JES Debuts ThingLink Interactive Video with iTunes Store Inside Facebook Timeline

Magik Muzik recording artist JES has debuted ThingLink’s new interactive video format inside Facebook Timeline. Bands, labels and producers can use ThingLink to add music discovery, movie rentals, stores and call to action to the surface of any Facebook, YouTube or Brightcove video.

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Kickstarter "It Has Begun..." Single & CG Music Video

We thought you guys might be interested. It’s a kickstarter created by my family making a song and CG music video called “It Has Begun” Check it out and let us know what you think! Here’s a picture from the project …

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OK Go Goes 3D - An Economic History of OK Go Videos

After appearing at the Dear New Orleans Benefit Concert Tuesday night, DC native and OKGo front-man Damian Kulash was interviewed by NPR’s Neda Ulaby to close out the summit on Wednesday. In an amiable conversation, Damian covered the history of OK Go videos, the embedding controversy, and the split with EMI.

An Economic History of OK Go Music Videos

The band first started choreographing dance moves in preparation for their appearance on a Chicagoland cable access show: Chica-go-go. The show couldn’t handle live performances, but “we didn’t want to lip-sync unless we were really swinging for the fences.”

So they rented some N’Sync and cheerleading videotapes to come up with a dance routine, which they used to end their live shows for a few years. The first video, for “A Million Ways” was filmed in Damian’s backyard, with choreography by his sister, a ballroom dancer. Budget: $5 (plus Starbucks runs).

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YouTube Advertisement Experiments

So recently I had a video made I was pretty proud of.  Originally it had about 500 views on YouTube from posting it on a few newsgroups & what not, which I don’t think is bad for a studio project that has been more or less defunct a few years.  But I thought it had more potential.

So I experimented with using the YouTube/Google Adwords promotions to publicize the video.  I was familiar with how quick the money can add up on those kind of campaigns, so I low-balled at $0.01 per click & a budget of $1.00 a day. 

The result over two months was spending $52.20 (pretty close to the $1 a day budget) providing the additional 5,220 views that would be directly caused by this.  After the two months the video only hit about 5,800 views & now (two months after closing the ad campaign) the video just hit 6,000 views.  Which means essentially no one who clicked an advertisement to watch the video shared it with anyone.  Also there has not been any type of sales spike associated with the video views.  (I’d hoped for a sales increase near the level to pay for the ads - a 0.1% click through to purchase sounds reasonable….)

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