New Facebook App Lights The Fuse For A Full-blown Music Revolution

Most of all, we need artists and fans to really take ownership of this community, and take advantage of the free options we’re putting out there. This really does need to be a team effort, and I think we have the strength and the ability as indie artists to build something huge, so we can have the kind of impact that we need in order to benefit all of the incredibly talented independent artists out there that are struggling right now, and also to impact the fans that are missing out on a lot of great music because of it. We’ve had a great response from artists so far, and we’re confident that these solutions will bring some big changes to the way the music industry operates in the coming years. The best is yet to come!”

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Grooveshark’s privacy policy has a “soul” clause

While reading through Grooveshark’s privacy policy the other day, you could say doing some “research,” I stumbled upon this phrase that seemed a little odd to me:

“This information may also be kept longer than 6 months by EMG if a user is found by EMG’s soul judgment to be suspect of carrying out illegal, unlawful, or dangerous actions with or in this service.“

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Music's Silent Salary Cap

It is no secret that mainstream music today is controlled by the major labels. By controlled, I mean owned. They decide what comes out, when it comes out, and who it reaches. They also control how much the artists get paid from their music. Effectively, this mean the labels, not the artists(the people truly responsible) own the music. 

The artists, though they’ve long had feuds with the label executives over extent of control, still need the labels to do 2 jobs: Mass Promotion and Mass Distribution. The labels, with their big budgets and bigger connections, essentially control mass promotion and distribution, thus giving them an excessive amount of control over the people who need those two things the most: the artists.

This situation of control, which borders on extortion, because the artists have little other choice, has created the occurrence of a silent salary cap in music.

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A World-Wide Movement – Beat-Play Interview with Alejandro Velasquez from Artefacto – Medellin, Colombia

This is an amazing interview with independent artist Alejandro Velasquez, a guitarist in the band Artefacto. He talks about the struggles for independent artists in Medellin, Colombia, and also about how artists there are organizing in order to make the changes they need to be successful on their own.

I love this interview for a couple of reasons. One is Alejo’s response to my question “How do you promote yourself?” I’ve never had anyone give me his response, and I’ve long felt the same way. He said “make good music.” This should always be first and foremost.

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Twestival-fm - What a great idea!

Twestival-fm is an awesome site made by SoundCloud, another pretty cool service, that allows bands on Twitter to upload their music where it can be found on a huge map of the world. This is a blurb from their site:

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Screw a New Music Tax – We’ve got our Own Ideas

So by now you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about a new music tax for AM/FM radio stations, that corresponds with the 1995 fee imposed on Internet, satellite, and cable radio, crippling hundreds, if not thousands, of internet radio stations.

If you’re an independent artist, I’m happy to announce that this means pretty much nothing. If you want the real scoop on what all the popular opinions are, and the real truth underlying them, this article is great The Man Can’t Tax Our Music . My suggestion: don’t worry about it.

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Interview with Salem on the Risan Project – The International Multi-Media ECO Tour

The Risan Project utilizes multi-media events to raise awareness of climate change and the praxis of alternative lifestyles. The message of the tour is derived from the belief that environmental policy must reflect the acknowledgement of a global climate crisis. Affecting policy decisions begins with knowledge and awareness of the current state of the environment and alternatives to current systems of energy production and usage.

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The Process of Innovation - Think Social!

This is an awesome topic that I love to share with people whenever I can.

Innovation is something that can be thought of in several different ways, however there are good ways, and then there are better ones.

Innovation can be basically anything that solves a problem that has not been previously solved, or it can be something that solves a problem that was previously solved, while solving other problems at the same time(these are the better ones).

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How can Musicians get Paid already?

This is probably one of the most common questions I get asked when I talk about my website. It turns out there is not just one answer, which is definitely a good thing.

There are many different ways artists can get paid today. The most common ones are to sell their CD’s, sell their merchandise, and sell shows. But especially with the internet’s explosion, there are more ways to make money than ever. I will get to these in a minute.

First of all, selling CD’s, merch, and shows sounds easy enough, but it all requires effective promotion. This promotion can be an investment in itself. Buying magazine or radio ad space can get pretty expensive, and there’s no guarantees. Also, online promotion is pretty ineffective at allowing you to reach new people everyday. You are almost limited to the people you know.

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Often Not Found Playlist #2

Welcome to the second Often Not Found Playlist. This week we’re featuring artists from MusicWithoutLabels.com. It wasn’t easy to pick these artists out of all of the artists we have signed up, but these songs are a good representation of all the awesome music and artists we have on board already. Sorry for being a little late on this one, my internet time in Colombia is limited. This usually will come out on Saturdays. Enjoy!

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Simple Keys to a REALLY Successful Business

First of all, when structuring your business you have to have the mindset of providing the best value to people. If you are approaching the organization of you business with the mind set of making money, you are going to be sadly disappointed later on down the line.

The money will come later. The sure way to secure that money is by forgetting about it, and focusing on how you can provide the most value possible to your consumers.

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The Often Not Found, Playlist Worthy Songs of the Week

This blog post will be the first of many that I am dedicating to all of the amazing independent artists I listen to everyday, who deserve way more support than what they’re getting. These actual songs I am taking from my thesixtyone.com playlist. They range from Rock to Reggae to Folk, and in between. All AMAZINGLY talented artists.

Thesixtyone.com by the way, just updated their interface, and it’s much harder to use!…but still full of amazing artists..Enjoy!

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The invention of the Toolbox, and how it can save Music

What came first, the toolbox or the tool? This is not a trick question, it’s obviously the tool, and we have proof. However, with the emergence of more tools, and more applications for these tools, it became apparent that another tool, a tool’s tool, was needed: the Toolbox.

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The "Metagration" of the Web...and what it can mean for artists..

It only make sense that with the floods of content floating out there waiting to be surfed, there would be some better tools put in place for finding and organizing the content that interests you the most.

So how is content found today? I think it would be safe to assume that Google is the number 1 way people currently find content on the web that they’re looking for specifically. It works great. It will show me any content or any websites that even contain the keywords I’m looking for, but when it comes to using the search results for a specific function, Google isn’t always so specific. In other words, there’s many things Google can’t/doesn’t do.

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