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”…
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…
DIY Distribution — Better Placement without the Risk
Our friend Chris Standring (writer of Street Team) has posted a great commentary at GoGirlsMusic.com about the right way to get your self-produced album into stores.
That Wasn’t Fear, It Was Independence Day
The rumors are true. The so-called big drop in file sharing use really was just due to holiday vacations, according to Jupiter Research. Traffic is back to normal — and growing. Jupiter says online music sales will only be worth…
Music Licensing Workshop in Nashville
Over your career, it’s likely that your long term wealth will come from music publishing and royalties. Folks in Nashville have a chance to register for a seminar that will take you behind the scenes of “music clearance” — the…
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…
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…
Does Your Club Owner Sound Like This?
When I first wrote Grow Your Band’s Audience as a series of magazine articles in 1998, one of the things I discovered was that this animosity between bookers and bands was mostly show. Posturing. Folks acting like that was the…
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.
More Newsletter Ideas
Our friends at HitBox have a list of seven tips for e-zine publishers…
Why Newsletters Are So Important
Mini-rant time. I am on the road quite a lot. And even when I am not on the road, I have a tendency to drop in at Kinko’s (or such)and use borrowed terminals. If I happen to surf across a…
RAVE Act is in effect…
One of the first examples of the legislation-formerly-known-as-RAVE. This is a pretty extreme example, but as local authorities become more aware of the powers of this law, musicians are going to have to take a leading role in educating audiences…