Posts Tagged ‘music’
Warming Up Your Digital Mixes
So you’ve just recorded and mixed your latest song digitally in Logic or ProTools, and gotten every little detail just the way you want it. But something, you decide, is “missing” from your mix. And it’s not just that — something actually seems to be wrong with it. Your ears detect it, and complain to…
– Read more
Building Context for Your Creative Work
Why do you make music? Write books? Make films? You might know, you might not. Either way, you do it for a specific reason. Maybe it’s to explore. Maybe it’s to affect other people. Maybe it’s to inject a little fun and excitement into your life. That reason gives your creative work context. So does your…
– Read more
On Vince Gill and Music Downloads
Nashville guitar legend Vince Gill recently spoke out on the impact of music downloads on recording artists. His comments have been flying around the Interwebs, fanning dissension. Here is some of what he had to say: “The devaluation of music and what it’s now deemed to be worth is laughable to me. My single costs 99…
– Read more
Artistic Courage Is Not Optional
Think for a moment about artistic courage. We’re all busy, right? We have a lot to tend to every day — family, friends, home, job, volunteering, watching cat videos on YouTube. We barely have a free minute to pursue long-term goals. The good news is our action-packed calendars ground us in routine. And the bad…
– 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
Jason Warburg: On Believing and Becoming
In his new novel, Believe in Me, Jason Warburg wrestles mightily with a Catch-22: to achieve something, we must believe we can achieve it. Yet if we haven’t achieved it before, how can we reasonably believe? Aside from resorting to self-delusion, we can listen to those who believe in us. According to the book jacket, Believe in…
– Read more
Spotify Royalties Rising?
All right, artists — have you bought your first sandwich yet with your Spotify royalties? We first examined streaming royalties in August, and are taking a fresh look at them now. Until the successful U.S. launch of Spotify last summer (before which the popular streaming service was Europe-only), Wampus recordings had generated an average Spotify…
– 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
Music Streaming Royalties — Crumbs?
Music streaming services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora, and Napster are sharing your music with the masses — and you haven’t had to do a thing to make it happen. And that’s great, right? People are hearing your songs and you’re getting paid every time they do. What’s not to like? Plenty, unfortunately. Unlike music downloading…
– Read more