.

Don Tapscott points at the year 2006: the losers built digital music stores, and the winners built vibrant communities based on music. The losers built walled gardens while the winners built public squares. The losers were busy guarding their intellectual property while the winners were busy getting everyone’s attention. Warner Music Group’s stock nose-dived from $30 to $14 in less than one year; Google rose from $323 to $526, Apple went from $50 to $127.