Santa Monica, U.S.A. — On October 15, Interscope Geffen A&M unveiled a new website that reimagines the concept of a traditional record label website. Using real-time social technologies from Echo and Arktan, Interscope has created an immersive experience that is woven from the social activities of its artists. The new site provides fans with a music resource that fosters deeper engagement with their favorite artists while inspiring them to discover new ones.

Social media is a core component of every music label, artist and brand partner’s engagement strategy. Music labels are continually publishing social media content on behalf of their artists, in addition to the exclusive tweets, videos and photos that artists are generating themselves.  By weaving all of this content together into a seamless, social experience, Interscope is flipping the content production funnel on its head and is bringing what fans care about most to the forefront.

“Everything a record label does is social,” said Lee Hammond, VP of Digital for Interscope Geffen A&M. “By leveraging this activity as the primary content source for our label website, we will always have the freshest, most relevant content available for our fans.  When our social media manager posts content to Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, that content will instantly flow into the Featured content on our home page.”

This new content framework extends beyond social media activity to include Interscope’s latest releases and official artist merchandise from Bravado. Every piece of traditional content is now displayed in a social way, with a pinboard-style visualization and the ability to Like and Comment on each item.

“This revolutionary approach reimagines how content should be generated, presented and displayed, creating a fusion between social and traditional content,” said Hammond. “You can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.”

Visitors can tab through each category of the site by swiping from side to side in an experience that’s formatted to work on a desktop or an iPad. Each category features a consistent set of experiences, curated using a mix of traditional and real-time social content from across the web. These include:

• Featured – A mix of real-time Facebook posts, YouTube videos and exclusive content generated by Interscope.
• Tweets – The latest tweets by or about the artist, curated to filter our spam and obscenities.
• Music – The latest music from a particular artist or label on Spotify.
• Videos – A media wall featuring the artist’s most recent videos from YouTube.
• Photos – A mix of artist photos from social networks and Interscope’s exclusive image library.

Every piece of content is fully interactive and if a visitor stops on a specific category, it persists as they browse. The underlying infrastructure can inject any piece of content into the artist streams, including merchandise, new tracks on Spotify, advertisements and other promotions that drive fans into revenue generating channels for both the label and the artist.

From a content perspective, Interscope is bringing its fans to the forefront. The homepage features fan generated art from Sleeveface, a site where users can upload pictures of themselves using physical recordings of Interscope Artists to create interesting images. Interscope also plans to accept user-generated sleeveart for each artist directly from the site.

All of the content on the site is generated in real-time through cloud services API’s. Arktan, a curation service that aggregates real-time social data from popular social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blogs and RSS, provides the social activity for each artist and brand. That data, along with other real-time feeds from Interscope’s merchandise and brand partners, is injected into Echo StreamServer, a real-time activity database capable of capturing, permanently storing and serving up social activity data at web scale.

Interscope also uses Echo’s Pinboard Visualization Plug-in to display each piece of real-time content on the site. By injecting an RSS feed from their merchandise store into Echo StreamServer, Interscope is able to visualize artist merchandise in a significantly more interesting way and integrate relevant products throughout the site in a visually consistent manor.

“The real-time, social infrastructure from Echo and Arktan provides Interscope with a very flexible framework to promote everything that a record label needs to promote, while keeping content fresh for the visitor,” said Hammond. “We believe that this approach sets a new bar for corporate websites in the music industry.”

The website was designed by Autumn 01, a technology, design and strategy agency based in Sydney, Australia.

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Van Halen, Rock And Roll Hall of Fame inductees and one of the most important and influential rock bands of all time, announced their return to the live stage with an extraordinary 2012 North American tour. The announcement was made during a once-in-a-lifetime performance, at the intimate Cafe Wha? in New York City. Known around the world for some of the most iconic live performances in music history, the legendary rock band will begin their tour on February 18. Kool & The Gang will join Van Halen for select tour dates.

Tickets for the Live Nation-promoted tour go on sale beginning January 14 at Ticketmaster.com andLiveNation.com.

In addition, Van Halen confirmed their new album, A Different Kind Of Truth, will be released in the U.S. by Interscope Records on February 7. The first single from the album, “Tattoo”, and its accompanying video will be debut simultaneously on Tuesday, January 10th, with album pre-orders starting that day. A Different Kind Of Truth is Van Halen’s first original studio album with singer David Lee Roth since the band’s classic multi-platinum album 1984.

Fans can expect Van Halen to perform selections from A Different Kind Of Truth alongside songs from their arsenal of epic hits that include:  “Eruption,” “Running with the Devil,” “Jamie’s Cryin’,” “You Really Got Me,” ”Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” “Everybody Wants Some,” “Unchained,” “And The Cradle Will Rock,” “Beautiful Girls,” “Mean Street,” “Somebody Get Me A Doctor,” “Jump,” “Panama,” “Hot For Teacher,” “I’ll Wait,” and more from their classic albums Van Halen, Van Halen II, Women and Children First, Fair Warning, Diver Down and 1984.

Van Halen – who the Los Angeles Times recently called “a force of nature” and “one of the flat-out greatest rock bands on the planet” – was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in March of 2007.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1974, Van Halen changed the rock and roll landscape forever with the release of their self-titled, 1978 debut album displaying unparalleled stage presence, revolutionary musicianship, and extraordinary songwriting abilities. With more than 75 million albums sold worldwide, the band’s record of achievement is hard to top.

Among a long list of awards, recognition and accolades, Van Halen joins an elite short list of two time Diamond Award honorees in the history of the music industry. Presented with two Diamond Award RIAA Certified Status’ for their albums Van Halen and 1984, the band has produced a repertoire of hits that remain some of the strongest and most influential rock songs ever written that fans will admire for decades to come.

Kool & The Gang found a special sound at the unique intersection of jazz, R&B, funk and pop. Their music has been created by the same core of players for over thirty years: Robert “Kool” Bell, his brother Khalis Bayyan, their longtime friends Dennis “DT” Thomas and George “Funky” Brown.

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