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Unraveling the Grammy Travesty: Bobby Sanabria Discusses the Latin Jazz Grammy
Source:
The Latin Jazz Corner by Chip Boaz
On April 6, 2011, the National Academy Of Recording Arts And Sciences introduced a “restructuring" of The Grammy Awards, eliminating 31 categories. This unexpected downsizing stole recognition from a number of genres, including Latin Jazz, contemporary jazz, classical music, Hawaiian music, and more. The storm had been brewing for a while, as the popular music industry fumed over Herbie Hancock's 2010 Record Of The Year award and Esperanza Spalding's 2011 Best New Artist award. These honors went to skilled jazz ...
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Jazz Takes a Back Seat at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
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Jazz Online By Joseph Vella
This was originally posted by Brian Ross (Managing Editor of Truth-2-Power.com) on The Huffington Post on 5/8/11. Brian makes some excellent points about the state of the music today. Feel free to discuss below. Yes, I speak jazz heresy: Maybe it is time that the promoters of the annual April/May music festival in New Orleans fess up. Jazz may get top billing on the signage and the posters at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, but it rides the ...
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Is This the Best or the Worst Time for Independent Musicians?
Source:
HypeBot
On Music Think Tank, Rich Gordon poses an interesting question—Is this the best or the worst time for independent musicians? With the ever growing DIY movement, musicians are finding that they can record and release their music without big companies. If enough people like their music, then artists are able to become successful. However, more opportunity leads to increasing competition to be heard. “I can't help but wonder if this is a double-edged sword? As more and more people make ...
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Other Places: A Jazzfest Post-Mortem
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
In January, after looking over the lineup for this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which was laden with rock and pop, I wrote: More than five years after Katrina, with the city recovering but much of it still resembling a post-war nightmare, a party called a jazz festival symbolizes New Orleans' determination to recover. That speaks of a spirit that rises from within New Orleanians and cuts through a malaise of failed leadership, politics and bureaucracy. For eight ...
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How Google and Amazon Hurt Recorded Music by Launching Cloud Lockers
Source:
HypeBot
The launch of Google Music and Amazon's Cloud Music Locker without licenses (and in Google's case without a download store) represents a real setback for the recorded music industry. I'm not one who believes that Google and Amazon should need licenses to create the kind of online hard drives that they did. But the result are cumbersome, only compatible with select operating systems and lacking many of the features that excite music fans while encouraging discovery and purchase. Sadly, many ...
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Music's Secret to Competing with Free: Raise the Price
Source:
Moses Supposes
Tweet Pundits are declaring that, due to so much free music on the web, Amazon's 69-cent- a-tune program is the ultimate sign of retail music's demise. But some basic laws of marketing are being ignored within these conclusions. The solution to competing with free might be counter-intuitive: raise its wholesale price. Insanity? Let’s see. Sometimes it probably seems like I take a contrary position to my fellow music business experts just to stand out. But that’s not true. The truth ...
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Recorded Music as a Commodity and the Power of Artistic Vision
Source:
HypeBot
Let's just admit it: recorded music is a commodity product. The abundance of recorded music now more than satiates the (plentiful) demand, and the market of recorded music is losing differentiation. Sure, different recordings will suit different needs and wants to some extent, but that's no different from other commodities like coffee or petroleum or pharmaceuticals. So what does business in a post-commoditization music industry look like? I see two big, important things that will drive the rest: 1. Music everywhere—use the ...
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NARM's Bill Wilson: Music, Investment, Innovation and the New Music Business
Source:
HypeBot
This guest post comes from NARM's VP of Digital Strategy and Business Development, Bill Wilson on the first day of NARM's Annual Convention in LA. The sound of schadenfreude is deafening. "The music business is dead." “The companies aren't changing." “The licensing and acquisition of music products is a third rail to investors." I understand, I used to be right there. For a few years after I put a proverbial bullet in my indie label and jumped into the startup world, ...
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