Want to get in on this action and try Sound Around free for three months? Well, you’re in the right place because we have a couple promo codes to dish out to bands. To be eligible to win one: Use your band’s twitter (or disqus) account to sign in below, leave a comment, and check “share on twitter.” You can check out band apps already built by Sound Around in the App Store.

Device Dependency

Apple continues to create a major dependence on iTunes through their mobile products—the iPod, iPhone, and iPad—and I don’t think that anything is going to “kill” iTunes without a war. iTunes is the 7-Eleven of media—it’s more convenient and expensive, but it’s closer to home. For many, the iTunes experience is ingrained behavior—a household name—and part of their daily commute so to speak.

Generation Gap

The second huge advantage Apple has is the generation gap. Older people are more likely to have money to spend, and are less likely to adopt something new—especially if it’s less convenient. For Spotify to compete stateside, it will start through today’s youth. I love the Spotify concept, its mobility, and its adaptivity. They are smart to develop/test/improve their service in one location (Europe) before attempting to roll it out in another market (U.S.)—that’s business expansion 101. I hope that Spotify becomes a hit in the U.S. mainly for the sake of the music. Who wants an iTunes monopoly?

Apple Affinity

Apple products have strong affinity, and an army of enthusiasts drinking their Slurpees. Anyone looking to compete with them has to have an equal or greater affinity, and/or introduce something totally disruptive (which Spotify has done to a degree). Spotify has game, but so does Apple, who made a calculated move with last year’s Lala acquisition. One big thing to remember is that music has always been about the experience, and it always has been.

Apple Shuttle

The first place I turn when looking up artists has been Google or YouTube. When I’m not clicking on the YouTube video links in Google, I’m clicking on the Wikipedia entries. Having streamable tracks in the search results gives us an even faster way to hear the music, and the video results still show in Google as well. I’m surprised that they didn’t include a YouTube link next to the Rhapsody, Pandora, Imeem, Lala links in the new music results. But maybe there is a legal issue there? Nah, couldn’t be.

I think that the benefits brought by Google Music Search are only beginning and many more features are on the horizon. What features do you think would be most useful and entertaining? What new data will be gathered by this and how could it be used for the greater good? Recent coverage on Mashable predicted that Google Music Search will decrease iTunes’ market share, help keep MySpace in the game, and make Google a source of music trend information. Google continues to grow as a major force on the web and its stock price has been rocking a strong upward trend through 2009. What implications does Google’s increasing dominance have for music in the years to come?

Did I mention that these services handle the submission process to the Apple iTunes Store for you? Please share how you’re using these for your band etc. Plus, what other platforms am I missing? Update: we were informed about a new 4th platform via the comment section below. Here’s the 411:

Update 2: More app services for musicians have hit the scene—see app services.

DepecheMode.com brings us the expected features of a band website, and then some. The site is photo-rich and packaged in layers of sleek design. The tour tracker adds interactivity by letting fans share their concert experience via messages posted by map location and photos uploaded to an immense fan gallery.

Photos posted by the band at each tour location can be seen in the tour blog. I only wish it were easier to sort and share the photos by location and date. The tour blog updates are not included in their RSS feed and they lack permalinks but the band does post them on Twitter @depechemode. I would like to see them integrate commenting to both the tour blog and the news feed.

Depeche Mode is currently on their Tour of the Universe and they are compiling a Universe of the Fans in a fan mosaic comprised of fan photos. “The more photos are uploaded, the more clearly visible Dave, Andrew and Martin will be.” One can zoom in on the mosaic to see the individual photos.

The downloads page includes two Depeche Mode iPhone applications—one free and one paid—but they lack integration with the more interactive features of the site. I would like to see a free app that extends fan involvement to the mobile environment by allowing mobile fan uploads and geotagging as opposed to the existing free app that contains sound samples, tour dates, and iTunes links. The paid app is meant to let fans remix the songs from Depeche Mode’s latest album, Sounds of the Universe.

Depeche Mode in Lima, Peru on their 2009 Tour of the Universe / flickr.com/photos/jos_ec/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Music SOTM Series: Do you know a band, DJ, or musician with an ace website? Please let us know: contact RVE and we’ll consider it for Music SOTM. Entries are based on interactive content, fan engagement, and mobility. Visit virtualmusic.tv/msotm/ to see more MSOTM artists.

Friend recommendations seem to be the hottest source—whether they are in person, on the phone, or through the web. We discover music through sharing in mainstream social networks—Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace—and also through music-specific social networks like Last.fm, Imeem, Grooveshark, TheSixtyOne, and Blip.fm. Mainstream networks are broadening their music capabilities, and music applications within them are going to be pretty huge. Smaller music sites that may not survive on their own might do better as Facebook, Twitter, or smartphone applications. The latest, big-name buzz has been about MySpace’s iLike purchase, Spotify—whose potential entrance to the U.S. may be through Facebook’s doors—and Grooveshark, whose iPhone application may be arriving in the future. Imeem—which started as a social network—made a complete shift into the social music service that it is today. YouTube is a major discovery source and video links are widely shared via email, IM, and Facebook. Ustream.tv is live video platform that can be used to discover music through live interaction—a crucial feature that I emphasized in my debut VirtualMusic.tv forecast.

Before one can recommend music to their friends, they have to discover it themselves first. They are, say, early adopters. This initial discovery is increasingly enabled by open, social, music discovery sites (see the clickable link cloud above) and through integration of their applications with the existing mainstream networks I mentioned above. This integration from site to site is a key usability factor that facilitates sharing and alleviates the need for users to ‘sign up’ for a million sites. For example Twisten.FM is a nice Twitter–Grooveshark blend that lets me hear a playlist made from the people I follow on Twitter, and there are a number of other applications built for sharing music on Twitter alone. The speed that information is shared on Twitter is awesome, and I often discover new artists through Twitter convo. Open remixing applications like Indaba Music are another up-and-coming source of discovery. The others ways exposed in our brainstorm include movies, live shows, videogames, bittorrent and p2p file-sharing, fan-funding sites (more about these in an upcoming article), magazine articles, blog posts—including mp3blog posts via aggregation sites like elbo.ws—and all types of radio—traditional, satellite, and web-based. We’ve seen a definite shift away from download sites and towards streaming sites. But what did we miss? How/where do you discover music? Please give us your say below.

• How Do You Discover Music? by VirtualMusictv//Flickr
• Music Discovery Link Cloud by VirtualMusictv/Flickr

Read more posts tagged Music Discovery here.