D.I.Y.

iTunes Says Artist Profiles On Ping Invitation Only

image from www.hypebot.com Say what you will about iTune's new social network Ping, but it's going to be a great place to market music.  So imagine the frustration of the many indie artists – many of who are selling music on iTunes – when they learned  that there was  no obvious way to create an an artist profile in Ping.

Apple Responds: "By Invitation Only"

We asked Apple to explain and just heard back from a spokesperson that "artist profiles were launched by invitation, but we'll keep adding more and more."  No information was provied on who is handing invites or what criteria they are using. But bands do have another option …kind of.  "Any iTunes user can create a profile on Ping, artist or otherwise," reminds Apple.

Has anyone tried to create a ping profile using a band name (i.e. The XYYZ Band) rather than a personal name (i.e. John Smith)?

Bruce Houghton on 09/02/2010 in D.I.Y. | Permalink | Comments (17)
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17 Comments

  1. Yea, my music is done under the name Ajikas, and I just made my Ping name Ajikas Ocean in iTunes. I don’t have any music for sale there yet so I don’t know if it would have worked differently had that been the case.

  2. Thankyou for getting a clear answer from Apple!
    I got so frustrated that eventually I called Apple, and was sent to fill in the Partner with iTunes ‘Content Provider’ application to get my artist name registered to be on Ping. so I could then have a user ID ( which is very odd as I already have one for my music )
    I have my music on iTunes as SlimGirlFat, I made a ‘people’ profile as Slim GirlFat
    ( with the space in between my name) but I cannot make an artist profile at all.
    Finding anyone to follow other than the lame recommendations so far has also proved useless as anyone I would choose to follow, cannot be found.
    Slimmie

  3. SlimGirlFat is a hyper-cool band name. I’ll check out your music Slimmie! I will look for your user profile and add you as a contact. I also spent all last night trying to set up an artist profile to no avail.
    Natasha

  5. To me, this sounds similar to telling artists to sign up for a personal account on facebook. Very confusing, not to mention an inconvenient way to connect to your listeners.

  6. I’m lucky for I use a pseudo/nickname for my artist name, and currently sign my contact emails with both this “artist” name and my first name.
    So I’ve been able to have a profile called “Laurent Burzinski”. Then I selected my top ten songs and included one of mine, so it can be quite easy to find me there…
    On the other hand it’s quite hard for me to find any people I’m currently connected with… And well, if by any chance I’ve got lots of followers there, I noticed I’m afraid I can spam them by using a “publish” button on my album page, album I can recommend to them… Sounds like a mass email feature… Anyway…

  7. Same here, I just changed my first name second into the band name, added my two albums to the 8 that appear on my profile and added the band biography with a link to our website.
    This is ridiculous. Amazon have an artist claim process where you have send them an email using your myspace account and click on a link to an email sent to the email address linked to Amazon customer ID. It only takes a few days and then you can take over your profile on the Amazon store, add videos, a banner etc…
    Why can’t Apple do that?
    https://artistcentral.amazon.com/faq

  8. I wish I’d known they weren’t allowing band profiles to be set up (yet…?) before I spent 20-30 minutes trying to figure out how!
    What’s the point of having a music-based social network and launching it to the public if they’re not ready to let bands use it? But then again, it IS Apple…and Steve Jobs is a control freak.

  11. Unfortunately,it looks like Itunes has become just another Gatekeeper for the Major labels. Why don’t they just do what Myspace did and have artist profiles? It’s just another way to send business to the MAJORS only. The “BIG BOYS” just keep cra**ing on us.

  13. I have to agree with the frustrated musicians who have already posted. By Invitation Only? I have several albums on Itunes, all of which could benefit Itunes from the promotion of an Artist profile. As a Mac freak, this is really disheartening. There must be some kind of deal struck with the labels, why else would they leave us out of the loop– when they could truly benefit from all the Indies and their followers participating in Ping?. Signing up under People and not as an Artist is not going to work the same. With the rise of the Indie artist and the catalogs of songs they have on Itunes, Apple is truly missing the boat on this one.

  15. I haven’t tried it yet, as someone noticed it takes more then 20-30 min. just to install the iTunes 10…
    and I don’t use it much as a place where to find/listen to new music… Am I missing a major thing or I can live without it ?

  16. I understand everyone’s frustration but do I believe that Gravity Kills would be a priority for PING over Lady Gaga? I am sure they will get to it as quickly as they can. As stated by someone else in this thread, it will be to Apple’s advantage to get as many artist pages up as possible.

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