February 2009
19 posts
6 tags
Breaking Down The Music Tax
“Suing your customers is not the answer.” This familiar sentiment has been expressed repetitively in recent years by both consumer advocates and music futurists alike. What they are referring to, of course, is the RIAA’s half-decade long barrage of lawsuits against individual file sharers. “The majors are alienating those who should be their biggest customers”, they...
4 tags
Live Chat Wrap-Up: Feb. 18
Thanks to all of you who tuned into our action-packed, special-guest filled, hyper-informative live chat last night!
We started things off by playing one of our favorite theme song submissions (so far), a clever tune submitted by Asia La Kay. Keep rocking those submissions everyone! Once we receive enough submissions, we’ll open the voting up to all of you to determine what will become the...
3 tags
Go-Getters, Tell Me Your Story!
I was amazed to see all the immediate thoughtful responses to yesterday’s post, which one of you referred to as a “call-to-arms” for the indie music community. The post was called: Calling All Go-Getters, The Music Industry is Yours.
So it seems we’ve struck a chord here! Now, I’d consider all of you to already be go-getters, at least to some degree, because you are...
4 tags
Calling All Go-Getters, The Music Industry is...
I was very much inspired after reading a post by Seth Godin over at his blog: Music vs. The Music Industry.
Seth has a way of distilling a problem/conversation/question to its very essence, and his thoughts on the music business are no exception:
The shift that is happening right now is that the people who insist on keeping the world as it was are going to get more and more frustrated until...
6 tags
Live Chat - Same Place, New Time
Hello loyal viewers! We’ve truly loved connecting with all of you during our weekly live chat sessions - and now we’re responding to a rather large group of you who have been unable to tune in because of work/school/conferences etc. We’re glad that all of you decided to keep your day jobs, but we were a little disappointed not everyone could make the chat. So, we are going to try...
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Artists House Updates
Maps, Questions, and Theme Songs, oh my! I just wanted to tell all of you about a few new cool additions to the blog.
Map: We’ve created a social map for the Artists House community - it’s a way for you to put yourself on the map and check out where in the world others in the community are - check it out and add yourself: http://ow.ly/ibw
Questions: You can now submit Questions to...
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Weekly Wrap-Up
Here are some highlights from this week in music news and musician advice:
From Artists House Music:
We want one of you loyal twitter followers to write an Artists House theme song! - details here http://ow.ly/get
AH Vault: Chris Blackwell On Getting Started in the music biz http://ow.ly/gd7
Guy Kawasaki’s Tips On Linked-In Job Hunting http://ow.ly/dox
Thanks to CrazedHits.com for...
4 tags
AH Vault: Chris Blackwell On Getting Started
The following interview with Island Records founder Chris Blackwell was conducted by our own George Howard a couple of years ago, but I always go back to it because as much as things change, some core facts remain the same, and Blackwell articulates that in a way that is both inspirational and challenging.
You can watch it here.
It is important to note that nothing presented by Chris is...
8 tags
Artists House Theme Song
For those of you who didn’t catch the news at the beginning of this week’s Artists House live video chat, we are in dire need of a theme song. If you’re up for the challenge, this would be a great opportunity to test your chops, get some free promotion, and provide a great service to mankind.
Now… on to the details:
The song must be original — no samples, not a...
3 tags
Guy Kawasaki's Tips On Linked-In Job Hunting
For all of those readers who don’t know, I am soon-to-be-graduated senior in college and this means a few things:
I, along with 6 million of my colleagues, am about to be thrown, headlong, out of the half-reality of university life
I have a false hope that I am actually God’s gift to the workforce
The odds are stacked against me under the best of conditions (which certainly...
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AH Live Chat!
Once again, we’d be thrilled if you’d join us this Wednesday, Feburary 11, at 3:30pm (Central Time) for a live video chat with the Artists House crew!
We’ve really loved getting to talk to you directly these last two weeks, and I think it’s been fun AND informative, a combination more classic than peanut butter and jelly.
This week’s proposed topic is branding, and...
7 tags
Free Downloads lead to Paid Downloads
Hypebot had a couple of posts about solo musician Corey Smith this past week that do well to illustrate the idea of a musical middle class independent of major labels. One of the most interesting points I found (aside from the astronomical $4.2 million in revenue he earned in the past year) was an example of how free downloads lead to paid downloads.
From Hypebot:
First, even though the music...
4 tags
Weekly Wrap-Up
In case you missed it, here are some of this week’s highlights in music business news and artist advice. As always, you can join the conversation with us on twitter.
NEWS
Warner Music Group Q1 Revenues drop 12% http://ow.ly/aqg
Jimmy Eat World launches Twitter concert-specific forums (yeah! leverage the tech!) http://ow.ly/aqq
YouTube Grabs 41% Share With 100M Viewers http://ow.ly/bdt
...
7 tags
Leave No Stone Unturned
Do you examine the marketing tactics used by your favourite artists? If you don’t, you should start immediately; I guarantee that you will learn a lot. It’s something that I’ve made of point of doing since I began studying the music industry, and I would like to take this opportunity to analyze a great Facebook tactic used by the management team of Jason Reeves (www.jason-reeves.com) to create...
9 tags
Live Chat Wrap-Up
First of all, thanks to all of you who tuned into our live chat this afternoon - this week’s ‘show’ was quite a success - we really had a lot of fun with you guys! And, of course, we hope it was helpful for you on some level.
I think we saw how many different opinions there are on the ‘right’ way to do social media. Everyone has their own ideas of Twitter do’s...
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AH Vault: Building Your Own Social Network
Creating a social networking environment for your fan base is a critical part of achieving success in today’s music marketplace. By providing an online environment for people to frequent and engage with others who share their interests, artists further cement their fans’ connection to their work and their brands. Additionally, the benefits of perpetual interaction cannot be...
3 tags
Muxtape Remixed
Sasha Frere-Jones from the New Yorker has posted a recently conducted interview with Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette on his blog. Over the course of the interview, Frere-Jones and Ouellette touch on a number of topics, but my interest was piqued by the description of the intended new direction for the site, which seems to move it into competition with MySpace and Facebook, among many others,...
6 tags
Join Us For A Live Chat!
That’s right folks - we’re at it again! Join us this Wednesday, Feburary 4, at 3:30pm (Central Time) for a live video chat with the Artists House crew!
This week’s topic will be Using Twitter in the Music Business….
We’ll be talking about Twitter do’s and don’ts, bands who use twitter well (and some who don’t), and how Twitter can be an invaluable...
5 tags
Weekly Wrap-Up
In case you missed any of this week’s tweets, here are some of the highlights from this week in music business news and advice:
NEWS:
Sony Artists to Monetize Raw Cellphone Videos with Kyte http://ow.ly/85N
Layoffs At Universal’s Interscope http://ow.ly/69q
Virgin Media ISP Pulls Radical Plan For Legal P2P http://ow.ly/69t
WMG YouTube Ban Spawns Protest Videos http://ow.ly/69u
...