Sound Recording - the WellMixed.com Blog

Michael Arrington reports in Tech Crunch today that MySpace is now focusing on what they are calling “Discovery.” This comes in the wake of CEO Owen Van Natta being canned two weeks ago.

Read Arrington’s report by clicking here.

What does this mean for musicians? It can only be good, as the website that all musicians are still obligated to join has hemorrhaged users, dropping from the 6th most popular site one year ago to 17th place today. Sound Recording has discussed in the past about how MySpace is failing, and how the music aspects of it have been lost.

This news presents us with a ray of hope that MySpace will again be a place for musicians to “be discovered.” Imagine if all internet users felt the need to visit MySpace every day to stay informed of what they should be discovering. What do you think will happen? Leave a comment…

Musicians are poor. When I ask potential WellMixed clients why they don’t get their stuff mixed and mastered, the number one reason is money. It takes most artists years to realize that people in their communities (churches, frats, bowling leagues, etc) want to support them.

Many of those folks are willing to donate or invest money in recording projects.

Check out Sellaband.com

It is a site that allows fans to help fund their favorite musical artists.

Dutch singer Hind raised $60,000 in 11 days last month via Sellaband. Once the album is released, fans will receive a variety of goodies/incentives .

It never hurts to ask for cash if you believe in your product!

Personal hero Derek Sivers, has this little gem recently posted to his website:

http://sivers.org/livecd

In it he retells a story from band manager, Terry McBride. The un-named band in question was selling about $300 per night in CD’s at $15 per. Then they tried an experiment:

They asked the audience to pay what they want, while making clear that they were very proud of the CD and felt like everyone should listen to it.

According to McBride, the nightly sales shot up 400%.

Sivers is asking people to comment on their experience with this technique, so check it out.

CD Baby founder Derek Sivers’ e-Book on Music Marketing (available HERE) has long been a favorite of entrepreneuring musicians.

I just came across this free e-book/blog by a gent in England named Andrew Dubber that focuses on promoting one’s music in the Web 2.0 era.

The blog version is more informative (or more distracting), as there are plenty of nice hyperlinked references.

Written about 2 years ago, it contains twenty still-fairly-relevant tips that aim to “help independent musicians and music businesses cope and thrive in a changing media environment.” It creates an excellent companion to the Sivers book.

Dubber lectures at the Birmingham School of Media at Birmingham City University so he knows a little bit about the subject. But as always, I advocate thinking for oneself and disagreeing where appropriate.

Mr. Reznor began in the business more than 20 years ago with his band, Nine Inch Nails. In this excerpt from Digg.com, he gives advice to musical artists planning on distributing themselves via the internet.

Reznor gives his music away for free nowadays. You can download Nine Inch Nails’ most recent album, The Slip, at NIN.com for free.

You can check out TopSpin here: www.topspinmedia.com

The full interview with Reznor can be found at Digg Dialogg