JAIMIE VERNON – HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL INDIE ARTIST

It’s only taken 8 months but I feel comfortable back in the captain’s chair at my record label after having not done it for the past 5 years. Re-issuing old albums will continue to be my bread and butter but I will always keep supporting and promoting independent music. It’s where I started and will always have a special place in my heart. The spirit of original and new music is what drives creativity forward. Nostalgia is full of sign posts but without new music to build and cultivate new paths the road ends and the sign post will read ‘dead end’.

JAIMIE VERNON: UN-MERRILY DOWN THE STREAM

This week came the revelation that digital music streaming services are both ripping off artists AND generating no revenue. Rarely has there been a non-story generating so much sucking and blowing simultaneously.

JAIMIE VERNON – TIDAL WAVE

During the 50 years preceding the collapse of the music industry – i.e. Before Napster – the music we knew and loved was carefully spooned out and fed to us proportionally by record companies who knew how much we’d consume and for how long. This was done via a sifting process controlled by radio.

Frank Gutch Jr: Thank You Music (and other reasons I love the indies); Digital Streaming Heats Up; New Albums of Note; and a Note…

But before I begin passing out (No, wait!  There is more!) awards and kudos to those who made a huge difference in my attitude and my life, let me point you all to a problem we in America (including the hat— that be Canada) should embrace— the media.  Not that the media itself is the problem, but (as pointed out by Roxanne Tellier‘s DBAWIS column of just two days ago) how we have allowed politics to destroy it.

Frank Gutch Jr: Musicians to Corporate: This Is War!; Mad Anthony’s Brand-Spanking New Video; and Notes Even You Can Play

Strap yourselves in, sports fans, because this is going to get ugly.  The past few days have given us a flurry of  comments and actions to chew on in this fast growing chaos which is the new landscape of music.

Frank Gutch Jr: Research Turtles: An Update, The Digital Streaming Wars Heat Up, Plus Notes…..

I thought Research Turtles had a solid chance.  I really did.  They had everything going for them— solid music, a great attitude, a growing following.  Evidently, though, you need more than music and attitude in today’s music world.  You need a honey boo-boo (whatever that is) or need to be a two year old master of the guitar or something.  I told Jud that.  He said it was too late, that he was already past the age of incredulity.  It ain’t easy being an adult.

Frank Gutch Jr: From Africa With Love: Dirtmusic, Tamikrest and Gary Heffern; Pandora vs. Pink Floyd: The Digital Distribution Debate Continues; Music History 101; and Notes…..

I’m going back to school.  I’ve been going to school since I graduated, in fact, because if there is one truth in the world it is that as much as we know, we know too little.  About people.  About science.  About truth.  And about music, among a few thousand other subjects.  We are a defective lot which is to say in vinyl terms that we are warped or scratched or that we skip.  Us humans are, in effect, not the top but the bottom of the food chain as far as I can tell because we are the only species who think we know it all.

Frank Gutch Jr: Vinyl Coming Back? May-beeee, There Is Just Not Enough Time, Karl Fredrick Anderson Chimes In On Spotify Etc., and Notes…..

There are a large number of reasons I love writing for DBAWIS.  For one thing, I get to write amongst some of the best writers out there.  I have had it in my mind to put together a list of must-read columns with thumbnail reviews and easy links so others could read what I have read, though I am sure with different eyes.  You see, I found DBAWIS very early in its existence, when Bob Segarini was writing what was then his column for FYI Music in Canada.  At first, I was just following Segarini, a musician I much admired after having interviewed him for Pop Culture Press for their “Summer of Love” issue.

Frank Gutch Jr: It Has Barely Started and Already 2013 Is a Kickass Year…..

In fact, this may damn well be the year I kick the bucket.  My life has pretty much been music, or music at its core, and it has never been better and I have to say that this next year promises to be the best yet.  Ever have that feeling that you can’t lose?  I not only have that feeling but am overwhelmed by it, politics be damned!  So pardon me while I crawl into my hole and surround myself with a future major labels only dream about.  Pay attention.  There will be a quiz.

Frank Gutch Jr: Loose Ends, Even Looser Ends, Paige Anderson & The Fearless Kin, Green Monkey Christmas, and Those Pesky Notes (to which you should really pay more attention)…..

It’s 3:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep and part of it has to do with Spotify.  Not Spotify specifically, but all of the music subscription services that have come along since digitization:  Mog and Pandora and Rhapsody and Sony and others.  What set me off was a musician who posted on Facebook that maybe you should log on to Spotify and check out a certain artist.  Why would that set me off, you ask?  Because I have just recently turned my back to such “services”.  Because if they are a better way to find music and artists, they are also cutting off the hands that feed them.  The hands of musicians and the hands of songwriters ans indeed the hands of all involved in the musical process, for it is a process.