Creative Music Marketing With A SoundCloud Game, Flixel Photo Animator & myband.is [Updated]

Breaking through the noise can be tough for an indie musician, but the following three tools will help you add some flair to your efforts. The biggest news is that SoundCloud has launched the Wave Raid music game that you can use to feature your own gamified tracks for your fans' enjoyment.

Two useful visual aids are Flixel's photo animator, inspired by Cinemagraphs (not Cinemagrams as previously noted), and myband.is, a website creator that shares some similarities with Onesheet. They each have their own appeal and are worth considering for your music marketing efforts.

SoundCloud Game: Wave Raid

Wave Raid: Quest for the Timed Comment is an HTML5 game that SoundCloud's Lee Martin says is intended to "showcase the upcoming 'ontimedcomment' event we'll be adding to our Javascript SDK." I assume they'll be announcing the details of the technical part today on the SoundCloud Developers blog but you can play the game now.

Wave Raid already has an example track that's quite fitting. Push play and then move the white arrow up and down with your cursor to collect points for eliminating comment thumbnails. The marketing part is that you can insert the url for any SoundCloud track and play the game with that song. For example, if you're A-Trak and you want to gamify your Fool's Gold Radio mix, you simply add the url, hit return and it produces a Wave Raid url for the gamified version.

This is so cool that I think everyone should encourage SoundCloud (or Lee Martin) to make an embeddable version for distribution on one's various sites cause who has time to learn about SDK's?

Flixel iOS App Commercial

Flixel cofounder Mark Homza says they were inspired by Cinemagraphs which apparently are quite difficult to make though Cinemagram does offer a relatively simple version using short video clips.  With Flixel you can simply take a picture, rub the area you want to animate and you're done.  Of course, then you can share it via the same free Flixel iOS app.

Given the increasing need for visual content to supplement your music, this is another useful tool for your arsenal.

myband.is Website for Estados Alterados

Though we typically wait till services are available for use, you can sign up now for early updates and beta access to myband.is which is a free band website-making service similar to Onesheet.

The service is being developed by La Cocoleria, a "group of music lovers who make a living as independent web professionals" in Bogota, Columbia. myband.is offers a strong graphic look with links out to your other sites as well as an embedded player that can provide such content as music, photos, videos and a Facebook newsfeed. You can check out 10 examples from different bands including Estados Alterados, Zoe Keating and The Plasticos.

What may ultimately set myband.is apart is that, since they are focused solely on music, their site could become a hub for music discovery.

Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith maintains his business writing hub at Flux Research and blogs about dance at All World Dance. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.