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.

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

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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

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

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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.

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Negativland's Mark Hosler on Copyright & Creative Commons

via http://www.radioclashblog.com/archives/2010/08/07/mark-hosler-of-negativland-on-creative-commons/

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Metropolis Records’ Dave Heckman speaks on whose got it right - artists or musicians?

From Art Design Cafe:  With humble beginnings, Metropolis Records grew out of a Philadelphia USA record store called ’Digital Underground’ in 1994 and has developed a strong reputation over the years as a leader in the music genres of electro-industrial, synthpop, future pop, darkwave, and gothic music.

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.

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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.

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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).

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