Brisbane, Australia’s indie record labels join forces to celebrate the sound of the city

Brisbane’s proud DIY music scene is being supported and celebrated through a unique initiative that promotes the city’s booming independent record labels – soundslikebrisbane.

Believed to be a world first, soundslikebrisbane (SLB) is bringing together the city’s indie labels under the one banner - already 13 local independent labels are represented with more to join the fold soon.

That first batch includes prominent local labels: Plus One Records, Mere Noise, Dew Process, Turkeyneck, Room 40, Someone Good, Pinnacles Music, SUGARRUSH, Lofly, El Nino El Nino, Red Tape Entertainment, Starving Kids, and Valve Records.

Covering every genre from hip-hop and jazz, to garage rock, country and pop – the labels define the creative melting pot that Brisbane has become. Together these labels work with dozens of artists, promoting close to 100 releases each year.

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WebCeleb Thinks Fans Should be Paid to Listen to Music They Like

WebCeleb is a social music marketplace with a great business model for music fans.

If you’re a musician…not so much.

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Mistakes Artists, PR & Management Companies Make When Submitting To The Press.

First off, I’m not a writer so this article won’t be as eloquently written as some of the others on this site. With that out of the way, let me start by stating that I run a music based blog (Hoodgrown Online) and I also work at a venue that books a lot of independent musicians so I receive a ton of submissions all of the time for a variety of sources. My list below is an account of a few things that really irk me and that fact that hired, professional Public Relations and Management companies are making these mistakes as much as lone artists are.

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Writing An Effective Contact/Gig/Business Letter

So you’ve got the band & songs ready and now it’s time to start hitting up venues, labels, bloggs, social networking sites, ext… But what do you write and how do you make it effective when you only have about 1 sentence to capture your potential audience?

Let’s start with the basics. First make sure to do your homework and refer to the correct person using their correct title: Mr., Ms, Miss, ext.. Nothing will get your e-mail sent to the trash faster then saying Dear Jon when the booking agent is Adam (you’d be surprised). If they have a last name use both. Some people like both names when being refereed to and in doing so you have already started to build a relationship with them; you defiantly will not hurt yourself (for instance my name is Zaque Eyn not Zac or Zaq or Zaqueyn and I am called Zaque Eyn not Zaque or any other version of). Make sure you check the spelling of their name. I cannot stress this enough. If you spell it wrong then don’t expect a reply back, although the exception here is if you write a great letter then people can get over the misspelling of their name, usually.

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Rock Band Network Announces Affiliate Program

Musical behemoth Rock Band Network announced their partnership yesterday with a number of do-it-yourself service providers to help bridge the gap between music and gaming.

Through this program, bands can receive special opportunities from affiliates, including waived and discounted account fees, complimentary distribution and promotion of Rock Band Network songs, banner ads, widgets, cross-promotional linking and more.

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The Nuts & Bots of Touring - Video Seminar by Jason Parker

Seattle trumpeter Jason Parker just returned from a two-week West Coast tour with his band, The Jason Parker Quartet. The tour was a huge success on all fronts, and Parker learned a ton acting as booking agent, PR firm, marketing director, tour manager, driver, band leader and trumpet player!

Wearing all those different hats really showed Parker what it takes to launch a successful tour. The band had a great time, played all sorts of cool venues, sold tons of CD’s, made contacts along the way and even came home with money in their pockets…so much so that Parker was able to pay the band 50% more than he had originally planned!

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RouteNote Upgrades: Free or Premium, The Choice is Yours!

RouteNote has just launched a major upgrade of our site and services. RouteNote now offers both free and paid options. The Paid options are the lowest in the industry and the artist keeps 100% of their revenues, compared to the free option in which artist keeps 90%

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Professional Way Of Life

So here are some tips on your professionalism & lasting career as a music professional.

1. Be humble in your attitude, show some humility.

2. Read & listen carefully to what the other party is saying and asking for & give them that info specifically.

3. Don’t add extra stuff if they never asked for it.

4. You are always on “interview” no matter where you are (grocery store, bank, car wash, event, concert ext…) and as soon as you leave the house. If your rude to someone, pick your nose in public, litter, steal, ext.. you are hurting your career. You never know who is watching or who your talking to. Always be on top of your game, bring your A level, always.

5. Write e-mails professionaly as if your life depended on it, because it does. Don’t write them from your phone, we can tell you didn’t take the time and they look terriable. If you don’t know what a professional e-mail looks like then go to you local library and find a business proposal writing book, it will help your writing syle 10 fold.

6. Give only the important information in your e-mails. We don’t care about your bio, dog or last relationship & why your depressed or have not had a job. We care about easy links to your information, how many true fans you have, how much merch you sell, how many cd’s you’ve sold and why you want to work with us. Keep it short and too the point!

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Why All Musicians Need To Have The Business Know How

The music industry, as we all know, is constantly changing. That’s a dead issue. Forget about digital downloading and piracy, they can both be overcome with the correct business strategies. So, what I want to talk about instead is a observation I’ve been noticing for a while now; There is a serious lack of business knowledge in the music industry.

When I say this, I’m not really talking about major labels (Although some of their signings do make you wonder), I’m more about the grass route independent musicians. There are many with enough talent to satisfy even the harshest critics, yet they’ll never quite fulfil their potential. It may be that they’re not sure how to effectively promote their music, or it may be that they’re not sure how to manage their budget. Either way, without at least some business knowledge you won’t get very far at all.

The thing is, a lot of musicians don’t realise they have to take the time to learn business side of the music industry. Many just go with the flow and learn as they go along. Now personally, I’ve never been of fan of making mistakes and THEN learning from them. If it happens, so be it. But I’d much rather learning as much as I can in the beginning so I can get things done correctly the first time around. This’ll keep your journey sailing smoothly, and save a lot of time and effort on re-doing things from previous mistakes.

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Treat your music like NPR

This week 93.9 FM WNYC, the New York affiliate of National Public Radio, is holding its thrice yearly pledge drive.  Check out their pledge page here: http://bit.ly/9msbLd

Its pledge drive got me thinking about how similar it is to music - NPR relies overwhelmingly on voluntary donations from its listeners, many of whom listen without donating.  Today, music can easily be downloaded for free as easily as turning the dial to 93.9 FM.  What is NPR’s secret sauce?  And, how can musicians use it to make money and gain supporters?

The answer is with what NPR rewards its supporters.  Not only is its programming consistently of excellent quality, which makes selling easier, but it offers many different types of gifts/rewards in exchange for donations.  The classic reward, perhaps its most popular, is the WNYC canvas tote bag.  Walking around my neighborhood over the past few days I’ve noticed the great number of people walking around with these bags.  They connote many things: an affiliation with an intelligent brand, willingness to donate money to a good cause, perhaps “hipness”.  Would your fans be proud to display their affiliation with you?  Do they already want to, but don’t have a way?

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Facebook Has Fan Pages: Use Them!

Here at Music Without Labels & Beat-Play, LLC we currently represent 320 independent musicians, offering free promotion. There are currently way too many artists today not utilizing social media the right way to promote their music. Facebook has had fan pages for close to 2 years now so don’t represent your band under a “personal” profile. Take a look at the reasons why it is not beneficial to build your music recognition on Facebook through a personal page.

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Secret to Success: The Power of Passion

For years I’ve been asked by artists and aspiring entrepreneurs about an easy way to succeed in the industry. Typically the question is unwittingly disguised as various queries, including: What’s the best way to get noticed? How do we sell more music? How do we get a manager? How do we get a deal? What’s the best way to get coverage? How do we get radio play? What’s the secret to getting more gigs? Et cetera… Many don’t realize this, but in essence, they’re asking, “What’s the easy way to succeed?

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Amanda Palmer: What you can learn from this DIY diva about the music business

Amanda Palmer is far from a household name, however, she’s as relevant to the music industry as any big name artist. She tours constantly, sells plenty of merchandise, and most importantly is adored by her fans. Even in this post “In Rainbows” music industry, within indie music circles, Amanda’s a hero and an inspiration to aspiring artists. Online, she’s become the poster child for the right way to use social media if you’re an artist. She used that connection to further strengthen her bond with fans. After experiencing, first hand, the effectiveness of connecting directly with her followers, she found that there was no longer a need for a middleman- the record label- between her and her audience. For the last year or so, she’s embarked on a campaign to be dropped from powerhouse label Roadrunner/Warner Records— a feat that is not easily accomplished, regardless, she prevailed.

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Indie Vs. Major: Which Record Label Contract Is Right For You?

A look at the pros and cons of both indie and major record label contracts as well as some of the common, yet most confusing terms used throughout the contracts

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