Friends, if someone has access to the indie top 200 reports, can someone please email it to me? The couple of people who usually send it to me are not in town this week. Thanks.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 2 Comments
Hey everyone, I’m working on a few music and web based ideas and need the help of some highly skilled web security, database (SQL), PHP or .NET, and ruby/ ajax developers. There isn’t much money in it, but there is a fair amount of equity available for the right people. The purpose of this will be to finish and present proof-of-concept level sites to various sources of funding. Seasoned corporate developers looking for something fun and innovative are encouraged. If you’re so inclined, contact me with a resume and we can talk.
Written by Bill Wilson | 1 Comment
Rolling Stone’s latest issue has Guns N Roses on the cover from 1987 and mentions the fact that “Appetite for Destruction” came out 20 years ago. That makes me feel really old as my 8th grade yearbook photo is of me wearing a Guns N Roses “Appetite” t-shirt. Holy shit!
Just curious where all of you were when this album came out? Could you imagine what would have happened if Axl didn’t become so fucking crazy? And when is Chines Democracy coming out?
Dust off your cassette tape and put Appetite in your stereo now!
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 16 Comments
So yeah. It’s official. All the legal bullshit and alienating of customers has done absolutely nothing to offset file sharing. In fact it’s more prevalent than ever. I will say it again to the labels out there in case nobody heard me the first seven thousand times I said this:
a. CD’s are a license to pirate. Stop making them, except for top 40 soccer-mom and senior-citizen stuff that sells at big box stores. Just because they’re 80% of sales doesn’t mean they’re 80% of the music transactions that go on.
(more…)
Written by Bill Wilson | 16 Comments
Because my last post on this topic wasn’t fun enough, I’ve decided to follow up on an interesting development. My colleagues over at A2IM are now getting into the game. Today, President Rich Bengloff made the following statement:
“Every Independent music label has or should have its own business plan, but as our industry continues to shrink in terms of sales, from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $11.5 billion in 2006, and the trend down has continued in 2007, artists and labels need other income sources. (more…)
Written by Bill Wilson | 1 Comment
It pains me to write this, as I’m a huge fan of Last.fm and what they’ve done (or could do) for indie labels, bands and music fans. However, it seems that their new media conglomerate sugar daddies are having an influence on their policies already. I was on their site today, doing some cleanup of my catalog that I offer for streaming and looking for some plugins to put on the upcoming revision of my label site. What I discovered should make anyone who is trying to build a career in indie music very concerned about their future.
This is why they didn’t participate in the whole web radio day of silence… because they changed their Terms Of Service to say that unaffiliated artists and labels waive their rights to be paid. Behold the juicy parts of the agreement for entities that control their own publishing:
Written by Bill Wilson | 17 Comments
I’ve stayed out of the whole argument over webcasters paying royalties issue because I believe the little blogger should be able to put up some streaming music that they like without having to jump through a million bureaucratic hoops or pay a fortune to do so. Although I feel somewhat betrayed by Last.fm’s sale to CBS, I still remain a fan of their model and recently re-upped with them as a paid listener.
While this argument has been raging between SoundExchange (the online and satellite royalty collection agency) and DiMA (Digital Media Association,) organizations like the A2IM (where I’m a member) are trying to sort out a fair solution to the matter.
Written by Bill Wilson | 2 Comments
Just tried to save a few bucks and order a 1TB hard drive from Dell to link up to my nifty 80211n Apple Hub. After completing my order and having the payment charged, I found out that the drive wouldn’t ship for another 3 weeks. So… I canceled it. Best part is they still haven’t refunded my money and it’s been a few days. I’ve been directed to about 5 different 800 numbers and have talked to about 3 off-shore customer service reps who all pointed me in the direction of more 800 numbers. This is simply the absolute worst customer service on the planet.
Never ever again.
Written by Bill Wilson | 5 Comments
A week or so ago at FoundRead, there was a great article about the singular goal for a startup company. According to Timothy Ferriss, the goal of any company should be “profit in the least time with the least effort. Not more customers, not more revenue, not more offices or more employees: more profit.” In the label terms, it shouldn’t mean more fans, a larger roster, a video on MTV or a major deal. All of that is bullshit and more or less only about the label or band ego.
I’ve taken his initial points and put my spin on the first 5 of his 11 points for the indie music biz.
Written by Bill Wilson | 7 Comments
I had to borrow the title from the recent compilation that Go Kart released, but I could not think of a better title for this post. I was inspired by Jordan Baker’s Pastepunk post, Somebody Get Jason Tate A Copy of SCREECHING WEASEL’s My Brain Hurts in response to Jason’s review of the new Yellowcard album.
I was further inspired by posts on Punknews regarding new songs by Sloppy Seconds and Ben Weasel. Make sure you check out the Sloppy Seconds’ song, “Lesbians” which is about as amazing as a Sloppy Seconds song gets.
I started Suburban Home after being blown away by the Pop-punk/Punk Rock explosion of the early 90’s. As with all popular sounds in music, the genre was nearly destroyed by a gluttony of pop-punk bands emulating the Green Day’s and Screeching Weasel’s of the world.
I think that now though in 2007 when a band starts a three chord pop-punk band, you have to give them credit. There is nothing popular about this kind of music and more times than not, bands are playing this kind of music again out of a love for the genre. There is almost a pop-punk guilt with music critics and that is too bad. If the music is good, it should not matter what style of music they play, unless they play Screamo.
I don’t know what it is, but I have been dusting off all of my old punk records and recently even put together a mix for the Suburban Home listening station showcasing many of my favorite Punk tracks next to my favorite Country tracks. It helps that I saw Propagandhi last week which just blew my mind.
It should be required listening that all music critics and fans for that matter listen to Screeching Weasel “My Brain Hurts” and “Anthem for a New Tomorrow”; The Queers “Love Songs for the Retarded”, Sloppy Seconds “Destroyed”, Riverdales “Storm the Streets”, Lillingtons “Death By Television”, and Teenage Bottlerocket “Total”.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 6 Comments
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