Music Business Blog by Jason Feinberg

Heading to Austin this weekend for the Fun Fun Fun Fest. A little business, mostly pleasure. One of my favorite bands of all time, the Murder City Devils, are doing a one-off reunion show (similar to last year’s two-off reunions shows in Seattle). That’s awesome enough, but then add in bands such as Neurosis, Sick of it All, The Sword, Angry Samoans, Riverboat Gamblers, Youth Brigade, and about 100 more, and well, you get two days of all-out rock!

If any of you are going, hit me up. Should be one hell of a good time.

I found this article about music managers taking on the role of a record label very interesting.

It hits home very closely as many of my marketing company’s clients are managers who are hiring independent companies to handle the individual functions that a label used to provide.

A few of my clients have left their labels to take this direction and are doing well with it. Their management team has hired us, a publicist, a radio team, a retail manager, and any other indies as needed. It can be a good way to keep all the costs down while ensuring that you are getting each function addressed.

It can also alleviate the syndrome of a label not spending enough time on a release. This, as I have seen from all sides, can be a very common killer of an otherwise solid record – the label prioritizes something else and focus shifts away. If a manager is hiring indies for very specific functions, they either must deliver or will be fired. It’s not that easy when a label has stopped caring and your A&R guy won’t even take your call.

I will add that there are some things a label can provide that a manager and indies cannot – quite often it comes down to infrastructure and budget. But this is becoming less and less relevant as major non-record companies are venturing into this side of the biz (eg. Live Nation / Madonna). As long as someone in the chain is providing financing and oversight, a virtual label can be assembled as separate objects feeding each other core info; if assembled properly this can run an artist’s career as efficient if not more so than many labels can.

That’s right all you non-believers – way back when in this post I laid out my thoughts on what the Sopranos finale meant. I had many debates with people but held fast in my belief that life simply went on – that we as observers had a glimpse into Tony’s world for 8 years, then just as quickly as it started, we were pushed out.

And what do we have here? David Chase saying basically that exact same thing in a new interview.

Maybe I should write and direct a mob show for a premium cable network???

[edit - not that it makes much of a difference but this is the link i meant to source for the interview]

CMJ is (almost) officially over and boy are my arms tired. Wait, that’s not the right punchline.

Anyway, been an insanely busy few days running all around NYC at the annual CMJ Music Marathon and conference. I moderated a marketing panel that went swimmingly, attended many others, and even saw a few good bands.

Unfortunately, very few.

This is partly my fault, as I just didn’t spend the time to find the super awesome underground bands I would like. But the overall feeling this year from a lot of people was that there weren’t as many breathtaking artists as in past years.

Add on top that I am super super super picky and specific about live shows, and you really get a small subset that I’d enjoy.

I did attend a number of great parties though, so all is redeemed.

More to come when I am back in Los Angeles and have a few minutes to unwind.

Off topic, but important –

I get tons of catalogs which tend to go right from my mailbox into recycling. Double this since I get a bunch at work too.

There’s a new non-profit site that allows you to remove yourself from multiple catalogs through one place. Check it out:

A quick note to you bands out there figuring out all the fun things you can do with your website.

There are a few “techniques” that are generally considered bad form. I can tell you, as someone who spends all day online visiting music websites, these two things piss me off.

First, do not resize my browser window to full screen. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I have my browser sized how I want it to work with my general workflow. Second, if you have to do this, your website does not scale. This is a design flaw, don’t make me pay for it.

Second, and I think I have mentioned this before – having music automatically start is somewhat bad form. Making it hard or impossible to stop it is exceptionally bad form.

Food for thought.

Earlier in the year my marketing company did the web promo for the Loudon Wainwright III CD Strange Weirdos: Music From and Inspired by the Film Knocked Up. One of the songs from it is called “Grey In L.A.” and it really sums up today. I love it when it is overcast here, probably for the same reason I loved living in Seattle. There’s something about looking out over Hollywood and the hills with big grey clouds above that makes me happy. But I also love the Sisters of Mercy, so there you have it.

For those of you that send out your own press releases, here’s a quick tip that tends to ensure a higher level of coverage for those that employ it.

It’s real simple – make sure the text in your PR is copy-and-paste ready. What I mean is that many editors will happily post your news item if all they have to do is copy it from your email and paste it right into their website. If the paragraphs read like a) a real news item or b) a story, you have made the editor’s jobs infinitely easier. Instead of making them take time to interpret, research, and create an article, you’ve done all the heavy lifting for them.

It goes a LONG way. So in the future when you are sending out press releases, take a second to make sure the text reads similar to what you’d find on the site you are sending it to.

A happy editor = gold!

An article was posted today on the PBS Mediashift blog about the future of digital music promotion. Both myself and an industry colleague Scott Perry were interviewed and are quoted thoroughly throughout.

The article gives six specific ideas that an artist can implement in order to be ready for and maximize marketing and promotion opportunities using the Internet. You can read it here: 6 Maxims for Music Promotion in the Digital Age