Mix your song at Abbey Road.

Here is a great example of Gyda Vattysdottir, formerly of Múm, and drummer Julian Sartorius, creating music by the moment. (From Vincent Moon’s wonderful “nomadic record label”, petitesplanetes.)

collection petites planètes • outtake • ÁRóRA & ÚRVERK from Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes on Vimeo.

Tie. Rock differentiator.

The New Rock-Star Paradigm.

Succeeding in the music business isn’t just about selling albums anymore. The lead singer of OK Go on how to make it without a record label (treadmill videos help)

Death Metal Vocal Exercises

The author is Cliff Goldmacher. He is a songwriter, producer, session musician, engineer, author and owner of recording studios in Nashville, TN and Sonoma, CA. Cliff’s site, http://www.EducatedSongwriter.com, is full of resources for the aspiring songwriter and his company, http://www.NashvilleStudioLive.com, provides songwriters outside of Nashville with virtual access to Nashville’s best session musicians and singers for their songwriting demos.

You can download a free sample of Cliff’s eBook “The Songwriter’s Guide To Recording Professional Demos”

Tweet

Would you say Aussies are more honest than the rest of the world, or do they simply appreciate the value of music the most? Either way you gotta love them for it.

The performance royalties from the recent (and hilarious) national broadcast of Stephen Colbert’s version of Friday, accompanied by The Roots generated thousands of dollars in income. The question now apparently is, “for whom?”

Lesson in short: never sign something you don’t understand.

I spoke recently with Mark Caro, a writer for The Chicago Tribune and friend, for an article he wrote about the challenges of coming up with a unique band name these days. He also noted that MySpace now has over 14 million bands! Read it here.

Was it easy to come up with a name for your band? Were you able to go with your first choice or was it already taken? Any tips for new bands?

Btw, if you are looking for good summer read, check out Mark’s engaging book “The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World’s Fiercest Food Fight” (Simon & Schuster)

Mike Masnick, the Editor of Techdirt Blog, gets it, and here he provides very useful insight about the marketing the Trent Reznor does so well. There is so much you can learn by checking this out. Hope it helps.

Bas Grassmayer brought this to our attention via HYPEBOT, another trove of great band career info.

Here are cities generally good for your first tour, based on population, media coverage, strength of support for live music, and routing:

New York
Boston
Chicago
Minneapolis
Denver
Seattle
Portland
San Francisco
Los Angeles
Phoenix
Austin
New Orleans
Atlanta
Washington DC
Philadelphia

The above list is by no means comprehensive. If a city not listed is playing your music on a radio station, or if it has fans living there that can put your band up for the night add it too.

2. Record some lyrics in English. Most of the population can’t understand anything else. While there is the occasional non-English song that catches on, it is a rare event here. You might get some specialty play on college or public radio, but commercial radio for the most part won’t play it. Even just having the chorus in English gives people imagery or phrasing they can react too.

3. Find someone to represent your music to film, television shows, and commercials here. For better or worse, these are the most economical ways of getting your music heard by the most people. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people will hear your music, and you get paid. You can then apply this money towards your tour! (See point 1.) There are many small companies that do this. Drop us a line if you want more info.

4. Make sure you have music and t-shirts to sell. This is crucial. Aside from the fact that income from these sales can help with your expenses on the road, you need to provide people with something to remember your band by after you have left. It is the sharing of this music and images that spurs talk about your band. This plants the seeds of awareness about your music that can lead to a bigger audience and more well-attended shows in the future.

5. Buy most of your touring gear when you arrive in the States before you’re first concert date, then resell it before you leave, or rent a storage space if you will be back in the US soon. This can help you save a lot of money on rental gear and overseas transport. With Craigslist and other music sites, it is very easy to buy and sell the gear you need almost wherever you are.