We thought you may be interested in learning about Artist Central, a free service where musicians, managers and record labels can promote music on Amazon.com.

Artist Central allows users to contribute compelling content to Amazon.com Artist Stores, search results, and product detail pages. This helps music fans on amazon.com discover artists and their work more easily, and leads to greater sales.

Users can upload photos, a bio, videos, and audio for promotional streaming, as well as utilize new features like a Twitter widget and customizable banners to create a robust, customized Artist Store on Amazon.com, ultimately helping customers discover artists and their work more easily. Check out the artist store for Band of Horses to see these features in action.

Artist Central is completely free to anyone selling their music on Amazon.com. Getting started is easy and only takes a few minutes. Just go to Artist Central and sign in with your Amazon account to claim your artist. (If there is currently no artist store for your artist, you can click “Create a new Artist Store”.) Claims are usually approved within 1-2 days.

Once your claim has been approved, you can upload artist photos, videos, tracks, banners, and bios and see them on the site almost immediately.

The event will be held next Wednesday and will start at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, 1 p.m. Eastern, and will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Alluding to the music-themed nature of the event, the invitation includes an acoustic guitar with a sound hole in the shape of an Apple logo.

The announcement dispels an earlier report that the event would be held on Sept. 7.

In recent days, a firestorm of rumors and speculation have centered around a supposed new Apple TV, perhaps dubbed iTV, starting at $99. Both Bloomberg and The New York Times have cited anonymous sources as stating that Apple is currently negotiating with content providers to offer 99 cent TV episode rentals.

However, Apple reportedly does not intend to make the new Apple TV the centerpiece of its announcement, as sources said Chief Executive Steve Jobs doesn’t expect the device to be an instant mainstream hit. Instead, Apple is allegedly looking to improve its product, which it has long referred to as a “hobby,” by transitioning it to the iOS operating system and giving it access to the App Store for content and games.

Apple is also expected to reveal a new iPod touch with a forward facing camera that will allow FaceTime video chat, as is currently available on the iPhone 4. There have been numerous leaked parts alleged to be from Apple’s forthcoming portable media player that show a space in the device’s front panel for a camera.

While the iPod touch lacks a phone number to allow people to connect for a FaceTime call, beta releases of iOS 4.1 show that the media player will identify users by their e-mail address. Jobs said earlier this summer that his company will ship tens of millions of devices compatible with FaceTime this year alone. Currently, only the iPhone 4 is capable of making FaceTime video chat calls over Wi-Fi.

(Source: Appleinsider.com)

“Playlists have always been central to the Spotify service and with the recent introduction of Spotify social we’ve seen millions of playlists be shared between friends and family. With millions of great playlists being created and shared we’ve looked to make it even easier for Spotify users to manage them with today’s introduction of playlist folders in this Spotify update.”

Alongside playlist folders – which up till now has been one of the most requested features - Spotify also introduces a number of other new features in this latest update, including:

Official Spotify Twitter updates will appear for all users in the Feed to keep them up-to-date on all the latest Spotify and music news

- A new look and feel for the Search view. Artist and album images are shown to make the search view more visually arresting
- Newly-added picture of playlist subscribers to the header of each playlist, so users can see at a glance who’s subscribed.
- Support for Windows 7 Snap, Jump list and Taskbar features
- Added “Send to Windows Live” option

The new version will be rolled out to users today.

Former executives from Disney and EA have joined forces to form QVIVO, a company that aims to release a free social media centre app that allow users to play and stream movies and music while interacting with their Facebook friends.

Former Disney man Jon Niermann and Liam McCallum, who were both serving as executives for EA’s Asian branch, are hoping that the QVIVO app will attract social networking addicts who want to buy, organize and stream their video and audio content.

The app is free for PC and Mac, but extenders for other devices such as phones will be paid for. It is described as ‘a free social media app for your PC and Mac. It organises your media into beautiful libraries, plays anything you can think of and even shares your fun with friends’.

(Source: Techradar.com)

SoundCloud is opening up a bit more to allow you to find and share more sounds to use and reuse. With new search and discovery features for Creative Commons tracks, your creations can go much further. More options give you more freedom over your audio content on the web. It helps expose your work and find people to collaborate with that you perhaps wouldn’t normally find.

With Creative Commons licenses, creators have the freedom to choose how their work can be used, shared and re-used. There are six different licenses that provide users with different levels. Not only can you search for tracks released under CC licenses on SoundCloud, but the SoundCloud player also got a face-lift. It now displays the type of CC license in the top right corner of the player.

Read SoundCloud’s full announcement here.

Press speculation abounds about forthcoming Apple or Google music subscriptions services. If and when they materialize they’ll join a crowded field of alternatives big and small. Competitors range from ten year veterans Rhapsody and Napster, euro-darling Spotify to newcomers like MOG and Rdio. In spite of the enormous investment the global user base is estimated at under 2 million current subscribers globally.

Read the full article here.

Sitting within the re-launched youtube.com/music site, Songkick will power concert recommendations in the ‘Events Near You’ section which draws on a user’s IP address to pinpoint their location. Sometimes this becomes an issue when your IP is located at a completely different part of the country (which we found that our IP was in Oxford, not in Cornwall!).

Songkick CEO Ian Hogarth says: “From our point of view, this is one step closer to making it incredibly easy to find local concerts, whether you’re on Songkick or on another site discovering music. It’s kind of early days, but it seems like a very significant number of people are coming through, finding out more about the show, buying tickets, etc.”

You will be paid a royalty on sales commiserate with most label deals. Placement is non-exclusive and by submitting you are agreeing to certain terms and conditions so read carefully before you submit.

Submit only songs that you believe are hit singles and are radio ready. Songs will be released as they are, so if they are not radio ready they are not eligible for consideration.  The label’s A&R ears are anxious to hear what you’ve got.

Click here to learn more about this opportunity.

Music Xray is an A&R platform where over 500 music industry companies and professionals (including major labels, Grammy-winning producers, indie labels, Hollywood music supervisors and many more) have opened drop boxes where you can submit music to hundreds of opportunities for acts and songs. You can also have direct and personal access to scores of music industry veterans for advice and help navigating the landscape of the ever-changing music industry.

Visit the Music Xray website.

The voting process will be taking place throughout the competition; winners will be finalized and issued on September 8. There will be one grand prize winner and three runner-ups. To enter the contest, look for the lyrics below, perform a cover of the song, and visit our SoundCloud page where you can upload it.

Contest participants are encouraged to produce some of the most stereotypical pop song music they can bear to play.

Read the full details – including the song lyric – here.

Asked by analysts specifically about the recent Google Music rumors, Bronfman Jr. delivered an intriguing big-picture assessment on mobile music generally:

“Google has yet to make any announcement about its music plans and I certainly don’t want to pre-empt those. In general, as the economic hierarchy in the mobile space – the wireless space – has yet to be written, there are a number of companies jockeying for position.
Companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony, network operators, and device manufacturers all recognize that that economic hierarchy is yet to be established. In that race, in that much larger world than the computer world, we see a great deal of opportunity because content is a critical enabler.

Without being specific about Google’s plans, we are optimistic about the next 12 to 18 months, as the struggle for hierarchy plays out amongst major corporations; we’re optimistic about the role we can play.”

Though Google last year enhanced its music search results using Lala and iLike, rumors about Google Music suggest it will primarily be an Android service.