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"How can i make music when i'm expected to spend all my time on Twitter and Facebook? " - Great music is where it all begins and ends, but in between the path to success is always changing. Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, heck..SongPlacements are all just new aged tools on the path to success.

A new study has found that the the fall of an item's popularity mirrors its rise to popularity, so items that become popular faster also die out faster. Kyle Bylin, Accosciate Editor for hypebot.com has taken that study one step further by relating the new find to the marketing strategy of record labels. It could be said that the Record Labels are killing itself to live, what a weird paradox.

Suspend Vocal Technique Momentarily Have You heard those songs when it sounds like the vocalist is whisper-singing and wondered "man how do they do that". It's not quite singing and its definitely not a full blown whisper, its actually a track that a lot of Pop vocalists keep in their bag of tricks. Vocal Coach Judy Rodman has some bad news for you wannabes, the trick can either be executed expertly or poorly. I'm guessing the poor one sounds like somebody choking on a rice grain. To find out more about delivering vocals with authentic emotion rather than just "singing" head over Judy's blog and check out a couple videos.

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.

Wanna start playing more shows, gather an email list and once it's full swap your email lists with artists that are similar in musical style. That way you can increase the chances of getting some new faces out to your shows. Venues want to know that you can gather a crowd, so an extensive email list is a very good start.

Fact #1 - Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine next to Google. Fact #2 - Many people search for music on Youtube and other online video websites. Now that you know these two facts. The renegade producer suggests there is no better reason for you to develop a business strategy which includes online music video distribution. Now what type of videos are we talking about here, not everyone has the money to shoot a MTV style music video let alone a couple. Well the renegadeproducer suggests uploading not just clips of your band but clips of your brand. You can create clips from the audio, backstage, with members of your tribe at shows or even while having breakfast. Having content that can visually engage your fans while your not on the stage can help strengthen the overall brand. Time is obviously a factor, so for this you should check out TubeMogul that group distributes your videos to many video sharing sites at once, but first you gotta create the content.

Could this be the future of music creation? DYI instruments, an alien version of the Blueman group. If you are remotely close to Austin Texas this would be something very cool to check out. October 18 is the full event.

Explore music has recently published the results of a poll determining the scariest theme songs in film. As a songwriter i find this list as an invaluable tool that you can use to compare songs in your library that you have deemed scary. Take a listen to each song in the list, most can be found on Youtube, and listen carefully to what instruments are being used and how they are being used, then mimmic these styles and sounds in your productions. Music supervisors are constantly basing their selections off of similar sounding songs, so having songs that mimmic the top 5 should definitely help with increased placements. Remember good artists copy, great artists steal. Landing at number 1 by the way, Psycho Theme (Psycho) by Bernard Hermann.

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.