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Facebook rallies for Abbey Road.

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.

EMI has issued a statement saving the good graces of the abbey roads studios, lets preserve history.

Applying the Record Label Model to the Indie Artist You may already be familiar with the online world of myspace music and facebook pages, and the offiline world of shows and radio play, but as George Howard puts it "Err too far online, you fail. Too far offline, you fail". In order to be successful today you need to achieve the perfect balance between online and offline marketing. Eleetmusic's Kevin English outlines how to use the four R's (Radio, Road, Reviews and Retail) of the "Not so new record label model" to capture the audience statistically proven to be more receptive to trying to new things. College students.

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.

Protection for Abbey

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.

Ways for musicians to make money in their sleep. Place your songs with other recording artists. Let them do the touring and the twittering, while you earn money. Place your songs in films and television shows. Not only does it publicize you as an artist-it generates sync fees and performance income. Place your songs in video games or other products. The licensing rates are pretty low, but the exposure is ridiculously high. And you don't have to travel in a van, tear-down or set-up. Place your songs in advertisements. It's not only about grabbing that Apple iPod spot. There are national, local and international advertising opportunities that could fund your band's next road-trip. Create new music for film/TV libraries, which license "needle-drop" music to a wide variety of media. The sync fees are virtually non-existent, but because these are non-exclusive licenses, the same piece can be used again and again, generating significant performance money....

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!