One thing is true, you need to go into the collaboration with the right mindset to be able to produce good music, and to leave the experience without a bad taste in your mouth.
Sunday, 19 September 2010
Collaborating with Established Artists
One thing is true, you need to go into the collaboration with the right mindset to be able to produce good music, and to leave the experience without a bad taste in your mouth.
Friday, 3 September 2010
Just what the world needs - another music social networking site
Apple have just announced the creation of a new music social networking site that exists solely within itunes.
Wired has the scoop:
Apple audaciously seems to think the world actually needs another social network — one that you even need special software to be part of, to boot. With the introduction Wednesday of ‘Ping,” a music-centered community that exists only within iTunes, they are probably right — and then some.
At Apple’s annual music event in San Francisco CEO Steve Jobs described “Ping,” part of the iTunes 10 upgrade coming soon, as “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/apples-ping-social-music-network-is-already-too-big-to-fail/#ixzz0ySrZD7XI
Wired has the scoop:
Apple audaciously seems to think the world actually needs another social network — one that you even need special software to be part of, to boot. With the introduction Wednesday of ‘Ping,” a music-centered community that exists only within iTunes, they are probably right — and then some.
At Apple’s annual music event in San Francisco CEO Steve Jobs described “Ping,” part of the iTunes 10 upgrade coming soon, as “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/apples-ping-social-music-network-is-already-too-big-to-fail/#ixzz0ySrZD7XI
Sunday, 29 August 2010
My Organ in your face - Free Kontakt Patch "Felix Organ"
Now you too can recreate that famous riff or many other riffs like it by using our free patch for Kontakt.
Felix Organ Demo by Celebrity Murder Party
You will need Kontakt 4.1 to use the patch - download it here.
If you like it you can always make friends with us on Soundcloud:
http://soundcloud.com/celebrity-murder-party/
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Shameless Plug: Ban this sick filth!
I've worked with AbandcalledQuinn before under the pseudonym Celebrity Murder Party - first under their single, the aptly named, "DIY".
ABCQ are self releasing their new single "Here's to Us" and their latest album "The Beggars Opera" on their own label Tromolo records.
A Band Called Quinn - Here's to Us - Ban this sick filth remix by banthissickfilth
This remix mashes together influences from The Specials, Classical Composer Steve Reich and the heavy dubstep bass sound of Caspa - all with Louise's Debbie Harry-esque vocals on top.
Check out the interview and download the mp3 here:
http://peenko.blogspot.com/2010/08/scots-way-hay-30-band-called-quinn.html
Sunday, 15 August 2010
"How we get thousands of real facebook fans for artists":
Peter Tanham of Amp Music Marketing writes:
http://www.ampmusicmarketing.com/social-media/how-we-get-thousands-of-real-facebook-fans-for-new-artists/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=blog
IntroductionWhen we start working with any new musician, two of the most important goals we start with are:He makes some great points about recommendation systems and managing email lists. Read more here:
1.Build a strong mailing list
2.Build a popular Facebook page
From experience, these to platforms are where fans feel most comfortable interacting with musicians. They’re also the two that drive the most sales. So ahead of looking to drive YouTube views, Myspace friends, website hits, Twitter followers or Last FM plays, we look to develop email subscriptions and Facebook fans.
http://www.ampmusicmarketing.com/social-media/how-we-get-thousands-of-real-facebook-fans-for-new-artists/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=blog
Seven Simple Steps for more followers on Soundcloud
I remember in a recent Beatport remix contest where the most successful (ie had the most spins) were often those who took the time to listen to other people's tracks and comment on them. Social capital and mutual feedback is without doubt the driving force in online transactions.
Seven Simple Steps For Getting More Listeners & Followers on Soundcloud
If you are a DJ or producer, I’m willing to wager that if you have been on the Internet any time over the past two years, you have heard of Soundcloud. As the company who promises to “move audio”, the service sounds like a lucrative bet for any budding musician. I mean, all you need to do is sign up for an account, upload a couple of your best mixes or original tracks, and hundreds of listeners or “fans” will flock to you, right?Read his tips here:
Hate to say it, but it isn’t quite that easy.
Similar to many other online services fueled by social media, including YouTube and Twitter, the benefits you get out of Soundcloud are entirely based on the effort you put into it. Gaining the attention of listeners and followers actually requires a bit of dedication and engagement, and requires bringing more to the table than just having good musical content.
http://www.beantownboogiedown.com/beantown-boogie-down-beat-bo/2010/8/12/seven-simple-steps-for-getting-more-listeners-followers-on-s.html
Saturday, 14 August 2010
An Ode to the CD from CD Baby
Peter Kirn writes:
Can music as a physical object have value and meaning again? For many music enthusiasts, that affection has turned back to the vinyl record, not the CD. (How many artists have we seen lately offering vinyl as the “premium” package for listeners?) At an extreme, there’s Alessandro Cortini’s SuONOIO, an album that has its own accompanying custom synthesizer.
But while we ponder this question, the one that seems the perpetual topic for music conferences and industry pundits, I turn instead to this (tongue-in-cheek) description of CD shipping. Given the record sales for many independent artists, maybe this parody isn’t actually so far-fetched.
If you’ve never ordered a physical CD Baby CD, you may not have seen it before. I can tell you it amused and delighted the person who got it, though (it wasn’t me), so never underestimate the value of caring for your musical customer.Read More Here: http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/08/10/an-ode-to-the-cd-by-cd-baby-could-you-really-love-music-buyers-this-much/
Friday, 13 August 2010
Dirty Tricks - Part 2: Snakes and Adders
In our last post about Nicky Kallongis' book Myspace Music profit Monster we investigated Myspace as a hosting solution and method for reaching more listeners. Nicky talked about using Friend Adders as a way of generating more "faans" annd exposure on myspace.
We decided we would give it a go for a short while and report back with our results. Myspace has some strict rules about using Friend adders - specifically you cannot invite more than 350-400 a day or they will delete your profile. In practice about 50-75 a day is the safe limit for friend adding.
Additionally some myspace profiles don't accept invitations from bands- or their profiles are private. You can't do anything about this - just move along and look at the next person in the queue.
In order not to jeopardize any of our legitimate accounts we used an alias that i set up to release some jokey Old Skool electro tracks - Trollingforlulz.
We did a cursory search for myspace friend adders. When approaching these sites you have to be careful as some of the sites feature adverts which are far from work safe. The biggest Google hit was for Friendfrost - which appeared to be an online repository for people to post their ID's rather than a friend adder per se.
A New Low for Music
This one video has commentators and bloggers split. The Reclusive Barclay Brothers are gaining lots of publicity by promising to give away £27 to 100 people who listen to their music. Unfortunately for them, and assuming it's not an internet practical joke, most of the people who've actually heard their single "lonely together" complete with glossy video are commenting on how bad the song is.
Only time will tell whether this turns out to be a viral scam for a tv show or a genuinely deluded band. Check out their site and sign up for a chance to be one of the lucky 100 here: http://www.newlowformusic.com/
Thursday, 12 August 2010
Myspace Makeover - Is it Dead or due for Resurrection?
Website redesigns are a bit like haircuts. Chop 6 inches, and people will definitely notice. Trim the bangs and add a few highlights, and some never know the difference.
And so it is with MySpace Music, which overhauled its front door back in September. That was a much-needed facelift that was obvious to users. Now, the group is tweaking and pruning its look.Read more here:
On Monday, MySpace Music will refresh to encourage more community (through activity streams) and greater discovery. The cleaner look enables easy access to "My Stuff," as well as a consolidated recommendations area.
Check it out below, complete with annotations (supplied by MySpace) to highlight the different areas (a full-size spread here).
http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/081110myspacemakeover
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Engineers with Attitude
Billie Ray Martin has been recording some new music in Berlin recently. She tells all about the trials of tribulations of working with people passing themselves off as professionals in her new article on the Hospital Club website.
Read more of her article here:
http://www.thehospitalclub.com/socialsite/features/view/10-08-10-engineers-with-attitude
It was in the pursuit of this endeavour that I placed two ads on Craigslist Berlin to find a studio and/or sound engineer.
Hear my tale: I’m behind in my vocal recording schedule for various projects, so in addition to recording in my living room, I’m looking for an external studio. Most 'proper' recording studios have either closed or simply aren't worth the money in an era of home recording, where great results can be achieved using your own space and equipment. The ad copy sought a professional home recording set-up, complete with an experienced sound engineer....She makes an important point about having the right attitude when working or collaborating with artists and how important it is to have a good engineer who can not only work the knobs, but also knows how to make an artist feel at ease with themselves - to get the best performance.
Read more of her article here:
http://www.thehospitalclub.com/socialsite/features/view/10-08-10-engineers-with-attitude
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Self Promotion tools for (DJ's) (strike) Musicians
Great post over at DJtechtools.com about self promotion tools for DJ's - but it's equally applicable to Musicians / Bands and Producers
http://www.djtechtools.com/2010/08/09/self-promotion-tools-for-djs/#more-7298
One of the dirtiest jobs in the DJ business is marketing and promotion. If you already have a big following, you could probably hire a publicist to do the promo grunt work for you. But how do you get a following without promotion? There’s the catch. While DJing is good work if you can get it, it’s still work. You’ve got to be your own hype man before you hit the big time. Luckily, the wonders of the modern world – technology and outsourcing – have your back. Read on to discover tools and services that will help you spice up your Facebook page, create a personal iPhone app with no coding required, and blast a press release to the music media masses.Read more including a breakdown of tools here:
http://www.djtechtools.com/2010/08/09/self-promotion-tools-for-djs/#more-7298
Dirty Tricks: Myspace, Monsters and Profit - Part 1
The subtitle of this book is "Easy online marketing strategies to get more fans fast". I imagine this with a plethora of exclamation marks and ones after the title.
The author, Nicky (the knife) Kalliongis is apparently a respected industry insider. Having been strategist for EMI and Time warners as well as a respected producer for Whitney Houston, Air Supply, Run DMC, Faithless, Hall and Oats and Eros Ramazotti (there's more of those ones and excalamation marks). Now that in itself makes the whole premise of this book somewhat suspect to me - surely this is one of the very dinosaurs blindly struggling through the web 2.0 tar pits?
The book comes across as severely dated and very basic for everyone who's got any familiarity with the web. Some of the marketing actions such as using a newswire service like PR Web strike me as the actions of someone who doesn't really understand the viral buzz they keep talking about.
That the whole marketing plan centres around myspace, a now almost defunct medium is enough to get the alarm bells ringing.
Even when the book was intially released (2008) myspace was already on it's last legs ready for a kindly shotgun in the face care of Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp who took something they didn't understand and made it even worse filling it's pages with advertising and slow clunky loading applications such as Myspace chat and yet more adverts.
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Metropolis Records’ Dave Heckman speaks on whose got it right - artists or musicians?
In interview, R.J. Preece—a self-confessed Front Line Assembly addict, a band which is represented by Metropolis—interviews the entrepreneur behind the music label. (While typing the interview up... FLA’s Unleashed on Artificial Soldier plays in the background...)
Read More Here:
http://www.artdesigncafe.com/Metropolis-Records-Dave-Heckman-music-art-2010
Also check out their interview with Cabaret Voltaire's Stephen Mallinder who we'll be interviewing for his opinions on the current state of the music industry in an upcoming article.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Aspects Of The New Music Reality
Music 3.0 - The Blog Behind The Book: 5 Aspects Of The New Music Reality: "During lunch with a friend today, he passed some scenarios by me for breaking a new act. One of the things he said seems to be what's now seems to be accepted industry knowledge, although I believe the logic is faulty.
"We're going to do vinyl and digital downloads but skip the CD. They're done." After discussing for a while what he was going to charge for the items, I told him my feelings on the matter.
"We're going to do vinyl and digital downloads but skip the CD. They're done." After discussing for a while what he was going to charge for the items, I told him my feelings on the matter.
Interesting July Music Stats
Music 3.0 - The Blog Behind The Book: Interesting July Music Stats:
"Digital music information and strategy company Music Alley puts together an interesting monthly report called NumberCrunch that includes somthat includes some interesting statistics culled from information sources like NPD, Forrester and Neilsen/Soundscan. Here are a few points that I found interesting (my comments in italics).
"Digital music information and strategy company Music Alley puts together an interesting monthly report called NumberCrunch that includes somthat includes some interesting statistics culled from information sources like NPD, Forrester and Neilsen/Soundscan. Here are a few points that I found interesting (my comments in italics).
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Free online mp3 hosting...
So you've written your magnum opus. You've spent a long time recording it, mastering it, sweating over how it sounds and now you need to get it out there on the web. You can either purchase some webspace and build your own webspace or use one of the many free mp3 hosting or distribution services.
Why host on a third party website and not your own space? The main advantages are:
- Free - you don't have to pay hosting charges to an external company.
- Bandwidth - 1000 downloads won't impact on your own bandwidth keeping those costs low.
- Website integration - usually the hosting companies have some way for people to embed you songs on their website.
- Social networking - some of the sites such as soundcloud are integrated social networking sites in themselves allowing listeners to rate, download or connect with artists directly through the site. You can mass mail followers and allow people to comment - enhancing your social currency.
Itchy Clips - Other avenues for artists
Recently Producer Sneak-thief and Stewart Walker have announced the creation of a new project - Itchy Clips. Itchy clips is a web portal / community designed to sell Ableton Live files for aspiring remixers and DJ's.
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Trent Reznor: What to do as a new / unsigned artist
In September 2009 Trent Reznor writing on the NIN forums outlined his thoughts on what unsigned bands should do if they're hankering after success in the internet age. We're using this to inform the different avenues and outlets we'll be looking into in the coming weeks. We'll also take a look at the different distribution methods and guerilla marketing techniques.
Here's what he had to say:
Saturday, 17 July 2010
We are living in a digital world....
Like it, or lump it, the internet has been a decisive force in music distribution for at least 10 years now. From the very first p2p networks like Napster and Audiogalaxy to torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay or Mininova to Music Blogs to the new legal alternatives like iTunes, Beatport, Junodownload and so on. The great revolution in the internet has been in providing greater access to distribution for artists.
Nowadays a track can go from mixdown in the studio to being downloaded by a large audience within a matter of hours.
Opinions are split between those who download music "illegally" from torrent sites and largely the music industry and their representatives about just how ethically sound it is to download music for free. The fact remains that whilst it has become easier to distribute your own music online the chances of a musician earning a living wage from recording has become increasingly hard.
Part of this is due to competition from the sheer number of people actively recording and releasing music. Part of this has been due to the process of illegal downloading and the notion of free online music itself. Recorded music is no longer a profitable commodity.
So, in this overly competitive era where access to the public has been levelled, can an artist make a living wage?
What we hope to do over the coming months is to log and record our experiments with online distribution, music licensing, gigging and so on, looking at the various different options available and ways to make income - not all of them through selling the music itself.
We fully expect to make lots of mistakes on the way but hopefully learn from them.
