Music Is Not A Competition…

“If I promote other bands, my band won’t be noticed”… It’s not something I hear musicians say a lot but it is certainly often implied. This post is here to kick that way of thinking right in the ball-gina. Musicians, bands: I implore you, help support each other! Stop thinking about your own music as the only music deserving of praise & attention. There is lot’s of cool bands out there, lots of cool artists & many of them work just as hard as you do on your art. Here’s the rub…

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Senzoo: Bridging Fans & Artists

Senzoo connects artists with fans. Fans can directly donate to artists to show support. Senzoo is free and takes 30 seconds to set up.

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Montreal Musician Jordi Rosen At Mapanare

A few years ago, while working for a music gear website, I was looking for artists to interview. At the time the site was not well known so larger artists were not interested. I went on a tear of social network band pages. Most of the music was…to put it in charitable terms…EAR CRUSHINGLY HORRIBLE.

Then I cane across Jordi Rosen. I have a hard time explaining why her music struck me so. When I interviewed her for the other site we talked about how she found her keyboard in a recycling pile. We talked about the accordion’s place in pop music. She was quite charming and after you ask someone for the 500th time why they like their stratocaster it is REALLY nice to talk about SOMETHING, ANYTHING, else….

The first person I thought of, although not the first I interviewed, for the culture site Mapanare.us was Rosen. She would up being the first musical interview. Check it out if you get a chance.

mapanare.us

Patrick Ogle

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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A&R's Are All The Same

The lounge was sold out; packed with zombies who starred at the stage for three hours, frequently stopping to check their Twitter or text a friend nearby. Both bands that I managed to catch (Das Racist & Penquin Prision) played until they were dripping with sweat in a valiant effort to please the unpleasable.

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You Can’t Spell Music Business without “Business”

You Can’t Spell Music Business without “Business”  Obvious, right?  Not so much. Here’s an anecdote from today and some thoughts on the issue.
At Music Xray we send out a mass email every Tuesday to tens of thousands of artists who have signed up on our site to receive them for free.  This is a link to the one we sent today: http://eepurl.com/rX8D

Today, we got back an email from a disgruntled artist that said, “YOU PEOPLE ARE THE WORST KIND OF LOW LIFE LEECHES THE SLEAZY MUSIC BIZ. HAS TO OFFER… I’M NO LONGER STUPID WHEN IT COMES TO THE KIND OF SCAMS YOU’RE PEDDLING”.

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Nine Inch Nails, John Legend, David Bowie Reps Talk Social Media Marketing

BOSTON—Berklee’s Music Business Department and Professional Education Division present Envisioning 21^st-Century Music Business Models, an annual discussion about current and future music industry trends. This year’s panel will examine how leading digital marketers are using Web technology and social media to promote their clients as well as their own companies. Paul Resnikoff, the publisher and editor of Digital Music News will moderate an in-depth panel discussion featuring representatives for acts such as Nine Inch Nails, John Legend, Plain White T’s, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Linkin Park, Morphine, and more.

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Creativity V Commercialism...

I’m a musician, not an actor… Do I have anything against actors? No… What I do feel passionate about is the abundance of heartless musical garbage that clogs the airwaves. So many people singing songs that have very little substance or meaning, the singers sound like they are not even convincing themselves. & even worse, they aren’t even pretending to try their hand at a bit of originality.

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10 Reasons To Make Art Not Merch

I have this saying: “Make art, make art!”

It comes from Glen Hansard’s humble but inspiring Oscar acceptance speech for Best Original Song in 2008.  

The guy had the whole world’s ear for a few moments, and he chose those words; “Make art, make art!”

It’s a phrase which should be at the core of everything you do as a musician.

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BandPages Turn Facebook into a Viable Home for Musicians

RootMusic is proud to announce the launch of BandPage Plus, an extended version of the BandPage Basic tool that launched last month with great success. BandPage Plus enables bands to personalize their BandPage so the look and feel of their Facebook presence matches their music and individual style. By utilizing BandPage Plus musicians can easily create a fan page that includes the option to upload a custom banner and edit the background and text colors via a simple visual editor.

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7 No-Brainers for Recording Electric Guitars

At first glance, an electric guitar seems like a pretty straightforward instrument to lay down. I, for one, never really stress too much over it. I can always get a decent guitar sound recorded without too much effort – thanks to my trusty Shure SM57, and some patience while tweaking the mic position millimeter by millimeter until I hear something I like. Recently, though, I had some excellent equipment and a good player to work with, so I wanted to make the session worth it, and really nail it. Google, save me now!

After some trolling around Google, and some soul searching, I’ve dug up 7 good pieces of advice to consider before and while recording your axe:

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Not bad for a Dutch Indie artist

a plan, a team, inspiration from the 40’s and 50’s. Their own record label. Good songwriters

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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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Rock The Biz - watch all about: "Tips&Tricks", "Future Of Music", "Income" and more

Finally all our chapters of Rock The Biz - the documentary about the new musicbusiness in Europe - are online. Feel free to watch here 4 further chapters for free:

Tips & Tricks:

Professional musicians, labels and player in the musicbusiness give hints, on what to focus, go’s and no go’s and many more

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