Web 2.0 Ireland

The fab designer of Web2Ireland, James Gallagher, just contacted me about the re-launch of LiveWebStars and their partnering with one of my fave web-sites, DownloadMusic.ie.

Livewebstars.tv promotes new music by enabling up-and-coming artists to perform and interact using live on-line streaming – broadcasting their lives, practice sessions, gigs etc to an audience right around the globe.

By working together with DownloadMusic, they enable consumers to buy mp3s with their mobile phone and also watch, hear and chat to the band in real time.

This is the sort of smart partnering that makes complete sense. It benefits everyone involved and will be of huge benefit to Indie Bands trying to get noticed and differentiate themselves.

There are apps/sites I like and apps/sites I love. DownloadMusic is in the latter category. One of those businesses that just nails the elevator pitch. As soon as you hear how it works, you get it. 

Johnny Beirne is the guy behind it and he has built something of perfect simplicity. Buy independent Irish music using SMS shortcodes. That’s it. I’ve used it, I’m in a permanent state of envy over how well it works.

From such a simple system, he has added value in so many places. The downloads now count in the Irish charts and have had a material effect on them on many occasions. The knock-on effect for small Irish bands is just enormous.

Because it is SMS based, bands can literally shout out short-codes on stage. Offline and online are now seamless! Not only that, but the site has been expanded to include band merchandise too. 

The recent launch of a USB key featuring 15 of the best Indie tracks from DownloadMusic is another bit of marketing brilliance.

Head on over, play a few clips and try it out. If you like it, why not blog about it too?

Some bits and bobs from around the Web2Ireland scene…

Joe survives at UTR – and gets great coveage for PutPlace in webware

Exceptional launches – Error tracking and managing for Rails folks and their apps

edenbee gets coverage on Mashable – “Edenbee or Not to Be? Climate Change Social Network Steps In To Help”

Firefox Party – Dublin – June 19th. All over the world, Mozilla will be celebrating the launch of Firefox 3 in late June. Mozilla is sending over lots of prizes/swag for us to give away on the night. The Irish need to live up to the great name we have for partying. Contact Paul Walsh for sponsorship opportunity – paul AT segala.com SPONSORS BY: BT, putplace (http://putplace.com) and Blacknight

Curry 2.0 dinner coming up in Dublin – more details to follow.

Wexford based ubcam launches – looks cool…

Polldaddy at 116 million + votes and counting – Lenny is building quite the database of value

Investment scene/activity @ web – no mention of Ireland…

Sean McGrath – XML and python expert – looking for some folks in Web2.0 space to work together..

Pixenate – plugins for wordpress and MT – Walter is building a great business in the photo editing space.

Downloadmusic – selling lots of songs via SMS – clever service with some great International plans