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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!

At Access4Artists, we know indie bands and artists because we are indie bands and artists. We are rabid fans of music and passionate fans of art, and we believe in building a strong community of like-minded indies around the world in a single, central location that can showcase music and art and encourage musicians and artists at the same time.

Grooveshark is a music streaming service that is accessed through your browser, and is driven by users who upload their record collections. Currently Universal has initiated legal action against the service for failing to pay royalties, which is bad news for the shark. The good news comes to indie musicians looking to capitalize on increased exposure. Since it is a free service to access indie bands can upload their music to the service in hopes of extending their fan base. Users who wish to purchase your music can also be referred to Amazon or Itunes. In 2010 have your music in more places.

indie-music-news 101 has deduced that there is Human emotions in music, thanks guys i would have never guessed. The article did go on to reveal a little something that may have come as a surprise to the rest of us however, did you know that the Taliban banned music in their band (Too many great opportunities to say banned), hit the jump if you want to find out a little more about the history of music by professors in cognitive science and ethnomusicologists.

Street Music How indie are you? Thats a good question to ask, because i believe that there are certain level of indie. I actually really enjoy the street performer, simply because sometimes walking down hollywood blvd. needs a soundtrack. What about the street merchant? At the same time you do have those artists that feel that they can sell you or even worse trick you into buying their product with a few nifty words, i think we're all in agreement on this, but there's nothing that inspires me to reach into my pocket and slip a few dollars like hearing them working for it. When trying to market your music on the street words just don't cut it.

Okay, so your an independent artist, more power to ya. You write, produce, record and distribute your own tracks, but how well is your music being received. Major record labels have numerous methods to track the performance and popularity of their music. Soundscan, and Billboard are some of those ways. But once the music reaches the consumer thats when the metrics come to a screeching halt. Luckily now as an indie musician you have many ways to track your music, some ways actually rival those of the record labels. You can now monitor your brand, and even statistics such as how much time my audience spends listening to my material, and what songs are shared the most in their network.

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.

I just spent 30 minutes, reading Courtney Loves rally call to all indie musicians. It's never been a better time to be independent. The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs." Her passion for music is definitely shared by the staff here at SongPlacements. Excellent article.

What are you pretending not to know? The musicpromotionblog has a great piece on pretending not to know in your music career. It all boils down being afraid of success.

7 Ways to Destroy Your Music Career Bob Baker takes us on a very entertaining journey, by revealing the 7 ways to best destroy your music career. He sarcastically touches upon everything from "being fearful of being perceived as a greedy, capitalist pig" all the way down to "using lack of time, money and connections as your biggest excuse". Wanna destroy your music career before it even gets off the ground? Follow these tips.

You Are Not Alone What keeps you from achieving your gaols? Here is a compiled list of responses from indie artists from around the web, of what they find keeps them from achieving their goals. Do any of these things look familiar to you? If so realize that many other people are experiencing the same road blocks as you are, it is how many of these things that you can knock off of your list that is going to make you stand out from your peers and make the transition from good to great!

Let People Know Your Online in as Many Ways as Possible.

I'm sure you've been hit with a barrage of goal setting blogs and news clippings since the ball dropped for 2010. I know i have, but nothing really struck a chord like the HAPPY HEALTHY WEALTHY game. READ MORE to find out how you can play.

Musicscout.com could help your band get discovered. Music scout is an App that has just been released for the android and iPhone market that enables music enthusiasts to express their thoughts and sentiments about the band they're currently watching. Now all you gotta do is convince all of your fans to download the App and give you great rating everywhere you go.

Start a relationship with your fans.

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.

are you a Indie twitter musician, then maybe this tweetmysong service can help get move your music from hard-drive to world wide

Labels put more musicians in the poor house.

Rockseter+Pro Born promises to turn dead tracks in to big live sounding mixes deliver professional studio sounding

Applying the Record Label Model to the Indie Artist You may already be familiar with the online world of myspace music and facebook pages, and the offiline world of shows and radio play, but as George Howard puts it "Err too far online, you fail. Too far offline, you fail". In order to be successful today you need to achieve the perfect balance between online and offline marketing. Eleetmusic's Kevin English outlines how to use the four R's (Radio, Road, Reviews and Retail) of the "Not so new record label model" to capture the audience statistically proven to be more receptive to trying to new things. College students.