Inside the Circle’s “Artist Appreciation” Giveaway!

The kind folks at Windows Phone (specifically Brian Seitz) was awesome enough to send over a few of these “X-Mini Audio Speakers”.

These little beauties, while small on size, offer a great deal of audio power. Just plug them into the headphone jack of your audio player or ahem Windows Phone and they offer great clear sound (ideal for listening to music at your desk or playing an audio or video podcast while riding the midnight train to Georgia).

By the way, the purpose of this contest is to give you a chance to give a shout out to one of your favorite music artists, whether it’s here at the blog or via Twitter.

There are two ways to enter (so you can have two entries into the contest). Be sure to follow the instructions carefully for both methods, otherwise you make that particular entry method invalid:

Entry Method #1: Twitter

1. Follow @windowsphone and @tromboneforhire on Twitter
2. Find the official twitter handle of one of your favorite music artists
3. Send out this tweet: “I want an awesome mini speaker so I can rock out to the music of @[insert artist’s twitter handle here]. #MusicRocks http://bit.ly/ewGZI5”

So as an example, one of my favorite artists is Kaskade (@kaskade). My tweet entry would look like this: I want a mini speaker so I can rock out to the music of @kaskade. #MusicRocks http://bit.ly/ewGZI5

Entry Method #2: Blog Comment

1. Head over to zune.net and find your favorite artist’s page
2. Leave the link to that artist page in a blog comment (you may want to use tinyurl or bit.ly since those links can be pretty lengthy) and tell us why you like that particular artist: how long have you listened to them, what drew you to like them in the first place, etc. Doesn’t have to be an essay, but you may influence someone else to try that artist.

Entries will be accepted all this week. I’ll stop accepting entries on Friday, December 10, 2010. at 8pm PST. 5 winners will be announced on Monday, December 13, 2010. Winners will have 24 hours to respond (either on Twitter or by comment on the announcement blog post).

I’m opening this contest to everyone within the U.S. and Canada. Sorry, while I know Windows Phone has an international presence, I don’t have international shipping funds at the moment.

I know there may be an urge to send more than one tweet with different artists twitter handles. That’s actually ok, but I’m not tolerant of people who spam their timelines, and consequently their follower’s timelines with tons of entries. Any shenanigans like that will just disqualify all entries (twitter or blog comment).

Good luck, everyone!