Here’s something to look into… I haven’t signed up for an account yet, but it looks like the folks at audiolife.com could be on to something really interesting.  They offer full back-end services for bands to sell mp3 albums, physical CDs, ringtones, and merch, and there are two things that are most interesting about their service.
1 – Bands don’t need to create any inventory upfront… all the CDs are done using digital manufacturing, at audiolife’s …

Interacting with your fans in the online and offline spaces is one of the most important things you can do as a band.  From social networking, to email, to live-chats, to live concerts, meet-and-greets and merch-table conversations, forging a relationship with your fans is a very important part of being in a developing band.  That’s not to say that should you be so fortunate as to have massive international success that you should be any …

Jumping off from where my last article ended… I just want to expand a little bit on the shift in the mindset of the modern musician.  Or, at least, the shift I think should exist.
It’s very true, you need to treat your band like a business.  Keep track of costs and expenses, manage inventory, market, promote, sell, spend time and effort doing research and development (music lessons and rehearsals!) etc.  But there’s another aspect to …

Music Industry professionals like A&R reps and label staff, booking agents, managers, music directors, music supervisors, publishers and the like, all provide very valuable services that can significantly help an artist in promoting their music and getting it into places that are hard to access: retail shelf-space, movie soundtracks, video games, on the radio, MTV, having versions sung by famous musicians appear on their albums, live performances on opening slots on major tours, etc.  All …

Ping.fm calls itself “a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.”  It’s currently in beta mode, which means it ’s free to sign up, and try it out.
Post a message to the Ping.fm service, and Ping then takes that message and distributes it out to all your social networking sites for you… so you only have to send it once.
You tell Ping.fm which social-networks you belong to (they support probably every one …

As promised, today’s post is about trying to “buy your way in.”  There are several ways that musicians try to do this… they think that if only they could buy advertising, or if they could hire an indie publicist, or a radio promoter, or buy their way onto a tour, then people would hear their music and fall in love with it, becoming lifelong fans in the process.  There have been bands who were born …