Recent Playlist
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1. Jay Z "American Gangster"
2. The Raconteurs "Consolers of the Lonely"
3. Killing Joke "Pandemonium"
4. Chotto Ghetto "Shootin' Devils" EP
5. Ice Cube "In the Movies"
6. Portishead "Third"
7. Billy Bragg "Mr. Love & Justice"
8. The Replacements "Last Live Show"
9. The Afghan Whigs "Black Love"
10. Gnarls Barkley "The Odd Couple"
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Musician's Resources
(Useful Links)
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 Yup. It's been a while. Good to be back.
Our latest and greatest: Myspace recently culled facts and figures from it's network and came up with a list of what they think will be hot in 2008... one of our recent clients, Partyshank was number one. You can read more about it here.
We just mastered our first iTunes Exclusives for Morcheeba and Warner Recording artist Motel.
SBD client Johnnie Burton signed a deal with the Japanese label Zenext Records. We wish her all the best.
I received a ton of positive feedback re: last issue's article about the Hitt Music Group. The article now ranks number 5 in google when you search for them...
Music News: The US Justice Dept. has approved the merger of Sirius and XM Satellite Radio... The FCC has yet to vote but it's pretty much a done deal. That's great news for people who think satellite radio should be more like terrestrial radio, you know, the same 5 songs, continuously shuffled and beamed to every community in the world. Ah, the power of choice.
iTunes has surpassed Walmart as the number one music retailer in the country. CD coaster anyone?
Good Links (thanks Justin): Here's an interesting post re: a highly un-scientific comparison between Monster Speaker Cable and generic coat hanger wire. Although I find the circumstances of the test to be dubious... I tend to agree with the overall synopsis. There's a point at which the materials and construction of a product offer a degree of difference that is highly subjective, if even measurable. And that's putting it nicely for all of you self-professed "audiophiles". Re: cables specifically: the most important part is the gage and connector/soldering job.
In a similar vein but more quantifiable, check out this link and see how well you fair determining which MP3 bit rate sounds better. If you can't tell, you probably don't need to worry about Monster Cable either.
R.I.P. Buddy Miles, drummer for Jimi Hendrix's the Band of Gypsies. Sean Finnegan, the drummer for seminal DC hardcore band Void.
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Making Money in the New Music Business
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 In case you hadn't heard...
Radiohead made 3 million dollars in the first month of their "payment
optional" online release of "In Rainbows." That's more than the
combined profits of all of their other albums available for download. Apparently only 40% of the "In Rainbows" downloaders paid an average of $6 each.
I guess the other 60% opted to pay nada. Nine Inch Nails sold out 2500 limited edition copies of "Ghosts" at a
price of $300 each within two days of it's release. That's $750,000 (I
know, I have a calculator). That number does not include the
non-limited sales of a $75 "deluxe edition", $10 CD, $5 download, and
miscellaneous merch. Do you know how many CDs a major label act needs
to sell to see that kind of money? Yup. A lot more than 2500.
So if you're saying to yourself, "that's all fine and good for bands that already have fans and established careers... but what about all the artists that don't and still have to work day jobs to support themselves? Every illegal download counts." True, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. This new business model is not destroying your livelihood... just the mythology. Bands with no hits and major label deals never really made money off of record sales... so the idea that there were "glory days" before downloading is false. The new business model is about niche markets, universal distribution and near-zero packaging costs. It's also buoyed by cheaper recording/mixing/mastering costs. Now you have access to the same resources as Radiohead and NIN... it's just up to you how you garner the necessary exposure and sell your songs. The more peeps know and talk about you... the better your chances, illegal downloads be damned.
Yes, there will always be people who illegally trade copyrighted songs... but your potential to make money is better than ever. It's just a question of scale. Also remember that there were plenty of DIY success stories before the internet and home recording boom. A few that come to mind; Jay Z selling CDs out of the trunk of his car. Minor Threat sitting around gluing their own 7" record sleeves. The list goes on and on. Major labels still think selling anything less than 50,000 CDs is a failure. And for them, with all the waste and useless middlemen in between you and your fans, it is. But that attitude also cuts both ways... they are not only wasting your time but standing in the way of your success.
DIY baby.
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How often do you implement ISRCs and is it worth it?
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 ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is a free, unique, digital "fingerprint" for each track supplied by either the RIAA or IFPI (for international) for the purpose of collecting royalties. It's mostly aimed at radio DJs. This information is encoded along with the artist's name, album title and song titles within the metadata of the song-file during the mastering stage.
Theoretically, no matter where or how the digital file is reproduced, this metadata remains tied to the track. Unfortunately, I've recently discoverd that this is not true. If you copy a CD onto to your desktop and then load those files into Toast or Jam... the ISRCs do not copy over to the new disc. Same thing goes with ripping CDs as AIFF or WAVS into iTunes and then burning a new disc (which also happens to be the "work-around" for removing DRM from MP3s/MP4s). Furthermore, ISRCs are not officially supported by MP3 codecs so companies like iTunes and Tunecore probably insert them into the MP3 "comments" section.
All of these things should be considered when deciding whether it's really worth it or not, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have them. And for the record, most major labels and a fair amount of indies are using them.
By the way, you can check ISRCs by using software like JAM. Load a disc into your computer, launch JAM, go to RECORDER, Disc Info, and whah lah... I'm sure there's other ways to do this but this is the only one I know... Hope this helps.
Have a good memorial day weekend. Until next time...
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