The problem with illegal downloading is that there are too many young adults who want to use it as a surrogate parent to get what they want without paying for it. Yes, I’m on my soapbox again. I am an advocate of every indie artist out there trying to grow their musical passion into a [...]
In an article in WSJ (7/29/’09) by Sarah McBride (“Studios Sue to Stop Pirate Bay”), the major Hollywood studios are requesting that a Swedish civil court impose an injunction against the operators of Pirate Bay (in the process of being sold to Global Gaming Factory X AB as of August 27th) to stop both its [...]
Check out the article “Musician, Market Yourself” in the New York Times by Brad Stone:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/technology/internet/22music.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=%20brad%20stone&st=cse
For those indie artists committed to bypassing a major label deal and doing their recording and marketing, Polyphonic is worth looking into. Formed by music industry trio Adam Driscoll (Mama Group co-CEO), Terry McBride (Nettwerk CEO) and Brian Message (ATC & [...]
The intro production to this Toto “Africa” remake wails! Talk about using yourself as an instrument and an effect. Kudos to Perpetuum Jazzile, an a cappella jazz choir from Slovenia. Awesome vocals and originality. Thanks, Betty-Lynn, for sending me this.
http://videos.komando.com/2009/06/18/african-thunderstorm/
I’ve got to credit Gloria K. Fiero in her book, The Humanistic Tradition for this indie gem: “Tempermental and defiant, (Beethoven) scorned the patronage system that had weighed heavily upon both Mozart and Haydn, and sold his compositions as an independent artist.”
The backs of business models supporting online music sites like Pandora and AccuRadio were able to straighten up as royalty payments to SoundExchange were agreed upon by artists and labels after 2-years of dark cloud debate. There’s still the 30-day period during which webcasters can opt-to-adopt the new deal or either resort to the Copyright [...]
Put whatever corporate Natta-isms you want on the message (“to transform and refine our international growth strategy”), cutting 66% of its international staff and closing four of its international offices means that MySpace has to finally confront its inability to be a leader in social networking and not skirt the issue by placing blame on [...]
Move over Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, EMI and Sony Music Entertainment. If you are making it tough for indie artists to get exposure in the charts, there’s a new sandbox for them to play in.
Two new charts will launch this month geared toward rising artists affiliated with indie labels. Indie labels in England [...]
Neilsen SoundScan data presented at NARM was distressing, to say the least: of the 105,575 albums released last year, less than a thousand sold more that 25,000 copies. And, sales of new releases dropped 18%. The 50,000 digital-only albums racked up less than 2% of all the newly-released album sales.
Indie artists tallying up their recording, [...]
Over 400 folks will lose their jobs at MySpace in a 30% reduction in employees positioned by Van Natta as a restructuring across divisions to create innovation and efficiency.
Let me extend my heartfelt empathy to anyone who’s lost their job in this souring economy. It’s tough to be out of work when the bills come [...]