Here’s the scenario: You release a new album. On day one pirated/illegal download links rank higher than any other result when people search for your music. Muso TNT is a product which I assume helps you get rid of the offending links. I have some questions. Is this service worth $40 – $130 for the first month or two? It seems the main time you would want this service would be during the initial release period. The company is based in London. Do you think that makes any difference in it’s effectiveness in stopping illegal files in the USA or Russia? Do you think it’s a good idea to stop the illegal trade of your music? After all, illegal file trading of your music increases your fame and gigs no? Has anyone used this service? Are there known competitors to Muso TNT that are worth looking at? I know from my “Horrorist” Google alert everything I’ve released is constantly being shared. Some friends of mine spend quite a lot of time working to remove their music from file trading sites. I’ve never attempted to stop it myself. What do you think?
Muso TNT enables you to track and remove every infringing file for your artist or title across millions of sites daily. Muso TNT is an online interface for rights holders to gear your fans towards legal download sites. We empower you to remove ALL pirated files with absolute speed and complete accuracy. We give you the tools to enforce your rights 24/7 and make legal downloads the easy choice for fans. – muso.com
For more info: muso.com
This entry was written by , posted on April 20, 2011 at 2:20 am, filed under business and tagged file sharing, Muso TNT, piracy. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The music and artwork is now finished for my next album Joyless Pleasure. I would like to send out pre-release copies to get reviews in magazines and important websites. I actually think normal people/fan reviews carry more weight but this is the first step. I have two questions to Wire to the Ear readers. 1. What’s the best way today to go about this? 2. Do you have any specific recommendations of places I should try and get the album reviewed? If you have any specific contacts at a media outlet that would be a bonus as sending music off into the abyss makes me cranky.
Thanks for your help!
photo credit: Steven Depolo
This entry was written by , posted on March 31, 2011 at 2:41 am, filed under business, promotion and tagged album reviews, Joyless Pleasure, marketing, promotion, reviews, The Horrorist. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The tech industry is going to finally let us store our own music in the cloud. We can then listen on our mobile and web devices from anywhere. Amazon is first out the gate with it’s Cloud Drive and Player. Google and Apple will surely soon follow. Here’s some thoughts. I hope it’s easy to get my massive music collection online. I will be glad to have my collection anywhere I can log-in to the net. I’m glad my music collection will be backed up online. I hope it works over 3g or it’s useless. I wonder if any of these services will allow me to embed a player and share my music. If they do I wonder if it will have massive implications for SoundCloud. I hope there will be some interesting APIs spurring some innovative Apps that use your online locker. Ho hum another bill.
“Amazon’s easy uploading process makes it simple for customers to save their music library to their Cloud Drive. Files can be stored in AAC or MP3 formats and will be uploaded to Cloud Drive in the original bit rate. Customers can hand-pick particular songs, artists, albums or playlists to upload or simply upload their entire music library.” – Amazon.com
photo credit: bixentro
This entry was written by , posted on March 29, 2011 at 2:39 am, filed under business and tagged Amazon, cloud, Cloud Player, music. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Now that I’ve finished my album I am putting together the same album full of remixes. Instead of paying 20 people to do remixes for me I am trading a remix of my own for one of theirs. This serves three purposes. I don’t have to shell out a bunch of cash. It forces me to work on material that’s not my own which I find a challenge. Lastly, every remix I do for someone else gets promoted by that artist therefore extending my own name into the world. I know this is obvious but maybe this post will trigger you to go trade with your friends, fans and if your lucky music heros. This weekend I am finishing remixes for Haujobb and Steinkind. See how they just got some free press?
“A remixer uses audio mixing to compose an alternate master recording of a song, adding or subtracting elements, or simply changing the equalization, dynamics, pitch, tempo, playing time, or almost any other aspect of the various musical components. Some remixes involve substantial changes to the arrangement of a recorded work, but many are harmonic, such as creating a “vocal up” version of an album cut that emphasizes the lead singer’s voice.” – Wikipedia
For more info: facebook.com/thehorrorist
This entry was written by , posted on March 17, 2011 at 3:12 am, filed under business, song writing and tagged business, Haujobb, remixes, Steinkind. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
It took me a while but I finally struck a balance between my day job and my music career. Three week day nights and weekends I am in front of knobs, dials, touch screen, API and Ableton. Weekdays as Director of Operations at ENVEN Energy Services I stare at Windows 7 via Bootcamp, Excel tracking sheets, Quickbooks or I am in the field auditing commercial lighting systems in Rockland, Orange and Sullivan Counties. Once and a while live performances as The Horrorist steal a Friday away from ENVEN but since I am a partner in the company it’s a perk I am allowed. Mornings before anything starts thirty minutes goes here to Wire to the Ear and these words. I know balance has found it’s equilibrium because my to do list gets cleared and I am not having those “missing class” nightmares. I admit I struggled to make this work and for a while it cost me some music creating time. The key is I pretend I am far more important than I am. I pretend I am a CEO. I wake up early, eat super healthy and spend 45 minutes on the Elliptical trainer each day. I allow myself one or two planned, scheduled fun short late afternoon meet ups with friends and family per week. I know this all sounds pretentious and needlessly stiff. In between all the positivity there is a blackness. I regularly feel like I am missing something somewhere. I have huge doubts and I feel I’ve become a mouse on a wheel. That said, I am doing my life’s plan and I hope in the end people will have noticed.
“There’s more besides joyrides. Little house in the countryside. Understand, learn to demand, Compromise, sometimes lie. You think you’ve got a hold of it all. You haven’t got a hold at all. When you reach the top, get ready to drop. Prepare yourself for the fall, you’re gonna fall. It’s almost predictable.” – Depeche Mode
For more info: Get the Balance Right, Depeche Mode (iTunes link)
photo credit: Colin Harris
This entry was written by , posted on March 7, 2011 at 5:08 am, filed under business, political, song writing and tagged balance, career, song writing, work. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I’m back from France and I’m happy to report that the event known as La Nuit Rouge pulled in 7,500 party goers. I spent some talk time with Pet Duo, Alan Fitzpatrick, Mindindustries and DJ Rush (at the airport). Everything from the moment I started my set was golden. Now since this is a tell all blog let’s rewind to my departure to France from JKF Airport.
I arrive at Long Term Parking. I’m a little later than I hoped because there was of course a few hours of traffic for what should be a 20 minute drive. I get on my Delta, KLM, Alitalia flight. I think they do this codeshare crap knowing they need to blame someone for mistakes so they take turns on each other. I’m in my seat. One hour goes by we don’t take off. Two hours go by we don’t take off. We finally get a report from el captino, “There’s a broken clasp in the cargo bay we are manufacturing a new one. Once we get the paperwork from Atlanta we can fly.” We approach three hours and they tell us we have to disembark. I know why they did this. There’s some new rule you can’t leave passengers hostage more than three hours. Now if you thought that was the bad part oh boy you are mistaken.
I had a layover in Rome. I missed that layover by a mile so when I asked when I could get another connecting flight from Rome to Marseille I was delighted to find out the only one would be late Saturday night at 9:30PM. That would get me into Marseille at around Midnight. I had a 1:00AM set time. That also meant that I’d have to spend 9 hours in the Rome airport waiting for that connection. I thought about canceling my show and just going home but I’ve only missed three shows in my entire career.
I was supposed to play the weekend after 9/11 in Stuttgart. I had my apartment robbed a few days before I had a gig. The third show I missed was my fault. Being that I have performed a zillion times since 1992 I think it’s a record worth keeping nice and I am sure promoters know I am reliable (which keeps bookings coming). So I decided to check into the Hilton Hotel Rome at the airport. I got a day rate of 100 Euros and slept myself into superman again. I woke up and took the short flight to Marseille.
I got to the gig and it was the usual war zone. Pet Duo was on stage with 6 CD players, two mixers, booze. On the same 5 foot wide table sat the lighting guy, his controller, the house mixing console and sound guy. I need a few feet of space too and I was on next. So I hovered around the Pets who are luckily my friends. They are also generally happy people so they didn’t mind me crawling around them. I hooked my gear up. They stopped playing. I started playing. I had a wonderful time after the show (this isn’t really a tell all blog!). Life is good and no matter what I go through to get there it’s always worth it!
“one night in new york city ou encore can you hear the sound… olivier chesler, trop bon, même le personnage c’est quelque chose!!! c’est quelqu’un ce mec!!!” – jérémy couvreur (via facebook)
For more info: facebook.com/lanuitrouge
This entry was written by , posted on February 28, 2011 at 6:12 pm, filed under business, live performance, promotion and tagged Alan Fitzpatrick, DJ Rush, La Nuit Rouge, live performance, Mindindustries, Pet Duo, The Horrorist, Things to Come Records. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Over the past three months I’ve been experiencing Chinese Democracy syndrome. Chinese Democracy was the Guns and Roses album that took them a decade to release. They wrote, erased, rewrote, sweated, talked and stressed instead of just letting it out. The truth is I have recorded almost 30 songs for my next album called Joyless Pleasure. I’ve worked harder and I’ve been more inspired while making these songs than ever in my life. Certainly it will be my best effort and about half I consider gems. Yet I still sit wanting to make one more song. One more that will be the one that will take it all over the top. I don’t have any advice in this post. I’m only sharing this strange experience. I am going to let go. I have my last song in Ableton. Maybe I just don’t want to go take the album photos!
“In the music industry, a release is usually a term referring to the creative output from an artist available for sale or distribution.” – Wikipedia
photo credit: Karola Riegler
This entry was written by , posted on February 24, 2011 at 6:40 am, filed under business, promotion, song writing and tagged album, Guns and Roses, Joyless Pleasure, stress, The Horrorist. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Some are calling this chart the death of the music industry. Maybe we are just returning to global sales figures that make more sense. After all, we all know the major labels were raping our wallets with Compact Disc prices right? If these figures dip below 5 Billion then we can have a death march.
“It makes me laugh!!! Copyright may have constitutional protection, but at the end of the day, the Internet is kicking the music industries monopolistic ass.” – JoeJoe
For more info: businessinsider.com/chartoftheday
photo credit: Edward Cotton
This entry was written by , posted on February 18, 2011 at 3:42 am, filed under business and tagged sales, The Music Industry. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Last night I attended the WordPress NYC Meetup Group at NYU Poly. The theme of the evening was ecommerce. I wanted to see if there was a good solution if you wanted to skip iTunes, Beatport and Amazon. There were three presentations covering the popular WordPress solutions: WP-eCommerce, Shopp and Ecwid. A representative for each product showed off what the products could do. Next, the WordPress Meetup Group broke into three parts everyone following whatever product they liked best into a separate room.
WP-eCommerce and Shopp were similar but I thought Shopp was cleaner and the develeper really knew his stuff so I followed him into the Shopp room. Ecwid was the only product with a monthly subsciption and it was based and hosted your files in Russia. I actually won a rafle for a free year of Ecwid but I still skipped past it. I’m sure it could be a great product but the entire idea of my night out was to find a free or pay once self contained solution.
Years ago I ran an online store script off my own website called the Easybe shop. Shopp is far simplier and more powerful to use. You can sell digital goods quite easily. Download links expire and are encoded so your source url is never revealed. You can send out coupon codes. You can sell physical goods. You can sell digital and physical goods within the same product using variables (such as a CD or MP3 download). You store lives on your Wordpres site within a link but there are sidebar widgets or shortcodes to put any product or product category into any WordPress post (nice!). There are options to host your files on your own server or if you’re a huge site you can use Amazon S3. There are language plug-ins and much more. The price seems very reasonable to me at $55. The only time you pay more is when there are full version point upgrades.
Because Shopp is a full store not specifically an mp3 store it doesn’t have a built in audio player but you can use SoundCloud embeds or a Wordpres plug-in like Audioplayer for your sample clips. I really liked what I saw and I’m going to set up a sample shop here on this site over the weekend. I still think you should have your stuff available for sale on iTunes, Amazon and Beatport. However, why not have a one click away store where no one get a cut of your action?
“Shopp seamlessly integrates into your WordPress website from administration to your online store’s shopping experience. It looks and works like it was meant to be part of WordPress all along. And Shopp plays well with other plugins by adhering to the WordPress plugin development guidelines.” – shopplugin.net
For more info: shopplugin.net
This entry was written by , posted on February 16, 2011 at 4:22 am, filed under business, promotion and tagged easybe, ecommerce, Ecwid, music business, Shopp, WordPress, wp-ecommerce. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The incredible music info archive site Discogs now has an optimized version for iOS and Android devices. I’ve used the site thousands of times. Often I go there to get info I can’t remember about my own releases! Here’s the page for some of my music on Discogs: discogs.com/artist/Horrorist
“To access Discogs mobile, simply navigate to www.discogs.com using your preferred mobile browser. By default, you’ll see the mobile version of Discogs with an option to switch to the full site if desired.” – discogs.com
For more info: discogs.com
This entry was written by , posted on December 13, 2010 at 1:29 pm, filed under business, iPhone, promotion and tagged Android, Discogs, iOS. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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