- "Demo" is not so much a reference to recording quality/sound but a tag to indicate that the creative process for the song is ongoing. As Spanky mentions above, it is a way to give listeners a peek into the process. Sharing early and unfinished versions of songs is a wonderful way for artists to interact with their fan base. - Avoiding MySpace is not good advice. Any site that appears on the first page of search results for your name (just ask Rick Santorum) demands your close attention. MySpace is still an SEO powerhouse. - Email consistently, and not once in a long while, but do not waste people's time. The trick here is to come up with something important to say and share beyond the obvious.

"No Stanger to Cotroversy?"

Lowery.

doesn't look like anybody at hypebot is going to fix the broken link so doing so here: http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/call-to-indie-artists-stop-giving-your-music-away-free.html

thanks for writing hypebot's story for hypebot, topspin guys.

Don't like doing this, but it's getting a little out of hand. Bruce, do you guys not have a spellchecker?

Excellent post, Brian. Tunecore appears to be doubling down on the moral judgment argument: http://blog.tunecore.com/2011/05/a-love-letter-from-the-back-end-model.html

Why would Price want to weed out acts? His business model is based on a shotgun approach. The quality of the content and actual sales of their artists are of no concern to Tunecore (the latter of which helps to explain why they add new stores so infrequently and service so few of them - and now that they aren't charging per store, they have about zero incentive to expand to additional retailers and markets). That said, Tunecore is the best deal out there for the vast majority of artists. Also, somewhat related to all this - why does Itunes insist on wiping all reviews of albums that switch digital distributors? Seems like bad business for Itunes and great for distributors in the sense that they can use it to keep bands locked in.

hey, thanks, myspace, but i'll stick with root music app + soundcloud.

So "good business" is not registering with rights organizations? Don't you want to be able to *measure* your exposure, as opposed to it being some nebulous thing? And if you're concerned about ownership of your music, entities like SoundExchange and ASCAP/BMI serve to affirm that ownership through documentation (SE logs the Sound Recording Copyright Owner and performers, ASCAP/BMI the writers and publishers). They are necessary because the alternative is that artists would have to enter into direct contracts with every single music service on earth. Aggregating all of those transactions under one roof is just common sense, as is taking advantage of the services that these companies offer.

Not sure what "make it" means anymore, but point taken. Given the pittance that these services pay for music, it seems a stretch to call it double dipping. Organizations like SoundExchange, and for that matter, ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, are necessary go-betweens, so it makes sense to work with and support them. Now in the case of SoundExchange, it's obvious that they have a *long* way to go when it comes to transparency and modernizing their downright archaic system.

So Phil, are you suggesting that each artist enter into an individual contractual agreement with 1,400 music services and collect those royalties directly?

Linky no worky.

Cheers, Kyle. Congratulations and well-deserved. Billboard needs guys like you.

Gosh, I really do hate to do this. But does Hypebot not have access to a spell-checker? As good as this site is, and as much as I depend on it for a resource, it's just hard to take HB seriously when the spelling is (1) so consistently wrong and (2) is so easy to fix before going live with a post.

What's more of a perception problem, Rihanna playing small rooms or canceling arena dates? The lower capacity venues will probably be packed. And you could probably charge more per ticket and make up some of the gap. I can't get my head around why handlers do this to their artists. Why put them in a position like this? Perhaps the best way to go is to postpone touring until the demand is in line with the superstar image that you wish to project. But I'd rather see the artist playing a smaller but vibe-y theatre or venue, with people spilling out the doors and tickets selling out in minutes or hours, belting out a great performance that people will pay a premium for (and tell their friends about) instead of gambling on filling up some sterile, corporate arena with 34 backup singers and dancers in tow.

Ping is indeed a failure. Apple may find a way to resuscitate it, but they had better hurry. Ping simply doesn't play well with other social networks, and most people I know don't want the obligation of maintaining yet another profile. And as Kyle noted, Ping is an ecommerce platform that seems uninterested in facilitating meaningful interaction and is mainly about funneling traffic to buy links.

the death of MySpace was actually about two years ago. it was just baffling to many of us why the turnaround plan didn't start a year earlier than that. ultimately, the site seemed to have no vision and little interest in improving the user experience - only an interest in spamming the hell out of anything that moved and padding its clickthrough numbers with a deliberately inscrutable interface.

A print ad in the New York Times? Even before one word of content, his cluelessness is already apparent.

while this sounds great on the surface, many pirates, perhaps even the majority of them, are motivated by an animus toward the industry of music and the very idea of art being monetized. to many of them, their biases and anti-corporate principles would likely get in the way. also, anytime you inject financial gain into the picture, credibility is compromised. if the music community knows or suspects that a pirate or blogger is being compensated for what they choose to feature, objectivity is damaged. they've sold out to the very system that they were ostensibly fighting.

Well done. Thank you for consolidating this information, Kyle. Spotify is indeed exciting, but it's still not clear how artists, or even Spotify itself, will make a living from this model if it actually does dramatically shift consumption habits.

thank you for linking this, Kyle. this is one of the best debates i've read in quite a while.

Huppe is spot on about streaming rates and gives an excellent real-world example. As long as piracy and streaming pay about the same, we're going to get exactly nowhere. Now if I could ask a question - when will the SoundExchange PLAYS database be up?

i think you want "fringes" (but i love "fridges"). don't mean to be grammar police, sorry. guy in the video has hands like me. poor guy. the idea of making music more family tree-oriented is kind of cool.

yeah, i think it's absolutely fair to say that this article is well below Hypebot standards. i see pieces like this constantly, but until today, Hypebot has been a respite from this kind of thing.