Pump Your Audio

Pump Audio is a company that licenses independent artist's music for television, film and advertising. You keep ownership of your songs and get 50% of the fees they get, plus performance royalties. It seems like a good deal:

Pump Audio was founded by musicians with experience as artists on both major and independent record labels. We know that the record label system provides no real solutions for the vast majority of independent artists.

In response to this, Pump has created a real marketplace within the production community for independent music. And nobody in the world places more independent music in production than we do—in fact, no one's even close.

Unlike many of the traditional options in the music business, you have nothing to lose by submitting your music to Pump. What you gain is the potential to earn money from having your music placed in a TV commercial or TV show.

And no matter what, you keep ownership of your songs and are free to pursue all other opportunities. We wouldn't have it any other way.

CD Sales Slipping

Here's an interesting article from Rev. Keith A. Gordon's Blog "Ryan Adams Sucks". It's his take on why CD sales are falling.

The shit hit the fan this week, and it wasn’t like a fat kid doing a cannonball into the deep end of the pool but rather like a gale-force hurricane smashing into the state of ship of the recording industry. A front-page Wall Street Journal story by Ethan Smith reported that CD sales have dropped 20% this year-to-date compared with 2006. Smith considers this “the latest sign of the seismic shift in the way consumers acquire music.”

Uh, maybe....

Let’s break down the points covered by the WSJ article and commentary offered by other pundits on a point-by-point basis and the Reverend will offer his own commentary.

Learn Chords the Legal Way

Wired News reports that guitar tabs site MXTabs.net is working with song publishers to share ad revenue and offer legal tablatures for aspiring guitarists:

Several websites have sprung up to help musicians share these notations, but as soon as they get encyclopedic enough to be really useful, they tend to get closed down. One of them -- MXTabs.com -- is being resurrected by MusicNotes as a legal service that will offer a reduced number of tablatures along with ads whose revenues will be shared with music publishers.

I guess the old site was .com, and the new one is .net. MXTabs.com is just a page of links.
Here's a related article about a site that was shut down.
I'd be flattered if someone wanted to learn how to play a song I wrote. It's not like anyone's getting rich playing in a cover band. Am I way off base? Would you insist on getting paid by someone who wanted to learn your songs on their own?

Music Choice

Music Choice is a provider of music and videos to cable companies, on-line, and on mobile phones. They take submissions from independent artists. Here's how you can submit your music (from their FAQ page):

Q. How do I submit my music to be played on Music Choice?
A. Please mail your CD, along with an artist profile and press information to:
Music Choice Programming, Attn: Unsigned Material
328 West 34th Street, New York, NY 10001

All music genres will be considered, but there is no guarantee of airplay. Each submission is reviewed individually and tracks are selected for possible airplay. Because of the large volume of submissions that we receive on a daily basis, it is impossible for us to notify artists if their music has been selected or to return materials. Keep listening to your favorite channel to find out if your music was chosen for airplay. By submitting your music to Music Choice, you grant all rights to broadcast and perform your music.

Old News is Good News, or I'm CooCoo for Cracker!

Man, that's a stupid headline.
Anyway - I knew Cracker had re-recorded some of their songs last year, but I didn't know the story behind it. Turns out Virgin, the record label that dropped them, was planning to release Cracker's greatest hits without the band's input. The Cracker guys were a little pissed about that, so they re-recorded all the songs on Virgin's version of their Greatest Hits album, added a bonus track and released an all-new Greatest Hits album on the same day that Virgin released theirs.
Here's more on the story form BloggingMuses, and an interview with David Lowery of Cracker on CMJ.com.
Support Cracker (and Banddot) by buying the album from Amazon. Just click on the link below (please).

More (somewhat) Useful Articles

Record-producer.com has a bunch of articles on producing, a lot of which are interesting even if you're not a producer. My only problem with the articles is that they tend to tell you what to do, but not how to do it. Here's a tip from a particularly un-useful article. Want to know how to soundproof a door? Buy a soundproof door. Seriously - that's what it says. Here's the whole article:

The best solution to access is simply to buy a sound proofed door.

This will be expensive, but it will be worth it. It will probably have magnetic seals around the top and sides, and a compression seal at the bottom.

It will also be very heavy, meaning that the wall it fits into will have to be strong enough to support it.

A reasonable alternative is a heavy fire door, with the jamb fitted with rubber compression seals and extended all the way around the door, including the bottom.

To gain better insulation than a single door can achieve, a 'sound lobby' is sometimes constructed so there are two doors between one side of the wall and the other.

I know it's hard to come up with things to write about, but c'mon. Why not just include that in another article about soundproofing a room or something?
Here's an article for them that I wrote titled "How to Be a Record Producer":
Find someone who would like to be recorded - perhaps a musician or band, or maybe a poet. It could even be an author who wants to make an audio version of his book. Then produce a record for him or her.
I wonder if they pay for submissions?

Too Little, Too Late?

Jon sent me this link about plans to save Rock and Roll. I hope there's still time.

...recent developments in the music world, such as the unaccountable popularity of the Dixie Chicks and Sufjan Stevens, have created a "perfect storm of lameness" from which rock might never recover. While Iommi refused to say when the vault would be opened, hard rock sources believe it will take place just prior to next month's Fall Out Boy–Honda Civic tour, which many fear will suck the remaining lifeblood from all that still rocks.

More on the RIAA

Tech blog Gizmodo (who was nice enough to link to Banddot awhile back) has declared March "Boycott the RIAA Month":

The RIAA has the power to shift public policy and to alter the direction of technology and the Internet for one reason and one reason alone: it's totally loaded. Without their millions of dollars to throw at lawyers, the RIAA is toothless. They get their money from us, the consumers, and if we don't like the way they're behaving, we can let them know with our wallets.

The only people that profit from the RIAA are the lawyers and the RIAA executives. Here's an example of their latest abuse of power from RAIN:

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange(a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA).

Radio Paradise is one of the many internet radio stations that can't afford to pay the fees that the RIAA want. Their view is at SaveOurInternetRadio.com:

There has been much discussion about how unfair these rates are, but our listeners find one fact particularly apalling: while Internet stations like ours are being told they must pay royalty fees that exceed their income, sometimes by several times over, FM stations - including those owned by media conglomerates like Clear Channel - pay nothing at all!

Yes, both FM stations and Internet stations pay royalties to songwriters and/or music publishers. But the royalties in question are owed to the owners of performance copyrights, which means, in most cases, record companies - and to them, FM stations pay nothing at all.

How do you know for sure whether an album was released by an RIAA member? Check out RIAA Radar. Just look up the album you want on Amazon.com and use the RIAA Radar bookmarklet to cross-reference the information, or use their mobile UPC lookup on your phone when you're at the store. Or you could just buy from local artists. RIAA Radar also has a list of indie music so you can find good non-RIAA bands, label info, and other good stuff.

From Radio Paradise again:

What can you do? Sign our online petition and open letter to the US Congress. Then please send an email message to your Congressmembers. You can use our suggested text, change it, or write your own message. We then suggest that you print your email (you'll get a copy) and mail it to your Representative and Senators and, if possible, call their offices. You can look up their addresses and phone numbers here.

IMWS

You probably already know about Discmakers - the DVD/CD duplication company. If you don't already get their catalog, you should sign up for it. You'll also get a free Mastering Guide and a 2-hour Music Seminar DVD.
They also sponsor the Independent Music World Series, which is accepting entries until May 9 for this year's showcase:

The 2007 IMWS features showcases in San Francisco, New York, Nashville, and Austin and will award a huge Grand Prize at each show. This is your opportunity to perform in front of music industry VIPs and win the gear to build your own home recording studio, a 1,000 CD manufacturing package, showcases at major music conferences, cash money, and more!

The IMWS exposes musicians from every genre to music industry participants through our live showcase finals. This isn't a popularity contest. Our goal is to discover, showcase, and reward the best independent artists in the country.

In each region, entries are judged on Songwriting, Overall Vibe, Musical Performance, Vocal/Lead Instrument Performance, and Originality. Genre and production quality are not a factor.

From the initial screening, 100 semi-finalists are selected and sent to the offices of Billboard magazine. Editors at Billboard screen the semi-finalists to choose six acts to play each showcase.

Poll like a Pro

Give your fans another way to be involved by designing a poll from Blogpoll. Get their opinions on what should be your next single or have them choose the art for your next album cover - the possibilities are nearly endless (I could only think of two, but you're much more creative than I am - you're in a band, after all). It's free, quick and easy. When you complete the steps to create one, they give you some code to copy and paste on your site. The only catch is that when you click the "View Results" button, you're taken to their ad-filled site to see the results, but what do you want for free? I added one below so you can tell me what you think of this blog.

Beat It

Ever since I got my kick-ass drum kit (pictured at right), I've been planning to become the next Ringo Starr. Now I've finally taken the first step by finding OnlineDrummer.com. They have all sorts of resources for drummers of any skill level, including lessons, a forum, and videos. Here's one of my favorites.