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Something a conference should do is provide an experience with which you can capitalize upon and use to further your career. Panels make strides in that direction but tools and services can take you the rest of the way. Here are some of the cool tools you can use from SXSW 2006.
Tagworld – http://www.tagworld.com - Think of this one as MySpace on steroids. Tagworld provides all the features MySpace does and then some. You get multiple pages you can use for your artist site, a storage area for files of just about any type, simple to use modules to quickly add music, video, guestbooks and more to your pages, control over the design and layout, a music discovery engine, a marketplace and more. You don’t have to go outside of the Tagworld website to store and present video or other content. You can do it all in one place.
 Examples of drag and drop modules. Place them anywhere on the page you want and in any order.  A sample page with basic layout. Many templates to choose from or build your own. One of the coolest things is the music discovery engine that runs on the site. So you’ve placed your songs on the site and you want people to hear them. Not a problem. When someone starts listening to a station on Tagworld it gives them an opportunity to listen to similar songs or similar artists. Say a user wants to hear music in the vein of U2. The Tagworld discovery engine will pull together a playlist of bands that sound like U2. Each song serves as a departure point from which you can hear and discover an endless stream of music. A person who might not have ever heard your music now can access your site, become your friend and can buy your music. How is that for cool and free? There's a newer, cooler kid in town and his name is TagWorld. 
MusicIP – http://www.musicip.com – MusicIP offeres a free product called the “MusicIP Mixer”. It scans your current library of music and allows you to choose a playlist based on your mood and other factors. The system also suggests new music you might like and may have never thought of. This is what they call the Global Music Relationship Engine. For a listener it is a great tool, for a band trying to get exposure it is plain awesome. Artists can submit their music to Music IP and have that music added to the Relationship Engine. Some of the features include:
- Manage an unlimited number of songs in your collection
- Create mixes based on a single seed song, artist or album
- Control number of tracks in a mix
- Acoustic power shuffles
- Modify mixes at attributes with “More Like This” and “Less Like This”
- Modify mixes by “Replace This Song” and “Replace This Artist”
- Morph playlists
- Find similar artists or albums
- Find duplicate songs
- Use MusicIP Mixer with TiVo
- Manage music on disk based devices
- Rename and organize your files
- Map playlists into Moods
- Integrated media player (or connect to your favorite player)
- Acoustic scan to find music based on sound
- Run MusicIP Mixer as a server
MusicIP is a very powerful tool for both musicians and listeners. Even better if you are both. Pandora – http://www.pandora.com is another type of music discovery site that was started as a blog. It grew and grew until a became a huge music recommendation service. Pandora creates custom stations just for the listener. Go the web site (http://blog.pandora.com/faq/index.html#31) and submit your music to gain more exposure. Stickam – http://www.stickam.com – Stickam allows you to easily place streaming video, slide show, music, and live video chat on your blog and/or web site. With Stickam, you can instantly play your videos online using just your web browser. There is no software to download, you just copy and paste the Stickam code into your web site or blog where you want it. Your video can be viewed by virtually anyone with no software to install and will play on any operating system including Linux, Windows and Mac.You can also stream video live and connect with friends and fans. Use the panels on myspace, friendster, ebay, xanga.com, blogger.com and more… Dropcards – http://www.dropcards.com - DropCards combine the quality and efficiency of secure pin-based online downloads with the distribution ease of collectible custom cards. You can sell the cards at shows to gain access to your music in mp3 format or you can give them away to promote. These are attractive cards and a cool new way to gain exposure for yourself and your music. 
The company creates a custom landing site for you, uploads your content, and prints your DropCards. They're great for mailing, handing out at events, in-store or even on-pack promotions.
DropCards redemption features sweepstakes, survey, or viral marketing packages, and each promotion is provided detailed reporting information on traffic, redemption, and demographics. This is useful information to see what kind of impression you are making and where.
So there you have it! Several great ways to get the word out about your band and music. This is just a small sample of the tools you can use found at SXSW 2006. Check the SXSW web site – http://www.sxsw.com for more exhibitor information from this year.
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