A Good Music Law Book

Posted on April 23, 2010 by IndieAve

Book: Music Law: How To Run Your Band’s Business
Author: Rich Stim

Have you ever thought about making actual money in the music business – even if that is just getting paid to play gigs? What about if your band makes it big, bringing in the big bucks? Do you buy equipment for the band? Do you write original songs? Hope to sign with a big label?

For these situations, and others, especially where money or song ownership is involved,  an understanding of the legal consequences involved are really critical. It is pretty easy to play gigs, write a few songs, and ignore all the legal details, but you should be aware of what you are ignoring, because even the little things can come back to bite you.

There are plenty of books and websites that can give you legal advice – but which information is correct, which is useful? There is one book that seems to rise above the rest, and provides comprehensive and sound advice for many of the legal situations your band may face.

The book’s table of contents shows its coverage:

  1. Yes, Your Band Is a Business!
  2. Band Partnerships and Beyond
  3. Management
  4. Attorneys
  5. Band Equipment
  6. Performance and Touring
  7. Copyright and Song Ownership
  8. Publishing Your Band’s Music
  9. Band Names
  10. Album Artwork
  11. Recording
  12. Duplication
  13. Selling Your Music
  14. Independent Record Agreements
  15. Taking Your Band Online
  16. Keeping Track of Your Band’s Money
  17. Taxes

That’s a lot of topics! And every one of them is important, especially if any money is involved.

The book tells the story of a famous 1970′s rock band that failed to secure the proper partnership agreements. After the band made it big, all the millions of dollars their recordings made were tied up in court until the late 1990′s. The only real winners were the lawyers.

This book can help prevent sticky situations. It provides a large collection of legal documents you can use to protect yourself. Among others, they include a partnership agreement that well let you legally formalize which band members own which equipment and song rights, and other essential. There are other documents that will help you protect your original music and performances.

And the book has great advice for going to the next step – managers, publishers, record labels. We’ve all heard stories of bands that sign with a major label, and in the process end up losing lots of their rights (Tom Petty, anyone?). If you read this book, you’ll at least not enter into agreements totally blind.

Seriously – get this book and consider its advice. You’ll be better off in the long run. And what is best, you can use its forms and follow its advice for just the cost of the book. (Although, as usual, when it comes to legal issues, your are advised to seek your own legal advice, especially as you move up the music ladder.)

Posted in Legal, Review | Leave a comment

twitterfeed – Autopost your RSS feeds

Posted on April 17, 2010 by IndieAve

An Easy Way to Twitter and Facebook Post

Do you have your own website, a blog, or a site with a band page you’ve set up that includes an RSS feed? If you do, you can have the feed automatically sent to your Twitter account or post on your Facebook page using twitterfeed.com. It is really easy to do.

Do you have an RSS feed?

You might have an RSS feed, even if you don’t know it. For example, if you have a band page on MySpace, you have an RSS feed. Most blogs include one. If you have a WordPress based site, you have one. You can tell if there’s an RSS feed icon showing on somewhere on your web page, or if the RSS icon shows up in the address bar at the top of your browser.They should look like this  or this: . If you see an RSS icon, click on it. If you then see a page that has activity relating to you, then you have a feed!

Auto post your feed to Twitter, Facebook and others

Keeping a fairly active Twitter stream, or current posts on your band’s Facebook page helps you alive to your fans who follow your Twitter account, or are your fans on Facebook. The website twitterfeed.com makes it very simple to automatically post your RSS feeds.

First, create a list of what all RSS feeds you have. Then, create a twitterfeed account. It is uses your e-mail address, and you can create multiple feeds (both different RSS sources, and different auto-post destinations) using the single e-mail account. The process is fairly simple – twitterfeed does a very nice job of stepping you through the process, so I won’t repeat all that info here.

Once your twitterfeed acount is active, it will check your feeds on an hourly basis, and update your Twitter, Facebook, or other account. You should be sure the feeds you setup give different information – it won’t look good if all your tweets are the same thing. The tweets usually consist of the feed item title and an automatically generated short link to the full article. Facebook includes part of the article text, again with a link back to the original.

What about my WordPress twitter plugin?

There is an excellent plugin for WordPress called “WP->Twitter” that has some advantages over twitterfeed. First, the WP plugin sends the tweet immediately – not at a scheduled time (every 30 minutes to 24 hours). That usually won’t matter. But the plugin also gives you several options for specifying just what goes into the tweet that are a little more flexible than the options offered by twitterfeed. It looks a little nicer. But the reality is that the twitterfeed service is just plain easier, and it includes Facebook, Laconica, hellotxt, and ping.fm services as well.

Posted in Advice/Hints, Blogs, Site Building | Leave a comment

Pro Tools Audio Production – A review by a working musician

Posted on April 17, 2010 by IndieAve

While Indie Ave is mainly about web resources for indie artists, most artists will need to use some software at times – for editing photos, editing videos, editing web pages, or creating musical recordings. So I’ve added a Software category, and here’s the first software review.

Van, my son who is the lead singer for Ivory Drive, and writes most of its music, wanted to experiment messing around with composing using some of the synths available for real instruments. Van uses Vegas for his video stuff, and has made some very good audio mixes, too. But it really it doesn’t have comprehensive support for all the synths.

Just what Digital Audio Workstation to use is a very important decision for anyone wanting to record and mix their own music. Van had used Cakewalk Sonar in the past, but wondered just what was really the best now.

I’ve recently become friends with a working musician who is also very good with computers. So I asked him what he thought. Here his answer, posted with permission. His review sure beats all the wishy washy reviews about DAWs you can find on the web!



Why I Use Pro Tools

by: Jeremy Hendrickson of Jeremy and Rebecca

I actually started using Vegas all the way back since version 1.  I originally began using it for audio production, back in the day.  But, I no longer use it for audio, but it is still my video editor of choice.  I love it over anything else for video work.

I also started with Cakewalk very early on.  I went to Cakewalk after moving on from Vegas and I liked it very much.  It has a bunch of stuff right in the box that is very useful, and the MIDI capabilities are really great.  My younger brother (who is extremely talented and produces a lot of local bands) also started on Vegas and later migrated to Cakewalk.  It can also be a fairly cost-effective way to get going.  Both Cakewalk and Vegas, as I’m sure you know, are PC only.

Now, all that being said, for audio production now I ONLY use Pro Tools LE (fully upgraded with the music production toolkit, etc).  I’ve got to tell you that I resisted making the move to Pro Tools for a very long time because I’m not one to jump on bandwagons.  I liked what I was using and found it to be very good and everything I needed to do what I needed it to.  And, frankly, even though Pro Tools has had the market share, it wasn’t always necessarily the best program.  (That has changed in the last few years, though.)  Plus, I’m just extremely loyal and kind of like not doing things just because everyone else is.

But, I found that it was becoming very difficult to work with studios who are ALL on Pro Tools because the session files between programs are not compatible.  Working in Pro Tools now is so convenient because I prep demos (temp tracks) and have an entire song laid out with all the sections marked and tempo adjustments, ritards, etc pre-mapped so that any recording that is done in a pro studio is done directly into my session files.  This is VERY convenient.  I just show up with a hard drive with all my files and they open it up on their system.

Also, the last two upgrades for Pro Tools have really put it at the top of the field in terms of functionality.  They have VASTLY improved their MIDI functions, and they are now as good or better than Cakewalk in that regard.  One of the best things about Pro Tools is that it is designed to alleviate most of the issues that plague those doing music production on computers (with dropouts and weird glitches, crashes, and so on).  If you set up your system to match their approved specs, you will have an efficient and much more stable system than you would with other software.  It takes a bit of getting used to if you’re coming over from Vegas and/or Cakewalk.  But, it was well worth it.  I have found it to actually be much more intuitive and I can work MUCH faster in it than I could in the other programs.  (Oh, and my brother finally switched to Pro Tools and said that he will never go back.)  Another nice thing about Pro Tools is that it can be used on a Mac or PC.  (It’s actually one of the very few that can be.)  I am running a boot camp on an 8-core Mac.  I have Pro Tools installed on both the Mac and PC side.  But, I only use it on the Mac side.  Though, I originally started with Pro Tools on a PC and it worked just fine there.  I’m just a Mac guy at heart, and its just more stable there, so that’s where I spend most of my time when doing audio production.  But, one can get started using it on a PC now, knowing he could always have the option to move to a Mac in the future.

I’ve been fortunate to work with several composers, arrangers, orchestrators, producers, film scoring guys, etc and most of them are using either Pro Tools, Logic, Digital Performer, or Cubase.  (In that order.)  These are definitely the tools of choice for professionals.  It’s not that Cakewalk can’t be used for pro-level work, but these guys are gravitating toward industry standard apps for ease of file-sharing, etc.  I’m seeing Cubase used mostly for guys doing programming and electronic types of music.  Logic is used by a lot of television composers as well as electronic-based genres.  Film composers and orchestrators tend to gravitate toward Pro Tools and Digital Performer.  For more traditional acoustic music, I’d definitely recommend Pro Tools LE, though.  It is especially cool because of its integration with Sibelius (notation software) so you can instantly convert your midi score material into a printed score for musicians.  (I used to use Finale, but won’t touch it now since Sibelius is now just as capable and much easier to use.)  And, you can find some reasonably priced PT systems to get you in the game, without breaking the bank, and that come with a bunch of extras that give you some great features right off the bat.

One last thing about Pro Tools that I love is that it has a host of virtual instruments that are designed specifically to run in PT, and will not run in any other application.  For instance, they have the most realistic Rhodes and Wurlitzer emulations on the market (Velvet).  I use it and have played the original instruments and absolutely love it (and highly recommend it).  Here’s a link to Velvet at Sweetwater:  http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Velvet

Just so you know, many of these programs have academic discounts.  I like academicsuperstore.com as they have a good selection of audio stuff and tend to have the best deals.  Though, there’s also studica.com and journeyed.com.

For acoustic piano, that’s such a highly subjective thing because every piano sounds so different and opinions vary amongst pianists as to what sounds good to their ear.  I will say that I record all my piano tracks from an actual acoustic grand.   That being said, I’m not opposed to virtual acoustic pianos, but have never found one that I felt was “it”.  So, here’s a link that kind of gives a rundown of a few options:  http://digidesign.com/index.cfm?langid=100&navid=108&itemid=5202 (I have one called “Acoustic Piano” from Native Instruments, but I never use it because it is not genuine enough for my tastes.  However, my brother owns it as well and has gotten some very amazing results from it.  Most good piano emulations should sound perfectly acceptable in a mix.  But, when doing solo piano stuff, Van will probably be much more picky – as I would be.)  Oh, and I’d stay away from GigaStudio.  I’ve had nothing but problems with it.  I made a pretty big investment in it years ago, but I won’t even touch it anymore because it was so buggy.

Finally, for symphonic stuff, I’m using Kontakt by Native Instruments.  I love it.  It is also very reasonably priced (especially at the educational discount).  http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Kontakt4Edu/ I’ve found it more than adequate for most production needs.

But, I plan in the future on upgrading the sampler in Pro Tools (called “Structure”) to use one or both of these amazing libraries

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GoliathPT/
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/QLSOGoldPT/

(Oh, and here’s an amazing, but extremely expensive acoustic piano: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/VIImperial/)

Anyway, hopefully all of that helps in some way.  I’ve spent too much time learning software and technologies that end up going the way of the dinosaurs that anymore, I just want to stick with what I know will be around for a while.  Fortunately, Pro Tools lives up to the hype, and I’d heartily recommend it to anyone.

Jeremy

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Essential Promotion Sites (article)

Posted on April 16, 2010 by IndieAve

A list of 28 essential promotional sites

This article contains selected content
from outside sources which
we thought interesting or useful.

Mark Stone, who apparently used to write a music promotion blog (the link to his blog doesn’t work anymore), created a list and description of 28 sites he thought important for promoting indie bands. I find that I agree with much of his assesments, although they tend to apply to bands that are a bit more established than a brand new on. As usual with these republished articles, I plan to cover similar material as the site grows. -BW-


28 Essential Music Sites To Promote Your Music

By: Mark Stone

If you have good music, people will listen and buy your music. But they need to find your music. I’ve done all your homework below and give you the 28 Essential Music Sites To Promote Your Music which will increase your income.

The sites below are broken down into categories to help target your music exposure needs.

Artists Bare Essentials

1. GoDaddy.com – Every band or artist needs their own website URL. There is so much you can do with it (I will cover it in a future post) to compliment your marketing efforts that it is well worth the $8.99 a year. GoDaddy is the best company for URLs with great customer service and cheat prices. I have used this company numerous times.
2. BandZoogle.com – This is a website that have band/artist templates for your music. You do not have to know how to build websites. They have it all for you. You can even sell your own music on the site among other services.
3. Bravenet.com – This company offers many free services and premium services that can help you build your marketing efforts. Most importantly, they have many interactive tools you can add to your own site or add to your social networks. It has a FREE email list tool to start collecting your fans emails. This tool is invaluable and I will post about the importance of email lists in the future. I have used this company numerous times.
4. FanBridge.com – This is an artist-specific company that helps build your fan base with email list tools. There is a free service and premium service. Use the coupon code MARKSTONE for a free upgrade.

Getting Your Music On iTunes & Other Sites

1. Tunecore.com – This is the premiere site to get your music on iTunes, Amazon and other valuable sites. Tunecore has just merged services with Amazon and will now print your CDs and open up merch stores for your music. This service will start on July 1st. But for now, get your music on iTunes. Over 70% of people use iTunes for their digital downloads than other sites. I personally know unsigned bands that make over $5,000 a month off iTunes alone. There is an annual fee for each album you download. But you get to keep 100% of your royalties while other sites take a percentage. You can also get 30% OFF your fee’s by using the code beheard30.

Social Networks

1. MySpace.com – This has been the mecca for all bands and artists. MySpace even has its own label called MySpace Records. They sign artists in all genres and they usually sign bands that create a big buzz on their site. Registration is free.
2. Purevolume.com – This site has better streaming features than MySpace (MS streams have ads and randomly don’t work). This site is free to register and includes all genres but mostly caters to rock bands. They actively scout good music on their site to feature on their front page. This site gets over 10,000 visitors a day. There are social networking features available as well.
3. Twitter.com – This is the latest social networking phenomenon. Fans can see what the band and each individual member are doing throughout the day. Direct fan-to-band interaction takes place which is HUGE in building a core fan base. This is free to register and is a must in any musicians marketing plan. I will post about Twitter and your music marketing plan soon.
4. iLike.com – This site helps announce any new songs, new shows, new blogs or new pictures that you post up. Anyone who has iTunes (which is about 70% of the music population) get automatic updates on their iTunes player if they have your music in their iTunes. iLike has a sidebar that you can download attaches to your iTunes. Once you register for iLike, tell your fans about the sidebar so they can stay up-to-date on your bands every move.
5. Lastfm.com – This is another site that intergrates with your iTunes player. When you open a free account and download the Last.fm Scrobbler, everything you play gets registered by Last.fm. They use all that data from everyone’s iTune players to give you top played lists and stats on your songs. This is a good tool to see what songs are most popular on your albums. You might think you know what song is your most popular but Last.fm will tell you what your fans listen to the most.
6. Facebook.com – This is largest social network site in the world (2nd in the U.S. behind MySpace). It is starting to improve its music applications so this is definitely a site that you need to register for.

Artist Press Kits

1. SonicBids.com – This site offers EPKs (electronic press kits) for artists but also helps “book and license your music,” according to their site. I have never used their services but I know it is very reputable in the music industry.
2. PowerPressKits.com – Again, I have never used this company but they offer free press kit building. They even have different templates for you to use.

Websites For Your Music Reviews

1. AbsolutePunk.net – This website caters to anything in the rock genre and will cover hip-hop/rap. The crowd here can be tough on artists but getting any exposure on this site helps. The staff is rather huge so it is easy to get one or more of them to respond to your emails. If you have the stomach, get your music reviewed on this site. Music industry people are on this site multiple times a day.
2. Pitchfork.com – This site is the mecca for indie/singer/songwriter music. The owner was even listed as one of the Top 200 most influential people by Time Magazine. Again, this crowd can be tough.
3. PunkNews.com – This site caters to the true punk crowd and, again, can be a tough crowd. If you’re a punk band and what street cred, get posted/reviewed on this site.
4. Stereogum.com – This site caters to the singer/songwriter/indie band crowd.
5. BrooklynVegan.com – This site caters to the NYC music fan. Covers more than music and even has a Sirius satellite radio show.
6. TheDailyChorus.com – A smaller blog that has a lot of music industry attention. This blog covers music mostly in the rock genre from hardcore, emo, indie, punk and “scene” music.
7. GlobalGrind.com – This caters to the hip-hop culture and is more of a social network for hip-hop artists and fans. There are unsigned hip-hop features.

Sell Your Merchandise Online

1. BigCartel.com – This is a very popular e-commerce site that will sell your music merchandise (T-shirts, etc.) on their site and handle all the payments for you. You simply collect the orders and ship them out. This gives you full control of the shipping process. You can create a store or use one of their templates.
2. DistrictLines.com – This site not only makes custom stores for some artists but they print your merchandise as well. They cater to bands in the rock genre but also have pop-culture icons as clients.

Companies That Make Your Merch (CDs, Tshirts, etc.)

1. Discmakers.com – This company is one of the kings in the CD duplication business. Their rates are very competitive and they also do a lot more than just CDs. You can get your Tshirts, stickers, buttons and a host of other things printed.
2. DistrictLines.com – They will not only make custom merch stores for you but they will also handle your printing needs.

Other Merchandise Companies

1. LoudBytes.com – This site allows you to purchase download cards, stickers or buttons with a code on each. This code can be redeemed on their site for your music. You can sell these items at shows without ordering physical CDs. You sell the cards to your fans and they will download your music off LoudBytes. They even have hangtags for your Tshirts. If you have physical CDs and want to sell a couple of B-sides, this is the most economical way to sell a song or two.
2. Dropcards.com – This is also a download card website that embeds a code into each card.

Music Discovery Blogs

1. Kings Of A&R.com – This site is heavily scouted by music industry people. This site covers all genres of music and if you feel like your music is good enough to be featured on the site, email Dean, the owner of the site.
2. TheDailyChorus.com – Another music discovery site that is scouted by the music industry. This site mainly covers music in the rock genre. The staff of this site is a lot bigger than KOAR so it’s easier to get the staffs attention.

I will explore many of these sites in greater detail to show you how you can improve your music marketing plan to obtain new fans which will increase your revenue.

Did I miss any valuable sites? Leave a comment and let me know or email me at:  markstone424@gmail.com!

About the Author

I’m a music industry veteran that loves the quickly changing music landscape and writing about it. I am always blogging about the latest music marketing trends (secrets) to help musicians achieve their goals. Please visit my free blog at: http://musicmarketingsecrets.blogspot.com

(ArticlesBase SC #960644)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – 28 Essential Music Sites To Promote Your Music

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