• Musician Finds a Following Online - WSJ.com
  In late 2006, Justin Vernon, a musician in Eau Claire, Wis., recorded nine songs while staying at his parents' hunting cabin in northern Wisconsin after a breakup with a girlfriend and his long-time band. He used just a desktop computer with recording software, a three-piece drum set and a guitar.
• Music tech predictions for 2009 | Digital Noise: Music and Tech - CNET News
  As I said in my 2008 sum-up, people tend to overestimate the amount of change that will happen in one year–which means my best bet for 2009 would be to simply reiterate my almost-there predictions from 2008, like the death of DRM and the decline of the concert industry.
• Who left it high and dry?: The future of music
  Charles Darwin might suggest that the credit crunch is just another unfavourable condition, among many others, for the biosphere of the music industry. It is all about survival of the fittest now.
• Music Sales Fell in 2008 but Continued to Climb on the Web - NYTimes.com
  Sales of recorded music fell sharply in 2008, as consumers continued to migrate away from the CD format, large retailers reduced floor space for music and the recession dampened consumer spending during the critical year-end holiday shopping period.

• 7 Common Link Baiting Mistakes | ReveNews
  Link baiting is a technique used to generate inbound links to your website. When done properly, this style of content will get you more links, better keyword relevance, improved online visibility, greater authority, and more trust from the search engines.
• BavaTuesdays-Integrating WPMu, BuddyPress, and bbPress
  This is a tutorial documenting the steps I’ve been working through over the past week to integrate WPMu, BuddyPress, and bbPress. All of the applications versions I am currently using are either in beta, alpha, or taken from the trunk.
• Popular MP3 & Music Blog Tracks / The Hype Machine
  Songs getting the most attention on The Hype Machine MP3 blog aggregator.
• Band Metrics - Private Beta
  Band Metrics helps musicians and bands analyze and measure the success of their music.
• An Artist's Guide to Twitter
  Twitter can be a great way to help you get yourself and your art out there. Plus it's also a great way to market your website.

• Hypebot: YouTube Taps Indie Music Via Rumblefish
  In what could provide another small piece of the indie music income puzzle, YouTube has partnered with Rumblefish, the indie branding and music licensing agency, to provide users with access to 25,000 licensed songs from Rumblefish's catalog.

• Bloomberg.com: U.S.-Apple to Sell IPhones in Wal-Mart Stores This Month
  Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will become the second mass-market retail chain to start selling Apple Inc.’s iPhone, with two store representatives saying the world’s largest retailer will carry two models of the Web-surfing handset this month.
  (tags: iPhone)
• 47 Essential Resources for T-Shirt Designers | GoMediaZine
  Interested in starting your own clothing line? Or maybe you just want to get an edge on some of the other designers on the major social t-shirt sites. Either way, there is a world of resources to be discovered that can help you do both.

• CD sales remain the biggest revenue driver for the music business
  Digital is the future, but analog is the present. Which is why CD sales remain the biggest revenue driver for the music business. But big-box retailers, who sell almost all of the industry’s discs, are determined to change that, by relentlessly cutting back on the amount of floorspace they allocate to CDs.
• Fatblog: Download Store Comparison - Part Deux
  We were really pleased to hear that lots of people found our post on download stores useful, so we’ve gone away, done some more research, and doubled the number of stores covered. We’ve put together a round-up of the features, file formats, prices and percentages that 14 different stores offer, for anyone who’s looking at where to sell their music.

• Tech Digest: Noise Gate: Six Tenets for a New Music Industry, Part Five
  Although piracy is undeniably bad for the music industry, there are plenty of ways around it. The sue-em-all solution hasn't worked, so what else can record companies do to slow the problem down? In this instalment, I'll share some of my ideas on how the industry can be creative in tackling the pirates. Hint: It's all about carrots.

• Music Sellers Try Fighting iTunes With ‘MP3 Compatible’ Kitemark | paidContent:UK
  Could this be the first serious threat to iTunes Store’s retail dominance? Seven other online music sellers have formed an alliance to promote their unique selling point - DRM-free MP3.
• 32.1 Million MP3 Players Sold In The UK Last Year. Huh? | paidContent:UK
  Keen to push its new MP3 kitemark, the Entertainment Retailers Association released figures today trumpeting the format in grand terms: “Never in the history of the music business have we seen a format take off like this before. There is now no doubt that MP3 is the fastest-growing music format of all time, faster than vinyl, cassette or CD,” said chairman Russel Coultart.
• Digital Growth Won’t Stop Overall Music Sales From Shrinking, According To Forecast | paidContent.org
  US digital music sales will grow by 17 percent per year on average over the next five years, to make up 41 percent of sales by 2013, Forrester’s latest Jupiterresearch forecast says.

• DIY Promo for Broke Rappers, DJ's and Musicians // Audible Hype
• How Can The Music Industry Be In Trouble With All This Free Promotion.
  2007 person-to-person music downloads were worth a staggering $69 billion, and movie/television piracy continues to grow, says a new study.

• How To Write Your Music Business Plan at Music Business Marketing
  I had a request recently on how to write a music business plan. Here’s the format I recommend my clients to follow. Call it a template.

Very difficult to be totally definitive on this one but the following list is a bunch of websites we consider to be essential bookmarks for music artists, bands, band managers and indie labels alike. Whether you’re just releasing your first digital EP and want it selling on iTunes or if you want to build up your ‘musicbiz’ network and don’t know where to start, these sites will help to get you up and running.

Digital Distribution

Tunecore - I use Tunecore to distribute Buzzsonic Records tracks to iTunes worldwide and AmazonMP3.There’s a signup fee of around $25 and then an annual fee of about $20 for maintenance. Adds up to peanuts for a worthwhile service that takes no percentage from your downloads which means you see something like 70c out of every 99c download straight into your own pocket. They also duplicate and shrink wrap short run CDs too.

Snocap - Founded by ex-Napster wunderkid Shawn Fanning, Snocap was supposed to be the first major legal P2P service in its formative years but licensing problems with the majors put paid to that. A change of business plan means that now Snocap powers thousands of MySpace artist music stores, using their store widget that you can paste into your MySpace profile and anywhere else online. Artists see something like 60c from a 99c download, though you can set your own price.

CD Baby - CD Baby and its founder Derek Sivers have an impeccably solid reputation with artists and its up there with Tunecore as the ones to go to. CD Baby’s digital deal has them take 9% of your revenue, though they distribute to a much wider array of download stores than Tunecore. Those short run CDs you got done at Tunecore? CD Baby will sell them via their much vaunted CD distribution channel.

Indistr.com - Another promising looking outlet is Indistr.com. Artists keep 75% of download revenue and get paid the same day of the sale via Paypal.

Music Biz Resources

Music Business Resources For Students - UK based college lecturer Daz Smith’s comprehensive website is packed to the rafters with tips and links on networking, manufacturing, record companies, promotion and diy record labels. Useful for bands and DJ’s hoping to make their next move, students of popular music and music technology and anyone else wanting to get involved.

Luke Hits - LA based Luke Hits specializes in placing unsigned bands music onto TV shows and film soundtracks by circulating compilation CDs with his contacts that he painstakingly picks from the bags of submissions he gets. He promises to listen to everything he’s sent. There’s no upfront fees, just a slice of whatever deal he sets up.

Hit Quarters - Database of A andR guys, record companies, songwriters and publishers. Useful if you are a songwriter trying to place a song. $15 annual fee sounds like a deal for the information here.

Moses Avalon - Moses Avalon is the author of three crucial books, ‘Confessions of a Record Producer’, ‘Secrets of Negotiating a Record Contract’ and ‘Million Dollar Mistakes’ which are required reading for all industry wannabes (and never has beens). His website has a bunch of useful artist friendly articles and advice.

Bemuso.com - Another astonishing labor of love from UK based Rob Cumberland. A very detailed and exhaustive collection of articles and links for artists going the DiY route. The site covers self distribution, publishing, do it yourself record labels and how the music biz works from a UK perspective.

Rap Coalition Intelligence Program - Astonishing site packed to the rafters with information, case histories and every fine detail you need to strike out on your own. Starting your own label, business basics, worksheets, writing a music business plan, start up checklist and every angle in between.

Music Tank - A business development network for the UK music industry, owned and operated by the University of Westminster. Run a unique programme of think tanks, conferences and events.

BBC 1Xtra - Great resource from BBC Radio 1 with tips on demos, music industry how to’s, studio and diy tips. Radio 1 is the most popular national radio station in the UK and the possibility of getting your music heard on national radio isn’t impossible. The Homegrown section of the site pick two unsigned artists/bands a week and play them on the air to a potential audience of millions.

Music Industry Forums

Velvet Rope - Legendarily frank and very busy music industry forums, populated by bands, labels, artists and wannabes. Littered with news of music industry happenings and rumors, unsigned bands and hype.

Harmony Central - Great musician’s community with discussion forums, industry news, guitar tabs and user reviews on music gear. Its the forums that make this site an essential visit though.

Just Plain Folks - Another very busy, long running and active forum community, this one squarely aimed at songwriters and musician networking. The forums boast over 40,000 members.

Planet Shark - If you want to creep your way into LA’s Hollywood film and music business community this is a great place to keep your eye on with news on parties, movers and shakers events, industry shindigs, casting calls and industry jobs. There’s an A&R 411 section on the site too thats worth bookmarking. If you live in LA that is!

Songwriter 101 - Another educational website and forum for songwriters with everything about the business side of the songwriter’s profession with information, education and advice from music pros and teachers.
Record of the Day - UK based subscription based music business news network but with a busy forum and UK music industry jobs board.

Recording.org - Professional recording studio forums bustling with over 30,000 members.
HomeRecording.com - And at the other end of the scale a forum for home recording enthusiasts discussing gear, techniques and the music industry in general.

Various Resources

Indie Music Bible - David Wimble’s Indie Bible is now into its 9th year and the 330 page book is crammed with thousands of contacts and articles on how to get your music on radio, where to get reviewed, where to sell music, where to upload it and 500 resources just on promoting your band.

Sister publication the Indie Venue Bible is a comprehensive directory of live music venues. It is in electronic (PDF) format and lists 26,000 venues and 2000 booking agents in the US and Canada.

The UK published tome the Unsigned Guide is an excellent companion to the Indie Bible and boasts 11,000+ contacts and over 800 pages brimming with every music contact you could ever think of.

Everyone already has a page on MySpace, like it or not its the number one destination site for networking bands and artists. But before MySpace there was Garageband. Now owned by iLike. Garageband has a neat community review process which works by encouraging bands to review other tracks in return for free webspace. Eclipsed now in terms of popularity compared to Bebo and MySpace but a great tool for getting real critical feedback.

Industry Bodies

For news on the business side of the industry the BPI (UK) and the RIAA (USA) are good for keeping your eye on the industries ruling bodies. The IFPI covers the rest of the world and in the UK the MCPS/PRS cover copyright issues whilst the ASCAP do the same in the USA. The independent music organizational bodies are the Association of Independent Music (AIM) in the UK and American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) in the USA.

Blogs and News

Mashable and Techcrunch are the two essential destinations for keeping up with daily news on new music and web 2.0 apps and developments and the blogs I fire up first in my RSS reader daily are the newsy Coolfer and Hypebot and the acerbic and essential Lefsetz Letter, written by industry veteran, Bob Lefsetz and filled with no holds barred finger pointing, analysis and comment.

Related Reading

New Music Strategies
Future of Music Coalition
Music Week
CMU Music Network
MP3 Newswire