MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: Can The Music Business Support Musician's Mental Health?

• Hilde Spille | Can The Music Business Support Musicians In Taking Care Of Their Mental Health?
• Nissim Elias | Do We Need A System To Rate Music?
• Adam Mezzatesta | Simple And Fast Invoice Generator For Bands And Musicians
• Yael Penn | Q2 Hit Songwriting Trends
• Wes Walls |[Case Study] How UnbelievableBeats.com Makes Money From Free Beats

Can The Music Business Support Musicians In Taking Care Of Their Mental Health?

Many musicians have mental health issues. Most common are depression, anxiety disorder and addiction. Who is responsible for the mental health of musicians? Fans, promoters, agents, A&R managers, managers or musicians?

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Do We Need A System To Rate Music?

In an era of mass music media that begs for better music selection - music rating services are now providing ‘healthier’ choices of music, benefiting the audience, and supporting the music business.

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Simple And Fast Invoice Generator For Bands And Musicians

As a working musician, boring ol’ admin can most definitely be thought of as a job for tomorrow. However, having worked as a band leader for many years, I quickly found that creating professional quotes, contracts and invoices was a must if you want to appeal to high-end clients with increasingly higher expectations (and budgets).

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Q2 Hit Songwriting Trends

Hit Songs Deconstructed recently released its Top 10 Hit Songwriting Trend Report, which details the compositional trends of the songs that chart in the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 during a specific quarter across 28+ categories, including song length, genres and influences, instruments, first chorus occurrence, tempo, key and more.

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[Case Study] How UnbelievableBeats.com Makes Money From Free Beats

This post was written by Wes Walls and originally appeared on the Bandzoogle Blog.

When Shaun Friedman of UnbelievableBeats.com decided to do something with his library of unused beats, he built a Bandzoogle website to put them online. Instead of selling his beats, he gave them away for free to build his mailing list, and found other creative ways to make money from them. 

He had over 100 free beats on his website when he launched it, and later added over 70 free loops. 

We talked to Shaun about how he used his free beats to grow a huge mailing list, and how he uses it to help earn a living as a producer.

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MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: (De)Value Of Online Content

• Mac McIntosh | (De)Value Of Online Content?
• Mark Knight | The World’s First Facebook Live Festival
• Byron Pascoe | Negotiating A Music Producer Agreement: 7 Key Issues
• Dixie Somers | Architectural Acoustics: How Your Music Hall’s Layout Affects Sound Quality

(De)Value Of Online Content?

There has been a fundamental pivot in the way we create, consume, and share content. As the entertainment industry has shifted from analog to digital, the behavior on how the consumers spend money for online content has significantly changed. The question is whether this content should be free and accessible to everyone (if so, to what extent), or should artists, content creators, and influencers properly charge for the online content they create. If we believe that all online content should be free, will there ever be any motivation to buy this content, and if we believe that it should not be free, are we losing out on a larger fan base?

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The World's First Facebook Live Festival

Harnessing the power of Facebook Live, new music blog Right Chord Music has created a new type of music festival, inviting bands and artists from across the world to takeover their Facebook newsfeed.

The Takeover Festival takes place 18th, 19th and 20th August. Tune in to watch from the Right Chord Music Facebook Page.

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Negotiating A Music Producer Agreement: 7 Key Issues

This post by Canadian entertainment lawyer Byron Pascoe originally appeared on the Bandzoogle Blog

Whether you’re a music producer, or a performing artist working with a producer, it’s important to discuss the terms of your arrangement with each other.

While it’s better late than never to formalize the artist-producer relationship, it’s easier to start the conversation before heading into the studio, and much easier before the music generates interest and money.

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Architectural Acoustics: How Your Music Hall's Layout Affects Sound Quality

The science of modern concert-hall acoustics was born in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the United States. The father of architectural acoustics was Wallace Clement Sabine, an assistant professor at Harvard who helped to plan the internal acoustics of the new Boston Symphony Hall, erected in 1900, and is considered to have be one of the best concert halls for its acoustics in the world.

By testing various halls using seat cushions, people, a pipe organ, various other materials and a stop watch, Sabine carefully measured the time required for different sound frequencies to decay within the various spaces. Today, there are six attributes in considering the acoustics of concert halls. These six attributes are the standard for which all concert halls are based.

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MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: How Much Practice?

• Jennifer Paterson | The Definitive Guide To How Much Practice Is The Right Amount
• Janelle Rogers | 5 Ways To Get On A Spotify Playlist
• Hilde Spille | Mental Health Of Musicians In The News
• Emma Sturgis | Braces And Beats: Ways To Cope With Braces While Playing A Brass Instrument
• Tom Hess | 5 False Claims About The Music Industry That Hurt Your Music Career

The Definitive Guide To How Much Practice Is The Right Amount

 The music world lives by the phrase “practice makes perfect,” but what makes the perfect amount of practice?

The path to musical expertise is a bumpy one, and practice is hailed as the golden ticket to success. When you’re aspiring to become an expert musician, it’s easy to feel like Goldilocks, struggling to find the sweet spot for your practice routine.

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the “10,000-hour rule,” based on Dr. K. Anders Ericsson’s research on expert performance, asserting that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master any skill.

This claim is famous, but is it accurate? How do you define too little practice? Is there such a thing as too much practice?

Read on for how researchers, musicians, and even doctors respond to these questions.

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5 Ways To Get On A Spotify Playlist

You’re ready to get on a Spotify playlist, right? But how do you do it when you have no followers, no connections, and you don’t know the first thing about how to make it happen.

I’m the queen of trying to find loopholes when everyone else says it can’t be done. Official Spotify playlist curators are unbelievably elusive and well guarded. They are also not the only way to make your way onto a playlist.

Below are five ways to get your song onto a Spotify playlist starting with two that essentially have no barriers and ending with the official playlists that require more strategy and savvy.

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