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Malcolm Gladwell ,author of the book Outliers, is pretty adamant about his 10,000 hour rule. The rule states that in order to master any craft 10,000 + hours of practice must be accumulated. And getting in that many hours of practice can take 10 years or more. Basically, you gotta put in your work. The music promotion blog has a piece on Steve Martin that really attests to the decade journey that one must take to reach celebrity over night. By the time Steve was propelled into great public awareness he was a well oiled machine, ready to deliver the goods. Television (tell a lie to your vision, particularly shows like american idol and other media sources are very good at trivializing the years of work that some of our greatest icons put in to achieve icon status. Record Labels have even been fooled forgoing development for the young inexperienced (We've seen how well that works). Thats actually the equivalent of getting hired for an entry position and then getting promoted to CEO of the company a few weeks later, needless to say, that company's going to fail. I guess the point of this is if you want to increase your chances of success, not being signed but actually be icon status (being remembered for the many things you've done, not just the first thing), then you have to sleep in that car, perform in front of an audience of empty chairs, bounce from label to label because when god finally taps you on the shoulder and says its go time your going to outshine all of the others not even half way through their 10,000 hour mark. Put in the time and you will be rewarded.

The Great Balancing Act Between Art and Business Both art and music require a great deal of energy and time, the balance is how and where you spend it. There are many different factors that go into creating a successful business around your music, including record keeping and bookkeeping. The insider has a great post about the difference between these two chores as well as some good advice on multi tasking business and music creation. Einstein said that one definition of insanity was repeating your actions and expecting different outcomes, if you wanna try a new approach to being a successful songwriter then all you gotta do is READ MORE.

You hear about your friends, family and friends-of-friends enlisting in the military everyday, you see the recruiting commercials and can even witness them on CNN in the background from time to time, but one opportunity that is never widely publicized is the military path for the working musician. the savvymusician.com solid rundown on the opportunities available to the working musician such as premier bands and regional bands complete with the pros and cons of undertaking such opportunities. "This is a good four year job for just about anyone. It can be a GREAT 20+ year job for many" Michael Mench - Commander of the US Air Force Band of Flight

A new radio study has noted that radio reaches 77% of adults over the age of 18 on a daily basis. Thats more than twice the daily reach of CDs, five times the reach of satellite radio (15%) and six times the reach of iPods and Mp3 players (12%). What they fail to mention is that record labels buy out all of those slots.

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 difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no difference and in practice, there is." (practiceofpracitceblog) As a musician you can't always have your instrument in hand, especially if music is only your part time gig. But being instrumentless doesn't mean that you can't practice. It's called mental practice and it's the best use of your time ever, especially if you hate your job.

Just because your making noise doesn't mean you are getting better. Silence is golden because it provides the perfect setting to reflect. Silence in your practice routines should be equal to the amount of time spent on playing in your practice routine. Meaning that everytime you play a passage it should be followed by slient analysis. The howtopractice blog has a list of questions that your silent time should be based around to get you thinking about so your hands will follow.

"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.

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.

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.

Tick Tock, The Copyright Act of 1976 is About to Expire. It's always entertaining to me to watch the money traps that the labels set for artists, back before information was freely available, EXPLODE! Welp, that's exactly what's about to go down. The Copyright Act states that an artist or author who sold a copyright before 1978 can take it back 56 years later and If it was sold during or after 1978 they can take it back 35 years later. Assuming a correct and prompt filing of paper work, the record labels could lose sound recording copyrights they bought in 1978 starting in 2013. How does this affect you? If the labels don't wanna lose the contents of their entire library you can make a for sure bet that the new copyright law will be negotiated in your favor. Higher royalties anyone?

At Access4Artists, we know indie bands and artists because we are indie bands and artists. We are rabid fans of music and passionate fans of art, and we believe in building a strong community of like-minded indies around the world in a single, central location that can showcase music and art and encourage musicians and artists at the same time.

At one time every major director in the world was in the league of new directors. They were no better than you are now. One day you will be among them, but only if you get the ball rolling now

I just spent 30 minutes, reading Courtney Loves rally call to all indie musicians. It's never been a better time to be independent. The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs." Her passion for music is definitely shared by the staff here at SongPlacements. Excellent article.

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.

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.

Twitter might be throwing ads in our faces, how do you feel about that?

Taking Marketing Cues from Alphex Twin Richard James AKA Alphex Twin is a british electronic musician described by the guardian newspaper as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music. Known for his outlandish marketing efforts it appears that Alphex Twin is at it again. His latest release goes the length of embedding his "demonic" face directly into the audio of track #2 (often referred to as "Equation"). It works by analyzing the audio with a spectrograph (note to self: keep a spectrograph conveniently stacked by my CD collection) which then decodes the audi and plots it in a frequency/time format. Pretty cool. If your looking to do any wacky marketing for your next release then you just might have stumbled across the holy grail.

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!

Street Music How indie are you? Thats a good question to ask, because i believe that there are certain level of indie. I actually really enjoy the street performer, simply because sometimes walking down hollywood blvd. needs a soundtrack. What about the street merchant? At the same time you do have those artists that feel that they can sell you or even worse trick you into buying their product with a few nifty words, i think we're all in agreement on this, but there's nothing that inspires me to reach into my pocket and slip a few dollars like hearing them working for it. When trying to market your music on the street words just don't cut it.