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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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Your Friendly Neighborhood Myspace Myspace is back. Ever since they dropped the ball on their no-money making music service, myspace music, they've been at listeners throats with all the advertising they can throw at us. First there was that annoying thing that started happening when trying to get a decent session out of an artists myspace player. I vivdly remember a picture of ugly lil wayne popping up everytime i tried to enjoy a couple songs in succession. Now there's word of experimentation with audio ads that must play before users can listen to free streaming music. Isn't myspace bogged down enough with bad user html and full page million dollar advertising slots? I guess my biggest worry is that more ads will just decrease the number of listeners trying to get an enjoyable experience from my myspace player.

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?

Myspace dodges Payment to Imeem Artists. Last week we broke the news that Myspace Acquired Imeem and some of its assets. Immediately it was obvious that thousands of listeners would be playlistless, but there was little insight as to how artists were effected. Now wired has a piece on how many artists that were previously owed money from sales would have to line up behind imeem's bank and other creditors. There was some talks about Snocap being acquired as a part of the "certain assets" and I don't know about you, but if Myspace were to release Snocap in another form it would def makes me think a little longer before signing up with a service that snubbed artists of payment once before. So go a head and change your name Snocap, change the look and feel, we know who you 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.

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.

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

could apple be creating some form of radio experience that allows users access to any song you want, whenever you want it, from wherever you are using whatever device you choose? could we be headed towards the mass distribution of streaming music services and Internet-delivered radio?

Labels put more musicians in the poor house.