This past year at Volume 11 we highlighted a different article every month through our “Blog Post of the Month” column.

The featured blogs had a great mix of advice ranging from how to land a record contract and a festival gig to John Mayer’s tips on avoiding social media pitfalls to how digital streaming is affecting today’s music industry.

Here are my favorite Blog Posts of the Month from 2011:

February Post of the Month: The Top 7 Things Independent Artists Do Wrong

I picked this article to help everyone kick off 2011, and I think now is a great time to go back to it.  Did you fix these problems this year? If not, it’s time to write some of them into your 2012 resolutions!

Since its the holiday season, I chose a holiday themed blog to share with you for November’s blog post of the month.

In “5 Ways to Make the Most of the Holidays“, musician Cheryl B. Engelhardt gives advice for taking advantage of holidays to do some positive things for your career.

It is telling that Engelhardt starts out by pointing out how much work she is putting in the rest of the year, and that her advice is based on the assumption that you are working hard on your music career, year round.

She describes her own efforts:  ”I’m never not working. I’m either plugging my next show, looking for the next film placement, writing a song, scheduling a band rehearsal, calling booking companies, or, at the very least, thinking about one of these things.”  So before you move to steps 1-5 of her holiday advice, make sure you are starting with the same strong foundation.

Well Spotify is here, and as a music fan I must admint I do love it.

Basically unlimited access to music new and old; I can listen to whatever I want wherever and whenever.  Check Wilco’s new album out?  No problem.  I’ll have it up in 10 seconds.

It is so cool, and so well done.  That Spotify is so well integrated with Facebook is super great for independent musicians as well (though a bit frightening on other levels), since there is no better way to spread the word about new music than for everyone to see that you are listening to it.  Their playlists also have much potential for music exposure.

However, music exposure aside, are musicians making money from it?