Web/Tech

Here’s a neat idea for a community site: Blanks and Postage. Fans send blank CDs and cover postage costs, and get great live shows on disc in return. Bands pay $50 for inclusion in the directory, which will surely expose…

79% of web users surveyed respond negatively or "very negatively" to websites that play sound without asking. (No, the fact that 21% did not fall into those categories is no excuse.) Forcing your audience to hear your music without asking…

Over at Build Your Band’s Site, I’ve been testifying about what to include in your site — here’s the flip side of that same coin: a great rundown of the items you should steer clear of. [ Thanks to Jason…

Lots of folks who attended 2NMC in September were asking me to clarify some things David Hooper was talking about in his advanced web seminar. Our colleague Neil Shearing just released a nice illustrated guide that talks about many of…

From a stellar overview of digital rights management, this insight from one of the most influential folks at a major label… Ted Cohen, EMI SVP, believes users who pass around music after paying for it are basically recruiting new fans…

Here’s a sample from the class we held on the conference bridge last night. You can get to participate in all five of these classes LIVE with the Build Your Band’s Site workshop or with a membership in IndieBiz…

Cool new calendar widget for your website that supports iCal and RSS!

My head’s been so underwater, I missed this study that’s been causing buzz in the blogosphere. According to a UNC researcher (and others), it takes 5,000 peer to peer downloads to “displace” one retail sale of a CD. And, as…

If you’re determined not to take advantage of some of the great offers for digital distribution on the market, you can check out a new book about placing your independent music on the iTunes service. As always, it’s still up…

I’m rather fond of the manifesto posted by the founders of Mperia, a new pay-per-download music site that manages sales for indie artists.

Streaming radio over cell phones was the holy grail for small broadcasters even when I helped launch xpn.org back in the late ’90s. With cheaper-every-week access and tools like mobile ShoutCast, if you don’t like your local stations, you can…

Sometimes, market forces work in your favor. When AFTRA, the union that includes most voice-over announcers, forced stations to pay extra to use their talent on streaming audio, it pretty much eliminated the benefits of streaming for commercial radio. Non-comms…