Promoting your music in the web 2.0 era
Two motivations for this post:
ONE: Hearing Ashlee Simpson’s new single ‘Outta My Head’ today. It represents the nadir of popular music. It was written by SIX!!! people. As a comparison, ‘Yesterday’, the most covered song in history, was written by Paul McCartney, one man, in his sleep.
So what’s gone wrong in the last 40 years, […]
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There’s a great story about how, when the Beatles completed Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the early hours of April 21st, 1967, they left Abbey Road and took an acetate of the recording to Mama Cass’s house in Chelsea, stuck speakers in the windows and broadcast the album to the neighbourhood. People in […]
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Two posts in one day! But rarely do two items in the papers anger me so much. John Harris, ex-NME journo (from just before the time I joined), Socialist firebrand and now Guardian columnist, can usually be relied upon for sober, insightful and generally left-leaning comment.
In today’s Guardian, however, he seems to have been replaced […]
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This is obviously a very sad and misguided decision, and sets a worrying precedent. The RIAA are probably very pleased with themselves - but they shouldn’t be. All the reports of this case, aside from the cowardly neutral - sorry, independent - reporting of the likes of Billboard, are leading with the words “single mother” […]
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Steve Albini turned up in poker forum last week, ready to answer any questions the community might have about the record industry, engineering, Nirvana and how shit Urge Overkill were. As usual, Albini has some great insights on the workings of the industry, making the thread a must-read for any aspiring DIY musician.
Downloading and […]
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As discussed yesterday, it’s not for the RIAA to sit on their pedestal and rage about people getting laid off, session musicians not getting paid, and songwriters suffering because of illegal file-sharing. We know this is happening, but righteously suing people is not the solution to anyone’s problems – and I say that as a […]
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Rolling Stone’s article on the decline of the record industry doesn’t really throw up any surprises – shock! It was Napster’s fault! – but there are some telling comments at the end from RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol.
“A great American sector has been damaged enormously,” says the RIAA’s Bainwol, who blames piracy, “from songwriters to […]
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There’s a buzz around about how to monetize P2P, as the music industry begins to realise that the Pandora’s box of illegal downloading that Napster opened in 2000 is never going to be closed – not even by those nice, reasonable folk at the RIAA. The belief of the new generation is that music is […]
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Little more than 10 years ago, TV was in a terrible state. Then something happened. A bunch of new writers who’d grown up getting their kicks from the Simpsons and Seinfeld starting scripting a new wave of TV - the most significant and seminal being Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Suddenly, as the millennium turned, it […]
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Yes, it’s the anniversary of ‘Sgt Pepper’ and bizarrely this obscure newspaper has run perhaps the most interesting feature I’ve read today.
FakeSensations – George’s Book
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This is a blog about how to promote your music successfully in the new internet-driven era. I used to write for the NME, now I work for Last.fm, and also make music as Fakesensations.