Tuesday March 8th was our first Digital Music NY networking event in 2011. We were at a new space in Midtown East, El Rio Grande, discussing the exciting new ways music is going social. Three awesome companies, Qoof, Rockethub, and FanBridge gave short presentations about how their companies are providing artists with new ways to take their music social.

To start off the night, DMNY co-founder Eric de Fontenay (MusicDish) gave a quick summary of what happened in MIDEM early this year. The biggest takeaway he pointed out was that the festival is reflecting larger trends in the industry. While overall attendance, especially by major labels, was down; publishers, managers, and new attendees all showed strong increases. This is just another sign of the major shifts currently happening in the music industry right now.

After Eric's introduction, Ben from FanBridge was up first and gave a breakdown of how FanBridge is helping artists connect online. They offer a management suite for mobile, social, and e-mail messaging that allows you to organize your campaigns across each medium, manage your lists, and post messages to multiple sites with a single click. They also provide tools like the mobile fan collector, which allows bands to use an iPhone or iPod Touch to collect e-mail addresses at gigs, as well as analytics tools to help understand your audience's demographics.

Next up was Qoof, who powers an in-video content system. Essentially Qoof allows you to embed interactive elements into your videos. Want to put a button in your latest music video where your fans can check out your current tour dates - without the fans having to leave the video? That's Qoof. It will even work in videos uploaded to YouTube.

Last but not least, RocketHub presented their crowd-funding platform, which allows musicians, artists, and other organizations to raise money to fund projects they're passionate about. RocketHub also unveiled their latest addition - the LaunchPad Opportunity. Each opportunity is hand-picked by RocketHub, and artists can all submit their work for review. The best submissions are chosen and awarded the LaunchPad Opportunity. The first one is The Gibson Music Retreat, click here to find out more about it.