I’ll admit to my seedy past… I once worked at a place where we used a dubious legal release that, if one looked at it at the right angle, could be interpreted to give my employer ownership of any music…
Author
Joe Taylor Jr.
Piracy vs. Obscurity
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…
Tell us what your music sounds like.
Bob Baker has an excellent post about getting more music publicity. Indeed, every time a band would pitch one of my radio stations with the line, “we’re like nothing you’ve ever heard before,” someone would chortle, “and like nothing we’re…
Big Moves!
If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been absent from the blog and the members area for the last week, it’s because Lori and I were moving to a new home in Charlotte, North Carolina! We absolutely loved Athens, and always…
How RIAA Litigation Works
Ray Beckerman has posted the most definitive guide to the RIAA’s practice of scaring the wits out of consumers with copyright infringement lawsuits. At the crux of the strategy is the realization that many of the “John Does” in each…
RIAA to YouTube: You’re Next.
I was working in radio, and part of a team that was running what was, at the time, one of the ten most-listened-to live streams in the world, when the RIAA and the PROs steamrolled streaming radio with some pretty…
What if lack of net neutrality dictated your playlist?
I honestly hadn’t thought about this until now… If the record industry, which has used payola and co-op dollars for decades to squeeze small artists out of radio playlists and off of record store shelves, could actually pay cable and…
Lefsetz on Downloads: WTF?
Lefsetz has some choice language for record execs that don’t understand why there are still ten illegal downloads of a hit song for each paid download. And he wonders why nobody in the mainstream media’s writing/thinking about why this whole…
Music Business Radio – Street Teams
I’m one of the guests on David Hooper’s Music Business Radio this week, and we talked a lot about street teams and growing your own audience. (We talked a lot about Music Hates You, in fact — the guys have…
Hem: Liberty Mutual’s Accomplishing What DreamWorks Couldn’t
Hem has been honing their sound — a blend of etherial vocals and Americana — for close to seven years now. DreamWorks signed them in 2003, but couldn’t make their records click at radio. Luckily, they’ve moved on to Rounder,…
New Tastemakers
Back in about 1996, I decided to shift my career away from music programming and toward production. That’s because I simply didn’t have the memory capacity of my colleagues, who can remember everything about every act they’ve ever heard. (A…
Sales Drive Radio Airplay, Not Vice Versa
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…