Group items tagged

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.

Congratulations go out to Songplacement member Julianna Raye who has been nominated for best concept album at the independent music awards. Hit the jump to cast your vote for her and help support independent music!

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.

Are you getting ready to go back into the studio and record your final vocals soon? If the answer is yes, then you might want to take some last moments and study up on things such as posture, breath support, jaw tightness and keeping critic out of the vocal booth. Why? Cause with time being money and all nothing sucks more than being in the booth with an itchy throat, bad takes, the pressure at max and having no clue what to do to get back in the zone.

Avid, creator of Protools and Sibelius 6 software gave top honors to Pro Tools 8 in the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) category, for quality and quantity, and top honors to Sibelius 6 for its tools and support. Has anyone been using the new Pro Tools 8? I know they say quality is better than quantity but what happens if you have both? (but does pro tools 8 really have both?)