November 24, 2009

I have been slacking on updates regarding the site; there is just too much going on in Austin to post about and promote! There is a little breather now that the “social season” has pretty much wrapped up and I wanted to let you know what’s going down here at TwoGroove.

No More Mixx: As I posted previously, I’m freeing up some time by not working with Mixx anymore. No more booking and no more trying to promote a struggling venue. It was fun and informative, but ultimately frustrating.

Upcoming Show: I can’t say too much about it yet, but there is a cool show coming up in December that TwoGroove is a big part of. We’ve got some great bands, an awesome venue, and its all for a fantastic cause. It will be announced very soon. UPDATE: The cat is out of the bag. Come support Austin Children’s Shelter on Dec 13th at Antone’s!

Site News: We’re gaining a bunch of new artists and are now well over 100. Definitely check out all the new music. We opened up the rating of songs to everyone (previously only Users and Artists could rate songs), so even if you don’t sign up for a free account you can rate any song you hear.

For those that do want to sign up, we quietly implemented a points system behind the scene. Any action from logging in to creating a playlist to rating a song will net you a number of points. Those points feed a ranking system and will translate to giveaways, merch discounts, and more. Right now, I’m making sure the points accumulation is working as intended, but the system is live and Users/Artists are gaining points.

July 23, 2009
Just a quick update to share something kinda cool for all the TwoGroove Artists. I decided to allow all bands to upload a small image/avatar to be displayed next to their name. Not sure why it took me so long to realize that all artists should be able to upload images…

So just log in and upload away. The image will show up like the one below.

Ooo, scrunched picture...

June 19, 2009
So it has been over a month since we’ve had a news update, but we haven’t slowed down one bit. This summer has already been a busy one for TwoGroove. Here’s a quick rundown.

- We started the TwoGroove Deathmatch, which is essentially a quick battle of the bands that pits any two musical groups together. Our first winner was Built by Snow.

- We’ve covered a number of shows with current coverage of Austin Surf Sesh 2009. New shows are being covered almost weekly; look for tons of photos from Future Fest the week of June 29th.

- Development continues on TwoGroove.com, with an emphasis on providing an incentive for you to sign up, log in, rock out, and rate music.

- There is currently an issue with PayPal accepting Artist Plus members. If you run into any problems, email me at tyler@twogroove.com.

- The blog continues to be a big hit and I put a lot of energy into updating it, along with my posts as Indie Music and Live Music Examiner on Examiner.com.

- We are looking for more Featured Artists. Send your EPK!

Become a fan of TwoGroove on Facebook and follow the blog here.

May 7, 2009
We’re constantly trying to develop TwoGroove to be as user-friendly as possible. We want site visitors to discover new music as well as rate the music they hear. The best way to do that is to sign up and create a playlist of music, listen to it and rate the songs. The charts are driven by your ratings and soon there will be some cool incentives to rate music. More on that later…

To help out with this, we are happy to announce new functionality for the TwoGroove player. By clicking the little arrow just above the fifth star in the player, you can pop the player out of the page. That way you can peruse the blog and still have the music player up and running. The player functions the same “popped out” as it does in the main page.

So sign in (or sign up!), create your playlist from our long list of artists, and listen along as you browse TwoGroove or any other site.

Test it out: here’s the TwoGroove player, loaded with songs from our newest TwoGroove Artist: Assembly Line Gods

As always, thanks to Inspired Roots for the great web work!

April 28, 2009

I just wanted to stop by and give a quick update on all things TwoGroove.

Through a mostly organic process, the blog has quickly become the focus point of the site. We’re finding that most of our site visitors spend their time here on the blog. I don’t blame them, we’ve been able to interview some great new acts and report on plenty of Austin shows. That trend will continue: our SonicBids inbox is still filling up with musicians from all across the world, we’ve got a glut of cool concert pictures coming up, and the addition of the embeddable player will make sure you have some music to listen to and rate.

Some cool things are in the works, but I shouldn’t talk too much about them just yet. Let’s just say there will be some incentives to rate songs and some new ways to highlight both our User and Artist communities.

TwoGroove will be out and about in Austin throughout the entire summer (and beyond), be sure to get out when you can!

April 11, 2009

As an addendum to our ground-breaking earth-shattering release of the Featured Artist badge, we’d like to present the TwoGroove embeddable player! Kick the tires on the player below, listen to Sw!tch-Tone’s music, and rate the songs!

Whenever we do artist interviews like Past, Present, Future and the TwoGroove Featured Artist, we will include this player in the post. You can listen to the songs they’ve uploaded as well as rate them. In the near future, we’ll be putting the power in your hands to create custom embeddable players and paste them into your MySpace page, website, blog, etc. This will be a great way for bands to increase the number of ratings for their songs.

Many thanks to Inspired Roots for making this happen!

April 2, 2009

Hey all, just a quick note to point out a cool little addition to the site. Sw!tch-Tone is currently our Featured Artist as you may know. We’ve come up with a little icon to represent currently and previously featured artists. Check it out.

This will be added to the musician’s TwoGroove page automatically when we feature them. Once they are no longer a Featured Artist, it will change to represent that they were once featured. If you are interested in having your group considered to be a TwoGroove Featured Artist, check out some deatils here. Also, stay tuned. We’re working on more of these badges as well as a way to reward Users and Artists for uploading, listening to, and rating music.

Ok, seriously, could I type the word “featured” any more in one post?

Featured.