How to claim my iTunes Ping Artist Page?

This whole thing really is "putting the cart before the horse." Why even have a social music network without artists to follow?

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/man-of-god-single/id372021835

http://c.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZConnections.woa/wa/viewProfile?userId=687 09037

One could equally say that how could artists put up pages to be followed if there is no social music network in which to participate? Things have to start somewhere, and someone has to be the pioneers. Facebook and Twitter didn't start out with hundreds of people already participating.

Patience, young Padawan! 🙂

Don't go by rumors. Contact the iTunes Store and ask. If you are signed up directly, sign into your provider account. If you work through a label or aggregator, have your label/aggregator ask.

I very much doubt that it will be by invitation only, though Apple may prioritize since they obviously can't work at once with every artist who has content in the iTunes Store.

For now, ping is by invitation only.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/09/03/cashmore.itunes.ping/index.html? hpt=Sbin

I just heard back from my record company Nettwerk,

We recently received information about this process. Right now, iTunes is only taking select requests from labels for artists to be added to Ping. In the coming weeks, I suspect they will open the platform up a bit, allowing us to manually add our artists. As I get more information, I'll let you know.

I'm bummed.

Well, one of two things will happen. Either Apple will smarten up and open it up for everybody, or it'll die an ugly death.

Just want to point out that the article quotes Apple as saying "Artist profiles were launched by invitation" which clearly was the case. It does not say that Ping will only be by invitation, or even that it's only by invitation now. Clearly Apple is going to have to prioritize; they can't set up artist pages right up front for every one of the thousands of artists they have. But there's nothing that indicates anything other than it's been only two days since the service launched and things are still very much in their infancy.

You are totally missing the point. Facebook and Twitter are not Ping. Ping is a Social Network for fans to follow their favorite artists. Currently there are only 21 artist to follow from what I see... and none that I would follow. iTunes has the artists and the fan base... Ping is the connecting point. However, only half of the equation is there.

If its not ready then dont launch it.

Apple playing God and deciding by invitation who gets an artist page and who doesnt is kinda against the concept of a facebook, twitter or the alike networking.

Yes, they might add this feature later but:

If its not ready then dont launch it.

Either they get this fixed soon or I cant see this catching on.

Hi, I too am looking how my independent band can claim our Artist page...

I can understand that if Apple let all the bands start their Ping page beforehand that everyone would have found out about the new feature before it was announced...

Hopefully in the next couple days Apple will open it up to independent artists as with no Artists people will just forget about Ping and it will wither away and die...

my band on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/stronger-single/id354920458

We're with you fellow independent artists. Nothing from Tunecore, CD Baby or Apple yet...
Jenny & Tyler

iTunes site:
http://itunes.com/jennyandtyler

"People" Ping site for now:
http://c.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZConnections.woa/wa/viewProfile?cc=us

I heard a great story from Derek Sivers when he was still running CD Baby. He knew the guy at Apple in charge of iTunes and knew that they had (at that time) two people in charge of getting artists into iTunes. Obviously these two were working day and night. Derek said "I'll give you $50,000 to pay for a third person so that my artists can get on iTunes sooner." The guy said "I'm sorry, but I can't get the authorisation for that. iTunes isn't important enough. And you're not the first guy to ask."

As far as Apple is concerned, iTunes is there purely to sell more iPods.