Love Long Distance
We save you the trouble of going to a million websites and just tell you what garbage is worth skimming over.
We save you the trouble of going to a million websites and just tell you what garbage is worth skimming over.
- Taylor Swift Pranks Keith Urban
- THE SHINS Recording New Album with Dangermouse
- Watch the Live ABBEY ROAD Webcam
- Lollapalooza 2009 Wrap-Up
- Morrissey to Release 7" Vinyl Box Sets
We save you the trouble of going to a million websites and just tell you what garbage is worth skimming over.
- Thom Yorke: Radiohead Not Planning to Release Any Albums for Awhile
- Them Crooked Vultures Sell-Out In 3 Minutes
- Police shut down HARD Summer '09
- Final Fantasy Signs to Domino
- Beatles Fans Swarm Abbey Road On Album 40 Year Anniversary
- Roger Ames goes to join the loser crew at Ticketmater
- The Washington Post LOVES metal
It's been a long week here at Musformation with the whole Twitapocalypse and Facebook of Revelations meltdown and the fact that everyone on earth is on vacation except us. This week was really slow and we did a lot less posts than usual and we imagine next week will be the same as well since everyone on earth is on vacation. If you guys get bored of staring at that picture looking for Lady GaGa's cock read these links below or head to our Table Of Contents and get to work!
- When Your Funds Are Low - Employ Your Fans For Cheap Volunteer Labor Part 2
- Getting Publicity - Use Hype Machine To Find Blogs That Will Blog About Your Music
- Putting The Hyper In Hyperbole: The Music Industry Will Be Over By 2018
- The Musician's Guide To Twitter: Making Your Followers Count Tools To Make It Faster Part 7
- If You Recorded A Demo You Are Already Dead In The Water
- Using A Netbook For Your Mailing List Is A Cheap And Great Idea
- Music Industry Red Flags: Having Bad Photos Talks About Your Work Ethic Not Your Look
- Don't Tighten Your Snare Stand Too Much Or You Will Pay For It
- Scheduling Time To Do Vocals Right In the Studio
- Get On 4G Cellular Internet On Tour To Get Things Done
We save you the trouble of going to a million websites and just tell you what garbage is worth skimming over.
- Lollapalooza Starts Today start braiding your hair
- Flaming Lips Songs Requested for Next 'Wild Things' Trailer
- Notes On Live Nation, Warner Music Group Earnings Call
- Sales Boost For Mercury Nominees
- R.I.P. Willy DeVille
Yes we have made this our weekend watching before, but I have to say this is one of the best movies I have ever seen and if you are not watching it you are missing out! It has some of the best insights into navigating the new music business you will see and could not be more entertaining. Head to Pitchfork where they are screening it for one week only!
Yesterday we discussed that having bad promo photos speaks about your work ethic as well as your image. My astute co-editor Todd Thomas made a comment that I felt made a point that should be brought to everyones attention.
"This is UTTERLY ESSENTIAL. I worked in journalism for years - people are lazy. If you have a good photo, they'll probably run you - it makes their job easier. When you're one of SO many bands buzzing around the interwebz you're going to need to be different. Set yourself apart from the 10 zillion other boring bands and catch someone's eye."This is absolutely true and we find it everyday we work in this business. I have witnessed bands not get articles that were already written because an editor didn't think they had a good enough picture available. Make great quality shots of yourself available on all of your sites as well as Flickr (with a creative commons license!!!). The easier they are to access the more likely you are to get written about! You want proof? Todd's band is getting written up all over the place right now and they have some fantastic press shots!
- Netwerk signs The Rifles
- Erik Hassle Signs To UNI Republic
- Warp Records has signed The Hundred In The Hands
- Jaguar Love signs to Fat Possum
- Sent by Ravens sign to Tooth and Nail
- The Red Shore have signed to Rise Records.
- Altercation Records signs The Jukebox Romantics
- Circa Survive signs with Atlantic Records
Once upon a time when I still wrote songs I had the problem that many have - even if I wanted to write something original I couldn't do it and it would just end up sounding like everyone else. Despite my love of music and how much I wanted to just enjoy whatever I wanted to listen to I realized I had to spend some time doing homework. I realized I had to listen to records I liked where that were not the usual set of influences in my genre. Unless you have a limited musical vocabulary odds are you like some music that most of the genre you are working in doesn't listen to. Take this part of your musical vocabulary and indulge it, listen to it more and the artists you can't help but sounding like less. As much as it is no fun the sacrifice can help bring you a better result in your songs.
Earlier in the week we discussed using a Netbook at shows to avoid the countless hours of adding email addresses to your email list and copying in poorly written into your mailing list. We offered the advice of using Google Docs to do this, but if you already use Fanbridge they have a much better alternative! Simply download a desktop App and you will have the window to the left ready to collect everyones info! This makes it even easier to collect email addresses and takes no time at all! Start today!
(H/T to Dom Tucci)
(H/T to Dom Tucci)
Do you need a way to get back to your desktop computer while you are on the road and send files? Need a file on your desktop computer emailed to yourself so you can use it on your iPhone? Jaadu VNC and Mocha VNC will allow you to access your computer just like Back To My Mac and do whatever you may need to do on your desktop computer while you away from it. A great tool!
We aren't going to pretend to understand their logic, but Gibson is introducing a new "Zoot Suit" series of SG guitars. Despite the Zoot Suit name (which obviously refers more to the 30's-40's), the guitars have a decidedly psychedelic paint job - even the ones that aren't rainbow (as shown) have a swirly sort of twist to them that is undeniably 60's. It doesn't take a historical genius to remember that the SG was not even invented until after the "Zoot Suit" era, but whatever, ask Gibson. This SG is also said to be heavier than most other SG's we've seen before (we always thought the light weight was why people bought SG's instead of Les Paul's). Besides the zany finish, it doesn't look like there is too much that is unique about the new Zoot Suit series. Expected to retail for around $1200 (close to the price of a standard SG these days), we expect this guitar to seriously flop, daddy-o. 
Yesterday we told you how plug-ins that should work great can sometimes lead to crashes. One of the smartest thing you can do to decrease loading time and make your system run smoother is to take any plug-in you never use and put it in a unused plug-in folder. This way if you do not it on a rare occasion you can grab it and load it up in a minute or so while having the benefits of a fast and lean system.
We save you the trouble of going to a million websites and just tell you what garbage is worth skimming over.
- This Is Quite Possibly The Spotify Cap Table
- Man Charged With Jay-Z And Beyonce Death Threats
- Ringtone Sales Plunging
- Former Shins Drummer Jesse Sandoval: "I Got Fired"
- Warp Records has signed The Hundred In The Hands
- Live Nation 2Q Loss Widens As Revenue Falls
- The "Lady GaGa Is A Hermaphrodite" Rumor Is A Sign That We're All Just Doomed
- Digg Ads To Begin Testing This Week
There have been a lot of useless music-related apps for the iPhone, but it seems that as of late, folks have been putting the interface to better use. Take for example, the Star6 sampler. DJ Jason Forrester helped created this device which interacts with the accelerometer on the fly. You can manipulate with endlessly on the fly and the Star6 even has distortion and delay effects. Perhaps best of all, Star6 allows you to record your performance. Very impressive.
Some people find Hype Machine to be a deplorable place where blogs are robbed of the glory of finding new songs. If you are like me you find it to be the greatest thing that ever happened to easily finding music by the groups you like. Aside from being able to easily find tracks by your favorite indie artists it also acts as a great way to find blogs that would be potentially in to your music (pending you are in the genres that are covered in their site). As anyone knows getting blogged about these days is one of the ways to getting into good graces of the Internet elite. Follow me to the jump and I will show you how it's done.
Do you miss the days of free-form radio where DJs could play what they want? Do you long for a station that is way ahead of the curve in what is new and interesting in music today. Do you just want to listen to the most hilarious radio show of all time by Mr. Tom Scharpling? Well it just got a lot easier because Jersey City based WFMU just got an iPhone App so you can stream their amazing broadcast whenever you want! This is great news to anyone who loves great music. While their playlist is so diverse that those of you with selective music tastes may get turned off the first time you tune in. We highly suggest going to their website and looking at their programming schedule and finding DJs you would be into and tuning in when they are on. There is no finer radio programming in America. While we are at we should also remind you that their Free Music Archive may be one of the coolest things on the Internet and you should get on it NOW!
At Musformation we have decided to follow Twitters lead and suggest
you a Twitter feed we find to be totally awesome every week. We figure
it is time to show people by example who is using Twitter right and
good the awesome resources it holds.
In the last two weeks we have been very excited about former Daily Chorus founder Tim Towner's new blog Bandology. He has been posting great content and also a great example of doing twitter right. Whether it is asking his followers what he should post next or just linking useful links for musicians, he is another great example of Twitter done right that you can learn from just like our past examples.
In the last two weeks we have been very excited about former Daily Chorus founder Tim Towner's new blog Bandology. He has been posting great content and also a great example of doing twitter right. Whether it is asking his followers what he should post next or just linking useful links for musicians, he is another great example of Twitter done right that you can learn from just like our past examples.
Next Big Sound is another site that tracks music artist's stats across social networks. With an interface similar to compete.com but geared more towards bands stats it show you on a day to day basis how different bands are performing around the Internet. Personally I don't find the stats that they show to be as interesting as sites like Rockdex, ArtistData or Band Metrics seeing as they all take a much more in depth approach to the analytics field, I do find that this site has a feature that can be very helpful to musicians. Let's say your band sounds a lot like Death Cab For Cutie and you are wondering what sites these librarian rockers are on so that you can get you music to more fans that would be in to your witty analogies about glove compartments. Simply type "Death Cab For Cutie" into the search and scroll down. You will now see which sites perform best for this band and can figure out where to concentrate your energy in promotion. There is also a list of their profile pages on some of the networks NBS tracks so you can see what they are doing there (see pic below). This site has just launched and already shows great potential, we look forward to seeing what they do in the future.
Earlier we gave you 5 tips from CopyBlogger about how to improve your email marketing. They are back with 5 more tips that are totally on point. Give it a quick read and you will be thankful.
One of the biggest and best vinyl plants in America. As well a great watch.
We save you the trouble of going to a million websites and just tell you what garbage is worth skimming over.
- WTF! La Toya's holding back on 100 MJ songs!
- In the Flesh: Debbie Harry makes sketch comedy debut
- Madonna accused of Satanic provocation - and you thought Jerry Fallwell was dead
- The Death of Bunny Munro: Nick Cave reads you his new novel
- Beastie Boys send update on MCA's health progress
- T-Pain for President of FSU? Worse things have come out of the music department
- No refunds for Foreigner fans - fans still Wanna Know What Love Is
- Dr. Love has none for NIN: Gene Simmons lashes out at one T. Reznor
- Twitter Under Attack: DoS Assault Kills the Party
- RealNetworks lays off 8 percent at music division
Today The Music Think Tank wondered why Spotify is such a music industry changing App. We also had a few people confused why I touted it as such in my rebuttal to a dimwitted New York Times Column. Today Lifehacker shows you a tour of Spotify and why it is bound to change the world. This also is a good time to point out you better get your music on there ASAP. Check out their tour and see what the fuss is about.
Many bands don't care about their image and in fact despise that they even have to think about it. I can't blame them - it is disheartening to see "cute" bands get ahead of talented ones. Spending tons of money on clothes and your hair can be mind numbing beyond belief. What most bands do not realize is that if you have bad "press shots" or photos it really shows that you have no concern for the quality you present and don't know how to make connections with talented people.
There is a million ways to make a band with no fashion sense or concern for their image look totally great. Think of it this way, during the metal era photographers still managed to make Nirvana and Hootie And The Blowfish look fresh and good despite the fact that they looked nothing like what the world was used to. Every scene has great photographers who want to work. Simply scroll through Myspace at your local scene and look for photo credits on bands who look good. This will speak for your work ethic, your ability to be self-sufficient and make a good first impression when you look good. No one wants to work with a band with low standards and who can't make things happen on their own. Photos are one of the first indicators as to whether you are up for the job. Don't skimp.
There is a million ways to make a band with no fashion sense or concern for their image look totally great. Think of it this way, during the metal era photographers still managed to make Nirvana and Hootie And The Blowfish look fresh and good despite the fact that they looked nothing like what the world was used to. Every scene has great photographers who want to work. Simply scroll through Myspace at your local scene and look for photo credits on bands who look good. This will speak for your work ethic, your ability to be self-sufficient and make a good first impression when you look good. No one wants to work with a band with low standards and who can't make things happen on their own. Photos are one of the first indicators as to whether you are up for the job. Don't skimp.
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