From the category archives:

Selling CDs

When Does a 360 Music Deal Make Sense?

Featured Article

For major touring acts, it’s a no brainer. Ditch the major labels, cash a fat advance check, and head out on the road.

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Music Business Education Reaching High Schools

Featured Article

After hearing so much great response from our profile of Drexel’s campus-based music business program, I’m noticing more stories about schools that model their student-run record labels and booking agencies along the same principles. This week, the Los Angeles Times profiles a school that’s offering the same kind of real world experience, only at a [...]

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Drexel’s Student-Run Record Label Reshaping Music Business Education

CD Releases

When I was in school — and I did have to walk uphill in the snow to get to class, so get off my lawn — the campus radio station was where you had to be if you wanted a career in the music business. I chose Ithaca over Syracuse and Temple as soon as [...]

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How Local Record Stores Can Stay in Business

Selling CDs

It’s not the first time we’ve covered the issue here, but amidst the horror story that has become the chart of overall music sales, there’s a quiet confidence among the owners of America’s finest record stores. The Columbia Free Times devotes an exceptional amount of space to the truth that a record store owner who [...]

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Where can you still make money in the music business?

News

While our regular readers ask me that question all the time, another group of people is just as curious about the answer — Wall Street.Clem Chambers from the investment website ADVFN offers a guest commentary in Forbes Magazine about his ideas for the real winners and losers in the entertainment industry shakeout. While he’s not [...]

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Live Recording Patent Busted

Concerts

With all the internet radio and YouTube stuff happening this week, this news nugget nearly slipped by me:The EFF managed to get a patent revoked that prevented many artists and clubs from offering quick-turnaround CD recordings of live performances. A Clear Channel subsidiary had patented the idea to make quickly-burned CDs of live performances available [...]

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Is Simon Cowell More Important to American Music than Bruce Springsteen?

Selling CDs

Simon Cowell seems to think so. The American Idol judge reveals in an interview with Anderson Cooper that acts he has signed to Sony BMG have sold more than 100 million records over the past five years. Springsteen, on the other hand, has not had what music industry insiders would call a blockbuster since Tunnel [...]

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P&D Deals Surging in the UK

Selling CDs

In Grow Your Band’s Audience and here on the weblog, I’ve written about pressing & distribution deals as a way to “hire” record labels to do two things that they’re really good at. Few majors will admit to doing a lot of these deals, but they work great for artists that know how to mobilize [...]

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Compact Discs as Souvenirs

Selling CDs

Lefsetz writes that he no longer wants e-mail from folks about the viability of compact discs. Indeed, the compact disc itself is not just a storage medium for music — it’s a reminder of how much you enjoy the work of an artist, and it’s a standalone product that should extend the experience that an [...]

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5,000 Records Is All You Need

Selling CDs

Lefsetz has a gloriously cynical look at this week’s sales. Pay close attention to what he says about the effects of an $18.98 list price, and the fact that publicity does not equal sales. Also note that a Guns & Roses greatest hits collection is blowing the doors off everything other than the 70-some records [...]

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