Finally — Someone Gets It
Universal lowers wholesale/retail CD prices.
News
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Tastemakers At Work
Mike Piazza is doing more for Guns N Roses than their label and publicist combined.
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Tastemakers Where You Least Expect Them
…and now, your local forecast…
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Five Rules of Post-SoBig Society
I think the author of this article might be taking things a little to the extreme. E-mail is not working so great this week, that’s for sure. But it’s always gonna be fine for one-to-one communication. Our spam filters did…
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Just Pennies Per Download
There’s a masterful parody of the iTunes marketing from the folks behind Downhill Battle. True, artists on major labels only get a few pennies per download. Crappy physical goods deal begets crappy digital goods deal. But instead of encouraging folks…
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Forrester Says Sharing’s Not To Blame For Sales Slump
In case you didn’t believe us, Forrester Research just released a report that validates our hunches. File sharing has had no net impact on album sales in general, and it’s actually helped increase sales for certain indie and obscure titles.…
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CD Baby Strikes Back
Derek just posted his formal rebuttal. Lawyers surrender. News at ten.
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KaZaA Chief: Look at What We Do
Nikki Hemming actually appeared on camera this week! In an interview with TechTV, she defends her curious company by emphasizing the positive effects that file sharing has on artists, citing specific examples of ticket sales and revived touring careers…
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CDBaby Digital Deal Still Safe
Lots of buzz today around the CDBaby.com digital distribution deal. If you hadn’t heard, Derek and his team are extending a program to their clients that takes the hassle out of getting your songs listed on iTunes, eMusic and other…
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Yes, Master!
String Cheese Incident, which refined the practice of advance ticket sales to fans, is about to sue the bejeezus out of TicketMaster. Apparently, TM won’t release blocks of tickets to bands unless they’re to be sold to “legitimate fan clubs”…
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Tossing The Dough
Did you know that at most modern pizza shops, there’s no need at all to toss the dough? Most professional pizza cooks use equipment that stretches that dough for them. Yet, on a bulletin board for pizza shop owners, I…
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The New Breed of Indie Musician
Thanks to Suzanne at Indie-Music.com for catching this great article in the Denver Post which neatly summarizes the new breed of “indie music” — artists who have been dropped (or liberated themselves) from major labels, only to bite them in…
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The Snapster Model
Tech journalist Robert X. Cringely posits a clever model for a legal music sharing business. It’s a surprisingly workable idea, which just requires a whole lot of lawyers and a few million dollars. On the down side, there’s no room…
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Adios, Tonos
News coming to us from different directions that Tonos is shutting down this week. As pedigrees go, that site had one of the best, but they couldn’t make the thing make money.
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You could be in Billboard
An insightful commentary from Slate, which points out that the new Billboard digital download chart could be toppled with only 1,500 paid downloads. Who’s gonna mobilize their fan base to make that happen?
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Natalie Merchant Pre-Order E-Mail
Folks, here is a textbook way to do this. Build up your database, then send a simple pre-order announcement with a little “somethin’ extra” to make the register pop. I can’t wait to see how this works… Natalie Merchant –…
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McKee Goes Diving
Discovered this great write-up of Maria McKee’s new project. I remember recording her for World Cafe when her last album came out, and how her handlers at the label had NO idea what they were gonna do to make the…
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Can We Still Be Friends?
There’s a new sheriffSharman in town. Rather, KaZaA 2.5 is out, and it contains a number of compelling tools for content providers. Me, I’m still to virus-and-spyware-phobic to run the thing on my own desktop, but it’s good to see…
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Indie Music On Sale!
Our friends over at Buy Indie Music have posted a great short list of the artists they’ve featured throughout June.
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Pay-Per-P2P
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is taking a step toward a middle ground on file sharing with this new hub page.
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Into Downloads?
UK site IntoMusic just relaunched with a clever new subscription model that splits revenues 50/50 with artists. They’re doing a great job using the front of their site to promote artists instead of technology, and for about five bucks a…
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Worst Buy
In all of last week’s commotion, I failed to notice that Best Buy finally unloaded Musicland. How long will the chain limp along on $18.98 list price disc sales?
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In-Store for Indies via iPod
I love this business model. DJs cut licensing deals directly with independent musicians and labels, load up iPods with custom mixes, and rent the iPods to cafes and stores for a fraction of what it might cost for them to…
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Heineken Announces Songwriters Grants
Apply soon for one of seven $3,000 grants sponsored by Heineken and administered by ASCAP.
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Downloading does not cause word of mouth…
…it will always work the other way around. Seriously, even if every musician on the planet had their music on iTunes or KaZaA, the only way an audience member would even think to download them would be if they heard…
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And the flip side of patronage…
I just saw Russian Ark, and seeing all those oil paintings reminded me of a great art class I took in grad school, where we discussed how art used to be customized to the whims of the patrons. It wasn’t…
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Senate Involvement in Indie Music
…and it’s not what you think. Not REMOTELY.
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The Point: One of America’s Finest Venues
Congratulations to our friends at The Point, who have just been added to Esquire Magazine’s list of the best music venues in America. We interviewed Rich Kardon for Grow Your Band’s Audience back in 2001, and it is so wonderful…
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Oh, HELL, no!
Someone must send pictures from this.
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Any such thing as a digital free lunch?
Interesting commentary from the Progress & Freedom Foundation on the effect of iTunes on piracy. Their basic argument: if iTunes is sellings songs at the right price point, then the *need* to pirate songs will diminish, marginalizing swappers. Meanwhile if…
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Free Expo for California Artists
Folks near Cal State Fullerton: register for your free admission to a great art & artists expo this August. You’ve got to be among the first 1,000 artists to get in for free, so register now!
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Spring Fever Sale on “Grow Your Band’s Audience”
You could call it Spring Fever. You could call it our wish to give you more tools for success. You could call it just plain crazy.We’re doing something we have never done before. We’re offering our flagship book, “Grow Your…
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Contact Directory Roundup
Dave Jackson’s just posted reviews of the major indie music directories. If you’ve been mulling over which one to purchase, you’ll want to hear what Dave has to say.
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Dax: Making It Easy To Share
It’s absolutely true, as documented in this Fox News report, that you can create a top ten record with about $1,500. What it doesn’t say until the last line is that you also need to have honed your songwriting ability.…
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Zeebo Turns Two
Congrats to Mark Weber — his Christian Music E-Zine, Zeebo turns two years old this week. Every week, Mark covers new releases and industry events with a literary flair. Here’s to many more years!
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Trash Proof Press Releases
Joe’s entering RANT MODE… Nothing riles me up more than a poorly written press release. It annoyed me when I was a business reporter, it annoyed me when I used to do radio news, and it annoys me even more…
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RAVE Act Protests Begin
We’ve been covering the RAVE Act in all its flavors in our newsletters for a long time. It finally cleared Congress a few weeks back when it was bundled with the Amber Alert legislation. (Reminds me of the episode of…
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We never had assembly like this…
Here’s an innovative and clever way to grow your high school audience — become a guest speaker/performer!
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Welcome, Summer!
For our readers in the U.S., I hope you had an enjoyable holiday weekend – we actually shut down our office for TWO WHOLE DAYS, and celebrated the unofficial start of summer at, of all things, a Herman’s Hermits show.…
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Another Club DIY in LA coming up…
June 5th in Los Angeles, there’s a Club DIY event about music publishing. If you live there, you should go. That is all.
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Got a Spare Thumb?
The folks at SongCritic are trying something interesting. Artists can pay $5 to post a song, and have it reviewed by a few hundred of their regular readers. The $5 is more than fair to cover their operating overhead (streaming…
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Pay-to-play…and not much more
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Have a Rotten Time in Toronto
The folks at NXNE have just inked a deal with Johnny Rotten to provide the keynote speech at their June conference. Understanding that, yes, folks are concerned about SARS and Mad Cow Disease, Toronto is still one of the nicest,…
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No Class Today / Compilation Update
Good news: we had a great time in Atlanta last weekend.Bad news: something did a number on my laptop, and it's taken me a few days to catch up.Therefore, I'm reluctantly rescheduling today's “Host Your Own Concerts” teleclass to June…
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Check out a new tip service from our friends at Kathode Ray Music
Plug time: David Hooper has finally launched his KR Tip Sheet, a data dump of all the queries he gets every week from labels, bands and publishers who are seriously looking for great new songs and recordings. One of the…
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New CDStreet Pricing — How will it affect you?
We just received a memo from our friends at CDStreet about their new pricing structure. We’ve been doing business with Glenn and his team since 1998, and I know I’ve been wondering how they’ve been keeping things so cheap.Later this…
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Here we go again…
With the recent court rulings sparing Morpheus, the industry is abuzz with talk of file sharing again. This notable article surveys the scene, with two key points that popped out at me.Someone correct me if I am statistically wrong —…
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Re-release that CD!
Labels are taking a cue from what their film company counterparts have known for some time. Re-releasing a CD (with or without “bonus cuts”) is a sure-fire way to re-invigorate an audience, and to refresh an artist or a project…
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Help Us Meet Your Needs — Take This Week’s Survey
We want to know what you think about our teleclass offerings. Are we on the right track, or should we be putting our energy elsewhere? Please take our 60 second survey.
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Sublet our servers!
Thanks for your patience during our recent tech overhaul of the site. We’re now running our all new software on our all new servers. And the great news is, we now have resources to extend some web hosting services to…