By Budi Voogt who runs Heroic Recordings, an artist management agency and record label. He blogs about music marketing and the industry and his first book, "The Soundcloud Bible," is launching soon.
Do you have great music and want to score a record deal? Or have you always wondered how artists got through to big labels and ended up getting signed?
In this post I will teach you my foolproof method for scoring a record label deal.
Some big news for vinyl lovers is coming from PledgeMusic. But there seems to be a bit of a delay so I've gathered up everything I can about the upcoming launch of PledgeMusic Recordings Vinyl Vault. PledgeMusic has helped bring a lot of vinyl into the world already but their Vinyl Vault project is said to be focused on "albums previously unreleased on Vinyl and Vinyl re-issues from some of our favourite bands." The initiative includes an element similar to fan funding in that a certain number of pledges will be required before manufacturing a release.
Yo La Tengo is a band that, for many, symbolizes indie rock as both a genre and a worldview. DJ Jesse Jarnow's even written a book on the band in relation to indie rock. Earlier this week singer/guitarist Ira Kaplan appeared at Ohio University where he discussed such topics as how Yo La Tengo has maintained their credibility over the years even as they created music for commercials by major corporate entities.
Jessica Blankenship is a writer and media manager at Muzooka (@muzooka).
Not-at-all newsflash: The music industry is a completely different animal than it once was. While it's true that the music industry has been a perpetually evolving beast since the beginning, never before have we seen such super-sized, fundamental shifts in such a relatively small time in terms of how music is produced, shared, bought and sold, and how success is quantified and achieved.
The Wall St. Journal takes a look at hip hop music marketing through Atlanta strip clubs featuring dj collective Coalition DJs. Strip clubs are a marketing staple for Southern hip hop with djs getting paid to play singles ideally at the peak of the evening. Apparently Coalition DJs are a dominant force in the current Atlanta scene with a well-developed approach for helping break records.
The following guest post is an excerpt from the new 4th Edition of Music Is Your Business by Christopher Knab.
Deciding to release your own record is only a good idea if you know what you’re getting into. As you read through the following questions, mark the ones that you can’t answer and make an effort to find the answers. We answer some of these questions throughout the book. There are, however, some questions that only you can answer, and a few that are outside the scope of this book.
As part of their anniversary celebration, indie label Sub Pop has posted the page one of Nirvana's first contract, In exchange for a one-year term between January 1, 1989 and December 31, 1989, the band was paid a whopping $600. Take a look at Nirvana's original recording contract with Sub Pop:
(CelebrityAccess) There has been so much written about the global decline in music sales that any good news deserves examination. The German music business finally delivered some this week. It’s been a long, painful slide for the recorded music there too, but unlike almost everywhere else, Germany's record business is showing measurable signs of growth.
Whenever news hits regarding Spotify or Pandora, in particular, many musicians express their displeasure through whatever outlet they have. In the U.S. most of this self-expression does little to affect the actual outcome of corporate or political decisions because American artists are generally incapable of collective organization for such change. But there are services that represent an alternative to Spotify and Pandora, offer a better business deal for musicians and could be collectively approached by like-minded musicians as a business move resulting in a win-win for everyone involved.
The Association of Independent Music has announced the 2013 nominees for it's UK based indie music awards. Along with the nominees came the announcement of two winners: Billy Bragg for Outstanding Contribution to Music and Geoof Travis of Rough Trade will receive the Pioneer Award.
For the first time since Nielson SoundScan began counting, U.S. album sales have dipped below 5 million units for 5 consecutive weeks. Just 4.69 million albums were sold during the week ending July 28, the lowest since the launch of SoundScan in May of 1991.
Global music rights agency
Merlin is slashing the administration fees it charges independent labels by 25 - 50%. Members were informed yesterday via an email obtained by Hypebot. The cuts are effective as of July 1st. Merlin's old and new rates are as follows:
Re:Discover is both an interesting new label and the center of a group of labels and services including Bundle Dragon which I wrote about yesterday. Re:Discover describes itself as offering licensing and distribution for cover song artists. It's an interesting concept but I'm a bit surprised at the seeming invisibility of the people behind the service.
On Thursday July 26th Congress’ House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet held a hearing on “Innovation in America: The Role of Copyrights.” A2IM board member Tor Hansen (YepRoc/Redeye) visited Capitol Hill to testify on behalf of both the company he and Glenn Dicker founded and the overall A2IM Independent Music Label community. Tor’s written testimony and a video of the hearing is here with Tor’s opening remarks starting at 52:54 of the hearing video.
As part of our 9th Anniversary, we asked our regular contributors to share their favorite Hypebot posts. This one comes from Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith.
Though numerous individuals have directly scoffed at the idea that cassette labels are anything other than an obscure novelty, a closer look reveals a mostly underground world of experimental music that is gradually moving towards releases that are more accessible to the mainstream.
Yesterday news began to spread of the announcement of International Cassette Store Day planned for September 7th. Set to be a modest version of Record Store Day, this event will mark the next stage in the development of the growing cassette subculture. In addition, last week a trailer for the crowdfunded documentary "Cassette" was released featuring such eminent figures as Henry Rollins, Mike Watt and Ian McKaye.
According to Billboard SoundScan mid-year numbers provided by A2IM, report, indie labels hit a record high with 34.4% of the overall market share based on master
ownership (not distribution). That's up from last year's mid-year mark of 32.9%. Top selling independent label artists so far this year include:
From Yahoo! to CMT, from writing books to founding a label, Jay Frank has covered a lot of ground in the music industry. Hear his story in this interview, as Kyle and Jason delve into Frank's fascinating career. And listen to Frank's thoughts on record labels big and small in Episode 26 of the Upward Spiral.
We've seen at a full copy of the iTunes Radio contract that Apple is circulating to independent labels and can confirm that for the first year, they are offering a "take it or leave it" $.0013 per "royalty bearing performance" plus 15% of net advertising revenue. Depending on the source, that's relatively comparable to the rates** that Apple is paying the majors, despite headlines to the contrary. But for both indie and major labels, the devil is in the details.
Full text of the A2iM Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech by Tom Silverman, music industry thought leader and founder of Tommy Boy Records and the New Music Seminar.
Lifetime Achievement Award?
Lifetime seems so final. After working for 9 months on the NMS finishing last Tuesday, the Sound Exchange board meeting last Thursday, the Merlin board meeting this Monday, A2iM Independent Week and the board meeting last night and the WIN board meeting tomorrow morning. It feels like it’s time for the “get a life time award.”
Artist manager and label co-founder Emily White tells the story of her career in music. From her internship with Amanda Palmer and The Dresden Dolls, to her time at Live Nation, and finally to founding her own management company and record label.
White led with her positive spirit, business smarts, and can-do attitude. Hear her stories and learn from her music industry lessons in this Interview Series episode of the Upward Spiral podcast. Listen below:
Jim Donio, President of NARM, shares the stats from this week’s sales report issued by Nielsen SoundScan: "Queens of the Stone Age set several sales milestones this week, notching its first #1 album with …Like Clockwork. It was also the first #1 record for the band’s label, Matador Records. It’s also notable that 13% of its total sales, 12,000 units, were from vinyl."
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