We all know musicians are constantly paid in cash for things. One of the biggest questions becomes where do you hide all of this cash? Consumerist has a few great ideas for you on their incredible blog. We would also like to add vitamin containers and the hollow shafts of things like desks and curtain rods can be amazing covert spots! Check out what they got!

Punknews.org has the lowdown on notorious hardcore/punk gang FSU shaking down members of a touring band for $5K. Check Punknews for the full story here is an excerpt:

"Accused of extortion is Elgin Nathan James of Righteous Jams who appeared in the Boston Beatdown DVD series, National Geographic's documentary on Straight Edge and also shot a film Goodnight Moon with Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy . Authorities allege James started the FSU street gang in Boston the 1990s to establish control over the punk rock scene there.

The alleged extortion took place when an undisclosed band was on tour in 2005 and 2006, prosecutors say. The victim was attacked in Boston and was told he could stop further attacks by making a $5,000 "donation" to FSU, according to the court."

If anyone else has ever been shook down by these guys now may be a good time to come forward!

We have discussed Nimbit briefly in the past but we felt today that we should tell you a little bit more about their awesome service. Artists like Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Rounder Records, Guster and Al Kooper.

• Their Online Merch Table Widget enables artists to sell CDs, individual or full album MP3s, or other merch. It is embeddable on websites and major social networks.
  
• The NimbitSkin is a skin you can put on an online store to make it look like the rest of your designs and sell any of the above mentioned merch and music. It features a smooth interface and a shopping cart that gives a pro looking advanced interface. 
• They also offer online music distribution that aggregates to stores like iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, eMusic, CDFreedom, LiveWire, and Groupie Tunes. They offer two models, one with a $15/album setup charge 20% commission. You can also become a member and pay $9.95 per month and get 100% of your own royalties. A steal for artists concerned about getting the most profit!
• They offer full website designs for $199. These sites include an online store, calendars, blog, video and photo galleries!
  

We're gearing up for some more changes and add-ons to the site soon! Before we do it we want to make sure we aren't neglecting what really matters. So we are asking you, that if you see us doing something dumb or would like to see something new with the site to please let us know in the comments. You don't need to register or anything all you have to do is type and hit submit. Thanks for the help!

Over the weekend ReverbNation tweeted some great news:

"ReverbNation: ReverbNation just passed the 400k Artist mark and the 25k mark for Labels, Managers, Venues and Other Industry Pros! Thank you all."

Pretty exciting and we imagine with all the awesome features they have that it is still just the beginning. As well today saw blogger GarageSpin post some details about his involvement in the Sponsored Songs program from ReverbNation.

"I get $0.50 per download, up to a $50 cap, and bragging rights."

Interesting model that the articles notes has been somewhat controversial. Judging by how much promotion the artists have received from this partnership it seems like the money is a bonus payment. Obviously it is up to each artist to decide where they stand on interesting new experiment in ad supported music.

Everyday we get some incarnation of the question of "Do Facebook ads work for bands and musicians pages?" A hard question to answer. Like Google Ads it is really hard to track their total effectiveness and if they are really the best marketing tools for you to be devoting your time and money to.

I will answer this in two simple ways. Obviously you are on Facebook if you are wondering this. Click on some friends page and photo albums and look at the ads. Do any of the ads you see on the left hand side strike your interest? The ads next to this writing are what I see all the time when I am online reading about what my friends ate for lunch and reading about ex-girlfriends changing diapers in my newsfeed.

Here is my breakdown of how the ads apply to me; While I am a Fugazi fan I would never go to a event on the punk-folk connection in 2009, I may have gone to anything featuring Fugazi in 1996, but now they are simply something in my interests because it is part of my history. There is no way for Facebook to know I have them listed in the music I like as more of a "part of my past thing." As for the second ad - I love Brian Eno, but there is no way I am buying a shirt of him and wearing it in public, until Facebook gets a algorithim to see if I wear shirts of weird looking rockers this isn't very effective. Lastly, I have absolutely no interest in work out methods so the third ad seems totally off base to me, meaning whoever paid for this ad to be before my eyes failed badly since I would never click on any ad about my abs.

To me that means Facebook isn't targeting my interests very well. This doesn't give me confidence that if I took out an ad on Facebook that they would do a good job of targeting people. Though when you go and look at the ads you may have different results from me and if you feel like they are targeting you, maybe it is worth it?

The other question I would ask you before placing an ad on Facebook would be have you done everything else you can to promote your band that may be more effective? Getting your music on online radio like Pandora, Jango, and Last.FM is a much more effective since people get to hear your music that are interested in your style. Would your money be better spent going out and socializing, meeting people who may like your band, getting a better PA so your band sounds better? Probably! But if you have a large budget and have already done many of the other means of promotion Facebook ads may be up your alley.

Blogger Wayne Rosse has the lowdown on what is another one of those ideas that is only good when inside a boardroom with a bunch of out of touch idiots who run major labels these days. I think some of them may have taken some of Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Work Week idea of only selling to your biggest buyers to be some innovative logic. What these mental athletes neglected is Mom and Pop store workers are the tastemakers and the people who form many of the local music worlds opinions. Have fun when they start encouraging everyone to steal your product on the Internet since they can no longer get it at their favorite record store. Another great way to alienate an increasingly smaller demographic - the few people who still go to stores to get music and make your company money. Retards.From Wayne's blog:

"Here's a really good one for you. Last week EMI sales reps started making calls to many if not all of their small accounts, mostly independent mom & pop stores, to tell them that they would no longer sell them product!!! Were these accounts bad payers? Nope. Would they not stock catalog or new artists? Nope. Then why in God's name, you may ask,  would they simply cut loose paying customers? The answer given by sales reps -- cost cutting."

Wayne has also concluded that EMI did this via phone so there would be no paper trail in hopes it wouldn't become a meme running rapidly through the Internet. Guess what EMI, it's on Digg! Read more here.

The Hype Machine recently had the great idea to make a Twitter chart in response to the poor job other sites are doing of this task. Unfortunately this awesome site dropped the ball a bit by allowing Tweeters with more followers to have more power.  TechCrunch with their near million followers was able to get Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" and was able to get it right to #1. Since HypeM is so diligent about keeping their charts from being gamed we are sure they will address this. In the mean time start getting your followers to RT your songs ASAP. More at TechCrunch.