I’ve been urging folks for months now to build their own mailing lists instead of just relying on the “friends” feature on MySpace. Even though we’ve seen similar sites vaporize overnight, the MySpace team’s done a decent job getting ad funding, so why worry?

Apparently, it’s not so hard to get data out of the server, [...]

Black Eyed Peas are taking the membership idea even farther, with a weblog-like site that allows members to pay $2/mo for bonus material and even a personalized weblog! Very cool idea.
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I got a couple of interesting e-mails today. One from a band who added me to their list without asking, which contained some profanity. I grew up in a working class neighborhood adjacent to Philadelphia, so I can tolerate more than my share of blue language. But the very next e-mail in the box from [...]

Great piece in the NYT about how music blogs are picking up the torch that radio disc jockeys of the 50s and 60s once wielded. They’re tastemakers to key pockets of tastemakers…
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Lots of folks have been asking me about how to raise capital for recording projects. Fundable is a new website that lets your fans contribute toward a financial goal. If you break down your budget into manageable chunks (say, 100 people @ $50 each), you can make it happen. The cool thing about fundable is [...]

Matthew at the always-awesome design shop 37signals takes on band websites that forsake any hope of usability for the sake of looking cool.
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Most of the musicians I meet at workshops want to know how they can generate more sales from their music websites. I wish I had my hands on this great model that Seth Godin points at, which shows how your site is just another piece of your audience-building campaign. It’s supported by lots of functions [...]

Reading this USA Today story calls up two issues that we discussed on a recent conference call:

Americans are not getting exposed to new music on the radio, and aren’t even expecting to be exposed to new music on the radio.
Americans with MP3 players actively share new music with each other, one-to-one.

So where are you going [...]

CDM’s got a good look at what the new Powerbook models mean for home studio and project recording. I keep flashing back to the time I authorized a $20,000 purchase for a mixing board with flying faders and a freakin’ Pentium 300 with a 5GB hard drive, to do only about half of what you [...]

Bob Baker’s got a great followup to my own e-mail rant from a few days ago. Just don’t be an e-mail idiot!
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