Music Nation (www.musicnation.com <http://www.musicnation.com/> ) has today announced the release of Friend Finder – a web tool that allows Music Nation artists and fans to seamlessly send out invitations to contacts in their pre-existing Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail address books.  In order to encourage artists to utilize this new functionality, Music Nation has launched a contest in tandem with the release of Friend Finder.  Artists who bring in the most friends between now and July 9 will win a personalized ad on the Music Nation homepage, a shout-out in the MN newsletter to, and an Epic Records prize pack, among other prizes.
Music Nation’s second series of online music competitions kicked off on June 18th. The site re-launched in the end of May with added key widgets and functionality, enabling artists to better promote themselves not only on the Music Nation site but across the Web.  This Friend Finder tool is just the latest example of the developments Music Nation continues to make for its community of independent artists.
Please help us in getting the word out to musicians that might be able to benefit from this. Let me know if you have any questions!
Thanks,
Jaime
Just to remind you about the scoop on Music Nation:
This summer, based on the success of this spring’s Music Nation competition, Epic Records and Original Signal Recordings are offering up two more recording contracts. Two 12-week contests are in action at www.musicnation.com, and at the end of the competition, both a rock and hip hop act will score major recording contracts, among other prizes.
All bands have to do is register (for free!) at MusicNation.com, create a profile page, and upload their videos. Rock and hip hop acts will be automatically entered into the competition.
Not a rocker or into hip hop? No worries. The Music Nation community has opened its doors to all genres of music- artists into rock, pop, hip hop, country, R&B/soul, latin, spiritual/gospel, dance/electronic, world, jazz, and their subsets now have a place to take advantage of the active community feedback and the powerful features Music Nation offers. Competitions for recording contracts in these genres are also in the works.
All artists will be able to take advantage of the offerings of the site, including the new embeddable EPK (includes bios, show info, mp3s, photos, press) that automatically generates when a profile is built, providing a perfect signature – a digital demo – artists can use to easily fingerprint a variety of web platforms. Â
In addition:
- An embeddable multimedia player (bands can create their own rotating clip of videos, mp3s, photos and embed on a number of sites directly from their MN profile page)
- User-generated statistic that are dynamic & programmable and give bands instant feedback from their fans
- Advance searching by tags/influences (created by both artists and users)
- RSS feeds for tour dates