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June 21, 2016 Getting your music and message to reach the ears of new listeners — potential new fans — has never been more possible than it is today. Social media sites like YouTube, Soundcloud, Twitter and Facebook have revolutionized the music industry by sharing and promoting new content and giving fans insights into the artists behind the music.
June 6, 2016 In pop music, the word “genius,” is often only associated with the likes of John Lennon, Elvis Presley, or Janis Joplin—dead, but not forgotten because their works continue to resonate with the living. We’ve heard people delegate such a lofty praise to Michael Jackson, Prince, or Amy Winehouse when they were still alive, and we still constantly see it being juxtaposed with living legends Elton John, Morrissey, and Lenny Kravitz; therefore, to give it to a not-even-forty-years-old pop diva with saccharine monikers—Beysus, Queen Bey—is a case that will always make it a subject of debate.
Album Release, album, art work, artist | tagged beyonce, creative genius, lemonade June 3, 2016 One of the first things you’ll need to think about when planning your show is budget planning. When setting your ticket prices, be sure to factor venue costs into the price to ensure your overhead is covered. Encourage people to purchase tickets in advance by advertising higher prices at the door. As you search for the perfect location, have a mental image and projected head count in mind. The style and layout will depend heavily on your audience and the type of event you are hosting.
Live Music | tagged dj, finances, live music, party June 1, 2016 I’ve been working with recording “artists” and musicians most of my adult life. For the past 10 years exclusively I’ve been either managing or developing (or both) artists and bands in the USA and around the world. Since the music industry is going through a major paradigm shift (mainly thanks to digital downloads) it’s always interesting to see how musicians adapt and how their expectations change.
June 1, 2016 In May and June radio stations will be looking for the next hot summer song. In relation to this we’d like to ask you to upload and plug your summer-related releases asap.
Each release that will be plugged between 1 May and 1 July will receive a “music in the spotlight” spot on our homepage for four weeks!
radio | tagged Radio, digital radio, new music, new releases, radio music, summer music May 31, 2016 What makes a great song? A catchy melody? Definitely. Killer lyrics? Possibly. But if you really want to know what helped Mark Ronson shift 14 million copies of Uptown Funk in an age where piracy and streaming rule, research suggests you may have to dig a little deeper.
Book, Business, Creativity, Education, Investing In Your Music, Music Industry, Music Psychology, Performance, Psychology, Research, Revenue, Songwriting, Success, crowdfunding , entertainment, music business, music production, music statistics, music streaming services, music technology, music theory, musician, production, radio, singer/songwriter, song, streaming music service | tagged #A&R, #composers, #engagement, #experience, #hitsongs, #songwriters, #success May 30, 2016 No matter who you are, what you do and where you live, you are always scared of trying new things as far as their results are concerned. That’s is because you start judging your caliber or your intelligence on the basis of those of results, which may not be up to the mark at the first go. Considering the fact that you hardly get desirable results whenever you try out a thing for the first time (such as play music, give a speech, and start teaching at school or college etc.,) it eventually makes you believe that you are not good at it and you will never be able to perform it effectively even in future no matter how hard you work towards it.
May 29, 2016 Nowadays, we just can’t promote our music the way we did 10 years ago.
With the rise of social networks and mobile technology, musicians, bands and artists rely more and more on Internet to market their work and their brand.
Thousands of independent artists make a living from their passion and grow their fanbase - almost for free - using online tools and channels. So why not you?
In this article, you will find 8 ways to effectively promote your music online!
Online Marketing | tagged Online promotion, marketing, social media May 21, 2016 The MUSIC Industry got MURDERED!!! Here are the 30 pieces of evidence (Pt 1) + Recording (Certainly on the Indie level) is dead because Artist have no clear way to effectively monitize their releases! Is your Youtube or Spotify revenue going to pay rent or mortgage??? + The Record Label System has been completely dismantled, leaving no reliable form of Artist financing, development, or support. Even top tier Artist are struggling here. + As touring support/opportunities shrink, Artist are slowly watching their last viable source of revenue shrink as well. As a result we’re seeing more and more old-timers come out of retirement to perform.
May 12, 2016 Attention: Independent Music Business Owners - We are looking for both participants and mission partners to build a better music business.
From traditional to modern musicianship:
Our initiative is to advance and help the community upgrade from traditional musicianship, to modern musicianship.
May 12, 2016 This article originally appeared on the Internal Affairs blog.
I’ve noticed that a lot of marketing blogs completely forget to teach their readers the basics and jump straight in to the deep end with marketing. The readers look on bewildered, yet gagging for their marketing “quick fixes” - I know, I was (kind of) one of them when I was younger.
Understanding the very basics of marketing will allow even the most inexperienced “musicpreneur” to take the most basic concepts and create a unique, creative and effective marketing campaign from them. Therefore, that’s why my goal at Internal Affairs is to introduce the very basics before anything else.
Now, before we begin talking about the nitty-gritty side of marketing and the music business, you need to understand a few things about being an entrepreneur.
April 28, 2016 Do you ever get this strange feeling that someone is watching you? Maybe I’m crazy (don’t answer that), but I do. I hope they don’t watch me too closely because that’ll get weird very fast. I’ll have to scare them away by walking out to the van in suspenders and a buckwheat hat “HEY YALL HOW YALL DOIN” *van screeches away* The other day I was thinking about getting some hot wings. And sure enough, Facebook gave me coupons to Wingstop. HOW DID YOU EVEN KNOW ME SO WELL FACEBOOK THAT’S A…
April 27, 2016 In 2015 we created an app called Kombie that lets you combine your selfies with clips from popular culture, live events, moments in time, in short any video available on the internet.
Our name comes from our key themes :
(K)Combine + Selfie = Kombie (pronounced Zombie with a K)
We built the technology to do this (twice unfortunately) and released our baby into the world last year. A few thousand downloads, a clunky interface (still) and a number of wrong turns but we are still alive and kicking!!
April 26, 2016 Just a few years ago the headlines in the music business trades were touting the story that Prince had returned to Warner Brothers Records after 18 years with a revolutionary new deal that would see him regain ownership of his back catalog of recordings. As with all things Prince, it was cutting edge. This Prince/Warner Brothers deal marked a new era as the ability to terminate master recording copyright after 35 years was granted in the Copyright Revision Act of 1976 and became effective in 1978, the year that Prince’s debut album came out.
It seems that just as the record business has been staggering back to its feet after the digital assault started by Napster over a decade ago, another hard blow to the record industry business model is starting to have ripple effects. Recording artists and songwriters from 1978 and after are now entitled to start terminating their contractual transfers and demanding back their copyrights. The 1976 Copyright Act, in a provision that has generally been overlooked until now, provides for the termination of copyright transfers. Even if an artist or songwriter signed a contract with a record company or music publisher that purports to transfer all rights in a work in perpetuity, the Copyright Act provides that the author can terminate that grant and demand that the rights revert to the author in a shorter period of time. This is a great opportunity for artists and songwriters to get a second bite at the apple, so to speak, and get a better share of the income earned from their creative works.
Prince was on top of his game. Generally speaking, for copyright grants made on or after January 1, 1978 (the effective date of the 1976 Copyright Act) the termination period is 35 years under Section 203 of the Copyright Act. For pre-1978 works the termination period is 56 years after copyright was originally secured under Section 304. For grants on or after 1978, termination may be exercised anytime during a 5 year period beginning at the end of 35 years from the execution of the grant or, if the grant concerns the right of publication of the work, then the period begins on the sooner of 35 years after publication or 40 years after execution of the grant. Although there are certain formalities which must be complied with to effectuate transfer, this essentially means that recording artists and songwriters can start exercising their right of termination as soon as 2013 – which may effectively decimate many record company and music publishing catalogs.
Back when the 1976 Copyright Act was drafted few could envision a world where the artists might not need the record companies to finance, manufacture, promote, store and distribute their records. Back then the expectation was that, although any particular artist could exercise the termination right, what would effectively happen is that the label and artist would simply be forced to renegotiate a deal to continue working together. Now in the digital age, however, this is no longer true. Any artist can demand back their masters and then simply offer them on their own website or license the rights to an online aggregator with little or no expense. This is particularly true in the case of catalog recordings since the artist would not even need the record company to finance the recording costs. The more digital the music business becomes the more obsolete the large record labels become for established artists. High profile artists with already established fan bases and large catalogs such as Prince, Blondie, the Cars, Bruce Springsteen and others probably have no need for much in the way of advertising and marketing of their recordings, and certainly no need for manufacturing, distributing or warehousing of the product. Simple ownership and possession of the digitized masters would be sufficient.
There is one scenario that does bode well for record companies in that it may steer even established artists to follow the renegotiation route as Prince has done. Those familiar with record contracts know that, unlike song publishing contracts which generally provide for the assignment and transfer of a song copyright to the publisher, most record contracts provide that the sound recording is created as a “work for hire” for the record label. Under the 1976 Copyright Act the termination provision is not applicable to a genuine work for hire grant. However, this does not preclude recording artists from exercising their right of termination. Just a few years ago I litigated a case where the Court held that a sound recording does not qualify as a work for hire. Without getting into all the applicable legal employer/employee issues involved, there is a great deal of case law which addresses the subject of “work for hire” and holds that whether a work created by an employee is a work for hire or not depends on various factors other than just the language of the contract. This area of law is ripe for litigation by recording artists who want to exercise their termination rights where the facts suggest that no genuine work for hire relationship ever existed. Although the landmark case has yet to be fought, from what I have seen it appears that in most cases the artist would prevail over the record company on this point. However, artist like Prince as well as label executives have also realized that the wiser course may be to negotiate the reversions and retain control of issuing artists’ catalog eligible for copyright terminations.
The termination rights of an artist or songwriter are generally subject to a 5 year window. Termination must be made effective within the termination window or the right to terminate the grant is forfeited. To be effective, the artist or songwriter must serve a written notice of termination on the original record company or publisher (or its successor) no more than 10 and no less than 2 years prior to the effective date stated in the notice. The notice of termination must state the effective date of termination. Perfection of the termination requires that a copy of the written notice also be filed with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to the effective date of termination
Although the termination rights of an artist under the 1976 Copyright Act would only be effective for the U.S. territory, the size of the U.S. consumer market for recorded music still makes this a valuable right to reclaim. However, what is good for the artist might further erode the influence of the major record labels and prove detrimental to the industry in the future, so labels would be well advised to start planning for the onslaught and try to forge deals like Prince has done with Warner Brothers.
Wallace Collins is a New York lawyer specializing in entertainment, copyright, trademark and internet law. He was a recording artist for Epic Records before attending Fordham LawSchool. T:(212) 661-3656 / www.wallacecollins.com
Prince | tagged Music Industry, Prince, copyright