They say that personalization is coming to the 2010 web, in the form of filters and recommendations, to help user discover relevant data.

They also say that the vast majority of Twitter users are clueless. And Twitter’s efforts to engage and educate them through the Suggest User List (SUL) and the tiny ads of Twitter apps haven’t done much so far. TV celebs and the likes seem to only drag with them a few millions of rather inactive “viewers”….Neither could Twitter implement Facebook Connect to educate users through their Facebook tweetering friends…

Lastly, everybody knows  that third party applications, built through Twitter APIs, made it the $1billion success story that it is today, by spreading its usage in new and creative ways. But the only publicity that they get back from Twitter are tiny ads on the Twitter web site.

So here comes Laura Fitton, aka @pistachio, with oneforty.

Oneforty is  a social app store, where users can discover new apps and developers get to showcase their latest creations.

The discovery process can be done through charts of featured or popular apps, by categories or through lists generated by the site’s tagging system.  Each app has its own “Fan Page”, with links to download or rate it, the developer’s Twitter ID, user reviews, who else is using the apps, related tweets and press mentions. So a mix of filtered and social discovery in a neat and clean interface.

When you create your oneforty account, the site uses the Twitter API to generate your  profile. You can then customize it by “adding”  Twitter apps to it, and writing about who you are, your interests and who you like on Twitter.

On the other hand, developers are being encouraged to claim their apps so that they can have the ability to add information (e.g. screenshots and press mentions) to the apps’ profiles.

Oneforty’s revenue model is fairly basic. If you want to download a paid mobil app, oneforty provides a link to Apple’s App Store, allowing oneforty to collect an affiliate fee. But there’s a lot more potential to it.

Remember what Facebook was before its platform?  Remember it was still trailing  way behind MySpace? Twitter, for how big it seems today, is still in its infancy and shaped more as a platform than a community. Apps educate, engage, trigger the viral process. Laura Fitton’s oneforty could play a major role in this process, making Twitter closer to the mass market and helping developers improve the Twitter still harsh ecosystem.

I am not sure of how oneforty plans to promote itself. The most logical thing would be to see Twitter acquiring it, right away, or cloning it. We’ll see. The year of the App Stores has still 100 days before its end!

Is Twitter worth $5,000,0000,000? That is what Scoble suggested yesterday in his post Why Twitter is underhyped and is probably worth five to 10 billion dollars.

The arguments that back-up his assertion are essentially four:

-Twitter is primarily a public communication platform that businesses can and will use to their benefit.

-Twitter will hit critical mass sooner and more profoundly than any other “social network”, because it offers an easy way for the public personas to broadcast themselves. (And who is in the entertainment industry, knows that Scoble has a point here).

-Twitter is mobile ready. Facebook, the most likely candidate to take over the public stream sphere, is not and is still playing catch-up.

-Twitter is more data driven than Facebook, its search digs into the tweets of the last few days, whereas data get lost in the Facebook newsfeed.

Why Scoble’s might be right:

-”Twitter is NOT a social network”: it is a platform for PUBLIC broadcasting of your tweets. The $5billion dollars implications:

1. Nothing on Twitter is meant to be “personal” (except for the few ones who chose to protect their stream). Facebook might get there but radical changes are needed to morph it from the secure, personal nest of your friendships into a public domain of your likes and dislikes; and a backlash from its core of heavy users is to be expected as the NTY is already reporting (in a post titled Facebook Exodus).

Twitter is a universally accessible database of users with public likes and dislikes. Tweets are searchable by anyone and show up on Google. You can do all the data-mining you want, segment and target. Geo-location is coming and soon Twitter should add analytics for corporate users, which will make its business value even more obvious.

Bottom line: a brand could look for the users that are most valuable to its business and start creating a relationship with them…No violation of privacy so far. No over-priced targeted display campaign. It’s all there…

2. The eco-system built around the Twitter API faces less challenges than the Facebook one when it comes to sharing users’data. The recent issues with the quiz apps are just one of the many examples.

-Twitter is Mobile ready. Which speaks about the intention of the user and the power of Context. When business will be on Twitter with relevant streams, where will users be more likely to search for a time-critical information? Will it be Facebook? Who will win the mobile advertising budgets, will most likely open the doors to the long-awaited advertising 2.0 era (or 1.0…considering where we still are).

-Twitter is not a social network. Following a brand and/or spreading his hashtags/keywords is not innatural on Twitter as it can be on Facebook. Facebook Fan pages are way different with this respect. Getting users attention and driving them to your page might work through viral dynamics, but users are more wary about reposting corporate stuff in their newsfeed, again because Facebook is about relevant and personal communication, whereas Twitter is a  utility for sharing information.

Why Scoble could be wrong:

Education- As Alex Wilhelm of TechGeist points out, Twitter would need about 40,000 corporate clients who pay a monthly $125 fee  to justify the $5billion valuation. That number is not impossible to reach, even in a short period of time, considering the media hype for Twitter. What could happen though is that those companies, who jump on board with the delusion that social media means viral, might end-up abandoning Twitter for lack of education. Being on Twitter and getting followers is not just about a sweepstakes or a random tweet. It’s not a coincidence that Zappos has been one of the few successful so far. How many Tony Hsieh have you met? Olivier Blanchard presentation, Basics of Social Media ROI, has a few insights on the common misunderstandings surrounding social media. And they’re here to stay…

User Experience. The real challenge that Twitter faces is to find a way to add value for advertisers without spoiling the user experience.  Is Google an advertising platform or search? In reality the first, for the mass it’s the second.

Spam. Protecting users from spammers and shady affiliate networks should be a priority for Twitter. No business model will be proven if they don’t find ways to avoid users from an avalanche of spammy followers. Nova Spivack memento still holds true.

Competition. Facebook or any other third-party? As Scoble suggests, Facebook has the potential to get there and has a larger user base to leverage on. Other thrid parties are working on it as well, from Co-Tweet to PeopleBrowsr …the list is truly growing at the speed of light. It will only be a matter of who is faster and better.

Christopher R. Weingarten (@1000TimesYes) – Music Writer, RollingStone.com and Village Voice on Twitter and the End Of Music Criticism.

Some good points on how to use Twitter to promote your music, engage and reward your fans.
Enjoy the full interview, very entertaining!

Twitter has its own ecosystem. Described as a lifecasting and mindcasting platform, it seems to be an open protocol that opens up infinite new forms of communication. Or None!

Not surprisingly in April, Nielsen reported that 60% of Twitter’s new users churn after the first month, and the Harvard Business Review has narrowed down to a mere 10% the percentage of savvy users who generate 90% of the Tweets. Last week, HubSpot, the Cambridge-based marketing firm behind the TwitterGrader, has published a report claiming that

• 55.5% of users are not following anyone
• 54.9% have never tweeted
• 52.7% have no followers

Bottom line: most user don’t get Twitter. But those who do, have been succesful in using it for driving sales (Dell), increasing their fan base ( Zoë Keating, DJ Richie Hawtin, John Mayer,  Mike Skinner, Lily Allen, Imogen Heap,J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, to name a few), increasing the readership of their blog (more than Google!- see the just released statistics from TechCrunch).

But how to get started without looking like a fool? There’s a small manual now available, The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein, who does a great job in introducing the reader to the Twitter Ecosystem.

The Twitter Book is a rare example of book that fits the needs of both a beginner and a more advanced user.

It starts from the core question, what’s Twitter good for and lists a few possible answers

1. Ambient Intimacy- you get to follow what your friends and relatives are doing by reading their tweets, without having to reply.
2. Sharing news - You can follow the reads and links broadcasted by the opinion leaders or other members of your industry
3. Sharing experiences – Something happens, it will get twitted right away (in your neighborhood or in the world)
4. Mind Reading- A well-honed search can reveal how people feel about your company, your music,your brand.
5. Business Conversations– It lets companies engage with customers and partners in a direct way – both personal and public.

To get you started, the book explains the details in signing up and lists various tips to maximize your enjoyment and use of Twitter. For example:

1. Create a compelling profile – Describe yourself, put a photo and a link to your site.
2. Understand what “following” means – in Twitter, this is asymmetric; two people don’t have to agree to follow each other to see each other’s messages.
3. Find people you know on Twitter  and get suggestions for cool people to follow – that’s  Twitter: you follow interesting people and if you are interesting yourself, you get your own following.

Then, the book explains a bit more about some conventions, jargons and terms, such as the concept of #hashtags, tweet, retweet, tweetup and @replies.

The most interesting parts for a less novice Twitter user are the tips at the bottom of numerous pages. Some examples of less-known tricks that you can find in The Twitter Book are how to conduct better searches using Twitter’s “advanced search”, how to sort messages, and subscribe to Twitter feeds using RSS. Even more beneficial are the lists of tools and apps for checking topic trends, measuring how frequently certain tweets are read, counting the hits for sites recommended through Twitter posts.

Finally, the authors focus the last section of The Twitter Book to explaining why Twitter is significant for businesses. They list uses such as promotions, customer service, and virtual meetings. And stress how not to use Twitter, particularly for spamming. If businesses want to attract followers, they should include information about related topics rather than bombarding followers with advertisements on their product.  Personally, I would have liked a more in-depth analysis on the business uses of Twitter and cases studies, but that’s not what the book is for probably.

The book is a compact manual that reads easily and has a lot of precious tips. It’s not your book if you’re looking to grow your followers by the thousands/day as many spammers are unfortunately doing.

I’m adding it to the must-read books

• The Cluetrain Manifesto by Levine, Searle, Locke, and Weinberger
• Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel
• The Search by Battelle
• The Long Tail by Anderson
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR by Meerman Scott
• Anything by Seth Godin
• Groundswell by Li and Bernoff

Last week, TRVSDJAM, the combined force of Travis Barker and DJ-AM, released their newest mixtape via Twitter, offering a free download of their newest mixtape in exchange for a tweet.

By tweeting “Download the new #trvsdjam mixtape ‘Fix Your Face Vol. 2 – Coachella 09′ in exchange for one tweet! http://twitter.trvsdjam.com/”, tweeters receive a free download via an application built by Culture Jam Labs.

As you can see in the pre-populated tweet, a special hashtag – #trvsdjam – is included in the twit, with the goal of making it a top trending topic on Twitter.

A brilliant and innovative use of Twitter as a Marketing Platform.

How did the campaign go?

Travis Barker and DJ AM have a combined 230k+ followers on Twitter.

By looking at TweetMeme it appears that so far 12,350 have retweeted the message. That translates into a 5% conversion rate.

The Twist chart shows the trends over the last few days. Clearly there was a peak as soon as the twit was broadcast, then the buzz quickly dried out.

So how do you measure the success of such a campaign?

-Buzz: the story definitely picked the interest of the music community and the social media one. The coverage includes big names as Hypebot,  MusicAlly, ProHipHop, TechCrunch, Mashable, and the list could go on…just try googling it.

-TwitterBuzz: the initial twit reached an audience of 230,000, the combined followers of Travis and DJ AM. It was re-twitted roughly 12,500 times. Assuming the average number of followers is still 70 as stated in a January poll,that translates into a reach of close to 900k users! Not trivial for an operation that probably costed the two musicians less than $5k (the development of the app).  According to Twitterholic, a Twitter tool that keeps tracks of your followers, both Travis and DJ AM kept growing their “followership” but at a rate that is pretty much in their average for the last few weeks. So this doesn’t seem to be a secondary byproduct of the initiative, but probably it wasn’t in the plans either.

-Conversions/Sales: as stated before, conversions could be measured against the total number of followers at a 5% rate or against the total reach, at a about 1.5%. How many of those downloaders were already followers? How many non-followers? How many were real fans? How many of those downloads will translate into new fans that attend live performance and buy the artist’s music? Will they be able to keep messaging to those users? Send them a follow-up?

These seem to be legitimate questions, and it’s up to each musician to gauge the success of his own initiative based on his goals.

Early Twitter conversations were tagged as life-casting and mind-casting, because early adopters were mainly geeks. But always more and more musicians are jumping on board, embracing the potential of Twitter as a marketing tool and new medium, what I would rather call a “FanCasting” because it is not really about sharing your personal life neither your knowledge. It is more about building and nurturing the Tribe of your True Fans, as brillinatly explained by Kevin Kelly and Seth Godin.

There are plenty of examples of musicians who use Twitter to connect with their fans and engage them, offer free music,  twitt a live show.  And many examples of companies supporting and educating artists in this new effort: TopSpin, ArtistsHouse and Plugola are just the first who come to mind.

To conclude heres An inspirational video from a few months back: Steve Lawson interviewed by Andrew Dubber

Steve Lawson from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.

Inspired by the launch of the slick NYTReader app, TechFold opens a provocative debate on the “death” of the browser and the role of desktop applications.

Apps according to Edwards offer many advantages over a simple browser site:

• “Apps can provide a better user experience than generalist browsers.
• Apps help companies “own” the user relationship – branding, formatting, metrics, and the like.
• They also enforce loyalty, or at least habitual usage – the presence of an icon on your desktop or in your Start menu is a powerful call to action.”

Rod Edwards continues noting that this trend has been accelerated by mobile apps. And this ends up begging the question on who is going to dominate the web app world.

I would bet on Facebook, if its micropayment platform will prove to be fair and easy to use as the App Store. Even though the real opportunity is for someone to step in and take over the app market, across all devices.

Back to Techfold’s point on the pros offered by apps over the clunky HTML browsers: speed, a better UI (most often pretty slick), an inclination of the user to view the app as premium and pay for it.

All of the above seem to perfectly fit the newly launched Pandora One service. Re-born from its ashes thanks to the success of its Iphone and BlackBerry apps,  this week Pandora announced its new premium service PandoraOne.

As part of the new $36/year subscription, the app runs off Adobe AIR and models the look and feel of Pandora’s popular iPhone app. There’s also a new mini player available for those who prefer to run Pandora in a browser window, and Pandora One also comes ad-free, includes limitless skips, and offers custom music player skins.

We shall see if Rod Edwards was right or not, if apps can substitute the browser for the average consumer, or if they will create an alternative premium customer base. But Pandora seems to hint at a future that is not too far from his vision.

BREAKING NEWS

A week dense of social networks ‘ announcements

FACEBOOK COLONIZATION

April 28th is a date to remember. Facebook launched the Open Stream API: it’s the start of the Facebook experience extending beyond the Facebook walls. Now any developer can create new applications incorporating the real-time stream.

One of the first apps to take advantage of this new API is Seesmic Desktop.

Another example is a demo of Silverlight+ Facebook Stream, that has wowed the lucky Techcrunch viewers: Microsoft Shows Off The Power Of Facebook’s New APIs

For a technical review of the Open Stream API, check Nick O’Neill’s post at AllFacebook.com

More on the business implications thanks to NYT Brad Stone Tinker Away. Facebook Says

For a less enthusiastic review, Marshall KirckPatrick Despite New Openness, Facebook Remains Fundamentally Closed

MYSPACE AND PLAYLIST

MySpace has a new CEO, former Facebook executive and Playlist CEO, Owen Van Natta. WSJ.com: Taking Helm at MySpace

Playlist names former MTV veteran as new CEO: MTV Vet Sykes New Project Playlist CEO

TRENDS

MUSIC SPONSORSHIP SPENDING

Music Sponsorship Spending at an all time High in 2009

AD SPENDING IS OFFICIALLY NOT RECESSION-PROOF

TechCrunch: The Online Ad Recession Is Officially Here: First Quarterly Decline In Revenues

MORE TWITTERS, MORE QUITTERS?

Nielsen shocked the Twittersphere this week by reporting that Twitter shows that some come but never come back, yet the small community is indeed very influential.

See also Pete Cashmore at Mashable: 60% of Twitter users quit within the first month.

GOING UP, DOWN AND UNDER

UP- HULU AND VEVO: The Gold Race to monetize music videos is on. Wired’s editor,Eliot Van Buskirk, reports on the Next Music Battle: Hulu vs Vevo

UP-HULU AND DISNEY: Hulu is becoming the preferred distribution channel for the big media companies. It just got major buy-in from  Disney that is now an investor, joining News Corp and NB.

Who should worry more? YouTube or Apple?

UP AND THUMBS UP-COLDPLAY,JOSH FREESE &DE LA SOUL

More artists experimenting with innovative models

-Coldplay will give away a free nine-track live album, LeftRightLeftRightLeft, at every gig this year. MusicAlly

-Legendary Hip-Hop Trio De La Soul works with Nike for a new Music Release. AdAge

-Josh Freese is getting ready to release self-release a solo album and has been attracting some attention because of the unorthodox pricing model he is employing.

UP AND THUMBS UP-SLACKER,SPOTIFY,PEOPLE MUSIC STORE&THINKINDIE:

More success stories for a few new music start-ups

-Slacker Radio hits the 1million downloads on the BlackBerry. Billboard.biz Q&A: Slacker CEO Dennis Mudd

-Spotify continues to recruit music fans at a rate 40,000 users/day. MusicAlly: Spotify has more than 1mln users in the UK

-People Music Store has signed a deal with UMG. Good job! Hypebot

-ThinkIndie.com launched today as the music download destination for  Coalition Of Independent Music Stores’ (CIMS) indie music retail outlets. Hypebot

DOWN

-France Reintroduces 3 Strikes Bill. UK Says No. Hypebot.

-Artist advocacy group The Future Of Music Coalition has released a new report “Same Old  Song” confirming that indie music is not getting its fair share of airplay on broadcast radio. Hypebot

DOWN AND THEN UP – SEEQPOD

Seeqpod CEO announces imminent acquisition. Wired

SOCIAL MEDIA

-TopSpin Ian Rogers has an amazing post on how musicians are experimenting with Twitter as a music platform and direct marketing channel

-Top 10 Twitter Tools For Musicians. Hypebot

-7 SEO Tips for Musicians. Hypebot

-Provocative advices from Eric Herbert. Forget MySpace: How To Build The Ultimate Website To Interact with Your Fans

OPINIONS AND MUST READS

Is A&R Still Necessary in Today’s Music Industry? Jim Markunas at MusicThinkTank

Resnikoff’s Parting Shot: The DIY Utopia… From the editor of DigitalMusicNews

Is MySpace becoming Windows of Online Music? Matt Rosoff

Music Is Not Like Water Fingertip

Your Facebook Profile Makes Marketers’ Dreams Come True Wired

100 Days of Data TopSping

Related articles by Zemanta

• AOL, MTV alums join MySpace’s revamped exec team (news.cnet.com)

BREAKING NEWS

ONE BILLION DOWNLOADS FOR THE APPLE STORE

Apple’s numbers are worth noting, because the company reported 800 million downloads just a month ago, and hit half a billion back in January. iTunes, on the other hand, took two years to reach that number of songs downloaded. The all-time top 20 apps sees Facebook and Google Earth climbing past Pandora to become the top free apps, followed by Pandora, Tap Tap Range and Shazam. [VentureBeat]

TRENDS

SPOTIFY CEO INTERVIEWED BY THE GUARDIAN: MUSIC FANS WILL BUY MUSIC

“If you truly connect and empower your fan base, people will pay for music. Perhaps that revenue won’t come primarily from selling records, but ad-supported music services, subscription music, downloads, merchandise and live shows as well as CD sales are all going to make money for labels and artists,” the head of Spotify, Daniel Ek, told the Guardian. “I think the music industry as a whole can be in a better position than it has ever been,” said Ek. “There has been a massive shift from ownership to access but people will pay for music if packaged correctly and it offers them something special.”[The Guardian]

MONETIZING SOCIAL MEDIA – FORRESTER PREDICTION

Forrester research by Mark Mulligan (free summary; $750 for full PDF) predicts that even though social music may not generate much revenue now,  monetization’s effectiveness must — and will — improve. Social music destinations will continue to build highly engaged audiences and deepen the relationship between fans and their music. But the labels will have to come to a compromise and change the licensing structure for streaming music. [Epicenter]

GOING UP, DOWN AND UNDER

DRM IS DEAD!  ITUNES VARIABLE PRICING IS BORN

As announced in January, on Tuesday, Apple made good on its promise to remove DRM from every song in the iTunes store — a long-awaited move that the labels only allowed in return for Apple letting them price songs at three different points: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. [Hypebot]

Only two days after, and Billboard reports that there was evidence the increases have hurt the sales rankings of songs given the higher $1.29 price.[BillBoard]

SPOTIFY API

It’s a good week for Spotify. Commercial terms were found with PRS [MusicAlly]

And on Tuesday libspotify, the company’s API, was launched to the public, which means that any developer (for approved devices) can build apps that access Spotify’s massive music catalog and use its P2P architecture, which streams Ogg Vorbis files between users like a streaming version of BitTorrent. [Epicenter]

VEVO IS COMING SOON

It’s now official: before the end of the year the new music video hub Vevo will see the light. Google/YouTube and UMG are working together at the new Join Venture and trying to get other labels on board. The big hope is to be able to better monetize music (videos).  Will they be able to get to $25-40 CPM? [Billboard]

YAHOO MUSIC IS BACK

On Tuesday, Yahoo Music launches its redesigned artist pages incorporating music content from third parties:downloads from iTunes, albums from Amazon, streams from Pandora, music videos from YouTube, and tickets from Ticketmaster.  Yahoo hopes this strategy will cut costs, while still providing music and videos for its 20-million-plus monthly visitors. [Epicenter]

LEGAL P2P COMEBACK? QTRAX (RE)-LAUNCH

The ad supported p2p finally “officially” launched last week with all four major labels on board. The subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies originally unveiled their service at the international music tradeshow Midem last year, but it quickly closed down after it turned out the company hadn’t finalized the major label agreements it said it had. Since then, Qtrax has signed licensing deals with all four major labels, and a number of independents.[Billboard]

SONGZA ACQUIRED BY AMIE STREET …SIX MONTHS AGO

TechCrunch was the first to discover that popular music store Amie Street has kept a deal it forged with Songza, a media streaming service, under wraps. The acquisition happened in October 2008 [TechCrunch]

WE7 AD-FREE SUBSCRIPTION AND REWARD SCHEME

We7 is funded by short adverts played at the beginning of each track alongside a paid-for download store. With the new rewards scheme, regular users collect points by spending time on We7 that they can exchange for ad-free days of music. The reward scheme will be followed in the summer by the launch of a paid-for subscription service for ad-free streamed music. This is likely to cost £9.99 for a month or 99p for a day. [MusicWeek]

GUNS N’ROSES AND ROCKBAND

“Chinese Democracy” will be released in its entirety into the Rock Band Music Store on April 14 and gamers will be able to download and play all 13 songs from the record, Harmonix and MTV Games announced Friday [Billboard]

SOCIAL MEDIA

TWITTER MUSIC POTENTIAL

Hip-hopper K’naan is revising his song “People Like Me” using fans’ tweets and the San Francisco sessions vets in Moonalice are planning a repeat performance of their real-time Twitter concert [UnderWire]

TWITTER PARTNERS AND GORILLAZ

No, Twitter Partners isn’t backed by Twitter, but Universal Pictures, Virgin Media and Gorillaz will use its services to launch on Twitter, soon. Supposedly virtual band Gorillaz is the first client to launch activity, promoting the documentary film Bananaz ahead of its theatrical release.[NewMediaAge]

FACEBOOK & PIRATEBAY

The Share on Facebook Pirate Bay feature didn’t last long. The Pirate Bay had recently made torrents more social by adding “Share on Facebook” buttons across its site. The social network  asked TPB to remove the buttons. After being ignored, Facebook is now blocking all links to The Pirate Bay and its torrents—legal and otherwise. [Ars]

MUST READ

Trent Reznor Interview with Wired [TheUnderwire]

MUST WATCH: TRENT REZNOR INTERVIEWED BY KEVIN ROSE

BREAKING NEWS (SORT OF..)

-Google launches a free ad-supported music service in China with the blessing of the labels. [WSJ]

TRENDS

-Why buy when you can listen free?

- The agreement between Spotify and 7Digital sparks a debate on the mixed streaming-store business model.  Glenn Peoples at Billboard views Lala as a possible winner because of its more focused user experience. [Billboard]

-But what do teenagers in the US want? According to a new report by NPD, teens acquired 19% less music in 2008 than they did in 2007. CD purchasing declined 26 % and paid digital downloads fell 13% compared with the prior year. In contrast, 52% of teens listened to online radio in 2008 vs  34% in 2007. Downloading or listening to music on social networks also saw a large increase from 26% in 2007 to 46% in 2008. [NPD Press Release].

-TIme for more numbers with Q1 already over. And the reality is again doom and gloom for the music industry with no Platinum album for the entire first quarter of 2009. Not a single new album sold more than a million copies in the U.S. (enough to win the platinum distinction) [MusicIndustryReport]

GOING UP, DOWN OR UNDER

-Fearing the outcome of lawsuits by Warner Music and EMI, music search engine and playlist generator SeeqPod has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection.  [HypeBot] Streamzy which let users build playlists from the songs on SeeqPod and YouTube, is on sale on eBay. [Epicenter].

-After blocking all music to UK users, YouTube is now yanking tunes in Germany, after the expiration of its contract with local royalty collector GEMA [PaidContentUK]. At the same time, Amazon opens its MP3 store in Germany [HypeBot]

-Last.fm is still free. Plans to launch the subscription service worldwide except for the US, UK and Germany have been delayed and Last.fm will focus on accelerating new features as SMS billing [MusicAlly]

-How is MySpace Music doing? Epicenter has an in-depth review. Reading is recommended. [Epicenter]

-What is Facebook Connect for? There are many ways to use it and one of them is to automate file-sharing:that’s what Pirate Bay is up to. Now under each track you can find a Share it on Facebook link! [HypeBot]

-More headaches for Ticketmaster, faced with a new classaction for its secondary ticket market practice. This one comes from the US. [MusicAlly]

GOING MOBILE

-On the AppStore side, some good news for Music Apps: the Pandora IPhone App hit 4 million downloads, AOL Radio 3.6million and other music app stars as Clear Channel iHeartRadio, Shazam, Tap Tap Revenge are not far (though numbers are not confirmed) [DigitalMusicNews]. In the meantime, Lala is rushing to get its app live, but still has some kinks to work out according to TechCrunch [TechCrunch]

-At CTIA RIM launches its new BlackBerry World App and one of its focus will be Music [MocoNews]

-And what is Nokia up to? It’s preparing its app store and it promises it will be a “smart” and “social” one. [VentureBeat interview]

GOING SOCIAL

-The clever team behind MusicMetrics launches MuZoid. a Twitter music exploration application. Send a tweet with the name of a band or artist to twitter.com/muzoid and in seconds you receive a link to a web page with gigs, a discography with price comparisons between vendors, and a recommendation of similar artists that you might enjoy.MuZoid uses MusicMetric’s text-mining technology to provide gig and album information for each artist. The company regularly sifts through data from a database of over 6 million artists. If MuZoid doesn’t know an artist, she makes a note of it and gets busy learning. Once enough information’s available, she’ll tweet back to the original querant with an update.[TechCrunch UK]

-Moonalice will post live tracks from their new CD release show on Twitter. Immediately following the end of each song, Moonalice’s sound team will upload it and “Tweet” its availability! [HypeBot]

-SellaBand, one of the online services that enables music fans to invest in up-and-coming artists, will sell its artists on CreateSpace, an Amazon company via a dedicated SellaBand store [Press Release]. Chuck D, named its US Ambassador, speaks about the project and the importance of being good internet marketers to win in the new digital era of music [MusicAlly]

-TopSpin CEO on the importance of engaging fans as a marketing tool [TopSpin]