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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+

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.

Wow. Someone just hit it the nail on the head with this one. George Howard, thinks business development is the key to success in the music biz right now, and i agree with em.

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.

If you were a little shy of completing your goals for 2009 then maybe refining your focus should be the mission for 2010. Multitasking is known to be good for doing many things at once, but generally sub-par results are achieved. Pick one thing that you want to improve this year, break it down into manageable chunks and find out how a narrowed focus can put you way ahead of your fellow multitaskers.

Take Your Social Media to the Streets The web seems to be the defacto when it comes to networking with like minded individuals and initiating relationships, but social media is supposed to strengthen our offline ties not replace them. We've all been guilty of networking with management, A&Rs or other industry execs online but failing to truly merge the online networking with the offline equivalent. John Jantsch gives the run down on 5 ways to use social media activity online to make it pay offline.

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.