Village Gamer

Reminder – There is less than 48 hours left to get your nominations in for our first Readers’ Choice Awards – don’t be shy or assume that someone else has nominated your title, character or studio – send in your own nomination, whether you’re a developer, PR specialist or gamer. All Canadian titles, components, studios and publishers are eligible.

Calling All Canadian Game Dev Types – Autodesk has issued a call for submissions for its 2010 Games Reel. Providing the perfect avenue to flaunt your work, the reel will be showcased at GDC from March 11-13, in San Francisco, Calif. Additionally, it will be streamed live on the AREA and featured on Autodesk’s Web site. If you’ve worked on any recent video game cinematics, trailers, in-game sequences and/or animations created with 3ds Max, HumanIK, Kynapse, Maya, MotionBuilder, Mudbox and/or Softimage, submit your work today. The deadline for imagery submissions is January 15, 2010 and for video submissions, January 29, 2010.

Campbell River – Independent musicians trying to find out how to sell music online can now use Website Music Player’s easy-to-install MP3 widget app that lets music artists take control of their income. Instead of handing over percentages to corporate media companies, musicians are able to set up a playlist of their own downloadable songs, and market them on social networking sites that already attract millions of visitors.

WebsiteMusicPlayer.com users can load their catalogue of songs into a flash MP3 player widget, choose a skin that color-coordinates with their website, and collect direct PayPal payments from the buyers who purchase their music tracks. Music sellers set their own prices and can track their sales info to help with future marketing plans.

Sellers have complete control over the entire process. They can create preview clips that allow buyer to hear enough to decide to purchase, yet don’t give away the entire song. The download process is protected and automated to allow hands-free delivery to the buyer, yet still protects the seller from having their download links illegally spread all over the web. Sellers can capture buyers’ emails to create a list of fans to notify when new songs are released. With the upgraded Platinum service, sellers can have their fans and associates sign up as their affiliates and sell music from their own website sites to increase sales and exposure.

“Website Music Player puts control back into the hands of the musicians themselves. It provides an opportunity for artists to finish cutting a mp3 or album, and then have it selling online that same day. Also, there are no middle people standing in the way of musicians selling directly to their fans,” says Jeff Turner, Marketing Manager of WebsiteMusicPlayer.com.

By using the simple ‘Add Application’ feature to install a widget on their profiles, Website Music Player subscribers can reach millions of potential fans that are already visiting popular social networking sites. Rather than spending money to place ads, WMP subscribers can tap into free traffic that is growing every day on these popular web 2.0 sites. Sellers can also use the WMP widgets to sell music online from their self-hosted websites or blogs, which provides a great marketing opportunity to distribute their music in many different places.

Music sellers who may feel intimidated by the technical challenge of setting up their own system for distributing and selling music online but don’t need to worry about this when using Website Music Player. According to Jeff, “A lot of thought and planning went into designing the system to be intuitive and very easy to use so musicians can concentrate on their music rather than worry about the technical side of things.”