Music Think Tank Open

Anyone can contribute

  • blog posts
  • press releases
  • artist announcements
  • industry announcements

Instructions – please read

 

Popular posts are often moved to the front of the Music Think Tank.

 

Saturday
13Mar2010

Experimenting with new business models

I’ve spent the last few months desperately trying to figure out new ways to make money through releasing my music online. As part of an experiment, I am trying out a new business model based on the Street Performer Protocol.

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Thursday
11Mar2010

The Question of the Decade

For the last few days I’ve been going back and forth in the comments section of my favorite music industry blog, Hypebot with a gentleman by the name of Jason who owns the little known label called Viper Bite Records. The post we were so passionately discussing was primarily about metrics but also rasied the question of whether or not the full length album was still a relvant business model. The conversation struck a nerve among readers and became so intense that I’ve decided to expand on these topics in a post of my own. Here is an except from the original blog written by Alex Mann of Trendrr called, “With Mixtapes & Social Media, Is The Album So Far Gone?”.

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Thursday
11Mar2010

Case Study - First Steps in a Music Start-Up Venture

Becoming a musician is like starting your own small business; getting off the ground is often the most challenging stage. This first post is a case study on my current situation. I’m gathering information to help guide big, practical decisions that start-up musicians (like myself) will have to make at some point in their career.

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Wednesday
10Mar2010

Put a Ring on her Finger- The Social Web & Music Marketing are Married  

The world is moving at a faster pace than ever, and technology is the cattle driver of the modern world taking us all to magnificent new lands. Innovation is changing the way we live our lives on what seems like a daily basis. The landscape for which/where/how we do business is in constant motion. The challenge is no longer ‘how do we get there’ its ‘teach me how to drive.’ I am a heavy enthusiast for the marriage between tech and business.

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Wednesday
10Mar2010

How do you like your music served? Subscription, Ad-Supported, Pirated or Downloaded Legally...

I believe this year marks the advent of real change for the better within the music industry. It’s not just because the year 2010 is the start of a new decade, or that in 5 years Back to the future II thought we would all have flying cars and hover boards- which I certainly wish we had because it would be awesome. It’s that the time has come to let innovation drive the industry towards change. An industry, which typically was governed with few genuine options, will soon have a full-service customizable menu. You can stream all you want, or you can go a-la-carte.

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Saturday
06Mar2010

Digital Branding With Music and Mobile Apps

Music-based mobile apps are one of the most powerful tools in a musician’s digital marketing arsenal. Apps are a hot commodity with customers, especially the gen-Y market. Beyond that apps provide an avenue for deeper engagement with your audience. But in order to maximize your potential for connecting with audiences, your app must be user-friendly and addictive.

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Saturday
06Mar2010

Rock The Biz -The Movie: Chapter 3 "Selfrelease"

In the chapter “selfrelease” european bands, labels and player in the music biz talk about the most important tools, go’s and no go’s if you want to release your music on your own.

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Friday
05Mar2010

2 Reasons to Take a Gig

There are two main reasons to take any gig.

1.  Exposure - By definition exposure means “the act of subjecting someone to an influencing experience.”  No matter what development stage your artist business is in, it will always be important to take gigs for exposure to grow awareness of your artist (or “brand”) in untouched markets. Exposing your band to the right audiences can be worth more than upfront money sometimes.

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Thursday
04Mar2010

Who Do We Reward More, The Best or The Most Visible?

Since you’ve been reading my blog and know how I roll, you can probably figure this one out. (Read this  fantastic post by Eric Barker for the science.)

The most visible are consistently more rewarded than their performance merits.

That’s why Nickleback has sold over 6 million albums. They’re everywhere, whether you like it or not. Magazines, blogs, radio, tv, etc. Pretty much everyone knows about them. Yuck.

So what’s going on here? Why is this? Is this a giant troll that the world is going to unveil in a few years? (a la Andy Kaufman’s style).

Nope. Once again the peculiar human brain is at work.

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Thursday
04Mar2010

Screw a New Music Tax – We’ve got our Own Ideas

So by now you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about a new music tax for AM/FM radio stations, that corresponds with the 1995 fee imposed on Internet, satellite, and cable radio, crippling hundreds, if not thousands, of internet radio stations.

If you’re an independent artist, I’m happy to announce that this means pretty much nothing. If you want the real scoop on what all the popular opinions are, and the real truth underlying them, this article is great The Man Can’t Tax Our Music . My suggestion: don’t worry about it.

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Thursday
04Mar2010

How Indie Musicians Can Get Started With Video

YouTube is huge. We know that. But did you also know that it serves as the number 2 search engine, right behind the king of search and technically their parent company, Google.

That means there are more searches done on YouTube than on Yahoo, Bing, Ask or any other search engine! Do you know what they are looking for?

Much like the personal branding niche tells us to Google ourselves, musicians need to look at YouTub’in themselves. What videos show up? What channels, subscribers, comments and playlists are on the first page of your YouTube results?

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Thursday
04Mar2010

Rock The Biz - Chapter 2 "Indie vs Major"

In this chapter the interviewed artists, labels and player in the music business talk about advantages and disadvantages of independent- and major labels. You can watch the all 11 chapters for free at www.rockthe.biz

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Wednesday
03Mar2010

Rock The Biz - Chapter 1: The Music Crisis

This is the first chapter of Rock The Biz, the free documentary about the new european musicbusiness, called “The Music Crisis”.

What led to the crisis in tradtional music business, what went wrong and who is responsible?

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Tuesday
02Mar2010

Is the RIAA to blame for reinforcing music piracy? 

I want to be completely upfront before you continue reading. This is my first post, and i do want to share a new technology that we launched today of which i am a co-founder. I do promise one thing, if you continue reading you will form your own opinion (whether you agree with me or disagree). However, i believe i have a radical alternative to piracy which we have been developing for the last 2 years. I believe being transparent comes first & foremost, that’s why right now, or forever hold your peace, i offer anyone not interested in reading about our new website, Webceleb.com- the opportunity to stop reading. If you’ve decided to continue reading, great. Let’s begin…  I want to make it very clear, this blog post does not touch on everything, otherwise it would be a thesis.  This is a quick deconstruction and reconstruction of how the RIAA brought down the self-inflicting hammer upon itself!

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