Indie

musicbizcenter

Okay, maybe this isn’t a brand new resource but I first heard of likeZebra.com today when I received an email from an acquaintance telling me about a contest on the site to win a Margaret Cho CD. The site caters to the independent and unsigned bands, offering online promotion a boost with a social [...]

greenshoelace

Ok, admit it. There’s a part of you that wants to be a rockstar. A rich, famous, on-the-radio music mogul. Like Kanye West or Lady Gaga. I mean, these guys have it all, right? They get to make the music they love and millions of dollars at the same time. To quote Rihanna: “The money, [...]

latimesblogs.latimes

I’m supposed to be on vacation, but I can’t resist a little post on a subject that’s been haunting me this week. We now know our Top 12, and some — myself included — are disappointed that two of the more idiosyncratic and intriguing performers, Alex Lambert and Lilly Scott, got the chop in favor [...]

billboard.biz

In the conversation about direct-to-fan sales and marketing, the focus tends to be on independent artists and labels that use new digital tools to sell music and other merchandise outside of traditional retail channels. Other than Warner Music Group, which has been very public about its adoption of Cisco’s Eos platform for D2F marketing, the [...]

kerascene.blogspot

Artists have always needed fans - lots of them - but now more than ever, they need friends. Not groupies, but a group of smart individuals, or even - shockingly - a label.
But the broader theme was ‘partner,’ not just ‘label,’ during a Tuesday roundtable at the New Music Seminar in Los Angeles. “This is [...]

idsnews

Having been dominated by the overly-sexualized pop anthems of Lady Gaga and the ballads of Susan Boyle, the Billboard 200 made room this past week for a new No. 1 debut album, Vampire Weekend’s “Contra.”
Selling 124,000 copies, “Contra” is the best-selling album in the country. Released by XL, an independent record label, “Contra” is only [...]

genyrockstars

2009 was supposed to be the year that everything changed. Digital downloads were supposed to rule and fan supported bands were to break out of the indie scene and take the world by storm. Instead do you know who ran 2009:
* The Black Eyed Peas
* Jay-Z
[...]

popmatters

Much positive writing about the music industry has been published recently. The writing that hasn’t been positive has been bombarded by passionate defenses from as far and wide as the headquarters of the RIAA, musicians and music consumers. All are laden with facts of the individual and study-based variety. For instance, Charles M. Blow’s recent [...]

stuartdavis

The music world has taken a hit, to say the least.
While music is as treasured as its ever been in our hearts and ears, the business of music has been crumbling. But as someone who’s been in that biz for fifteen years, I’d say that ain’t such a bad thing.
We’re well into the advent of [...]

top40-charts

A little over a year after the birth of the online fan-funded endeavor ‘The Sukey Rose Project’. Mia Kim will be releasing her sophomore album ‘Who Is Sukey Rose?’ on July 14, 2009.
With the success of the project, Kim has witnessed the power of true fan support.
More than 100 fans contributed to the album presale [...]

Inigo Figuracion
sandiego.about.com

Indie music artists always face a conundrum: you want your independence, to not be a part of the mainstream, to not be part of the music industry machine, to be proud of your unknown status but to a few converted. But at the same time, you want your music to be heard, you want [...]

Sarah Rodman
Boston Globe

“Don’t drink the tap water. Watch out for the guns.” This was the advice given to Taisei, lead singer for the Japanese rock band SA, about coming to the United States.
Hopefully, he won’t have to worry about either Monday night when his band plays T.T. the Bear’s Place in Cambridge as part of [...]

Brooke Snyder
weathervane.emu.edu

The “indie music” movement has been slowly gaining recognition among fans worldwide. This movement, which focuses on knowledge of underground bands, is well known for its members’ open disdain of mainstream music. I fully admit to being what some call an “indie snob,” meaning that I have made a conscious effort to find and [...]

Chad Radford
atlanta.creativeloafing

For more than 20 years, Shannon Mulvaney has been an Atlanta music fixture. Since the mid-’80s he’s lent his bass-playing talent to dozens of local punk, indie, grunge and otherwise DIY bands. You may have heard of some of them, like Anna Kramer and the Lost Cause. Others, you most certainly have not.
And therein [...]

Pete Mortensen
cultofmac

Now that iTunes is the world’s biggest record store, it’s probably important for Apple to spotlight worthy artists who don’t have a giant promotion engine behind them. Fortunately, the company recently launched the (iTunes link) Indie Spotlight channel to bring attention to relatively obscure bands.
On the other hand, they also recently created the [...]

Google’s YouTube has cut a deal with Sony (SNE) to keep the label’s videos on the world’s biggest video site. But it is still haggling with the other big music companies: Warner Music Group (WMG), Universal and EMI.
Here’s one way that Google (GOOG) execs could speed up the process–wave the results of this survey of [...]

A few months ago, while driving home from the in-laws, we heard Normcast episode 119, a German podcast full of nice little fragments, pieces of music and other fun stuff. In this episode, Norman played Matthew Ebel’s song “Everybody Needs a Robot” (lyrics, YouTube video) and, being the geek that I am, I liked it [...]

What began as a hobby for Nick Staver became a much greater and more time-consuming love for music.
And Staver’s best friend and band manager Tony Diehl knows it takes more than just a love for music to make it as a band. Over the past seven years, Diehl has found managing a band is more [...]

The Nokia Music Store in Austria http://music.nokia.at and in

Switzerland http://music.nokia.ch are now live. With five million tracks from major artists, independent labels, and up-and-coming local acts, the Nokia Music Store lets people enjoy music directly on their Nokia device or personal computer.

“With the launch of the Nokia Music Store, Nokia aims to make available to [...]

To create a community is a noble feat, an unselfish sharing of culture and ideas. It’s the basis for this here website and it’s the foundation for a healthy resurgence of hot dang, top popping North American indie rock bands currently falling from our alt-skies.
Be it the Canadian lupine star scene or Omaha’s folk casio [...]

So much for buying “import” MP3s.
While watching BBC America recently, I discovered a Scottish singer named Sharleen Spiteri, formerly of the rock group Texas. I liked the cool-’60s sound of her single “All the Times I Cried,” so I thought I’d check out her album online. I bopped over to the Amazon MP3 store — [...]

For many in New Orleans, music is a way of life. The 2009 Grammy Awards proved the Crescent City adds life to music.
Local artists racked up a truckload of nominations led by Lil Wayne, the rap superstar from Hollygrove who scored the most of any artist. Times-Picayune music writer Keith Spera said it’s a feather [...]

We live in a time when everybody and their sister can and does make their own music, and most major record labels are hesitate to invest their money and time developing, promoting, and marketing unknown new music. Most labels in this day are looking for artists with established fan bases and independent record sales. My [...]

Rap artists may look like blinged-up fantasists high on attitude, but some - like 50 Cent - are masters of marketing, squeezing mega-fortunes out of carefully crafted personal brands. Dave Waller goes backstage.
Rock ‘n’ roll was all about revolution. You grew your hair, squeezed into drainpipe trousers and aimed your Fender at the squares, as [...]

Emerging artist and producer Mr. Ozwald thinks he may have found a solution to the music industry’s inability to sell albums the past few years — he gives songs away for free.
His newest album, “The Yearbook,” is comprised of 12 singles released over a 12-month period. He wrote, produced and released a new track each [...]

Part one in a series called Backlash to Capitalism. Independent music as a demonstration of the displeasure of youth subcultures with the all-encompassing greed of the 21st century.
The culture we live in is based solely on “getting ahead in life.” We spend our entire youth training to be a profitable member of society. [...]

FOR THE INDIE IN ALL OF US - It doesn’t seem like it matters now. You just want to get as many emails on your list as possible. But as the list grows knowing who is on it and where they are from will start to matter.
Your band swings through the South (or just a [...]

The purpose of this website is to provide sound, pragmatic advice about making a living as a musician, written by people that have hands on experience. My experience has been as a freelance musician playing my own music, booking my own gigs, producing my own albums, and anything else that falls under the realm of [...]

Muxtape — the mixtape-making service shut down last fall by the recording industry — is back. But instead of letting anyone make illegal music playlists, it’s taking a new direction — a “a minimalist platform for bands to promote their music and listeners to create mixes.”
What’s the point? Muxtape customers — bands — will be [...]

The country may be in full belt-tightening mode right now, but that’s not stopping the owners of several Boulder-area music venues from making big changes to their clubs.
The owners of the Foundry, Nissi’s, the Laughing Goat Coffeehouse and the soon-to-open Boulder Drafthouse (formerly the RedFish Fish House & Brewery) are all revamping their rooms and [...]

(The Learning Curve) Ok kiddies, here is your lesson for this week. There is a small chance you have heard of one or two of these bands, but the others? You probably haven’t, but you know them now.
There is some experimental and ambient music with Ascension of the Watchers, and electronic euphoria with Julien-K and [...]

It might surprise some that the Tampa Bay music scene thrives, despite the accessibility of music in the digital age. If anything, MySpace and other Web sites have helped spread the word to get more folks out and ordering CDs. The area has several top-notch music acts. Concert halls and venues pack crowds without the [...]

When radio station WDET dropped nearly all of its music programming a couple years ago, it left a deep dark void in Detroit’s music scene. Even as Detroit gained some excellent local news talk in shows like “Detroit Today,” local musicians lost one of their biggest media outlets. And those who wanted to tune into [...]

I’ll start off citing a source, surely to some of my readers’ chagrin: I was at church today (I even saw a dude from work there). While I was there, this great pastor mentioned something stirring and brilliant that coincides with my attitude toward music:
“The word ‘amateur’ was never intended to define a second-rate person.”
It’s [...]

Indie 103, the high-profile but low-rated alternative-music radio station, ceased original programming Thursday morning, a little more than five years after it debuted, but said it will continue life on the Internet.
At 10 a.m. the station bowed out by playing “My Way,” both the versions by Frank Sinatra and late Sex Pistol Sid Vicious, a [...]

Yes, the traditional concert season lands in the heat of summertime.
But the best time to get acquainted with local bands may just be wintertime. Sure, some hibernate and write and record as the snow falls outside, but many others take advantage of the prime slots available at clubs — not to mention the masses still [...]

Koch Records has announced that Harlem, New York rapper Jim Jones has joined the company’s executive staff, as Vice President of Urban A&R. Jones will be responsible for signing and developing new talent for the Urban Division of Koch Records, which is the #1 independent record label in the United States.
“It feels good to know [...]

Navigating the blogosphere can be tricky. Half the time you end up on some maladjusted teenage girl’s Myspace blog reading about the boy who won’t notice her or how Fall Out Boy’s lyics are like so incredibly meaningful. When you do stumble upon a worthwhile blog, you feel just like some European explorer setting foot [...]

The trickle down of lower music sales is effecting distributors and today North Carolina based Redeye let at least four staffers let go as part of a move that combines the Strategic Marketing Department and the traditional Marketing Department into a single sales and marketing unit.
In an email sent to labels by Redeye general manager [...]

I’ve seen so many people get jerked in the 17 years that I have been pulling artists out of bad deals. And I have been vocal (for free) about how artists can protect themselves from getting jerked by less than savory managers and production companies, greedy labels, and unscrupulous scammers. Yet, every week [...]

here is something kind of heartbreaking when your favorite indie artist’s song starts making the rounds on the radio. Or when that incredible underground band you’ve been listening to for years starts playing bigger, less personal venues.
This past Friday, Jonathan Mahler, writer for The New York Times magazine, published a feature story about Andrew Bird, [...]

Tuesday morning, I received the Golden Ticket of journalistic invitations: a summons to Prince’s mansion, high atop Mulholland Drive, to hear the new music he’ll be releasing sometime after the holidays. At 8 p.m. that evening, I drove my dirty Mazda past the fountain in his courtyard, parked by the limo in the back, and [...]

Survived 2008 okay? The year proved difficult for an already-disrupted industry, though “accelerated transition” could be the best description of current forces at work. As in previous years, consumers continued their shift towards digital formats, and free continued to beat paid. But a widespread economic downturn appears to be intensifying a long-running [...]

After a couple of failed attempts on getting our band Georgia Wonder on Wikipedia, we finally succeeded and learned a bunch of stuff on the way. It’s really not as hard as you think to get yourself on there, but there are a few things you need to know to make sure your content stays [...]

If technology, the economy and the struggling music industry were not reason enough for going independent in 2008, harnessing creativity and maintaining a living became driving forces for many stars who decided to go independent.
In the last 10 years recording artists have faced the growing digital divide head on, some have fared well, while others [...]