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The Great Balancing Act Between Art and Business Both art and music require a great deal of energy and time, the balance is how and where you spend it. There are many different factors that go into creating a successful business around your music, including record keeping and bookkeeping. The insider has a great post about the difference between these two chores as well as some good advice on multi tasking business and music creation. Einstein said that one definition of insanity was repeating your actions and expecting different outcomes, if you wanna try a new approach to being a successful songwriter then all you gotta do is READ MORE.

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.

2 qualities of a great songwriter are 1. Patience 2. Being among the willing

Have you ever heard of the legendary Abby Road Studios? If your not familiar, tons of great albums have come from Abby Roads including albums from Radiohead, Muse and the Zombies Panic At The Disco, grew their own audience by distributing their music through the internet and now you can see some great live recording, as well as some interesting insights and discussions with the band.

Great Songs aren't written, they're re-written.

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!

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!

"How can i make music when i'm expected to spend all my time on Twitter and Facebook? " - Great music is where it all begins and ends, but in between the path to success is always changing. Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, heck..SongPlacements are all just new aged tools on the path to success.

You hear about your friends, family and friends-of-friends enlisting in the military everyday, you see the recruiting commercials and can even witness them on CNN in the background from time to time, but one opportunity that is never widely publicized is the military path for the working musician. the savvymusician.com solid rundown on the opportunities available to the working musician such as premier bands and regional bands complete with the pros and cons of undertaking such opportunities. "This is a good four year job for just about anyone. It can be a GREAT 20+ year job for many" Michael Mench - Commander of the US Air Force Band of Flight

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.

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.

Practice is something that all great musicians submerge themselves in. Its not looked at as chore but as a necessity for sharpening ones strengths and talents. What better way to sharpen your skills than a fun exercise. Homegirl from the howtopractice blog challenges you to a game of opposites attract, that forces your brain to go against the conventional to strengthen the conventional.

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.

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.

Potential Artist Revenue Streams David Sherbow music business visionary has a good outline of ALL POTENTIAL ARTIST REVENUE STREAMS. The list covers publishing, digital sales, merchandise, live performances, sponsorships, endorsements, fan clubs, and the list goes on. It'd be great if this list could actually link to articles that explain how to work the revenue of each stream. Hopefully we'll see this in Potential Rev Streams list 2.0.

Napsters Impact a Decade Later If you watched the Grammy Awards Sunday night then you probably witnessed the Academy's plea to US music consumers, encouraging the purchase of "great" music. Cnn Money took a 10 year look at the RIAA's 8 billion dollar decline, the free movement and most importantly, the label anti-christ, Napster.

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.

identify the 3 tips 1. raise eyebrows, 2. lower your jaw, squeeze your butt for power. - this actually seems like the formula for soiling your underpants.

Explore music has recently published the results of a poll determining the scariest theme songs in film. As a songwriter i find this list as an invaluable tool that you can use to compare songs in your library that you have deemed scary. Take a listen to each song in the list, most can be found on Youtube, and listen carefully to what instruments are being used and how they are being used, then mimmic these styles and sounds in your productions. Music supervisors are constantly basing their selections off of similar sounding songs, so having songs that mimmic the top 5 should definitely help with increased placements. Remember good artists copy, great artists steal. Landing at number 1 by the way, Psycho Theme (Psycho) by Bernard Hermann.

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!