Music Business Blog by Jason Feinberg

A great article by Mark Glaser on the PBS Mediashift blog, interviewing Nettwerk CEO and all-around smart guy Terry McBride. As I am a big believer in the artist-run business model, this is a very interesting perspective on how artists should be running their enterprises given the opportunities and constraints in place with current technology, record label practices, etc.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/12/nettwerk-ceo-terry-mcbride-puts-fans-in-charge-of-bands346.html

Excerpt:
Search engine optimization, the ability to write basic code, understanding how social networks and blogs work together, how to connect that interaction back to the sale of music or monetization of behavior or crowdsourcing music. It’s understanding all of those things, and having a very imaginative marketing plan around the artist vs. around a product. It’s really brand marketing. What are the artists’ causes? Are there cause alignments? Are there other brands we can hook up with to align our causes? And if the other brand is bigger, can we give them free music and get exposure to their audience because it’s like-minded tribes?

..that one of my favorite bands is doing a West Coast tour in 2009..


RISE DEVILS RISE!

THE MURDER CITY DEVILS ANNOUNCE WEST COAST TOUR,
NEW WEBSITE AND LIMITED EDITION COLORED VINYL

FEBRUARY 2009 TOUR DATES
11th – Seattle, WA – Showbox
12th – Seattle, WA – Showbox
13th – Vancouver, BC – Commodore
14th – Portland, OR – Roseland
15th – San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall (Early show)
15th – San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall (Late show)
16th – Pomona, CA – Glasshouse
17th – Los Angeles, CA – Henry Fonda
18th – Los Angeles, CA – Henry Fonda


Los Angeles, CA – A preacher’s mouth and a rock ‘n’ roll heart – sometimes that’s all it takes to make you move. The Murder City Devils never fail to stir these emotions in their audience; for the fans that need to feel it again, and for the fans that never have, the Devils are hitting the road for a week in February to deliver their powerful brand of sonic assault.

Starting February 11, 2009, the Devils embark on a seven-date West Coast tour with stops in Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, Pomona, and Los Angeles. Tickets go on sale December 12, 2008. More information can be found at the all-new website http://www.themurdercitydevils.com.

Sub Pop Records, celebrating 20 years of business this year, will re-issue limited editions of all three MCD full-lengths (The Murder City Devils, Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts, and In Name and Blood) as well as the Thelema EP on high quality color vinyl February 17, 2009.

What makes the Devils rise above is that they understand rock ‘n’ roll is about much more than a simple formula – it’s a lifestyle you naturally know or don’t. The music, the lyrics, the look, and the vibe all have to be in sync. You either have it or you don’t, and the Devils have a combination so few other bands in the genre possess – a gripping sound, a distinct message, a touch of the mysterious, and the know-how to give the fans exactly what they want.

After three full-length records and five years of relentless touring, the Murder City Devils called it quits on Halloween, 2001 at Seattle’s Showbox. Yet the same force that powered their manic tour schedule never quite subsided, and the band celebrated its ten-year anniversary by playing at the 2006 Capitol Hill Block Party and in 2007 at the Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX.

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/12/how-to-use-twit.html

Guy Kawasaki is one of those guys who just gets the Internet. He makes tons of money and has many great ideas. Here’s a post of his on how to rock Twitter like a superstar. Even if you or your band does a handful of these things you’ll see some tangible improvement. Sample:

#6 – Make it easy to tweet on your behalf. Twitterfeed is a service where any RSS feed can automatically appear as your own tweets. Bloggers do this, for example, so that their blog posts automatically appear as their tweets.
…
Then my new book, Reality Check, came out, and I made an offer of a free copy of it to anyone who signed up for the Alltop Twitterfeed. Another 280 people signed up—bringing the total to approximately 450 people.

We counted, and these 450 people had a total of 140,000 followers. This meant that whenever we announced a new topic, the 140,000 followers of 450 people received notification. These 450 people had followers in common, so their tweets didn’t reach 140,000 different people (see next section), but this was the Mother of Retweeting.

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/12/how-to-use-twit.html

I am a pretty big follower of the Long Tail concept, especially since my company does online marketing and uses the niche + catalog concepts to their fullest. Here’s an interesting article that takes it even further – looking at the long tail when it comes to Jam music, a niche that has many unique characteristics.

The Long Tail of Jam Music

Excerpt:

The ever-changing set lists, which are an important characteristic of jam band music, create a huge number of diverse and unique shows which in turn offer different levels of appeal with the listeners. Most jam bands do not perform a perfectly concerted and standardized performance such as one would expect from a Madonna attraction, but rather a mutation derived from the set list, the inspiration of the musicians and the interactions between the musicians and their audience.