Posts Tagged ‘indie artists’
The Artist Compensation Storm
As sure as dark clouds gather in hurricane season, a storm is brewing around artist compensation. Art and technology are at odds. However, it wasn’t always that way. From the advent of cassette multitracks in the ’80s, to the arrival of digital multitracks in the ’90s, to the maturation of digital audio workstations in the ’00s,…
– Read more
Pandora: A Change in Priorities
So you’re an independent recording artist, casting about everywhere you can for airplay and exposure. Pandora, the internet-radio service with the taste-smart music library, has just accepted one of your original recordings for rotation. Great, right? Pandora provides access to your music on one of the most talked-about music platforms out there. It’s a step…
– Read more
Kickstarter vs. NEA: Paths to Indie Funding
Have an album you’re ready to record and release? A film you want to produce and screen at festivals? How are you going to pay for it? Talking Points Memo (TPM) reported this week that Kickstarter, the popular crowdsourcing platform, will likely distribute more funds to creators this year than the National Endowment for the Arts…
– Read more
Hear-Like-Buy: Why Spotify Is Marketing, Not Commerce
You can’t read an article in the music press without tripping over somebody complaining about Spotify royalties. You’ve heard the chorus: Spotify is destroying what’s left of the CD market. It is cannibalizing iTunes. It is ripping off indie artists. And so on. So, you think. Spotify must be pretty bad. But is it? If…
– Read more
SOPA: Your Role as Artist and Advocate
Some people think the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is about censoring content creators. Others think it is about guarding intellectual property. Either way, the proposed legislation is about the control of creative works. It promises to have a measurable impact on everyone who disseminates and accesses content via the internet. In a (generalized) nutshell, the…
– Read more
Spotify: 3 Tips for Artists
Depending on whom you ask, the music-streaming service Spotify is either the savviest music-sharing platform ever or the canniest artist-fleecing apparatus ever. Either way, it just might be the future of music distribution. As an indie artist in a Spotify world, you have a choice. You can either mistrust Spotify or you can make it work…
– Read more