Welcome to spinme.com, where we help working musicians make more money making music. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or our weekly newsletter. Thanks for visiting!Over the last few years, I’ve been talking to clients and members about how to get a core group of your fans [...]
In Grow Your Band’s Audience and Music Management for the Rest of Us, I write about how the best kind of record deal you can land is a “P&D.” That stands for pressing and distribution, and it means you, the artist, are basically hiring a major label to manufacture and distribute your disc — the [...]
Putting the gloom and doom of the Tower Records post behind us, there are still opportunities for indie record stores to stay alive and stake a claim for relevance in their customers’ lives. To survive, a good record store should:
Position themselves as an expert in one or more specific niches. When folks think you’re THE [...]
We have a lot of new readers rolling through the site this week, so I thought I’d sum up my philosophy on how to make money making music. I just typed out a quick note to one of the members of our music business mentoring program that frames things up nicely…
The challenge with being a [...]
I think a tipping point for my love of music was the first time I visited the Piccadilly Circus store of Tower Records in 1992. Up until then, my record retail experience was limited to the awful chain stores around Philly, and the little shops in Ithaca that carried a few stacks of used and [...]
Tim Lee’s got an awesome post about eMusic and its lack of DRM. I’m used to folks’ jaws dropping when I tell them at seminars that they should not worry at all about people ripping off their albums. And, in fact, that piracy might be the best thing that could happen to them when it [...]
Yes, back when guys like Cousin Brucie and Dick Clark could open a mic and cause a Sam Goody stampede, radio (and TV) could dictate what records flew off store shelves. Not today. Focus groups and sales forecasts determine what goes on an FM playlist. So if you’re still trying to exert yourself to get [...]
Thousands of artists use CD Baby’s digitial distribution program to get their music into iTunes, Rhapsody and other digital stores. Today, CD Baby posted a streamlined version of their DD agreement. Among the changes are: improved readability, ringtones and an easier-to-grasp term length. They’ve also removed language and items that were suggestions and not required [...]
Michael Tarlowe started his independent label Virt Records in 2001 with a tight focus on the Triple-A and performing songwriter markets. Virt’s modest roster includes critically acclaimed artists Vienna Teng, Shane Nicholson and Brenda Weiler. New releases from husband-wife duo Ellery and San Francisco folk-popsters The Bittersweets are planned for 2006.
When I discovered that Virt [...]
Here’s a report that American Idol finalists typically have poor record sales and that labels are hesitant to offer contracts to former AI contestants.
Of course, “poor record sales” can mean different things to different people:
Second-season singer, third-place finisher Kimberley Locke, has sold approximately 209,000 copies of One Love, but after her, the next-best loser is [...]
