We at Musformation read A LOT of blogs. Like, A LOT! We often find
things that are interesting, but we don't have the time to write em up
for you guys. This makes us feel bad since we are trying to make our
community a more educated and entertained one. So every Wed. I will be
sharing with you Recording Nerd Links. So if you are that particular
brand of nerd/insomniac/internataholic/crazy shut in, enjoy. Nerd.
- Control your iPod with ease using the iPod Serial library
- Goldbaby's The Fat Juno 6
- Renoise 2.5 Is Out Now & You Can Try It For Free
- An Interview with Multi-Platinum Record Producer Steve Migliore, aka Mr. Mig
- Careful Drink Placement
- EQ Before or After Compression?
- Ear Training: Acoustic Guitar
- Native Instruments Introduces Evolve Mutations 2
One of the most interesting pieces of data that people are always wondering about is when to post big news about your music. Many people say 9 AM EST on a Tuesday, while others will say to get the weekend buzz going with a mid afternoon Friday post. Fortunately there are some nerds out there who will actually crunch this data! As far as Facebook sharing goes blogger Dan Zarrella has written up a extensive summary that finds that the most Facebook sharing is done on the weekends, since many workplaces now have Facebook blocked. He has a very insightful blog post where you can take away some interesting thoughts on how to get your news spread around the net more efficiently. Check it out.
If there is anything most bands regularly hear from their adoring fans it is that they are, soooo much better live than they are on record. While some of this hyperbole just comes from the energy of live, loud music and enjoying it with others, there is many a time a band can bring a whole new experience to fans with their live show. The funny thing is, many bands who are great live do not exploit it and show this fact off to their fans as much as they should. After the jump we will go over some ideas on how you can show off your live skills.
In a move that is becoming a regular promotion for buzz bands with a passionate following weirdo-rockers MGMT are launching a scavenger hunt that they claim will yield life-changing prizes. The band will announce the location of the MGMT Mobile Vehicle in different cities from this site, where upon fans can descend to the location and get these hyped up prizes. If done right this could be a great way to get awareness and buzz going for a band who needs to defy the sophmore slump to keep their hype going.
In the past we have discussed the importance of having share buttons on your site so your fans can easily tell everyone about you. If you haven't heard Google recently launched their new sharing system Google Buzz. While this new feature may have been met with skepticism, if your fans want to use it to tell their friend, why not let them? The site ReBuzzThis has made you a wide variety of buttons so you can enable this. Take advantage now and spread the word!
Drowned in Sound has up a fantastic article on the buzz band Blood Red Shoes, who have dispensed some amazing DIY advice to up and coming groups that you don't get to hear everyday. A fantastic read with great advice like the tidbit below.
"This is a sad fact because there are people around our band, and a lot of bands, who really believe in what they're doing and will work fantastically hard to make things happen. I have a lot of love for these people. A lot of folk in the music industry are not evil contrary to popular belief. Actually they mostly start out really genuine music fans who want to work in a music environment and the issue is actually the system itself, which like everything else under capitalism, is set up so the workers are the ones getting ripped off the most. Nevertheless, no-one will quite feel like you do about your band, nobody will have that 10 minutes of suicidal end-of-the-world depression you get after a shit gig. Or that utter disappointment when you see they've printed your album sleeve on the wrong kind of paper."
This past Saturday was March 6th, which while being insignificant in the
grand scheme of things, this was a big day for Musformation. After two
months of planning, brain storming and research Todd and I officially
started posting to Musformation on a daily basis on 3/6/09. It wasn't a
planned launch as much as a bunch of bugs got fixed, we started giving
out the URL, and we had something to say. The later part of that saying
is a lot of what this site is about. We have something to say.
- How To Pursue A "Corporate Sponsorship" To Get Funding For Your Music
- Band Tip: Spend Energy Making New Fans Instead Of Badgering Your Friends
- Lessons On Building Fan Community From Lady GaGa
- Surround Sound Coming Soon To iTunes
- Getting Paid By SoundExchange - Watch The MetaData!
- Music Business Reality - You Need Smart Management And A Smart Label
- Root Music Is A Great Way To Make Your Facebook Page Look Fantastic
- Why Attending Your Mastering Session Can Hurt Your Record
- RockBand Network For Unsigned Artists Has Launched
- Exercises To Improve Your Controller/Button Timing
- Initial Reports On Rock Band Authoring Is DIY Is A No Go
- Scratch Off Record Covers Are All The Rage - See The New MGMT Cover In Action
- MP3Cut Is A Website To Edit MP3s/Make Ringtones
- Mistakes You Shouldn't Make When Writing A Press Release
For a third time we have to link this fantastic film. It is now available to watch for free online. By far one of the best films made in showing how Creative Commons licenses can benefit your music. A must watch
- Anti- signs Lost in the Trees
- The Maine Sign To Sire Records
- His Name Was Iron Inks With Masquerade Recordings
- Paper + Plastick signs A Loss For Words
- Borderland Gets Signed
- The Fall Of Troy Breaks Up
- Ya Boy signs to Konvict/Interscope
- Nicki Minaj signs to Cash Money/Motown
- Century Media Signs Vampires Everywhere
- 6131 signs Such Gold
- Don Giovanni Records signs Byrds of Paradise
Ohhh Ahhhh! Now that is a good looking Facebook page! RootMusic is a site that offers a great looking Facebook App with a great sounding player, a very clean layout and show listings. If you are looking to get a nice clean Facebook layout and do away with some of the lamer options for putting music on Facebook this App could be a a great idea for you. (via GetFresh)
Control is a hard thing to give up and after you have made your record, you now need to put it in someone's hands to do crucial final tweaks that if done improperly can ruin the experience of your record or if done properly can accentuate and give your record a breath of fresh air. Mastering is the last creative step in making any record that has the potential to be great get to that greatness. Unfortunately, many times trying to keep control at this stage can be one of the things that brings down your record. The relationship between a engineer's speakers and their ears has a value which can never be calculated in importance. That said, many times artists/producers will walk into a mastering engineers room and try to make critical decisions on the sound of a record when they do not know the room very well and can't make proper judgments. In the hundreds of records I have made over the years one of the smartest decisions I have learned to make is to stay home from the mastering session and have the mastering engineer send me files to listen to on my own speakers in my own room so I can make educated decisions on how I want the record to sound. By being in my own comfortable environment this has made it so I am happier with my records and know I am always making the right decisions.
Sometimes news comes in pairs but it appears the RockBand network launched today as we were writing the last article on it. Check out 100+ new artists on your gaming system. More at Wired.
Over on The Music Think Tank, Brian Hazard has authored a look back on his experience authoring his own music's Rock Band upload and so far the reports are looking grim. I have heard the same from a handful of artists that we work with that this process is near torturous experience. As per my usual personality I am skeptical when anyone complains until I saw what you went through to do this. As someone who has worked on a DAW daily for the past decade I was shocked at how techie and annoying the process can be. If you are looking to do this and have money to burn TuneCore offers up a pricy solution and we have seen a few studios starting to offer the service. We will keep you posted as more options develop, but for now be warned that if you choose to go this route yourself it can be a long and painful process.
Last week, we linked you to a cool scratch off album cover, it seems MGMT caught on to this idea too.
Yesterday, we all flipped our lids when we saw OK Go's latest video spread around the Internet and saw that they yet again made one of the best viral videos the world has ever seen. The small detail that made this video a bit more interesting was that it was sponsored by State Farm Insurance and contained a little message from them at the end. We have long been told that the future of music is in corporate sponsorships and partnerships, but the question is how do you go about getting one of these? Follow us to the jump and we will give you some ideas.
If you haven't heard Lady GaGa just got certified Diamond for her record The Fame. Seeing as this doesn't even happen every year, nevermind this fast it shows she is doing something right when it comes to gaining fans. ReadWriteWeb has up a interesting article that examines some of the web strategy behind this fan building. The most interesting facts are the prominent links featured on her YouTube channels and some statistics regarding logins to her fan community.
"A jaw-dropping statistic was given that 89% of users coming to LadyGaga.com chose a third-party logon rather than create a new account. "Signup with Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace" is the default option on LadyGaga.com - and it works."Many people are starting to recognize that fans will talk and engage more if they can get "real world" recognition for their good remarks in a community. They want people to be able to find them on Facebook and Twitter and make further connections with people they have a bond with. Anyone looking to build a fan community should take notice to these statistics. Read more here.
We recently told you that TuneCore will now allow you to upload ringtones to iTunes. If you are looking to make edits to a song to make it into a ringtone or just edits for a DJ mix you can now use browser based editor MP3Cut to do the job. Simply upload your MP3 make the desired cuts and it will let you download a new file of your edits!
Mic Control has up a great article on how to not fall in the many pitfalls of writing a bad press release. As we know, bloggers and press people are a finicky bunch and will not write about you for even the slightest offense. This article can help you be a little more successful in your press endeavors.
What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.
- Check Out: Metric's contribution to Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
- Billboard publishes list of 2009's fattest wallets in music
- Black Keys Announce Their Sixth Album: Brothers
- Arcade Fire to Cover Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers"
REMINDER: Each of those buttons up top will make this site show articles written only on that particular subject or you can can follow our individual RSS or Twitter feeds.
From our initial conceptualization of Musformation, the idea was to help create an open community with spirited dialogue and a constant flowing ideas instead of attempting to be the final word or end-all-be-all site of musical elitism. We are musicians and producers who write about our real world experiences that are our own personal reality. But we also want to hear from you. We have a loyal audience, a great set of consistent commentators and a very intelligent readership that always surprises us. Agree with us, disagree with us, love us, hate us, but give us your own take. We love links, articles you've written, ideas and anything you've got. It's been an amazing run so far and 2010 is looking even better. Keep it coming, ya'll. 
We recently discussed the idea of giving surround sound mixes to your fans as bonus content. Well it looks like Apple is on to the same obvious idea and will be finally supporting this in the near future. Wired has the full deal on how you will soon be able to blast out MPEG surround mixes everywhere from your living room to your fantasy luxury car.
This week SoundExchange's John Simson penned a article for Billboard that held some very important wisdom in making sure you get paid for your music. With online radio's growing strength it become more and more important that you properly register with SoundExchange and you data is in order. Some of the more to-the-point advice on getting paid properly is below.
"Copyright holders must include complete metadata on all tracks. It is essential that creators include all relevant metadata on each digital track they release, including, at the very least, artist or group name, copyright holder or label name, and track and album titles. Artists and labels often send out tracks with little or no metadata attached, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to determine who should be compensated. Due to insufficient metadata, millions of dollars wind up in buckets labeled as "promo only," "self-released" and "label unknown.""To read the rest go here.
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