Song Placements Blog

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.

Labels put more musicians in the poor house.

Protection for Abbey

Facebook rallies for Abbey Road.

Rockseter+Pro Born promises to turn dead tracks in to big live sounding mixes deliver professional studio sounding

using ear plugs at shows really allows the nuance to shine through

Polk provides surround sound capabilities from a wireless system.

Book on practice makes the usually very monotonous actions of practice seem fun and invigoration. Who are you trying to convince?

Would you mind your child being taught by a computer music teacher? I was taught to type by a computer mavis beacon...could work.

Start a relationship with your fans.

The future of Music: Manifest for the Digital Music Revolution - The guide to prepare you for a world where copyright has vanished, music belongs to know, one artists make money indirectly from their music.

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

The powerful effect of rebranding

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

Are The Record Labels Biting the Hand that Feeds Them Radio broadcasters around the country are growing increasingly concerned about the long-standing relationship with the music industry. The record labels are demanding an additional "tax" (not including the hundreds of millions of dollars paid annually to groups like BMI, ASCAP and SESAC, which goes to compensate songwriters and music publishers) on local radio stations for every song played. The music industry must be in panic mode to intentionally put a strain on the over 80 year mutually beneficial relationship that previously had radio promote record labels and artists and generate millions of dollars in music, hospitality, small-business and merchandise sales. Free local radio reaches 236 million listeners/week but record labels seem to not really give a hoot about free promo, pay up or shut down.

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.

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.

If the name Ian Rogers doesn't ring a bell it will soon. Ina Rogers is the CEO of Topsin media, a music client that analysis how your brand is doing online. The data that his company collects suggests that the campaigns that take the shape of a snowball have a much better chance of showing a return on investment. Which as someone cadidly pointed out in the comments is the traditional definition of artist development. Ians 3 points that success seeking musicians should follow are 1. Goal: Have more fans tomorrow that you had yesterday 2. Grow fan connections as well as dollars. Everyday should mean more email addresses, twitter followers, Facebook fans, and MySpace friends and of course dollars. 3. Action: Do something small weekly, something big monthly

The Music Power Network (MPN), which is the brainchild of Dave Kusek, (Some big instructor at Berklee) credited for being an all-around future music business expert, is coming to a YouTube Channel new you! The MPN will be making some of its educational videos accessible for free to help you achieve success in this ever changing industry. Subscribe to the network if online music business lessons and advice are your forte. Also be sure to check out the songplacements youtube channel, send us links to your songs and we'll add them to our playlists for others to see.

All that studio equipment that you're plunking all of your hard earned cash into deserves to be protected. Nothing shows just how much you don't use all of your fancy equipment like a congregation of dust. CompuCover is a company that makes custom-fit covers for your gear. They've been in business since 1979 so you don't have to worry about them vanishing in thin air when you need a replacement and they're cheaper than the dirt gathered between your Tritons Keys. One custom CompuCover sleeve will set you back a cool $16.95 in comparison to the $50-70 price tag of the competition.