April 2009
30 posts
3 tags
Josh Freese's DIY, Variable Pricing, Etc.
For those who aren’t in the know, Josh Freese is a drummer and member of A Perfect Circle, The Vandals, and Devo, as well as being a member of the Nine Inch Nails touring band between 2005 and 2008. He is getting ready to self-release a solo album and has been attracting some attention because of the unorthodox pricing model he is employing.
The highlights of the various permutations are as...
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Music Business Weekly Wrap-up
In case you missed something, here are some highlights from last week in music business news and artist advice:
Artists House Music:
We’ll have singer-songerwriter @andrewduhon on our chat this Wed! Very excited - you gotta check out his music: http://www.andrewduhon.com
Win a free consultation with music-biz expert George Howard and Grammy-winning producer John Snyder! http://is.gd/ucdj
...
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Change the World or Go Home Contest
First, if you don’t know the story of the blue monster, take a moment and enlighten yourself.
In celebration of Artists House reaching 10,000 followers on Twitter, we want to hold a contest. Basically, our community represents what can potentially be a pretty good force within the world - being involved in the music business is not only a privilege to be doing what we love, but also a...
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Live Chat Wrap-Up: Jealous Monk
In case you missed this week’s live chat, embedded below is the archived video of our conversation with Nick Pino of Jealous Monk. The other half of the band was stuck in traffic, but Nick Pino impressed the hell out of us and performed a song by himself. We like that kind of lionhearted determination!
Nick has made several songs off of their album Sun Up To Moon Down available for free for...
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Merchandise Marketing Lesson from Katy Perry
With the decline in recorded music sales, now more than ever, artists must take full advantage of the other revenue streams available to them.
Merchandising can play a huge role in an artist’s overall revenue stream; for many artists, the income generated from merchandise sales is their second largest source of income, next only to the income generated from live performances. Taking the...
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Creative Commons "Zero" License
The Creative Commons 0 (thats a zero) license is the most permissive of all of the copyright offerings that the CC foundation offers, essentially providing a way for creators to donate their work to public domain in a way that incorporates elements of international law so that it will be recognized globally. The spirit of the project is to allow creators to foster new projects based on old and...
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Some Productivity Apps Worth Checking Out
I just thought I’d make a quick post to point out a couple of applications that have really been helping me with my multi-tasking lately.
First up is Fluid, a free program that essentially turns any web-based application into an executable program that can be launched from the dock in OS X. I know I get tired of having multiple instances of Safari open and constantly switching back and...
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Music Business Weekly Wrap-up
Here are some highlights from this week in music business news and artist advice:
Artists House Music:
4 Traits of a Healthy Music Business http://ow.ly/3fBT
We’ve got a series of streaming concerts scheduled throughout this weekend - tune in from home and enjoy some great performances: http://ow.ly/3bAj
Watch some clips from our live chat with @theblueparty: http://ow.ly/3buN
Live...
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Weekend Streaming Concert Schedule
As many of you know, we at Artists House are closely linked with Loyola University New Orleans, and we’re going to be streaming some live concerts happening on Loyola’s campus this weekend. This will mark the first time the College of Music and Fine Art has ever webcast concerts live from campus. Even if you have no association with the school, you may find this interesting - not only...
6 tags
Live Interview with Wayne Kramer of MC5
Next week’s Monday Night Forum guest is composer, producer and recording artist Wayne Kramer!
Wayne Kramer is a songwriter whose reputation writing music for film, TV and video games risks supplanting his legend as one of rock’s stellar guitarists. Rolling Stone calls him as one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.
For more information about Wayne, click here: http://is.gd/sZzJ The...
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Live Chat Wrap-Up: The Blue Party
We had a great time with The Blue Party on Wednesday, talking music business, relentless gigging, and the importance of having a plan. The Blue Party have made a point to book primarily house parties, both because it aligns with their style and values, and because these days it is simply an easier place to connect with fans on a more human level. Especially when you’re just starting out, why...
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Weekly Music Business Wrap-Up
Artists House Music:
Why Interruption is a Crappy Music Business Model http://ow.ly/2897
On The Blog: The Future Of Music Coalition’s Principles For New Business Models - Read Up And Leave Your Thoughts: http://bit.ly/H45I2
Bandcamp 1.0: The best home on the web for your music? http://ow.ly/2cys
Tools for finding a unique domain name: http://is.gd/r3KH
Artists House Vault:...
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Digg's Kevin Rose Interviews Trent Reznor
Kevin Rose interviewed Trent Reznor for this week’s Digg Dialog. As we all know, when Trent speaks its probably worth listening (and it will probably slam the status quo).
Enjoy the full conversation below:
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AH Vault: DMCA And Creative Commons
I know that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but it really does bear thinking about as it is the overarching rule book for how copyrighted content is distributed and used online. The most controversial and therefore relevant section is in Title II of the bill. Known as The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, that section outlines how ISPs and other online service providers...
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A Response to the Query: Musicians as Artists or...
Today’s guest post comes from one of our readers, On Davis, who left this as a reply to the article Are You An Artist or Entertainer? On makes some good points that might provoke some good conversation around the question:
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The reality of producing any kind of art is recognizing the frames of references by which art is fitted. Since we are talking about...
5 tags
Weekly Wrap-Up
In case you missed something, here are some highlights from last week in music news and artist advice!
Artists House Music
Bandcamp 1.0: The best home on the web for your music? http://ow.ly/2cys
Why Interruption is a Crappy Music Business Model http://ow.ly/2897
Are You An Artist or Entertainer? Guest post from @primusluta http://ow.ly/1HqY
Chris Anderson Discusses The Four Kinds Of Free...
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Future Of Music Coalition: Artist Principles For...
The Future Of Music Coalition, a watchdog group that carefully examines issues that exist at the intersection of music, technology, and copyright law, has released a brand new list of principles for the future of artist compensation under new business models. Essentially, the following are a list of “best practices” that the coalition hopes will be employed by companies that plan to...
Streamlining Your Outreach With Artistdata
We at the Artists House foundation know that a big part of being successful involves not only working hard, but working smart. Our engagement with our various social media accounts (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) is streamlined through a variety of applications (Flock and TweetDeck in my case), and there are literally hundreds of them to choose from. Bands are no different, and I have...
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Ask RIZ
Hello ArtistsHouse community! I’m excited to announce that RIZ will be sitting down with me to do a video interview for ArtistsHouseMusic.org.
RIZ is an emerging artist and songwriter. He is currently independent, but that hasn’t stopped him from taking his career into his own hands and making some very big things happen. For example, in addition to writing and performing his own material, RIZ...
8 tags
The Memefication of Your B(r)and
I’ve tweeted this out a couple times, but in case you’ve missed it, you should head on over to Hipster Runoff and read The Memefication of Your Band. If you’re new to the bro-talk, just keep an open mind and read through the thing. Think about your own experience online and the way some things spread ‘virally’ these days. Think about how what he says really reflects...
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Why Interruption is a Crappy Music Business Model
This post isn’t going to shock you - if you’re here and you’re following us on twitter, etc., you probably already understand where we are in the music business and you probably have some sense of what social media is about. As described in the Cluetrain Manifesto (which is available in its entirety for free), the internet was adopted so quickly, so vastly, because it was a...
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Music Tech Talk w/ Randy
We had our first live chat session last night with our in-house tech guru, Mr. Randy Funke. We talked about using various open-source platforms for establishing web presence, the potential of creating your own community websites using Ning, and some basics about buying your own domain names and hosting service. We know that most musicians aren’t programmers - Randy is both, so he can speak...
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Bandcamp 1.0: The best home on the web for your...
Today’s guest post comes from Mike Ventimiglia who graciously agreed to write up a review of his experience with Bandcamp.com for his band, The Mississippi Kings. I’ve seen a lot of bands utilizing the tools on Bandcamp, so if you are looking for a platform for managing your band’s digital downloads, you might want to check out Bandcamp.
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Bandcamp...
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AH Conversation: New Ways Of Controlling The...
As a follow up post to my proselytizing about how the future of the music industry lies with distribution methodology like the Pirate Bay (see China: Our Digital Future? below), I thought I would lay out some purely personal hypotheses for how such a system might work, ask some questions, and solicit your thoughts on the matter via Twitter, Facebook, and your Blog Comments.
Based on the...
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Music Business Education
We receive many questions about the best way to go about getting a start in the music business. Well, the best answer is to educate yourself, and just start getting involved in whatever manner you can.
Where and how do you get an education in the music business? John Snyder, founder of Artists House and professor of music industry studies at Loyola University New Orleans, prepared the document...
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Tools For Finding A Unique Domain Name
If you’ve done pretty much anything, ever, you’ve probably had to try to find an original domain name that wasn’t already being used or wasn’t being squatted on by someone trying to get a 10,000% return on their $10 investment. Like it or not, grabbing a good domain name can be one of the most important parts of starting a new venture, whether it be a band, a business, or...
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Live Chat Wrap-Up: Markets Are Conversations
Thanks to all of you who joined tonight’s live chat with the Artists House crew! We covered a lot of topics tonight, but hopefully you can see how all of this ties together to bring home one important point: MARKETS ARE CONVERSATIONS.
And I think the best we can do today as promoters, or marketers, or what-have-you, is find tools to help us facilitate conversations. Some tools are more...
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China: Our Digital Future?
A number of recent events taking place in and around the music industry have had me thinking about music’s digital future. First, we have the news yesterday that Seeqpod, a playable search service that essentially crowd-sourced streaming music from around the web, has been “bullied” into bankruptcy by the RIAA. Secondly, we have the announcement that the Pirate Bay, who are...
1 tag
Chris Anderson Discusses The Four Kinds Of Free
Chris Andersen is a regular contributor to WIRED magazine and author of the Long Tail. He will be hosting the upcoming Free! Summit which will be held on May 11th out in San Mateo, CA. I consider him to be a new-economic guru, someone who forecasts our shifts in thinking years before we actually make the changes. As an example of what I mean, I am going to include Chris’s 2002 TED...
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Artists House Is Looking For A Producer
Artists House is looking for a passionate, responsible producer to help us with our live Artists House shows. Obviously, applicants should be tech savvy. You do not have to live in New Orleans. Because of the beauty of technology, you will be able to work with us no matter where you live (though if your day is our night, it might get tricky). Our show style will remain quick and dirty, so the...