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Your musician page at a4a is more than just a place to tell people about your band. Post photos, music, gigs. Interact with other musicians and with a thriving community of rabid music fans all from your musician page. Access4Artists brings your music to the fans and encourages the ongoing interaction that builds a lasting relationship between the artist and the fan.

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

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.

Musfy, Musicians Wanted, Myspace and Craigslist are all viable option when it comes to connecting with other musicians looking to form bands.

I provide these musician quotes for your inspiration...

Telling the lizard brain to be quiet. Seth Godin explains that fear, rage and reproductive drive are all characteristics of the lizard brain. It's predominant fear factor hates change, forward movement and the unknown which of course if a very bad thing if your trying to move forward as a musician. The lizard brain holds you back and keeps you from being successful. Seth's advice? The lizard brain will accompany us in our time on earth, but we can tell it to be quiet, we are listening to something else right now.

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.

I've been hearing some chatter recently about underground music going the way of the "black guy mohawk"-out the door. one definition of Underground music is music that refers to a variety of post-1960s rock, pop, or dance subgenres that developed a cult following despite their lack of mainstream. Even though music can't hide from the internet I still believe that because of the pressures put on todays bloggers and DJs to "play for pay" or "go where the money is" that underground music can still live and thrive and evolve on the internet. Hopefully we can help increase the underground network by strengthening long distance ties between musicians and their fans. Everyone is now the underground musician. Music will go back to its purest form where the main inspiration for doing it is the love and the respect.

Public Servants Arlene Goldbard raises some compelling ideas about how artists can help the economic recovery. Arlene, a writer and a social activist suggests that in order to help spark the recovery of the economy we have to recovery culturally, and who better to help us do that than the most creative ones in our society, the artists. She reasons that government initiates that put artists and musicians gifts at the service of schools, communities, hospitals and prisons are a good investment that worked in the 1950's to spurn recovery. Follow the link to check out the video, and if these are ideas that you support then there is a petition to support Art & The Public Purpose: A New Framework in the comments.

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?

You may not get to a million followers on Twitter, but it is worth taking the time to see how the top 10 musicians on twitter are using the service.

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!

Christmas is right around the corner and if your like me you left your christmas shopping to the very last minute. No worries if you have some musicians for family/friends here are 31 Gift Ideas that you could pony up as a christmas gift that i'm sure they'll appreciate. The list ranges from 1. A flip cam, 21. A recording session to Invisible number 32 being a 1 year membership with Songplacements :)

the machinery of culture is constantly changing and i hate to say it but that means as a creator of music you gotta be constantly changing too. To help soften the blow of the many more cultural changes down the road, then surrounding yourself with a real social network of musicians and partners that may be able to understand certain shifts more easily than yourself could be a good step in battling your future market woes.

Are you ready for Myspaces audio ads? Regardless if your ready or not they're on the way. Myspace has teamed up wth TargetSpot to find the right balance between music and advertising that will keep listeners and attract investors. Basically the strategy -Short audio ads, increase overall value. As the exclusive audio sales rep for Myspace Music, Target spot, which represents a network of both internet radio providers and some of the largest radio groups has doubled in reach from 20 million unique monthly listeners to as many as 40 million. Target Spots plan for us listeners who still find ourselves on myspace from time to time is to have a "sensitivity to the space" and ensure a good user experience. I hope this solves all of Myspaces problems, so that they can focus on their next task, helping the musicians of it's myspace music service.

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.

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

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

Learn from the best music video directors and interact with musicians who need and appreciate your talent as much as you need and appreciate theirs. Share your work with the fans and let them help you to become the next big music video director working with some of the biggest names in the music business.

A4A is the only site you will ever need for the promotion of artists and their work, whether you're an indie musician or the next Stanley Kubric. We help you to build a fan base that is both loyal and passionate about your work and then the promotion is a matter of sharing your video with your built-in fan base who will in turn share it with their social networks.