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Congratulations go out to Songplacement member Julianna Raye who has been nominated for best concept album at the independent music awards. Hit the jump to cast your vote for her and help support independent music!

Since the go-to spot for every up and coming musician is the Myspace, i thought that grant you fly on the wall access @ the myspace HQ for one day. Techcrunch has the dirt on the internal crumblings Myspace.com from the perspective of 3 anonymous employees. What each employee reveals is a bit shocking, but after about a minute of mentally pretending to sift through many of pages on myspace music seem to make %100 percent sense. Internally, Myspace sucks, and it's ever-so apparent on the outside. The accounts state that there's lots of yelling and confusion going on behind the scenes and one employee even compared it to a poorly run enterprise development shop than an Internet company. I think the only thing holding Myspace together right now is the independent musicians back (they should pay us) and we can only take so much weight, before it's time for a lighter load. Facebook Fan Pages anyone?

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.

Okay so many bands are using protools to record themselves but that doesn't mean that Independent producers should close down shop. Rely on the live scene for some additional income and your studio might be getting more business in the off season than you originally planned for.

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.

2009 Future of Music Policy Summit CCC: California Copyright Conference NARIP: National Assn. of Record Industry Professionals AIMP: Association of Independent Music Publishers PMA: Production Music Association NMPA: National Music Publishers Association Record companies often earn money that cannot be paid to artists, managers, songwriters, or publishers because of paperwork problems. I know what you're thinking: yeah, right, paperwork problems. NMPA president and CEO David Israelite and Special Master/lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who will be overseeing the distribution of nearly $300 million to music publishers from the big four record companies.

Musicians are ditching studios for cheaper solutions, but clearly achieving the same result. One step closer towards total independence.

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!

American Idolizes The Money, Not Your Music Eleetmusic's Kevin English had a chance to hear out some of the past american idol finalists at one of the panels held at the recently passed CMJ 2009. The topic, an interesting one mind you, was a look at entertainers who have been to the top of the mountain only to look down at how far they had to fall. Artists such as Kimberley Locke (remember her?) talk about their idol experiences as well as life after the season has wrapped and the cameras have powered down. The gist? Sometimes being an independent artist carries with it the invigorating feeling of carving out ones own musical destiny. At the end of the day you have a pretty good realization of who you are, who your fans are, and you can proudly boast that you aren't just a number in a label of numbers.

At Access4Artists, you have the ability to create an online press kit that is available instantly to promoters and talent seekers anywhere in the world. One phone call or email and in seconds your digital press kit is selling for you!

Welcome to Access4Artists, the only web site you need to find local bands anywhere quickly, and even interact with your new favorite artists in our online communities that bring the music to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Are you getting ready to go back into the studio and record your final vocals soon? If the answer is yes, then you might want to take some last moments and study up on things such as posture, breath support, jaw tightness and keeping critic out of the vocal booth. Why? Cause with time being money and all nothing sucks more than being in the booth with an itchy throat, bad takes, the pressure at max and having no clue what to do to get back in the zone.

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

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.

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.

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.

Fact #1 - Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine next to Google. Fact #2 - Many people search for music on Youtube and other online video websites. Now that you know these two facts. The renegade producer suggests there is no better reason for you to develop a business strategy which includes online music video distribution. Now what type of videos are we talking about here, not everyone has the money to shoot a MTV style music video let alone a couple. Well the renegadeproducer suggests uploading not just clips of your band but clips of your brand. You can create clips from the audio, backstage, with members of your tribe at shows or even while having breakfast. Having content that can visually engage your fans while your not on the stage can help strengthen the overall brand. Time is obviously a factor, so for this you should check out TubeMogul that group distributes your videos to many video sharing sites at once, but first you gotta create the content.

Sign up for Twitter to follow Kevin_AnR_Shine (@Kevin_AnR_Shine). CEO OF THE F.I.R.M (A&R/LABEL CONSULTANT)...FORMERLY. ASSISTED WAYNE WILLIAMS (SR VP OF A&R @JIVE), WORKED ON 2011 GRAMMY NOMINATED R KELLY UNTITLED CD..