Sonisphere is in its second year and this time with close to 130 bands, they have extended the revelry to three days in total and increased capacity from 40,000 to a maximum of 55,000 black-cladded, riff worshipping festival goers per day.

Day one saw Europe invoking the first mass sing-along with their crowd pleaser The Final Countdown followed by the industrial/electro legend Gary Numan whose set was heavier and precisely tailored to the eager audience with extended versions of his classics Cars and Are Friends Electric.
Alice Cooper headlined the Saturn stage with his trademark theatrical performance which this time included inflatable dolls and giant size syringes.

All guns firing on the Second day with the Apollo stage hosting Anthrax, Placebo and headlining act Rammstein with their epic light and pyrotechnic show. Sparks flew as Rammstein’s industrial metal set exploded with a show of fire breathing, rocket launching and crowd surfing in a rowboat.
The Saturn stage shook with Soulfly, Fear Factory and Motley Crue and an exceptional vocal performance from Skunk Anansie.

Even with all 55,000 tickets being sold the festival felt comfortable with a final day line-up including Iggy and the Stooges, Alice in Chains, Slayer, Pendulum and Iron Maiden who had the crowd worked up early on and carried the momentum though to the final song.

Festival organiser Stuart Galbraith commented on the success of the festival saying ‘One of the key advantages at Sonisphere is the alternating stages letting fans have the opportunity to see all the main acts rather than having to choose due to clashing performance times. We also work closely with the authorities, the local community and the land owners to ensure the best possible festival for our audience.’

Sonisphere promises to be back next year with what’s expected to be an equally impressive line-up of bands, comedians and performers.

1. Google Sync is only supported on iPhone OS versions 3.0 and above. You can check your current version by going to Settings > General > About > Version. To upgrade, follow the instructions at http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/. Please upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0 before setting up Google Sync.

2. Perform a sync with iTunes to ensure that Contacts and Calendars from your iPhone are backed up to your computer.

Getting Started

1. Open the Settings application on your device’s home screen.

2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.

3. Tap Add Account….

4. Select Microsoft Exchange.

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Enter Account Info

5. In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address. If you use an @googlemail.com address, you may see an “Unable to verify certificate” warning when you proceed to the next step.

6. Leave the Domain field blank.

7. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username.

8. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.

9. Tap Next at the top of your screen.

9a. Choose Accept if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog appears.

10. A new Server field will appear. Enter m.google.com.

11. Press Next at the top of your screen again.

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12. Select the Google services you want to sync.

13. Unless you want to delete all the existing Contacts and Calendars on your phone, select the Keep on my iPhone option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes.

If you want to sync only the My Contacts group, you must choose to Delete Existing Contacts during the Google Sync install when prompted. If you choose to keep existing contacts, it will sync the contents of the “All Contacts” group instead.

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You’ve set up Google Sync for your iPhone. Synchronization will begin automatically if you have Push enabled on your phone. You can also open the Mail, Calendar or Contacts app and wait a few seconds to start a sync.

Here’s what he has to say:

“I posted a message on Twitter yesterday stating I thought The Beastie Boys and TopSpin Media “got it right” regarding how to sell music in this day and age. Here’s a link to their store:

[illcommunication.beastieboys.com]

Shortly thereafter, I got some responses from people stating the usual “yeah, if you’re an established artist - what if you’re just trying to get heard?” argument. In an interview I did recently this topic came up and I’ll reiterate what I said here.

If you are an unknown / lesser-known artist trying to get noticed / established:

* Establish your goals. What are you trying to do / accomplish? If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) - your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days your need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one.

If you’re forging your own path, read on.

* Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.
To clarify:
Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this - give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people’s email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special - make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan. Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase. Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters… whatever.

Don’t have a TopSpin as a partner? Use Amazon for your transactions and fulfillment. [www.amazon.com]

Use TuneCore to get your music everywhere. [www.tunecore.com]

Have a realistic idea of what you can expect to make from these and budget your recording appropriately.
The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact - it sucks as the musician BUT THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So… have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process (plus build your database).

The Beastie Boys’ site offers everything you could possibly want in the formats you would want it in - available right from them, right now. The prices they are charging are more than you should be charging - they are established and you are not. Think this through.

The database you are amassing should not be abused, but used to inform people that are interested in what you do when you have something going on - like a few shows, or a tour, or a new record, or a webcast, etc.
Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace - it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don’t autoplay). Constantly update your site with content - pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any - Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

If you don’t know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don’t get it - find someone who does to do this for you. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig - good luck, you’re going to be waiting a while.

Hope this helps, and I’ll scour responses for intelligent comments I can respond to.”

Do check out his post and website: http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183

- Jamie

The UK is sitting at 36th place, and USA is in at 29th!

Data from speedtest.net

Held over 3 days (30th July - 1st August) and attracting even bigger names than it’s rival Download, Sonisphere has become the hard rock/metal festival of choice for serious music fans.

Last year’s was good with 40,000 people attending, but this years is set to be even better with the increased capacity of 60,000. Below is the un-official lineup and stages for this years festival. This will be updated as new acts are added and confirmed.

View & Download a Map of the festival here

Click here for the official Sonisphere website and be sure to follow @jamie_dale on twitter for live Sonisphere updates

Ok, so it’s not the newest kid on the online beat making block, but it is one of the best. This rather impressive looking web based music production studio has most of the tools you’ll need to start making tunes right from your web browser. It’s certainly no replacement for conventional studio gear, but it’s a bit of fun when you’re bored.

It comes with emulators for some classic drum machines, sequencers and stomp boxes namely the TR-808, TB-303 and the BOSS guitar effects pedals.

You can set the time signature and BPM of your new track and using the Tone Matrix, you can programme in hooks and melodies like you would on a Monome say.

You can record your masterpiece, but you’re limited to 5mins recording time.

http://www.hobnox.com/index.1056.en.html

While the band ultimately gained strength from misfortune, initially they were on the verge of breaking up. “We honestly thought that after this thing happened with Chi, why even carry on?”

Although Deftones had already tracked a full album of songs with Cheng and producer Terry Date tentatively titled ‘Eros,’ they decided to shelve those recordings and work on an entirely new batch of songs with their friend Sergio Vega filling in on bass. They hired producer Nick Raskulinecz to work with them, and in just two months they had recorded an entirely new album. “I honestly think it’s one of the best, if not the best records we’ve ever done,” Moreno said. “My favourite record is ‘Around the Fur.’ It was written and recorded in four months, which was the fastest, easiest and funnest record we’ve ever made. This record totally has that feel to it.”

Full Interview

UPDATE:

http://www.gunsrazorsknives.com/

Deftones, via their website, have confirmed a release date of May 4, 2010 (pushed forward from the initially reported May 18 release date), for their album Diamond Eyes.

Google have had a FREE little feature called Google Apps for a while now, but still not that many people know about it. The big benefit is that it gives you all the features of Gmail, but with your own domain name! You can sync email to your phone, you can setup POP and email forwarding and even out of office replies. You can have up to 50 email accounts in total, and setup mailing lists and groups. Oh Google…..

But wait, there’s more… It will also give you Google Documents and Google Calendar linked to your domain name. Google Docs gives you a sort of virtual online Office suite, with Google’s version of Microsoft Excel, Powerpoint and Word. Google Calendar is an online calendar which will sync with your iPhone too.

All the features above can be accessed through:
mail.yourdomain.com
docs.yourdomain.com
 cal.yourdomain.com

So How’s it Done?

Once you have your domain name, then navigate yourself here: http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new

It will ask you to enter your domain name and confirm you are the owner. You must have the control panel for your domain name at the ready as you will need to edit some DNS settings to get it all working. I’m not going to go into the specifics of this too much as the set of instructions Google provide are far better than I could write. (leave a comment if you do get stuck)

The whole process from start to finish should have you up and running within 3-4 hours depending on propagation time.

We love free stuff. Enjoy

Why do this? Mostly to save time and to get your message out to more people.

To start with, you must have both a Facebook and a Twitter account. The best way I have found to link the two is using Twitter to update Facebooks status. The problem I was having is that I didnt necessarily want ALL of my tweets being shunted to my Facebook page. Enter Selective Twitter Status.

Selective Twitter Status is a little Facebook app by Andy Young and is available here

It works by monitoring your tweets for anything with the hash tag #fb. When it finds one it farms that tweet out to your Facebook page.

All you have to do is add the application to your Facebook page, fill in your twitter log-in details and give it permission to post to your wall.

Thats it. Just put #fb at the end of the tweet you want to go to Facebook and it’s job done.

The purpose of jailbreaking an iPhone is to unlock the potential that lies within.

A jailbroken and unlocked iPhone will allow you to use your phone on most networks, with most sim cards in nearly any country without being tied into a certain provider’s contract.

It will also allow you to use a little app called Cydia, which is a bit like Apple’s app store but with a whole host of software that Apple might not want you to use.

For example, you can download via cydia, an app called WinterBoard to completely change the theme of your phone or you can download an array of ringtones instead of the rather boring default selection. For the geeky among us, you can download an app called openSSH which will give full SSH capabilities to your iPhone.

The details below are for PC and will work with the iPhone 2G, 3G and iPod touch. It will not work with the 3Gs yet.

You will need to download:

- RedSn0w: (Used to jailbreak the iPhone)
 http://theiphoneproject.org/windows/redsn0w-win_0.7.2.zip

- iPhone 2g only - Firmware: (RedSn0w will ask for this)

http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/

Steps:

1 - Backup and Sync the phone in iTunes first (make sure notes sync too)

2 - Restore phone to vanilla 3.0 firmware via the restore option in iTunes

3 - Run RedSn0w and Jailbreak the iPhone or iPod touch.

4 - Restore backup from iTunes (it will ask you for this when you first plug it in after jailbreak)

5 - Install Ultrasn0w from inside Cydia if you want to Unlock the phone

6 - Install Winterboard from inside Cydia for themes

Here’s a good YouTube video if you need a little extra help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wByBC4Uc10Y

That’s it. Your free to be different!