Geek moment: Webdoc & Thinglink are my two new loves

I always love checking out new start-ups and exploring the possibilities they offer for artists, especially around this time of year when everyone is gearing up to key conferences like LeWeb (this week in Paris) and Midem (end of january in Cannes).

My latest discovery was Webdoc. The name sounded a little retro to me, but I was curious regardless, so I signed up and started testing a design. Today, I asked our intern to put a nice flyer together to announce Emilie Chick's new concert dates in France and this is what he did. Pretty ...fly, eh?

Most of the admin tools are intuitive, and some will very probably need a little fine-tuning in the near future, but overall, I'm just really really excited. The possibilities are endless and it's an amazing tool for artists to start using for personal qualitative flyers, interactive posters, count-downs till release, voting contests and more. EMI is the first big label to use it and are currently running a Pink Floyd treasure hunt.

The beauty of Webdoc is that you can publish it publicly or share it privately if you prefer and it integrates all the social tools you need to make it viral (Facebook, Twitter and G+) while it also provides an embed link to add anywhere needed. So I was also able to add it to Emilie Chick's landing page in no time which is just what I needed. 

Discovering new tools is always exciting. This fad of mine started when I discovered the Midemlab finalists 2 years ago and compulsively looking up every start-up on the list and imagining the possibilities as a consequence. I felt like I'd stumbled upon Ali Baba's secret cave. I do not consider myself a confirmed geek (far from it!), but I always stay on the look-out for new tools for artists via twitter feeds and the various start-up/hack day contests that are starting to multiply (which is fabulous). I discovered Webdoc because it won  the Music Tech Pitch 4.5 start-up contest in London. 

Another great tool I stumbled upon some time ago now is Thinglink. I enouraged the artists I worked with to integrate it when possible. Carosel, who are proper geeks and always super reactive, are a good example of this. On the tumblr they set up to share the recording process of their second album, they regularly post videos, reviews and cool info but more importantly cool pictures. Which is why Thinglink gives each picture shared that extra interest for fans. See below.

Of course, there are many many amazing start-ups spurting across the web, but I just wanted to share the two that caught my attention the most as I feel they are actively contributing to helping both save money on expensive non-customizable flyers for artists and their partners and above all get really creative at promoting themselves online.
....Who is going to complain about that, may I ask?