Don't Search, Listen and Google Music

I live in a small town in Texas, which is about 45 minutes away from Fort Worth. My commute to work is around 20 minutes of solid thinking time by myself in my car. Recently, I purchased a Droid Incredible and I download and test music apps for easy listening. What seems to be the best option is subscription services like Rhapsody so I can stream and download songs to my phone for a small monthly fee. Otherwise, I am at the mercy of Last.FM and Pandora’s picks for my playlist. It can be dangerous to expose my good mood to music I would rather not listen too.

One option I have been waiting for is Google Music. I love using Google for their Gmail, Reader, and Docs. However, after reading updates from the rumor mill, Google Music plans to be Google’s answer to iTunes. According to TechCrunch, Google Music will be a browser-based web store with the option of having a cloud “locker” to access and stream music from any computer and phone for an additional  fee. This means you would have to purchase an album, purchase locker space, and hope that the full song preview does not kill your appetite to fork over your money.

I think that at this point, Google Music is going to take a bit longer to launch than I have hoped for. Right now, I pay eleven dollars a month to stream Rhapsody from my phone and any computer. Over the last few months, Rhapsody rolled out a download feature for subscribers to their iPhones and Droids for no extra fee. I think that Google has a good plan to combat iTunes but not such a good plan to compete with the subscription and free music providers. Here’s to hoping Google Music will rethink their strategy.

Keeping Concerts Alive

The whole process of going to a concert has always fascinated me. I go to so many that I have to budget and plan just to see a few major headliners each year. This last year I went to see Green Day for the 6th time. Tickets for the seats were around $60 for the closest seating area and around $30 for the lawn at the Superpages Center in Dallas. Upgrades to "VIP" seating was an extra $25 for seats directly in the middle of the seating area, food and beverage service, and reclining padded seats. For a fan like me, the extra $30 to $55 dollars seems like a great deal. For someone who might be seeing their first concert, it can seem like a money pit.

Ticket sales have declined with the economy, but the prices continue to climb. There's always something more you can purchase with your ticket. The Dallas House Of Blues offers VIP wristbands that can give you perks like food, drinks, and meet-and-greets. You don't even have to be someone special or smooth to get back stage, you can just pay more money to get access. While the perks seem like endless possibilities for profit, the venues are also out to get your money. While food and beverages are always high, you can also pay to cut in line and get in the venue before everyone else.

For fans like you and me, there's not much we can do to counteract this kind of gouging, except maybe sneaking in our own snacks and beverages or skipping the concert all together. Bands that are just starting out have a harder time touring independently now more than ever. This is a problem that the music industry seems to ignore and creates panic in artists to pick up the slacking ticket sales.

Indie Managers Association

The Indie Managers Association was created in 2002 in Washington D.C. to promote independent managers. The website links to an artist management resource site which further links to a pretty heft resource links page that has a treasure trove of information for aspiring managers. Though the point of the blog was to find peers, I have sifted through many search engines to find my niche only to find that the group website is out of date and so is the information. I am inspired by IMA to create my own association here in south Fort Worth, Texas region and promote independent managers here. There is plenty of young and aspiring talent that needs management in this area and it would be beneficial to network with the metroplex.

What I would do differently from IMA is to keep a simple website and keep it updated on a semi-regular basis, or pay someone to do that for me. The copyright says 2010 but it looks dated and unkempt. I would tie in social media. I would not necessarily keep a fan page or twitter account but I would add in the feature to share on networking sites with one click.

"Faking it until you make it" is a cliche way of saying to put some effort into it. With a network of new, seasoned, or aspiring independent managers we can have a strength in numbers to push forward our artists in the area. We can create effective line ups, gigs with bands that showcase similar music, tour in areas that we are unfamiliar with more easily and we can share our own experiences. We can help others avoid areas where we have failed.

National indie management associations are difficult to find for music groups. I think if we can set up a community of managers that are starting out, we can create an open, creative, and social system to manage music to replace the current system and move the music industry in a more productive direction.

What Happens At Work...

In today’s blog I will cover material from a new source that has been brought to my attention in class. TED.com is a site dedicated to community and communication through sharing knowledge on a user-created content site. TED.com offers discussion and enlightenment on many topics.

I have watched a segment from Jason Fried on why work doesn’t happen at work. I think this is an important topic as my generation moves from being in a classroom to being in an office environment. Jason narrates a situation on a typical office situation where companies build offices with all the necessary items and expect people to work in these spaces. He proposes that typical workers want a different, environment like a basement, coffee shop, or library and even at different times to get work done.

Another important point Jason makes is that the distractions we face that takes away from work are voluntary distractions. Offices ban Facebook and Twitter to keep workers off, but Jason points out that these are modern day smoke breaks. Tiny breaks to take a breather. The real problems Jason points out are meetings and mangers. “You don’t find managers and meetings at the places you prefer to do your work because they interrupt your time while you are trying to work,” Jason points out. Meetings aren’t work, they are time taken out of your day to plan work you could be doing.

What can managers do instead to turn around the anti-office mentality? Jason suggests things like No-Talk Thursday, a day where once a month no one talks to each other. Quite time at the office is valuable. He also suggests replacing meetings with email and instant messaging. They might be distracting but you can be interrupted on your own schedule.

I completely agree, I have spent over two years of work in an office environment and honestly, did not get meaningful work done. It even stretches into my homework. My creative thoughts happen when I am thinking about something else. It’s not quite a House moment where I stare at a cup of coffee and think “it’s not Lupus,” but I’ll look at that cup of coffee and think about the fluid interaction if I were to knock it off the table and how I can make that feel translate into a website. Abstract, but it always works for me. I also think that I had more work done when I was not involved with interruptions, meetings, and being micromanaged. As an intern it was easy to worm my way out but I fear that this is not a choice when working for other companies. The office is not an enemy but sometimes it can feel like a battlefield when trying to compete with a deadline. 

Who Do You Think You Are?

As you can see from my previous blogs, I have attended a few workshops lately with the Recording Academy. One of the most important things to consider when starting a band, a management company, or even having a show is what is your brand. Everything you sell has to provide some sort of insight to who you are and the image your fans will achieve if they buy into your products.

For me, my personal brand is NerdyRockChick. Most of my social media contacts are listed under the persona with the exception of LinkedIn for professional purposes. I based the name on a questionnaire that told me to describe myself in three words.  I love sci-fi, punk rock and I am a girl.  NerdyRockChick.

Once you figure all of that out and you establish your brand, you now have to protect it with everything you have. No matter how small your operation might be, there are can always be a negative side to your image.

One of the blogs I follow is Internet Paraganar. There are quite a few topics covered on the website but their internet/computer blogs have many useful blogs on marketing. A blog that recently caught my eye covers protecting your brand name and reputation online. There are many people who can attack your brand. “People who want to destroy your reputation could be your business competitors, former employees ore even customers dissatisfied with your service delivery or your product”.

Translation for artists, anyone who has a similar style, former band mates, and fans that stood out in the rain for two hours while you were a no show.  So what can you do to diminish the damage? Social media is by far the best bridge to use to reach out to those who have nothing good to say. A tactic seen by bands on twitter such as @bfsrocks (Bowling for Soup) is reaching out and sending a personal mention or a general tweet toward fans apologizing for errors in information.  

I'm In The Band

I recently went to a Rock Band Network workshop in Austin that was put together by Pyramind and sponsored by T-mobile. As a gamer, it was a really neat experience to meet some of the creative talent that has put together one of my favorite video games. As a musician, it was really cool to find another socially interactive product for content and connecting to fans through a popular medium. What really appealed to me was going through motions to actually set up a song through the process and learning about the Rock Band Network. 


It can take a whole company to take a song and develop it for game play. You have to start with the music and record the stems, which are separate audio tracks. Then you have to translate the stems into measures and beats and then to notes corresponding to the controller. A really cool feature I did not know about was you could set instances in the track to follow the digital character so the animation that goes on while you are playing look authentic. It’s designed to be so authentic you can tell if a bassist is playing slap or pick style and what words the vocalist is in the animation is singing.

This is a long and tedious project that can take several days to work through and often there are companies that divide the work.

Once everything is complete, the song then goes to the Rock Band Network, which is a community of artists, programmers, and gamers that give feedback and can affect whether or not a song is allowed to be on Rock Band. The community watches for authenticity, profanity, and quality work. It is essential that if you are going to publish your work on the network that you get a sense of common mistakes so that you can publish as quickly as possible.

The best part of the whole night was getting to play Rock Band with executive producer Jeff Marshall and Gregory J Morgan of Pyramind. 

Live Sound, Live Music

With current lawsuits against music pirating, it is clear that a new strategy must emerge for profit to be made. Sky News Online quoted Chris Wright of Chysalis saying, "You can't download the experience of being at a live gig." I believe the most beneficial plan is  having a well-rehersed act, a stocked merchandise table and website, and respect for the fans will lead to profitable popularity.

If I had the choice to live anywhere and do anything the rest of my life it would be to be on tour with a band. One of my basic criteria for whether or not I like a musical act is how they sound live. There is something about the in-person experience versus a recording in the car or in a room that defines a moment in time differently.

Every seminar I have attended the last year, artists and promoters are depending on concerts to turn a profit as well as pushing merchandise. Because recordings are no longer a profit-maker for the label or the artist, the quality of work can only get better from here on.