Music Business
this look like the community designed by Glocal Music
Share/Bookmark this!
Still think a music career is an easy path to a blinged-out life? Don’t believe the hype. A whole lot of folks have to get paid before the musician does. The Root traces the money trail.
If you thought the life of most musicians was comparable to the blissful and blinged-out existences of Kanye and Rihanna, you’ve clearly not heard much about our ever-desiccating music industry. According to the latest Nielsen research, only 2.1 percent of the albums released in 2009 sold even 5,000 copies — that’s just 2,050 records out of nearly 100,000, and to fewer people than go to a small liberal arts college.
As if that weren’t bad enough, even the bands who do move units end up paying through the nose, mouth, eyes and ears for management, legal fees, producers and other expenses, leaving most of them scrounging to pay for record advances and, if they can afford it, health care.
From the outside, it often sounds fun to be in a band. But before picking up that guitar or microphone, take a look at where the money from a record goes.
read more on the root
Share/Bookmark this!
Digital music distributor TuneCore has made several improvements to their service that will enable artists’ music to go live more quickly at digital retail, be categorized more accurately and show up in more searches. Artists can now do bulk uploads, allowing them to upload up to 20 songs at once and have their music delivered faster to stores and fans.
read more on hypebot.com
Share/Bookmark this!
Numubu, a social networking site for musicians and music industry professionals, is out of beta and offering $25,000, 5 iPads and more as prizes to entice signing on. The company is also developing tools to help market and sell music. Most of Numubu’s offerings are free, but there is a premium membership that includes a share in any ad revenue that the site might generate on your pages. Here’s a video overview:
Numubu a Social Networking For Musicians And The Music Industry
connect with us on numubu
Share/Bookmark this!
Why You Should Pay For Music
BY: JON SHELDRICK
Let’s get one thing straight: I love free music. If a musician decides to give away an album, I’m the first to download it. I am against the RIAA lawsuits that sue people for sharing music. Rather than scaring people into buying music, I advocate a culture in which people actually want to spend money on music, because they understand the positive repercussions it has on the medium of recorded music, and the lives of the artists that produce it. What I hope to do in the following paragraphs is persuade you that not only does paying for music benefit that artist you claim to support, but also benefits you, the listener.
I’m not going to make a legal argument. It may be valid but just isn’t relevant in practice. A law is only as effective as the means by which you can enforce it. And, unless something crazy happens in the world of Internet regulation, no one will be able to forcibly stop people from sharing music. After all, if there was no bouncer outside a concert venue, we could expect to see ticket sales plummet just as fast as CD sales. The problem is that many people just don’t value music in a meaningful way. What do I mean by that? Well, I understand perfectly well that people value music in the sense that they enjoy it, and love rocking out on their iPod. However, they don’t value it in the sense that they will willingly fork over $1 for a song, thus helping the artist who made it continue to produce awesome music. If I’m going to convince you to buy your next record, it’s not going to happen by scaring you with abstract arguments about copyright law.
I used to illegally download in high school. I remember when Napster first came out. It was incredible. It was fast, free, and delivered on-demand music; what could be bad about that? I can say, in all honestly, I did not once think about how it could negatively impact a musician, until I saw first-hand what it was doing.
After high school, I went to NYU, hoping to become a recording engineer. At the same time, I began to record my own music, in the hope of someday making a living from it. In an effort to get a grander perspective on the business I longed to enter, I got an internship at an indie record label. There I saw artists, with sizable fan-bases, question whether they could record another album. The demand was there, but the audience was not paying for the product they claimed to love so much. This directly translated to artists not recording albums, plain and simple. Instead, they embarked on relentless tours, leaving little to no time for writing new material and recording it.
During this time I also started to look for work in recording studios. There, I saw an effect of file sharing that was not immediately obvious. Musicians could no longer afford to pay recording engineers (amazing artists in their own right). As music sales continued to decline, studios all over New York City were shutting their doors. And it wasn’t just the big time Hit Factory places; small independently run studios were going under as well. It wasn’t that they were creating inferior products. It was a direct result of people not paying for music. This led to a decline in the quality of recorded music, at least when talking about independent artists who don’t have a 1 million dollar advance to burn through.
As I saw this going on around me, I stopped to think. If I want to be an audio engineer at a studio, how can I download music illegally? It would be utterly hypocritical of me to download an album for nothing, and at the same time hope that someone else would buy one I worked on. I realized that if I wanted things to change, I would have to start by doing it myself. Hands down, the best way to support your favorite artist is financially. Of course, telling your friends about songs and re-tweeting alerts helps, but it does not necessarily enable artists to produce moremusic. At the end of the day, what good is a fan who tells 1,000 friends about your album if none of them actually buy it? Sure, those people might go see the band live, but concerts and recordings have totally different budgets and costs. When you go see a live show, it doesn’t make up for the record you ripped off LimeWire. Your ticket price pays the roadies, the sound guys, the tour manager, the gas bills, the van insurance, and maybe, if they’re lucky, the band. That form of logic reduces recorded music to a PR Tool, aimed at promoting the sale of tickets and t-shirts. And what does that say for recorded music as a medium? Will recorded music be reduced to the importance of a T-shirt, used to promote a live show? Recorded music provides a listening experience that is unique and rewarding in its own right, and listeners should strive to preserve that. Fans should respect the wishes of the artist. If a musician asks that you pay for an album, you should respect the time and effort that went into its creation, and pay for it.
Perhaps people don’t really care about how artists make their living. But there are positive repercussions for the listener. First, I guarantee you, it will make the listening experience more rewarding. You will have a recording whose quality matches what the artist intended. You will listen closer. Just like you would savor the taste of an expensive bottle of wine, you’ll savor the sounds of that record you bought. After all, good music is not meant to be “chugged”. Buying a record will also make it easier for that artist to produce another one, meaning you get a kick-ass sounding follow-up to that record you just sipped slowly with some cheese and crackers. It is, in essence, a “win/win”.
Don’t believe me? Try it out. Wait for the release date, like you would a souffle coming from the kitchen. When it arrives, set aside some time to put it on. You can end the listening session with the comforting feeling that you are enabling the artist you love to continue to create beautiful music, that you will be able to tweet about in the very near future.
At the end of the day, it’s really a moral argument. Unfortunately in the music world, as with life in general, the moral road is not always the easiest route to take. As Plato said, “[Music] gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” In this sense, it is almost as important as the air we breathe. I urge you to meditate on this. How much does music mean to you? How does it positively affect your life? Hopefully many of you will come to the conclusion that while you may not have a fat bank account, ten dollars for a record you will play 100 times is a damn good deal.
[via www.musicthinktank.com]
Share/Bookmark this!
After several years of offering free services, music marketing and sales platform Bandcamp announced today that it will be switching to a paid platform in early August. Bandcamp will charge artists 15% of each transaction, dropping to 10% as soon as an artist, management or label’s all-time sales exceed $5,000. The revenue share rate for existing accounts will be based on all sales to date.
Details here.
Share/Bookmark this!
An ASCAP legislative fundraising letter revealed last week that the American performing rights organization is invoking fears of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Creative Commons in order to raise money. ASCAP appears to be repeating, now in the more heated language of fundraising, arguments it has had with the Creative Commons license in the past. For its part, Creative Commons insists most of its licenses don’t preclude performing rights bodies like ASCAP from collecting funds.
In the letter, sent on behalf of ASCAP’s Political Action Committee (PAC), the ASCAP Legislative Fund for the Arts, the PAC argues to its members that that these organizations undermine the value of music:
Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote “Copyleft” in order to undermine our “Copyright.” They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth in these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.
This is why your help now is vital. We fear that our opponents are influencing Congress against the interests of music creators. If their views are allowed to gain strength, music creators will find it harder and harder to make a living as traditional media shifts to online and wireless services. We all know what will happen next: the music will dry up, and the ultimate loser will be the music consumer.
Attacks on Creative Commons by ASCAP are nothing new. The organization argued in a 2007 essay (and subsequent report) that elements of the license, which is applied to copyrighted works, meant “artists should give up all or some of their rights.” As noted in a rebuttal by Creative Commons’ Laurence Lessig, some of those claims were incorrect. Among other items, ASCAP said that the “licenses ask creators to waive the ability to collect royalties,” which isn’t true of the non-commercial CC licenses.
read more on createdigitalmusic.com
Share/Bookmark this!
BandCentral is a web-based collaboration, organisation and management tool for musicians.
The multi-login BandHub™ is a shared space with all the tools you need to manage your band: everything, from gigs & rehearsals, assets & fans, to recordings, merch & money… all from one central, secure and instantly accessible place.
Share/Bookmark this!
Gigsby.com launched recently in private beta as professional network for the Electronic Music Industry.
Share/Bookmark this!
At yesterday’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference, MySpace co-presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones were interviewed about the future of the struggling social networker.
On falling numbers -“We have 120 million unique visitors worldwide. US numbers have been fairly flat. Page views are down… substantially by design. MySpace used to have processes that took 10 page views that should have taken 1.”
How important is music? “It’s incredibly important. The pedigree of MySpace is around musicians. Free streaming access from record labels. We’re building out all sorts of tools for musicians. Dashboards, presence management.”
read more on hypebot.com
Share/Bookmark this!
WHAT WE DO
With our highly professional mixing service you can make your music sound as you want. »
We can make your music radio ready and compatible with any hi-fi system. »
We provide a 48 hours express service. Get your music ready whenever you need.
Comunicate directly with our engineer to make extra adjustments on your music. »
Read more about our Services »
BLOG CATEGORIES
SEARCH
Welcome to online-mixing.com
Your online mixing and mastering studio.
This is where you get your recorded music mixed and mastered in the way you want.
With us you can achieve the same high quality sounding mix as today’s major artists.
Get in touch!
We will be happy to hear from you, no matter the subject. For contacting us please use our contact page
To stay updated on our news and promotions subscribe to our Newsletter