Group items tagged

1. The best approach is slow and cautious. Right now, we are in the jungle. In the jungle, you don't rush blindly ahead. You dip a toe in the sand, and see if you sink. We have no hope of predicting which of these services might catch on. We need to move slowly, with very short-term agreements and see what works and what fails. And we need to be sure not to undermine our other business partners while we do that. Which leads to… 2. We should support our allies and punish our enemies. Rob McDaniels for InGrooves estimates that it takes 150-200 streams of one song to equal the royalty income on a single download. Right now, our industry still relies on the sale of physical product (believe it or not, it's still the primary source of revenue) and on digital downloads. Perhaps streaming is the future. Perhaps not. But we would be very unwise to cut ridiculously low-cost rates to a business model that obviously threatens both physical retailers and iTunes. Let's take care of the people paying our bills. At the same time, we should continue to press ahead with legal efforts against things like Pirate Bay- efforts that are finally starting to show some results. 3. We need to recognize that "bundling" and ad-revenue sharing is a marriage, and it works both ways. If we bundle the cost of music access into the cost of a mobile phone or the sale of a computer, we're now not only in the music business, we're in the electronics business. Any economic factors that hurt the sales of phones and computers will now hurt us as well. 4. Most of all, we need transparency in the negotiations and setting of rates, so that everyone in the music community understands what they're being paid and how it's being calculated.

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.

The techdirt blog goes for the jugular of John Conyers, not the same dude from the terminator movies, but one of the RIAAs biggest backers of forcing radio stations to pay to help promote music. It all started with John delivered a speech at an event put on by the recording industry lobbyists, Conyers made the analogy that the lack of a performance right mandatory fee for radio stations was comparable to slavery and indentured servitude. Techdirt sheds some light on the old practices of shady labels paying off radio stations to spin records fully knowing the momentum that radio promotion can lend to a project. But that was years ago when (the only way to steal music was to run out of best buy with a stack of cds in hand and hope you didn't get spotted by the surveillance)you actually went to jail for stealing music. Techdirt goes on to say that the argument of the lobbyist groups are completely made up and ridiculous, just an excuse for the labels that are unwilling to actually do something to properly capitalize on free promo. As artists who's arguments are more valid the RIAAs or the Radio stations?

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 Bonnaroo music festival cleverly cleverly uses its myspace page to unveil its latest lineup. If you head over to www.mysapce.com/bonnaroo right now you'll be greeted with cuckoo clock that reveals another act every 6 minutes or so. During the course of the day artists will be making their own announcements through the myspace page. Acts that have magically appeared from the cuckoo include: Cross Canadian Ragweed, John Foogerty, Medeski Martin & Wood, Weezer, The Flaming Lips with Stardeath and Wite Dwarfs perfroming The Dark Side of the Moon and the Avett Brothers. Head over to the bonnaroo myspace page and see how long you can wait inbetween announcements before you ADD kicks in and forces you to destroy your computer.

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.

Do you practice perfectly? If not you might need a little push in the right direction. The howtopractice blog advises you not to open your music and bash your way through it but instead break your practice up into many tiny tasks that you can aim to improve -only then will you see rapid results. The best part of this post is the colorful circle of "perfect practice" that holds your hand through the 5 steps of mastering your pieces. Save the chart to your computer or hand draw it in your practice notebook if you have to. Once you have begun practicing with this colorful piece of wisdom don't be shy to scribble the answers to each of the 5 questions out. Seeing is believing, plus writing it down always seems to work for me. Toodles.

Eric Beall hit it out of the park this time with his incredible article walking you through just exactly how you would make a connection on the other side of the big record label doors. His advise offers walk arounds to from being unsolicited to solicited, direction for who to actually approach with your recorded material, finding the people who's tastes are suited to your music and always looking for the alternative way into a project. The article does such a good job of explaining how to get your music heard that i'm sure you will start applying this knowledge right away!

RIP Imeem. Today in HOLY F*%^$ WHAT JUST HAPPENED, Imeem a favorite among many music enthusiasts has just evaporated, in a deal that has Myspace music acquiring "certain assets". Myspace plans to leverage imeem's industry leading technology and their snocap service. Right now Imeem users are left on their face with no other option to sign up to Myspace. How do you feel about Imeem disappearing?

Theres been a lot of talk about how to survive the music industry, what social networks you should be on and online distributors you should be with but the simple truth is that the music you create is much more important than your current method of distribution. So i challenge you for 2010 to step your game up partner with that one drummer and create amazing music, be relentless and most importantly get out of the house and book some shows. Paying or non-paying, it doesn't matter if your the right person for this, the money will come.

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 :)

Music will thrive in 2010 Jomar, blogger for the musicproducersforum recently wrote a rebuttal to CNETS recent article entitled will recorded music survive in 2010. Kudos to Jomar for getting it right. To sell music this year labels will have to see music as more than just a way get money from the customer. With the record labels struggling for a solution i've never seen so many artists recording music, its as if getting signed is an annoyance for the artists of the future. The leveling is almost here, with every artist gaining access to the same tools, theres never been more of a reason to record music. The less expensive it is for an artist to record music the less money an artist has to make to see a profit.

Money owed that noone knowed. Are you a member of SoundExchange? Actually, let me rephrase, do you have songs on myspace? If you do then head over to SoundExchange and grab yourself a free membership. SoundExchange is a non-profit performance rights organization that collects statutory royalties from satellite radio (such as SIRIUS XM), internet radio and other streaming platforms. Myspace recently teamed up with SoundExchange to help identify the more than 25,000 major, indie and unsigned artists who are registered with myspace but not with SoundExchange. Collectively there's $14 mill in royalties sitting in a SoundExchange bank account, waiting to be paid to you.

Measurement is the key to success. In the industry this measurement is called (intimidating music please) - THE SOUNDSCAN. Fortunately i've never had to judge my artistic worth based off the soundscan, but for those of us lucky and unlucky enough to under go this tracking system it can be a psychological torment, sucking the creativity and positivity right out of a project. Happily we have a new form of measurement that shifts from pessimism to optimism. READ MORE to find out what they are.

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.

The Nydailynews says that radio is not supposed to be here right now. First, the TV was supposed to kill the radio by changing it from an audio to a visual medium, that didn't work so much. Then MTV was supposed to be the radio killer back promoting a product that sucked the magic out of songs by pre-empting the listener's imagination - again the radio withstood the test of time. To be fair MTVs claim was that television and radio could work together, promoting and enhancing the other and thats exactly what happened. iPods, and social media are the disruptive technologies now but something tells me many other mediums will kick the bucket before our good ol friend the radio lays its head to rest.

raising money

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?

Is Radio now synonymous with Gas Station. Jerry Del Colliano seems to think so. Big. National. Impersonal. That being said to bring positive results to radio is for the stations to remember the 80/20 rule. 80% live and local, 20% national or voice tracked (if at all). The number one way to start turning radio around right now is to abide by the 80/20 rule. It's not really that costly to do. Brings immediate live and local results. Returning to live and local rights a lot of wrongs.