Music Industry News

NARAS Messed with the Wrong Latin Jazz Artists...

Source: Digital Music News
August 3, 2011

What started as a plan to simplify the Grammys is now getting really, really complicated. On Tuesday, a group of Latin Jazz artists decided to sue NARAS in New York Supreme Court, a move that follows months of frustration. The suit, filed by artists Bobby Sanabria, Ben Lapidus, Mark Levine and Eugene Marlow, alleges that the Recording Academy violated contractual agreements and caused “irreparable harm" by forcing Latin Jazz nominations in related categories. NARAS has basically been telling these artists ...

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Slicethepie Moves Fan Funding to Pledgemusic, Integrates Soundout Song Analytics

Source: HypeBot
August 3, 2011

Fan funders PledgeMusic and SliceThePie have formed a partnership that integrates SoundOut, Slicethepie's song analytics service into PledgeMusic, who now also takes over the management of the funding process for Slicethepie's artists. SoundOut offers crowdsourced feedback for music and now all successful artist on the PledgeMusic platform will receive a complimentary report on one of their tracks.  SliceThePie was one of the first to offer fan funding of music projects. Fan funding has become a crowded space including KickStarter who ...

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5 Ways to Turn Superfans into Super-Marketers

Source: HypeBot
August 3, 2011

Sanjay Dholakia, CEO of Crowd Factory, recently shared his insights on encouraging teens to become superfans who will broadcast your message beyond the level of basic participation. Such fans are motivated by the chance to support artists they care about, hooking up their friends with rewards and receiving recognition for their supermarketer status. “How To Turn Your Superfans Into Guerrilla Marketers“ is a nice quick intro to the concept of the “superfan" who is often a teenager and is highly ...

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Creating Your Own Offline Music Distribution Network

Source: HypeBot
August 2, 2011

Recent news of the development of a CD distribution network via 7-Eleven by Mall Jamz and Thump Records reminded me of one of my favorite topics, creating distribution platforms that use networks of retail and other commercial outlets that do not typically sell music. This concept has mostly been explored on a local level with diverse outlets that one's local fanbase frequents, for instance an indie rock band getting local fashion shops, bookstores and coffeehouses to carry their album, and ...

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The End of the Jazz Masters

Source: Groove Notes
August 2, 2011

For thirty years, the National Endowment for the Arts has honored jazz musicians with the highest award for the genre, the NEA Jazz Masters Award. The recipients of the 2012 NEA Jazz Masters Award (including Jack DeJohnette, Von" Freeman, Sr., Charlie Haden, Sheila Jordan, and Jimmy Owens), will apparently be the last group to earn the $25,000 fellowship.

The National Endowment of the Arts' FY-12 Appropriations Request cut $21 million dollars, returning to its 2008 funding level.

Among the changes ...

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Philadelphia's jazz elders riff on the golden times

Source: Michael Ricci
August 1, 2011

The walls of Conference Room 310 at WRTI are lined with a gray cushion that dulls sound. To the roomful of elderly jazz musicians who came of age in smoky, boisterous clubs, the acoustics can be challenging. “I can't hear a thing in this room!" exclaims Morris “Mo" Bailey, stationed in a motorized wheelchair at one end of a conference table, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. Bailey, a 79-year-old saxophonist turned composer, suffers from muscular dystrophy in his legs ...

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Why Vinyl Pressing Plants Keep Raising Red Flags...

Source: Digital Music News
August 1, 2011

The simple version is that growing demand for vinyl will result in more capacity to handle that demand. Certainly makes sense over the long-term, though right now, it's just not that simple. For starters, there are a lot of sticky production and expansion issues surrounding the recent surge in vinyl, including a deepsuspicion among pressing plants that this is just a fad. And when it comes to capacity, there's a ceiling to consider. “What a lot of people don't understand ...

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Stuttering to the Top of the Charts

Source: Chris M. Slawecki
July 31, 2011

The Stuttering Foundation, a nonprofit organization helping people who stutter since 1947, has recognized the song “You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet," a 1974 number one hit by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, as being the most unique of the many rock songs featuring stuttering vocals.

Jane Fraser, president of the Stuttering Foundation, said recently, “Not only was 'You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet' the first song with stuttering vocals to reach number one, but more importantly it was the first such song that was ...

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