Tag: video

English · Interviews

MUZU.tv – What Can The Music Video Distribution Platform Do For You?

Music2Deal3 Comments

muzu homepage

What is MUZU.TV and how has it come into existence?

MUZU TV (http://www.muzu.tv) is a fully licenced music video distribution platform. We enable Labels, Artists and content producers to create a channel and promote and monetise their videos across the MUZU multi platform network. MUZU’s network covers 22 territories of North America, Central Europe, Latin America and Australasia on desktop, mobile, smart TV and Xbox.

MUZU TV was founded back in 2007 on the back of the issues that Youtube unearthed with copyright. the vision was to support all copyright holders to provide them with a platform and video players to protect their rights and earn revenue from video views, which at the time Youtube was not doing. In 2014 we have over 200,000 licenced video clips being watched by over 11m users and we work with the Major and Indie labels to deliver activity for both new releases and their video archives.

For Music Fans MUZU is a place to watch music videos, build playlists and share content with your friends across the web. By registering you can access your channel and playlists on your PC, Mobile phone, tablet, Smart TV and X Box console. You can sign up to our newsletter to be sent weekly updates on new music and artist promotions as well as follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get daily updates. MUZU is just music and entertainment video focussed where as sites like Youtube have everything and you dont get a ‘pure’ music experience.

How does it work?

Content owners just need to set up a channel on MUZU to get started and upload their videos https://www.muzu.tv/join/?type=industry

Once the content is live they can share it themselves through artist websites and social media pages and contact MUZU for submission for editorial to be featured in New Releases, Our Picks and Iconic features. By uploading videos the content is also automatically distributed through the MUZU network so it is searchable on our parnter websites like Last.FM, Metacafe and NME and our Smart TV and Xbox apps.

MUZU is a premium ad funded business model so content owners earn 50% of the net ad revenue generated from video views wherever the video is watched. Our business model is syndication so premium ads travel with the content.

Our ethos is to work with artists and labels to drive reach and scale around key impact dates for releases and tours and we have a number of promotions that we offer to help promote content: from video premieres, to artist interviews, featured playlists and competitions. By working together to share this activity you drive fan engagement, music discovery and video views which will turn into ad revenue

For Music Fans we recently relaunched our site with new playlist making tools. DJ Mode allows you to continously watch music videos while browsing for more content to put in your playlist. There is also a great recommendations engine working to provide users with music discovery with an auto populate feature. Fans can also enjoy the promotions we set up with labels for new music and competitions.

What are the benefits of using MUZU?

MUZU benefits in many ways: it protects copyright and monetises content; we automatically distribute your content to a network of sites; We enable activity as we want to share new music with our users through our editorial voice that supports established and emerging artists. Labels are able to promote their artists within a music community and share their videos using MUZU players across their networks.

How can it help people who are a part of the music industry, for instance artists and bands?

MUZU is an independent video network. We work with labels to offer additional reach and monetisation to their video content outside of Youtube.com. Most views to Youtube powered videos happen on Youtube via Organic search through Google or as recommendations in the platform. If labels want to get artists featured on the Youtube homepage they need to buy advertising campaigns. They may also find that monetisation off Youtube does not provide premium rates when they share their content across social media

MUZU helps labels and Artists by giving them a music community to promote their content to. It gives them a premiium monetised player to share their content and we offer marketing initiatives to Labels to give them homepage editorial and social media support to give them the incentive to share their videos in our player to drive more views. We enhance the existing activity that Youtube generates naturally and labels can benefit greatly to help drive more activity and conversations for new releases.

How do you want MUZU.TV to develop? What are the future plans?

MUZU is developing alongside the ever evolving digital world. We have new Console apps in production as well as bespoke iOS and Android Apps. Watch this space in 2015

For more information on MUZU go to http://www.muzu.tv

​Follow MUZUTV on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/muzutv​

Follow MUZUTV on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/muzutv

Email us info@muzu.tv

by Sara Shirazi

English · This & That

Video Competition

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As announced in one of our prior newsletters, Music2Deal now offers the possibility to also embed your music video to your music offer. To celebrate this new function, we started a competition about the videos, here you can find the five best entries of our Music2Deal users.

Eva Gisler

She is a singer/songwriter/vocalcoach from Switzerland and loves different styles of music from soul to pop – rock, funk – jazz and she has got a variable voice to sing all these styles.

Click here for more information about Eva Gisler.

Check out her Video to the song Used To:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K3Y64pZKuA

Kostas Mintsoudis

The Music Producer who speaks German, English and Greek with the main genre pop sent us a video from Phil David.

Click here for more information about Kostas Mintsoudis.

And here is the Video of “Grenzenlos” from Phil David:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udTRjX6Oauw&feature=youtu.be

 John O’Brien

The UK-based songwriter in the Dance Electronica genre takes part with the Video to the Song “Surrender”.

Click here for more information about John O’Brien.

Kivah – Surrender

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nor2OCfwTwY

Tyler Ling

The former member of a band, starts now as an artist with his own songs. His live-program is estimated in Autumn/Winter 2014.

Click here for more information about Tyler Ling.

Link to his website: http://www.tylerling.de

Tyler Ling – inside me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FOgiXJPCc8

Mike Puskas

The music producer in the Alternative genre, is also the owner and CEO of IKONIC Artists LLP, DEAD Famous International Pty Ltd, and Astral Records & Music in Australia. His entry to our competition, is from the band Winged Serpent.

Click here for more information about Mike Puskas.

Winged Serpent (Official Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6H4Sxrkl2o

 

English · Tips

Who are you? Or: How to disappear completely, while trying to get noticed

Music2Deal2 Comments

Screen shot 2014-01-20 at 17.06.08

Article by Lars Deutsch

True story.

I watched a music video yesterday. The video had a couple of good ideas and looked pretty good for an unsigned artist. The artist was female, kind of young and kind of good  looking – I guess.

I am not being difficult. I really don’t know. After watching her video, I am not sure of her age – not even ballpark. Okay, she’s likely older than 13 and younger than 40. I am not of her ethnicity and I have no idea what she stands for or who she is as an artist or a person. The video tried very hard to follow and idea of what video “should be” , so did she, and so did the music.

Speaking about the music, I have no idea what kind of voice she has, or if she can sing or write songs. Her vocals were heavily processed, a lot of the music was either loops or sounds like loops, and everything was very compressed. I don’t think there were any real instruments or any custom writing in the arrangement.

If I spent four minutes watching a video and listening to a song and I have no lasting impression, then there is something very wrong. Isn’t the idea of a video to showcase the artist? Or at least the song?

There are several tools that artists use to tune their vocals. All of them change your voice. Autotune and its clones not only tune, but also mask the true sound of your voice. Add heavy compression and a filter or two and the character and nuance of a voice are eliminated.

While she might be a good singer, a beautiful woman and an interesting person, this artist has no chance of showing it. With heavy filters on the music and visuals, she has become “any/every female singer between 14 – 39”.

She went to great lengths to hide… to be discovered.

Being interchangeable and not leaving a lasting impression is the opposite of what an artist should want. What to do?

Give your voice a chance.

Choose the microphone that works for your voice, not the microphone that happens to be in your friend’s vocal booth. Make sure that you do not eliminate the character of your voice in mixing.

Sometimes a heavy vocal effect can be a storytelling tool or there is a good reason for it.
Not being able to hit the notes should not be the reason you use effects.

Artist or DJ?

Loops are great tools, but loops do not contain your “heartbeat” or character. Loops do not respond to your vocal line. Loops do not use an inversion when you need a new color the second time around. Loops are other people’s music that you are playing, just like a DJ.

Whatever your style and background, your music should be custom-made. The fewer premade elements the better. The more you shape your material to be unique the more you are an artist. Please check out my other text about music writing for a fuller exploration of this topic.

Ok, everybody in the first row!

High frequencies make a sound appear closer. Combine high frequencies and a lot of compression and it is “in your face”. If everything has a lot of high frequency and is heavily compressed, everything is in your face. This is another good way to loose nuance and character.

Your voice might sound dull after everything else has been treated with an extra layer of high frequency and heavy compression. This usually means it is time to heavily treat the vocals as well.

While this might not be good advice for 2014, this is good music advice:

Keep everybody’s high frequencies under control, so there is a room in front of the “band” for the vocals. The end result is that the vocals will not need to be treated in order to cut through the noise.

What is hip now is not hip when you hit the market place

Having idols and learning what works is great. You might be happier and more successful aiming for something that is more ”you”.

Real life and pen and paper solutions:

Write about your topics, write songs that have your heartbeat, your sensibility and that support your stories. Stay away from producers / songwriters that would make you sound the same as their last ten productions. No sound is more unique than your voice, and you should protect it. Find a way to turn who you are and what interests you into the core of your artist persona.