Apple is collaborating with EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music and Universal Music Group with an eye towards creating an interactive bundle on their iTunes shore that includes material such as liner notes, lyric sheets and photos. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39697354,00.htm

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MTV recently accounced that they will enable any artist-unsigned emerging act, indie cult fave or major-label superstar-to submit songs for possible inclusion in the Rock Band game.

The plan isn’t as simple as uploading a song to iTunes or anything like that. Rather, artists and labels will submit songs to a community of trained freelance game developers and other interested programmers who will prepare the tracks for Rock Band. Additionally, labels can either hire trained developers or school their existing employees to do the work in-house.

Songs submitted through this process must then be reviewed by other developers to check for playability, inappropriate lyrics, copyright infringement and so on. Then approved tracks will be posted to an in-game download store separate from its existing “Rock Band” store where creators can set their own price (50 cents to $3 per song) and receive 30% of any resulting sales. Gamers will also be able to demo 30-second samples of each track.

If this process works and allows for any musician to have a fair chance of getting their music uploaded for games, it could obviously be a great way to attract new fans, as well as allow fans to add some individuality to their game playing experience.

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The future of Internet radio appears more secure after a handful of online stations reached an agreement Tuesday to head off a potentially crippling increase in copyright royalty rates. As reported in Yahoo Tech, large commercial webcasters will pay copyright owners up to 25 percent of their revenue or a “per-performance” rate that is below [...]

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We wanted to give some link love to the folks at New Rock Star Philosophy. The “left brain” section of one of their recent articles provides a good starting point for marketing and production ideas that will use your limited time and $ resources wisely.

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During every interview, convention panel, startup negotiation or conversation with an industry peer, there is inevitably a moment when someone says something like, “All this talk about social networking, new media and digital marketing is exciting, but does it work? And if it does, where are all the successful artists that have made it because of music 2.0?”

This excerpt from Hypebot’s “Let’s Prove That Artists Don’t Need Major Labels to ‘Make It’” speaks to the core of what Volume 11 and other related web sites and services for independent musicians are all about.

Who has been using these new models and services to grow?

How exactly have they done it?

What can we learn from them?

As we all know, there are so many ways we can now spend our time marketing ourselves. Role models and/or examples of what is possible and how to do it are vital for independent musicians in this day and age. But with limited time and resources, we need to focus.

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