These days our bandwidth can be so low from working and maintaining relationships with family and friends how do you keep up with the latest and greatest? Easy; use Twitter to follow the people that actually create the technology.

That brings us to Lee Martin – he takes care of Them Crooked Vultures and Beck’s Web needs, and he is also a developer within the Web Music Technology community. I am a little late on being completely blown away by his Twitter app to stream music – twt.fm. To be exact I am up and over 1.7m users late!

Within maybe 30mins I had uploaded links to 3 songs of my band Life Love Misery, including links to purchase from iTunes and it was played almost 200 times. Imagine if you band is popular; watch your bandwidth!

Once you log in and start an account this is what your twt.fm page looks like.

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

A recent report issued by the Jewish Moms For Independent Musicians (JMIM) stated that 9 out of 10 Jewish moms support the “pay what you want” model for selling music online.

“We think it is a good application of the morals we like to teach our children,” says Stacy Schwartz, President of JMIM and mother two young musicians with myspace pages. “My kids put a lot of time into their music. Right now they are giving it away on myspace. But they should be compensated for their time and effort like anyone else. The newspaper delivery boy gets paid for delivering the paper every morning. My kids should get paid too.”

Added Lauren Gold, Vice President of JMIM: “If you can’t get someone to do the right thing, guilt is always a great last resort.”

Okay…. enough of my attempt at an Onion style article. The truth is this model seems to be working.

[Read more →]

ReverbNation is getting into the online music distribution game.  Their service appears less expensive than iTunes or TuneCore, and also offers free promotion tools.
From Wired.com:
“For small bands, [mapping marketing efforts against sales spikes] may not be important, but for the mid-tier acts using our existing tools as they are meant to be used, it could [...]

[Read more →]

Please note that the below is not official legal advice, it is ONLY for the U.S.A., we are not your lawyers, and you should always contact your attorney before entering into any contract such as a license.
I was reading an article in November’s Spin Magazine called “Faking the Band.”  Apparently, unknown studio musicians are using [...]

[Read more →]

I recently read two quotes from guitarist Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes about record labels and why the Black Crowes chose to use their own label, Siver Arrow Records, for distribution of their upcoming new album Warpaint:

From the March 2008 Paste Magazine: “… these assholes who are sitting on this sinking ship – and have caused the ship to sink – still don’t even understand why it’s sinking.

[Read more →]

We all knew this question would need to be answered eventually – is the album going the way of the dodo? Is there even a need for it anymore?

[Read more →]

Dave Kusek states in his new book, The Future of Music, that since live performances and t-shirts cannot be digitized at least at the moment, the experience of being at a live event is going to have to get more appealing for bands to survive in the coming years.
This is likley true, although I think [...]

[Read more →]

The Radiohead decision is fascinating and no doubt highlights how the radio industry is now starting from ground zero in determining how to function in the digital world. That alone warrants substantial discussion. For up-start bands, though, the question becomes what to do if there are no record labels to finance their growth?

[Read more →]