Music Business Blog by Jason Feinberg

For those of you that read my blog but don’t read Seth Godin’s, you have your next task clearly laid out in front of you – subscribe to his RSS feed. Very savvy and forward-thinking marketing stuff.

Alternatively, check out this interesting post – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/the-marketers-a.html

Excerpt:

Traditional job requirements: show up, sober. Listen to the boss, lift heavy objects.

Here’s what I’d want if I were hiring a marketer:

You’re relentlessly positive. You can visualize complex projects and imagine alternative possible outcomes. It’s one thing to talk about thinking outside the box, it’s quite another to have a long history of doing it successfully. You can ride a unicycle, or can read ancient Greek.

Show me that you’ve taken on and completed audacious projects, and run them as the lead, not as a hanger on. I’m interested in whether you’ve become the best in the world at something, and completely unimpressed that you are good at following instructions (playing Little League baseball is worth far less than organizing a non-profit organization).

The one and only Ian C Rogers has posed a thorough detail of his keynote from the GRAMMY Northwest MusicTech Summit 2008 here. It’s a fascinating look at the future of the industry from someone (and a company) that is certainly in a position to be discussing it. One of many, many interesting nuggets:

As such, it’s hard to deny there’s a power shift going on from label to artist, and therefore the artist’s closest business partner, the artist manager. This isn’t to say labels aren’t valuable. A lot of people like to line this debate up as label vs. independent, but that’s not how I see things. What I see happening is artists having a choice, and labels needing to prove their value. It’s no longer the de facto dream of every musician to “get signed”. Instead of doing a 360 deal with a label artists are able to do a 360 deal with themselves and choose their business partners based on who is going to add the most value. If you’re an unknown pop-punk band from Orange County would you benefit from the marketing and branding help Epitaph Records could provide? Hell yeah. If you’re Joe Purdy would you benefit from what a major label adds? Perhaps, but what would you give up in the process? Artists now have some leverage in their ability to earn a living without making the leap.

Read the whole thing here (with slides): http://topspinmedia.com/2008/11/grammy-northwest-musictech-summit-keynote/

Dave Allen has a fantastic article on his blog about vinyl, analog, digital formats, and tying it all together to a new generation. Real good stuff, check it out.

Excerpt:

Digitizing music has made music more affordable and provided ease of use in portability but at the huge expense of having the emotional range, the highs the lows the rumbles, removed in the process. What we have been hearing on CD is a compressed version of a digital slice of the possible range of sound available to our ears. At live shows the bass sub woofers in the PA system allow you to literally ‘feel’ the bottom end, on CD or MP3 that experience is simply not available to you. Yet, when you play a vinyl record through a great hi-fi system you can experience it in a recording.

Read more here.

I wrote a guest blog entry for The Hype Today about my experiences at CMJ. It’s sort of tongue-in-cheek, sort of accurate, and sort of ridiculous. For your reading pleasure, I’m re-posting it here.

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Two weeks ago marked my sixth CMJ Music Marathon (Oct. 21 to 25). I went twice in the 1990s as music director of Las Vegas college radio station KUNV and four times as the owner of a music industry online marketing firm. My experiences have been vastly different each year, and near unrecognizable when I compare the ‘90s to more recent years. So for those of you considering going (or are wholly unfamiliar with it), I present to you:

The “So Over It” Music Biz Guide to CMJ

WARNING: I love my job, the music business is the greatest industry on the planet (maybe tied with porn), I’ve had a million great CMJ experiences, the people I’ve met that organize the conference are awesome, and I am at least 6 years away from being jaded. Having said that, this is going to come off super, super snarky. Ahh, the duality of man.

Ask anyone who has been going to the big music conferences for a while and you tend to hear the same things: “SXSW was way better in the ‘90s, before all the majors heard about it.” “CMJ used to be about the college radio community, now it’s about big artists and buzz bands.” “MIDEM? I can’t afford to go to Europe!” I can’t necessarily say that stuff (maybe the last one), but I can tell you that each year, I find most conferences less and less useful. This year proved no different for CMJ.

Maybe it’s because I own a moderately successful company, so I am mostly past the “learning” phase. It could be that I go to so many conferences that, at this point, I tend to hear the same thing repeatedly. Or it could be that I have seen so many bands over the years that I simply don’t find massive joy in waiting around for hours to hear the band that I’ve known about for months and have probably already seen three times.

Having said that, for those of you who have a better attitude than I do, here’s a blueprint for a successful CMJ:

First, you need to find out about all the parties and RSVP two weeks prior to the conference. Seriously. Not being on “the list” is the first step towards suicidal depression. Next, go to New York City, ideally the week of the conference. If you get there during the day, go record shopping before you’ve spent all your money on beer. There are plenty of free drinks to be had and people that will buy them for you anyway (well, if you’re a girl, or if you convince a band that you can get them on Pitchfork). Strategically plot how you are going to see the 10 bands per night you read about on the blog you pretend to hate. Realize that with Band A on at 10:45 p.m. in the Village and Band B on at 11:15 p.m. in Williamsburg, it’s going to be tight. Miss half the bands you want to see. See a bunch of other bands instead. If you’ve just seen your last band, look at your watch – if it isn’t after 3 a.m., you’re lame. Nobody goes to bed before 5 a.m. Find an after-party – you did RSVP for all of them, right?

If you can manage to wake up in time (and actually care), you can then head to panels to learn all about what bloggers were talking about last year, or what the majority of the industry should be talking about and hopefully will be by next year. If you’re smart, you’ll network like mad at these, as getting networking done at shows can be tough. Most of the panelists probably don’t want to meet you, but some are nice and actually do. I’ve been a panelist and I really enjoyed meeting conference goers, but some of my colleagues were in a mad dash for the exit.

Next, eat a good slab of NYC pizza. Maybe two, it’s going to be a long night. Don’t eat anything with garlic; you’re going to be in very close quarters. Also, stay away from beans.

The cycle begins again. Repeat last night’s shenanigans. Remember, finishing earlier than 3 a.m. = loser.

Once the conference has come to a close, fly (drive, walk, hitchhike) home, think back about your experience, and decide if you’re going again next year. Make sure to blog about all the bands you saw that your friends haven’t, each band on the list gives you +1 indie cred. If you really want to be cool, give away an MP3, but link to their site so maybe someone, somewhere will buy something from them.

And there you have it. You’ve CMJ’d with the best of them. It really is an amazing experience, especially if you are in college radio or under 21 and getting into all the good clubs (see Jason Feinberg 1995-1996). As much as I sound like a douchebag about it all, I really enjoy CMJ week. If nothing else, it’s five days in NYC with thousands of other people that love music as much as you do. That can’t be bad, not by a long shot.