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Loiterers Should Be Arrested. The CMJ Music Marathon ended last week but the lessons learned have just begun. Kevin English, blogger at eleetmusic.com took some time to talk about the lessons that he took away with him from the many panelists. His conclusion; there is no concrete answer to surviving in todays music industry. Old school pundits stressed the importance of networking and buzz generation by any means possible while New Media progressives represented new media applications, widgets and digital services that promised to strengthen direct to fan relationships. It wasn't until the Sudanese rapper Emmanual Jai took to the stage that he realized industry survival was about constantly adapting, bending the industry to specifically cater to your needs. Figure out what your number one need is right now as an indie artist and exploit that need. Kevin's short but enlightening read this morning brings me to the idea of a (wait for it, wait for it) digital manager. Not loading up all of your tracks on myspace, but actually hiring a manager to surf the web all day and submit your music to opportunities world wide. Has anyone tried something like this yet? let me know how it works, and what you have been doing to try to adapt.

Malcolm Gladwell ,author of the book Outliers, is pretty adamant about his 10,000 hour rule. The rule states that in order to master any craft 10,000 + hours of practice must be accumulated. And getting in that many hours of practice can take 10 years or more. Basically, you gotta put in your work. The music promotion blog has a piece on Steve Martin that really attests to the decade journey that one must take to reach celebrity over night. By the time Steve was propelled into great public awareness he was a well oiled machine, ready to deliver the goods. Television (tell a lie to your vision, particularly shows like american idol and other media sources are very good at trivializing the years of work that some of our greatest icons put in to achieve icon status. Record Labels have even been fooled forgoing development for the young inexperienced (We've seen how well that works). Thats actually the equivalent of getting hired for an entry position and then getting promoted to CEO of the company a few weeks later, needless to say, that company's going to fail. I guess the point of this is if you want to increase your chances of success, not being signed but actually be icon status (being remembered for the many things you've done, not just the first thing), then you have to sleep in that car, perform in front of an audience of empty chairs, bounce from label to label because when god finally taps you on the shoulder and says its go time your going to outshine all of the others not even half way through their 10,000 hour mark. Put in the time and you will be rewarded.

Forget the Record Deal, What about the Publishing Deal. While labels are understandably trying to mitigate their risk, by targeting artists who are already as "developed" as possible, it seems that publishers have taken on greater roles as nurturers of talent. Taylor Swift go her start by honing her songwriting abilities under the guidance of Arthur Buenahora at Songy/ATV Music publishing. Keri Hilson speaks about having first developed as a songwriter with Universal Music Publishing, and how that experience helped her launch her solo career with Interscope Records. HERE is a full interview with Eric Beale, who began his tenure in the industry as a songwriter, writing songs for the Jacksons and Diana Ross. Hopefully this interview gives you some further insight into the world of publishing and some hints on how you can either get into the publishing business as a working artist or as a career, helping other artists hone their skills!

Access4Artists is one such tool. In fact, we dare say that a4a may well be the only online tool you need to promote your band, interact with your fans and have a great centralized location online that any talent booker anywhere can access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's like we took the entire process of how to get a gig and made it virtually idiot proof!

The Greatful Dead knew a thing or two about business. "A group of stoners who somehow got more things right than the suits running the record industry, radio and even some high powered new media businesses." Some great business lessons that could be learned from this group are sprinkled through an article on indisdemusicmedia comparing their biz model to that of the Radio Industry's. Some of these points should be laser sketched into your brain (if you simply can't remember). According to the Atlantic Magazine article your fans are key to your ultimate success. But not all your fans. As with every musician you have different levels of fans, cater to only your most loyalist fans because their the ones that are going to purchase your music. Get a team together consisting of the band the road crew and and other organization members and periodically rotate the final decision makers. Your not the only one with good ideas on how to run things. Give it away until they buy it. Some things in life are uncontrollable (death, natural disasters and file sharing fall into this category) Don't try to fight against it. Rather embrace it and exploit it for your own benefit. The greatful dead exemplified this by not having an hernia upon the realization that their fans were taping their shows. Instead they used it to increase demand and drive the sales of other revenue streams. The same way that humanity doesn't fight against death but instead uses it to make the quality of life better the same way a musician should approach the death of the CD. Just because the CD has to die, doesn't mean that your career has to go to.

Eric Beall hit it out of the park this time with his incredible article walking you through just exactly how you would make a connection on the other side of the big record label doors. His advise offers walk arounds to from being unsolicited to solicited, direction for who to actually approach with your recorded material, finding the people who's tastes are suited to your music and always looking for the alternative way into a project. The article does such a good job of explaining how to get your music heard that i'm sure you will start applying this knowledge right away!

What exactly does a music library do. Music libraries are becoming more important to the indie musician as money gets tighter and the demand for indie placements rises. Songplacements.com is now the premier music library in southern California, helping artists land opportunities previously only available to the majors. With that being said, the insider has a great piece on exactly what a music library is and does. Knowing how company's such as Songplacements.com operate empowers you, the independent musician, allowing you to better exploit our services, and hopefully land more placements!

The how to practice guide goes over the essence of simplification, and how exactly it is applied in music. Music simplification is a method of practice that visually breaks music notation down to it's simplest parts. The 7 step example covers 1. Removing dynamics 2. Removing other markings 3. Get rid of tricky notes 4. Taking it further 5. Removing yet more notes 6. holding repeated notes 7. Putting it all back together. Of course it doesn't do justice without the pictures.

The iPhone is one of the biggest innovations of this decade. It has single handedly connected people from all around the world, offering a rich web presence and an "app for everything". Creating an iPhone app used to take at least a general knowledge of some programming experience, until now that is. MobBase is a web application that makes it easy for your band to create an inexpensive, customizable and feature rich iPhone app. Indiemusictech has a few screen shots of how easy it is for your band to get distribution on iPhones worldwide.

Just because your making noise doesn't mean you are getting better. Silence is golden because it provides the perfect setting to reflect. Silence in your practice routines should be equal to the amount of time spent on playing in your practice routine. Meaning that everytime you play a passage it should be followed by slient analysis. The howtopractice blog has a list of questions that your silent time should be based around to get you thinking about so your hands will follow.

Theres been a lot of talk about how to survive the music industry, what social networks you should be on and online distributors you should be with but the simple truth is that the music you create is much more important than your current method of distribution. So i challenge you for 2010 to step your game up partner with that one drummer and create amazing music, be relentless and most importantly get out of the house and book some shows. Paying or non-paying, it doesn't matter if your the right person for this, the money will come.

You may not get to a million followers on Twitter, but it is worth taking the time to see how the top 10 musicians on twitter are using the service.

Here's a couple of resources that i've gathered on who to get shows booked for you or your band.

It's Time to Call Your Manager Out. What exactly is the role of your music manager? The reason we're asking is because unfortunately for the music manager there has been a role change that has slowly been taking place over the past couple of years. No longer should your manager be concerning themselves with getting you signed, rather they should convern themselves with developing and unlocking true value for their bands. READ HOW http://songplacements.blogspot.com/search?q=manager+