Independent artists have never had access to so many customers. A single distributor can get an artist’s music into digital services around the world. U.S. artists were getting Spotify royalties before the service was available stateside. Now they’re getting royalties from Deezer, Bloom.fm and other services not yet available in the States. Since distributors have added their catalogs to YouTube, independent artists can reach listeners through the world’s most popular […]

Many of the writers whose songs I listen to at my workshops work long and hard on their lyrics, striving to find unique, fresh ways to tell their stories and express their concepts. But they sometimes forget that we’re not writing poems, but songs—and if we hope to create songs that resonate with listeners, our lyrics need to be delivered on the wings of outstanding, memorable melodies. It’s often easier […]

Fresh off his hosting gig and performance at the 2013 AMAs, Pit premiered the video for our single Timber Sunday night. It’s great to finally see the visuals for this as the record has really taken on a life of it’s own. The single is already Gold and we’re currently #10 on the Billboard charts, while only being out for 6 weeks. Platinum and #1 are definitely next!! Check out […]

Apple’s place atop the music retail food chain gives it an incredible amount of influence. So it’s no surprise that iTunes has 13 entries in this year’s Maximum Exposure survey. The store had a 41% share of the U.S. record business in 2012, according to Billboard’s calculations, and it has a 63% share of digital sales, according to NPD Group. The relatively limited number of ways to reach fans through […]

Music PR mistakes you can avoid next time you approach the media [This article was written by guest contributor Dmitri Vietze, CEO/founder of StoryAmp.com, and publicist of 16 years.] You spent a big investment of dollars and time, took all of your learnings from rehearsals and performing on stage, absorbed everything you could from your mentors and inspirations and produced the best recording of your career. Maybe you even borrowed money from […]

20% of industry-wide music sales take place in the last six weeks of the year. 30% of music sales on CD Baby happen during that same period. And yet most independent musicians let the holiday season slip by without doing a few simple things that could make a big difference in their own music sales. I get it; there’s a lot going on — and really, all you want to do is […]

The first requirement for being successful in anything is to define what success means to you. That is one of the biggest challenges musicians face today. There is no standard to follow. It’s not like going to college, where there is an established set of measurable parameters. You attend classes, you pass exams, you write papers, and after completing all of the requisite steps you succeed in earning your degree. That’s an ideal scenario where […]

The funniest thing about this biz is you’ll be involved in a record and never know when things are happening with it. Case in point, I was randomly tagged in a tweet by OnSmash and that’s the only reason I’m aware of this new video for Let Her Drink From the Bottle (produced by my clients Tha Deviants). Definitely one of my favorites off Jim’s Vampire Life 3 tape. These visuals […]

The momentum continues to build as Flo Rida premiered the Vegas-endorsed video for his new single How I Feel (produced by our client Sermstyle) last week. Everything has been natural up to this point so we’re definitely looking forward to Atlantic pressing the GO button on this record. Check out the video and feel free to leave your comments below.

The album is dying in front of our very eyes. In other words, what kind of screwed up world do we live in where Katy Perry’s new album “Prism” sells only 287,000 copies in its debut? One in which everybody’s interested in the single, and no one’s got time to sit and hear your hour-plus statement. This is not emotion, this is statistics. The shelf life of news is shorter than […]