Bitvibe

June 14 – 16, 2011 was the Licensing Expo 2011 at Mandalay Bay, in Sin City – Las Vegas, NV. Bitvibe co-founders, Art Edstrom and I attended the event to evangelize the future of licensing and how brands can leverage the Bitvibe platform, in conjunction with their social media presence, to create a powerful synergy with their fans.

We discussed unique brand extension and fan engagement opportunities with some of the most well known brands in the world and the response was fantastic. One very experienced licensing executive commented that she had “certainly never heard anything like it before!” Other comments were things like; “wow, you guys are really onto something”, “I’m surprised nobody has thought of this before” and the obvious “what a great idea!”. As we any new innovation, a few brands didn’t understand what we’re doing.

Our platform creates new revenue opportunities for brands to leverage what their loyal fans already love doing but don’t have a legitimate, legal outlet for and the power of worldwide crowdsourcing means the sky’s the limit. It’s the ultimate in brand extension and fan engagement, creating a win/win for everyone as well as creating one of the most powerful new ways for brands to monetize their social graph.

Art took this photo of me at the Elvis Presley Enterprises Booth during Licensing Expo 2011, prior to meeting with them to discuss how Bitvibe can help them to extend their brand.

We had great discussions with representatives from many of the most well known brands in the world, including Star Wars, Star Trek, the NBA, Nascar, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Janet Jackson and many others. All in all it was a great learning experience for us. We had a great time, met some very forward thinking people and learned a lot. See you all next year!

Star Wars Booth at Licensing Expo 2011

Outside E3 Expo in Downtown LA

In Bitvibe’s continuing quest for better understanding of fan-based markets outside of the music industry, I participated in the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in LA the past two days. Certainly an eye opening experience being from outside the gaming industry. Massive booths. Tens of thousands of people. Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed roaming from booth to booth.

The gaming industry is projected to eclipse $70 billion in revenue by 2015.  The music industry is approximately the same size globally. Two huge markets we’re working in.

Related articles

• What we learned from the E3 Expo (cnn.com)
• Top 3 Gaming Trends From E3 Gaming Expo (abcnews.go.com)
• At E3 Video Game Expo, the Buzz is About Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 (shoppingblog.com)
• Massively’s E3 2011 awards and impressions (massively.joystiq.com)
• E3 2011: The lesser-seen hardware (reviews.cnet.com)
• Exclusive: Who Won The E3 Buzz Battle? [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)

Arthur Edstrom (CEO, co-founder) (Photo by Kamil Bojanczyk for TechCrunch)

I’d like to thank everyone that stopped by the Bitvibe Startup Alley exhibit during TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC, May 23-25, 2011. We enjoyed talking with everyone about how we’re applying crowd sourcing to fan-base markets to help brands engage deeply with their fan-base while allowing their fans to create and sell stunning items.

AND, I received a lot of wonderful comments about the Styx guitar painted by Linda Jacque. We will make this piece of fan art available in the Bitvibe marketplace. It looks amazing on the wall!

By Courtney Harding (@cortneyharding), New York

via Billboard.biz

Ashton Kutcher — actor, celebrity and apparently something of a technologist — took the stage this morning on the second day of TechCrunch Disrupt, and told Charlie Rose that he wants to create a “Y Combinator for media companies.”

Kutcher said his specific talent was moving ideas and businesses from the fringe to the mainstream, using his race with CNN to get a million followers on Twitter as moving the platform in to popular use. He added that he has 6 million twitter followers and 9 million Facebook fans, and can use that megaphone to push brands forward.

The actor said that the first thing he looks for when judging potential investors is whether or not the company solves a problem, and that his goal is to bring some of the efficiencies that exist in the tech world to the film world.

He also shared an anecdote about discovering his films on a download site and sending the link to the movie studio, only to be met with silence. He compared the current cannibalization of the film industry to what’s happened in the music industry over the past decade.

Elsewhere at the conference, a handful of music companies were in the main hall at TechCrunch Disrupt:

– Bitvibe is an Austin company that sells fan art with a band’s blessing, displayed a Kiss painting and a Styx guitar, and shared a story about selling fan art at a band’s show with great success.

– Gobbler allows musicians to upload and share large files, was also present on start-up alley, positioning itself as a way for artists to keep track of files and avoid the dreaded loss of the disc containing their new album.

– Thinglink, which embeds links in images and then allows the images to go viral and be shared, demoed an example of a product it did for Simple Plan, where clicking on various parts of the band’s album cover directed users to videos, songs, and places to buy music.

In this photo: Archana Chattha, Vijay Chattha, Jason Lee, Tim Chang, Arthur Edstrom, Ustad lal Singh Bhatti, Satish Pillai, Pangfua Her, Dave Wood, Ron Wikso, Jon Cook, Cindy Lundin Mesaros

Check out the sick Black Mahal bass guitar and custom painted clock created based on Bitvibe’s fan-sourced business model of engaging with talented fans to create stunning branded items.

We met up with Black Mahal for their show at Momo’s during SXSW. Great band! Fun time.

Pictured is Gabe from San Antonio, with the fan made Gregg Rolie Band original painting that he recently purchased through Bitvibe at a live Gregg Rolie Band show in San Antonio.

He got it signed by each member of the Gregg Rolie Band and said that he was going to make sure and place it in spot in his house where ALL his friends would see it! This gorgeous painting was created by Gregg Rolie fan Linda Jacque.

By the way, Gabe is the lead singer for Lights of San Antonio a Journey tribute band. Gregg Rolie was of course, not only a founding member of Santana, but of also of Journey.

Congrats to Gabe, Linda and the Gregg Rolie Band for having such cool fans!

We’ve been fortunate to recently meet Santana (and Gregg Rolie Band) fan, Artist Linda Jacque. We wanted to create a one of kind painting on a guitar for Gregg Rolie fans. You’ll see in this short video it’s a stunning detailed guitar design for the Gregg Rolie Band. Gregg is looking at the guitar and signing it as a collectors item.

Gregg Rolie, co-founder, Santana and Journey. Inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

[Note Nov 14, 2010: This guitar sold almost immediately. Linda's working on another few designs. We're thrilled. Thanks GRB fans!]

We’re excited to have just received Eric Resch’s first coffee product for Bitvibe. We’ve worked with him to create Sacrifice Coffee for the Gregg Rolie Band. The coffee is rich, full and as addictive as the song Soul Sacrifice, which originally garnered international acclaim when Gregg performed it at Woodstock with the original Santana band.

Here’s a fun video I created to show this product off a bit:

Soul Sacrifice Coffee – Certified Socially Responsible Fair Trade Guatemalan, Ethiopian, French Roast.

Gregg Rolie Band

As you have read in past posts, we’ve changed our strategic direction a bit here at Bitvibe. It’s not a radical change, but significant. We’re still working on what we think could be a massive marketplace, but for Bands. The kicker is we think we can facilitate FAN-MADE goods for bands. We’re planning to connected fans with bands to make these FAN-MADE goods.

Ok, cool. Umm, to start we need a band? Fortunately we got to sit down with legendary Gregg Rolie from Santana and Journey fame. He LOVED our concept. Agreed to have his Gregg Rolie Band be our first band for test marketing. Decision was made at Gregg’s kitchen table.

“I despise a world which does not feel that music is a higher revelation” — Ludwig van Beethoven

We’ve decided today to switch our business strategy. Wow, BIG decision!!