One of my favorite producers of late, Maya Jane Coles, is a rising start in the house music arena. She’s been tagged on a number of lists:

• ‘Producer of the Year 2011′ by DJ Mag
• ‘Best Breakthrough DJ 2011′ by Mixmag
• Debuted at No. 9 on the Resident Advisor ’2011 DJ Poll’
• ‘Best Newcomer 2011′ at the Ibiza DJ Awards 2011

via SoundCloud

Tony Zeoli

Wow, where do I begin?

I’m in Miami for my first week as Director of Product Development (Music Services) with Market America, a leading network marketing company based in Greensboro, NC with a global footprint in 7 territories, including the UK, Canada, and Australia. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, as I just accepted the offer on Tuesday and Wednesday I was on a plane to Miami!

My role is to drive product development of music applications and services for Conquer Entertainment, a social music platform developed by its CEO, Amanda Ridinger, and the passionate, talented, and creative team supporting the product to date.

Main Stage at MA World 2012

The Conquer Entertainment platform for artists is a DIY software-as-a-service mechanism to allow artists to maximize the distribution and marketing of the music to fans through social media, while leveraging Market America’s transformational power of the Shop.com’s network of 190,000 direct distributors worldwide. Shop.com associates will have the ability to create and market music they believe in directly to music fans in their networks. Music fans can purchase music directly from the a Shop.com associate’s website, innovative social media widgets for Facebook and other platforms (I’ll be bringing this to WordPress and Drupal for sure!), or through the Conquer Entertaiment portal, which currently redirects to http://myworld.marketamerica.com/. That will certainly change and I’m already working on it.

The first order of business will be to ensure that music fans and artists can discover their music at a Conquer Entertainment domain name, while we prepare for the rollout of Conquer 3.0. In the meantime, we’ll be rolling out a ShopBox widget (patent pending) for social platforms providing artists with a way to publish their tracks to Facebook and sell tracks directly in social media streams. Yes, you’ll be able to complete the transaction AND download directly from a Facebook news feed or band page. It’s pretty awesome. I wish I would have thought of that myself!

Of course, just getting in the door this week, I have tons of ideas. I’ve been meeting with (and partying with) the Conquer team for the past few days, both at their booth on the main concourse of American Airlines arena and at the Market America after-party at the Viceroy 50, a lounge with an outdoor pool on the 50th Floor of the Viceroy Hotel in downtown Miami. Of course, on the way down from the party, we got stuck in the elevator for a few minutes, but it ended up working out. Although my life is dedicated to digital, sometimes digital – especially when running things as important as elevators – can be problematic.

It’s off to my 3rd day here in Miami. I’ll try and post a few more pics and videos of the Conquer team and the conference itself. Time for breakfast!

When I’m not toiling away in OmniGraffle, creating site maps, wireframes, and associated product documentation, you can find me creating DJ mixes using the digital audio workstation, Ableton Live. Before I got involved in building and managing really cool web products, I was a DJ in the Boston area. And, that’s where, in 1995, I launched Netmix.com. It was the first DJ culture website in the world to broadcast globally renowned DJs in the mix.

I originally ran the site out of my apartment in Brookline, MA. I paid a local web development shop about $10,000 over two-years to build and host the site and Real Audio streams. In 1996, I split up with my girlfriend at the time and moved to New York City to pursue fame and fortune as one of the first online music start-ups. After 5 difficult years working p/t to pay the bills and spending nights and weekends on Netmix, I sold the company for $3.165 Million in cash and stock. While that looks like a phenomenal sum on paper, it turned gold honey pot turned to a dark bronze.

Our deal closed on June 1st, 2000. I bought a few bottles of Moët & Chandon, then popped the cork in the office we were sub-leasing from one of my former partner’s friends on University Place at 10th Street in the West Village. I remember shedding a few tears of relief, for it was a long arduous journey from growing up in subsidized housing in the Allston section of Boston, to being handed a check for $100,000 with the next payment around the corner. Unfortunately, that payment never came. The bubble had burst and our parent company couldn’t raise a nickel to keep us alive. In fact, despite our combined traffic numbers and the dedication of our content team, our sales team hadn’t sold a dollar of advertising that summer. While Netmix was on its way to generating our first $100,000 in sales that year, our parent company folded only 6 months later. The advertising market bottomed out and the writing was on the wall.

After 6-years of continuous growth, Netmix went dark. I still have all the mixes. One day I’ll put them all online again.

It’s been 11-years since those tumultuous days of what is now called “dotcom 1.0.” In 2003, I discovered WordPress, a blogging platform that allowed me to bring Netmix back online as a blog. Since that time, I have published over 400 articles and launched my podcast, the Netmix Global House Sessions. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing–Netmix will always be live. It may not be as timely or as relevant as it once was. The inconsistent publishing schedule is evident and my mixes are the only audio on the site. But, I don’t do it for the money. I do to keep alive what I first started over 16-years ago. And, who knows where it will go.

In the spirit of Netmix, here is my latest Global House Sessions podcast. You can either listen to the SoundCloud version below, or subscribe to the podcast and download it with iTunes to your desktop or iOS device.

8tracks is on of my favorite Internet radio sites. And, I’m not just saying that (disclosure: I’m on the Board of Advisors), because I’m down with the crew. It’s just that these cats were able to survive the major label mafia and keep their handcrafted internet radio service available to wanna-be DJs. You gotta check out some of these mixes. Definitely music you won’t hear on the radio. I’m digging this mix I posted from Aiden Bordner. Check this out and other phat mixes on 8tracks.com. Start your own radio station, tell your friends, and play all the music you probably have never heard, for as long as your ears can stand it. Anyone can become the DJ. I’ve got some joints on 8tracks as well. You can listen to my mixes on my profile here.