There’s a long-running trope about the Velvet Underground that goes something like: “The Velvet Underground only sold about a thousand copies of their first record. But every single person that bought that record started a band.” It’s funny to me…
Category
Grow Your Audience
How Much Do Musicians Really Make from Record Deals?
After yesterday’s mailbag entry on royalties, our friend Ken Muse pointed me to a great breakdown of the current record deal math done by Cord Jefferson at The Root. By the math in the article, the average “signed” musician makes…
“Help, I Need to Buy $1,200 Jonas Brothers Tickets”
Here’s a coda to last week’s kindie rock story: Salon contributor Kenneth Rapoza flashes back to his Bon Jovi youth and wonders how cool it would be to treat his kids to VIP tickets and a meet-and-greet at a Jonas…
Did the Live Concert Business Push Jane Wiedlin Off That Hill?
Lori and I just came back from a family vacation at the Jersey Shore. We snuck away for a night to Atlantic City, and we’re either the worst gamblers or the best gamblers ever, because we ended up spending about…
Keep Your Eye on the Goose
Now I know the music business has turned upside down, since I just learned about an OK Go video from a science magazine. (I probably would have been on this way sooner, but I’ve been on vacation!) Discover Magazine’s blog…
Climbing Aboard a Sinking Ship
Run into any burning buildings lately, even though you’re not a firefighter? So why are you so worried about getting your song on the radio, getting your band signed, winning that battle of the bands? Every week, I get e-mail…
Kindie Rock
Have we all been using “Kindie Rock” to describe hip records for families for a while now, or is the term bubbling up from Anne Hart’s great blurb about the genre in the Savannah Morning News? Like most overnight sensations,…
NACA Schools Block-Booking Live Music
Every time I write about booking shows on college campuses, I get two kinds of e-mail. One burst of e-mail comes from artists who are so frustrated about how difficult it is to nail down dates through college activities boards,…
Forbes: Jill Sobule Raised More Than Public Enemy
Katie Evans uses her entertainment column in Forbes to explore some of the ways that bands raise money from fans beyond traditional CD sales. (And, as I’ve been writing about for the last ten years, CD sales are just about…
The World Can’t Go On Without CBGB’s Bathroom
If you saw any of the live seminars I’ve staged in the last decade, you’ve probably seen me reference CBGB’s bathroom as everything great about rock and roll–and everything wrong with live performance venues. Long before YouTube comments, there was…
Don’t Underestimate the Power of an Audience
It seems like the music journalism community has decided that this is the week they can finally pile on Taylor Swift. In the past 36 hours, I’ve read headlines about her “career-ending” Grammy performance, bloggers and columnists have called for…
Ingrid Michaelson Focuses on Live Gigs, Song Placement
This London Times profile of singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson deserves a little more than just a slot on this week’s “interesting links” list. A few slices of Michaelson’s life indicate the direction that savvy working musicians will need to take in…