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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.

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!

Grammy winning music producer Lillywhite is providing music professionals the opportunity to gain insight and hear about his career path, and ongoing journey through his long career. The evenings' interview is followed by a question-and-answer period. If your a producer or engineer in NY then this might be worth checking out. It all goes down this evening from 630pm to 830pm and is free to Recording Academy members and $30.00 for everyone else.

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.

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.

The Sustainable Musician Its such a great feeling that we can look past the grammy awards and come out saying "that's not MY music industry". Musicians are excited that they now have the opportunity to create a sustainable career without the permission of the gatekeepers we all know as the recording industry.

If the unexpected was to occur have you thought of any backup plans? Jazz musician David Baker was an up and coming trombone star when his lip was irreparably injured in a car accident. Instead of give up music entirely, he learned the cello, and built a career as a composer, string player, teacher and author. Even after the unexpected snatched the dream he was still able to flourish! The savvymusician blog wonders how many options we would open up by embracing our full capacity's.

As someone dies, someone else is born. I'm sure by now you've heard the big news. Aerosmith is now looking for a new lead singer. 50 years later, Steven Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith has decided to pursue a solo career. The announcement follows an interview that the band's frontman, Steven Tyler, gave to a British music magazine in which he said he was interested in "working on the brand of myself - Brand Tyler." If you've always wanted to be a part of the legendary rock group now might be your chance. I have no clue on how the band is preparing to fill the lead singer gap, but in todays media centric world, i'm betting either world wide auditions or a reality show. All i'm saying is be prepared, thats all.

Eric Beall recently made a trip to Amsterdam to partake in the Writers Camp sponsored by Holland's equivalent of our ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and Harry Fox Agency, BUMA STEMRA. While on his visit he actually made time to experience the Vincent van Gogh Art Museum, which he calls "a career retrospective". While browsing the Art and reading the personal letters between Van Gogh and his brother Theo, Eric was able to see numerous parallels between Van Gogh the painter and all of us who write songs and make records. Here are 3 of those parallels outlined here for you. 1. Where you are now is not where you are going. 2. Where you're going will be depend upon your willingness to challenge yourself with new opportunities, and by the people with whom you choose to surround yourself. 3. Ultimately, it's not about where you are, or where you're going. It's all about the journey. To get a more elaborate explanation of these 3 parallels head over to Erics blog to read the full article.