Musician’s Notebook

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So it appears that Nine Inch Nails is doing it again! 

After releasing, “Ghosts I-IV” on March 2, 2008 you figure most fans were thinking, “Okay, great well, now we’ll have to wait for some time for another release from Nine Inch Nails.”  Well guess again! Nine Inch Nails just so happens to release their new single entitled, “Discipline” (mixed by Alan Moulder), which includes vocals and everything. American radio stations began playing the new single and provided the online links  as to where you can download this song for free (discipline.nin.com)    

Now the whole situation that has people completely psyched and in massive anticipation is the fact that about two weeks prior to “Ghosts I-IV”, Trent Reznor posted on his site blog “2 Weeks”. So he does it again now! April 21, 2008 Trent Reznor posts “2 Weeks”. So us doing the math leads to the very speculation that the follow-up to “Year Zero” will be released on May 5th, 2008!! Even contained with the MP3 down for Discipline is the message that says “Go to www.nin.com May 5″. So no one knows exactly what that’s all about, but we all know that Nine Inch Nails has gone completely independent and of course thats a whole other story. 

In the future, I  will be discussing a few things about how the music business has changed over time and why artists like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead have been doing these complete DIY releases. As for now let’s all put our hands together for more Nine Inch Nails material! 

A recent study suggests that digital music will not save the music industry from the sharp decline it has been experiencing over the last few years.

From what I’ve read in various parts of the web and the opinions some music bloggers are taking on this issue, some perspective needs to be gained.

Nobody Said Digital Music is a Passing Fad

The first thing to reconsider - many writers seem to be accusing the study of calling digital music itself a passing fad.

Wrong.

It merely says that digital music isn’t going to save a sinking ship.

This is only confirmation.

We’ve known that the music industry has been sinking for some time. We’ve all known that nothing could save it but a complete turn-around in the way it does business. We’ve also known that’s not going to happen.

Digital music is definitely not a fad. It’s a revolution. In an environmentally fragile age, we need to be conscious of our choices when it comes to wasteful distribution methods. For musicians, it means the end of era where the stranglehold on the music market is tight.

The mistake many musicians make is assuming that this means it’ll be easy for them to become rich and famous and rock out in stadiums.

It might level the playing field, but a variety of other skills - or contacts with these skills - are essential. The foremost among them is marketing.

Being able to work with a digital audience for your digital music helps.

The traditional music industry is falling down like a tree falling on a lumberjack. But the ideal of an independent band is not a completely realistic ideal, as I’ve said before. We all need to put in place business systems that make it possible for us to remain independent while working with those businesses that possess the resources to fulfill various functions.

Well, digital music means that you can safely remove distributors, retailers, and printing presses from the list (unless you choose to sell CDs, but that’s not going to work for long).

Anyway, let’s get back to watching this industry pull off its last band-aids before it’s buried in the coffin.

comScore has released figures detailing the Radiohead choose-your-own-price experiment that was featured on practically every blog in the world recently.

62% of customers paid

And this, dear reader, means that a whopping 38% of customers didn’t. The question is: is 62% a large or small number in this experiment? That depends: by expectation, I think 62% is very small and I would’ve expected something more like 80-90%.

Of course, the album has been downloaded hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times by peer-to-peer, so the accurate figure of total distribution is probably much closer to my earlier prediction.

By expectation that number might be small, but is it really? Hell no. You don’t expect to walk into a bookstore and walk out again with a book without paying. You don’t expect to hire a lawyer for free. And it just so happens that musicians are serious professionals with a job to do and families to feed. The musician’s job is no less important than the lawyer’s job in society.

So why the #%*! are we getting shortchanged?

Many of us provide free songs for download these days, and yet our so-called fans and admirers think nothing about taking for free those things that we do ask something in return for.

The level of respect for musicians between the classical period and today has fallen to a dramatic low. This is thanks to the music industry’s strategy to perpetrate such an image of us upon the public; why? So they could get away with the ridiculous “payments” that they award musicians today (even with a hit record, most musicians are still in debt when working with the current industry).

But it backfired.

It was a plan that should have backfired, too, and it did; the music industry has been having a nervous breakdown for the last few years over piracy figures. Only, it didn’t just backfire on the perpetrators - it backfired on us.

Yup, we’re all in  the same camp on this one. The public no longer respects the duty and role musicians and other artists fulfill in society. They don’t see the need to pay us for our work, just like the industry didn’t when it started ripping us off decades ago.

And that is why out of all Radiohead’s fans, only 38% didn’t steal from the band, and just because they offered the choice doesn’t make it right.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: radiohead, download, music, digital music

It’s not every day that an international superstar quits music only days before tickets to an international gig go on sale, but that’s what Meat Loaf did in the middle of a performance two days ago. He stopped in the middle of one of his hits to declare that it was his final performance.

“This is my last ever gig. Thanks for 30 years, I can’t do this any more,” he declared in the middle of Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

Meat Loaf was reportedly slurring his words, so could it be alcoholism, or is the man just fed up with the abuse that the record industry perpetrates on artists for the sake of their own deep pockets?

This iconic artist has taken a beating from the Music Mafia over the years. After having success only at a regional level, the industry was already stealing creative control from him:

With the publicity generated from Hair, Meat Loaf was invited to record with Motown. They suggested he do a duet with Stoney Murphy, to which he agreed. The Motown production team in charge of the album wrote and selected the songs while Meat Loaf and Stoney came in only to lay down their vocals. Excerpted from Wikipedia.

We all know that the industry is constantly forcing signed artists to sing along to the lyrics and music of hired songwriters; this just goes to show that their mafia techniques have been around for many decades, and even then they weren’t afraid to pressure an artist who had barely started making a name for himself.

I’d put my money on interpreting “I can’t do this any more” as meaning “I can’t be abused by the industry any more” - and that’s why he’s quitting music.

It’s important that musicians know their copyrights, especially when dealing with the industry. Knowing things like this allows artists, with the help of an able intellectual property lawyer, to negotiate with businesses so that the artist in question doesn’t sign a slave labor contract and both parties end up with an equitable deal; this allows artists to do what they like within the realm of that equity, even if the industry doesn’t like it (just because it’s fair, doesn’t mean they will).

Take Meat Loaf’s abuse as a lesson: learn your copyrights now, and be smart when dealing with people who will use deception to take advantage of you.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: meatloaf, music industry, music mafia, copyright, intellectual property, bat out of hell

Led Zeppelin will offer downloads of their music from all major online music retailers as of November, around the same time as their reunion gig in London.
Led Zeppelin is one of the last rock giants to allow their downloads to be acquired digitally, one of the last hold-outs across the world. When the last hold-outs cave in, it becomes clear that “Digital Downloads” are not just a passing fad for the music industry, but the new hegemony - something we at Musician’s Notebook already knew.

While Led Zeppelin doesn’t need to worry about forging an audience and a career, digital downloads are a vital part of the modern band’s effective marketing campaign, among other things (such as band blogging). It’s advice that may run contrary to the music industry’s own beliefs, but we all know that they’re not very good for you anyway.

We’ve come along way from the controversy around Metallica’s anti-Napster stance all those years ago. Personally, I don’t understand the controversy: Metallica has legal rights and the legal right to enforce those legal rights. They are legally, morally and ethically justified in demanding that fans don’t rip them off. At the same time, offering downloads of songs, whether it is free or for fee, is the distribution medium of right now and there’s no going back. If you have a problem with your songs being sold at iTunes, please leave through the third door from back - yes, the one that is marked “Career Incinerator”.

Led Zeppelin is also selling ring tones and full songs for mobile phones with Verizon Wireless, so you might say they’ve also sold their soul to the devil.

Today I came across this article, The Problem With Music, which was originally printed in the Baffler. The article isn’t really about the problem with music, though. It’s about the problem with the music industry. And it’s a big problem, a very worrying problem to all musicians out there, big and small. This article exposes one part of the extensive corruption that these charlatans who call themselves the ‘music industry’ have engaged in. They are not in the music industry, though; they’re just as bad as those guys with Tommy guns that claim to be in the ‘waste management’ business.

Steve Albini

The article was written by Steve Albini who, aside from his obvious flair for high-quality and inquisitive writing, is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He’s been around the music biz block enough times to be credible in what he’s saying and joins a myriad of other voices shouting the same thing: it’s time for this music industry to clean up its act. Now that it’s become so much easier to launch an independent music career, however, their power is waning and we may soon see the day when they actually have to clean up. One can hope, anyway!

Check out The Problem With Music and remember: even a good lawyer may not save your ass from these vultures, so know what you are doing and how they operate.

I came across the Future of Music website and really enjoyed their manifesto. I think you will too.

Recent advances in digital music technology are loosening the stranglehold of major label, major media, and chain-store monopolies. Digital download and online streaming technology offers musicians a chance to distribute their music with minimal manufacturing and distribution costs, with immediate access to an international audience. Songs that would never be programmed through currently-existing narrow commercial channels are slipping through the radio industry programming stranglehold and gaining exposure, thanks to the new breed of file-sharing programs.

Here’s a group that’s working to educate, inform and act on behalf of musicians who once had to put their careers in the hands of mega-corporations, and can now take it back for themselves. I really like what the Future of Music Coalition is doing and the issues they’re pushing, such as net neutrality.

Positioning is important for artists, and one way to go about building a particular reputation and brand for oneself is to write and publish articles that espouse a point of view on an issue. Well, Colin Preston decided this would be a great idea over on his MySpace blog, but he made one stupid mistake.

He didn’t write the article.

Instead, he lifted an article that my friend and colleague, NDK Creative Artist, wrote and claimed it as his own. What’s the bitter irony of this situation? The article he lifted espouses anti-piracy.

As always, the Free Articulator did its job and exposed the situation. People like this who pretend to be artists are a despicable stain on humanity. The bottom line is this: DON’T ever steal other people’s content to promote yourself (or for any other reason!). It’s stupid, it’s pathetic, and you’re probably going to get caught. And if you do get caught, you freakin’ well deserve it.

The exit clause is perhaps the most important clause in the band agreement. It stipulates the conditions under which a band member may leave the band, and outlines the actions that can be taken when a band member must be terminated, and for what reasons this may be done. It prevents long, drawn-out arguments over these particularly sensitive issues of band life and prevents one member’s departure from creating problems, or even a collapse, for the whole band.

The purposes of the exit clause are:

To facilitate the departure of band members in as clean and professional a manner as possible;

To ensure that the departure of a band member does not jeopardize the band financially, structurally, perceptually or with regard to intellectual property issues;

To ensure that the information the media and public receives from the band and the departing band member is uniform and consistent;

To ensure that a replacement can be brought in smoothly, trained in the songs that the former band member played on that instrument, and with no legal roadblocks to recruitment left in place by the departing band member.

A good band agreement will have a thorough exit clause that meets these goals and resolves any issues arising from them, and will typically contain the following stipulations:

1. Media Release on Exit

A media release must be developed on the exit of any band member. This is a joint public statement which can be sent to media, or on a smaller scale, placed on the band website so that loyal fans have a unified view, and not opposing views, of what occurred between the exiting band member and the rest of the band.

2. Payment Withholdings

Any payments/settlements owed to the departing band member will not be paid until they have worked with the band to craft and publish a media release, under the agreement that they will not make statements that contradict the release.

3. Completion of contracted performances

No band member intending to exit the band will put contracted performances in jeopardy. This one is a HUGELY IMPORTANT one. Imagine it: you’ve just scraped up the huge amount of cash it takes to put on your own tour, and one of the band members wants to leave. They’ve not only sent you broke with no means to recoup that money, but hung you and the band out to dry. The condition must be that the member will give sufficient notice to the band and complete any remaining contracted performances. If this is disregarded, there are grounds for legal action and the band will collect damages.

The band can also use their discretion to determine whether the exiting band member is reasonable in wishing to leave before the completion of contracted performances.

4. Transfer of professional relationships

If the exiting band member is the holder of professional relationships directly affecting the band, the exiting band member must transfer this relationship to the band before leaving, without damaging or defaming the relationship between the band and the professional.

5. “Negative position”

The exiting band member should not leave the band in a negative position that could allow the band to sue the exiting band member.

6. One month’s notice

The exiting band member must officially notify the band at a meeting one month before exiting. This condition is superseded by (3) Completion of contracted performances, so if there are contracted performances a month and a half from the official notification, the exiting band member must attend them. Again, the band can use their discretion to determine whether the exiting band member is reasonable in wishing to leave before the official exit date set in the meeting.

7. Successor recruitment

Depending on the way in which the band member leaves, they may be expected to assist in recruiting a replacement and teaching the band’s repertoire to them. The exiting band member must do as best they can within their skills to document any musical notation or tablature for their instrument, or obtain help to do so.

The second clause, regarding the withholding of payments, can be modified to stipulate that all exit conditions must be met before payments are issued, but otherwise, the consequence is often legal action.

Having a band agreement with a strong exit clauses is one of the best things you can do for the longevity and success of your band. Get to it!

Read more about the Band Agreement in the Establishing Your Band series.

There’s one industry on earth that seeks to engage all your senses. It offers more than anyone could ever need to sate the ears; there are all kinds of glittery film clips and artsy pictures; its spokesmen pose on the labels of Pepsi bottles and various other sugar-infused tastes, and you can reach out and touch them at a live appearance, amidst the crowd jumping up and down and grinding against you.

And everyone remembers the smell of their first brand new album, the one that escapes when you open the case and turn the first page of the booklet (and it’s a much better association than mentioning the smell of sweat at a concert).

Of course, I’m talking about the music industry, and with all their fingers in dozens of pies, you’d think they’d be the first to adopt new technology, and the new cultures that form from it. The music industry is the slowest industry of the arts to move forward, and this has happened again and again over the decades, from piano rolls to vinyl to cassettes to compact discs all the way to the MP3. Not only do they resist the technology, but they resist the culture.

The music industry is starting to catch up on digital distribution, and it’s possible to find the majority of popular artists’ catalogues in iTunes or any of the other online music stores. These distributors are all struggling with the record companies who have begun the process of adopting new technology, but have not yet bothered to adopt the culture. Instead, they bring their typically capitalistic and Western attitude with them, and it seems to say something like this: guard this intellectual property obsessively with flimsy, breakable security devices, or we might lose all of our money and go out of business!

These crippled files are intended to stop piracy. Look at the internet! Piracy is still rife. Legitimate consumers are the only ones affected by this plague of DRM, and it’s such a flimsy and easily broken method of protection that it will never stop piracy, but only fan its flames on. The people who pirate an album are not the ones who would have bought it in the first place, so DRM not only cripples legitimate users, but in fact loses album sales through the growing culture of people who are opposed to purchasing albums for ethical reasons.

The digital culture, provoked into existence by these new technologies, needs an entirely different approach from the music industry to work effectively. The approach that is needed demands unprotected releases, because DRM can be broken easily, but trust is much harder to tear apart. You can go further - release some, or even all, of your songs for free download, and see how that improves your credibility and album sales.

DRM is killing sales, it’s killing artists and it’s killing consumers. If DRM doesn’t go, it will only be a matter of time before independent artists, with unprotected albums and free songs for download, are taking the big audiences, the big money, and the big satisfaction. That might not be such a bad thing, and that’s the power of the internet. The music industry has a big lesson to learn from the literary industry and its luminaries such as Cory Doctorow, where some pockets are readily adopting less restrictive policies.

It’s important that you do not send your intellectual property over instant messenger at any time. AOL/AIM, for instance, claims the following rights over anything you send through:

“irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt, and promote this Content in any medium.”

Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger doesn’t make things any better - you grant it permission to:

“use, copy, distribute, display, publish and modify your submission, each in connection with the service; publish your name in connection with your submission; and grant these permissions to other persons.”

If you send a file through any of these programs, you lose your exclusive rights to it (if you owned the intellectual property to begin with). If you discuss sensitive plans, ideas or campaigns for your project, these can be used or published. It’s scary enough that they can monitor your discussions to begin with.

What should you use? Use Skype. It’s peer to peer, it’s secure and it doesn’t claim any rights in your intellectual property. Steer clear of using standard instant messengers to discuss or share your material, because if someone’s watching, you might not get it back.

Amy Winehouse’s mother, Janis, has made statements where she accuses the music industry for her daughter’s state of mind and health. I agree with her. I am not a personal friend or acquaintance of Ms Winehouse - in fact, I haven’t listened to her music, even. But I do know that the music industry shows an intrinsic disregard for the well-being of the artists it “supports” so long as there is a short-term buck to be made. Forget nurturing the artist and planning for a long and immensely profitable career and sustainable brand; just rip ‘em for all they’re worth and throw em to the side when you’re done, just like you’d do with a whore in the street.

That’s the way this corrupt industry works, though there are exceptional companies.

So what do you do? If you’re facing involvement with the industry, then check all contracts and negotiate them. Have a lawyer and a business manager, both of whom care for your career and your rights, and understand those rights, at any conferences. Stipulate conditions: you don’t tour for more than x amount of time (select an amount of time you think you can handle without burning out, destroying your family, etc), clauses that let you step out of a performance if you’re ill, that provide recovery time, and so on.

If they don’t agree to your conditions, do not give in. It only means they will rape your talents until you can’t do what they want anymore, and you’re going to wish you never signed that deal. So don’t take it, even if the carrot is dangling in your face.

Musicians, I’ve come across something you really should check out - the Future of Music Coalition’s website.

According to their mission statement:

 The Future of Music Coalition is a not-for-profit collaboration between members of the music, technology, public policy and intellectual property law communities. The FMC seeks to educate the media, policymakers, and the public about music / technology issues, while also bringing together diverse voices in an effort to come up with creative solutions to some of the challenges in this space. The FMC also aims to identify and promote innovative business models that will help musicians and citizens to benefit from new technologies.

Head on over and educate yourself on various issues incredibly important to working musicians, and keep abreast of the latest news in those areas.

Link

A week ago, I conducted a brief survey in a room full of musicians: what are the five copyrights?

Mind you, these aren’t just musicians. These are students of a university degree that is supposed to teach more about studio engineering, production, and the business of art and entertainment than theory and technical proficiency with an instrument.

I got blank stares. I wasn’t surprised, but it is sad to see that musicians don’t really understand something that is more important than anything else to their career. I’ve known musicians who sucked, but knew their copyrights well and exploited them to forge a career.

Only once you know the rules, can you break them, they say. And only when you know the copyrights, can you benefit from them. Your mission: find out what the five copyrights are. If you’re the first person to tell me what they are in the comments, you’ll get one free constructive critique of a set of lyrics.

Research away!

When I heard the Spice Girls were reuniting for a ‘world tour’ (consisting of only eight dates, which is a comfort), I was worried for humanity. I thought that the horrible days of this so-called band’s repetitively blasted crap on the radio were over. And when I heard that they were each getting paid $25 million to cause brain damage, I scoffed even more. Then I heard that these pathetic performers were going to have pitch correctors installed between microphone and speakers for every show - may as well put a bunch of models from a local fashion agency on the stage and let the machines do the work. Wait: they did. Pity they didn’t choose the good looking ones.

The nail in the coffin: each member of the band will be traveling with their own jet. Yup, five stinkin’ jets will be used on this horrid excuse for modern show business. Well, nobody ever heard of a carbon neutral tour, but this on the other hand, is just plain irresponsible.

And let me tell you this: celebrity, no matter how ill-deserved, is no excuse for irresponsibility.

Let me go further: celebrity brings the dire need for responsibility. It is art that creates culture, and that has created the pitiful culture we live in, and the key to rectifying the sordid state of this civilization. So it is artists who must pave the way not only with their works, but the public actions that send clear messages regarding their beliefs and intentions and attitudes regarding the world and the many issues debated herein. Even if you are ignorant enough to doubt the veracity of climate change, five jets is still irresponsible, stupid, and ultimately damaging.

The Spice Girls show themselves for what they are; pathetically unintelligent little beasts who care for nothing more but their creature comforts and snobbishly immature vices. Not quite the shaker of fresh cinnamon finely ground after being collected from eight different exotic countries, but the little tin of cayenne pepper that got lost somewhere in the back of the cupboard in 1986 and now forms one unbreakable mass of terrorist-resistant building grade brick.

Should celebrities be responsible? The answer is, according to every decently honest and respectable source around the world, yes. And if we weed out the celebrities-for-nothing and leave ourselves with the artists, then there is a Code for those artists. Read especially point three of The Code of a Creative Artist and remember that it is far more than a piece of work that must show responsibility, but every word and action that stands behind that work, to give it strength and integrity in a world lacking both.

There’s a great article by Tim Manners of Fast Company on piracy and music marketing:

http://www.fastcompany.com/resources/marketing/manners/112904.html

My only gripe is that this article suggests you can’t get CD-quality or higher from the internet; that’s a load of pure bogus.

The music industry is its own worst enemy. Every time a tactic works to get more music into more hands, they kill it off. Fewer sales for them, fewer music out there, and fewer happy (paying) listeners.

In the UK, a decision has just been reached regarding the standard rate of royalties musicians receive when they sell music through an online distribution channel: 8%.

Excuse me? You’re distributing material online with minimum expense, and as a retailer and distributor you’re not responsible for the marketing of the artist. But you retailers want to take 92% of the earnings just for stocking the shelves?

Musicians are the ones who spend their lives working their asses off to get the music heard in the first place, the ones who go to great effort to create a song in the first place, yet some men in suits would like the lion’s share when they’re nothing more than a conduit between artist and public.

Of course, retailers deserve some payment for their services. That’s a given. But this is nothing short than ripping artists to pieces and cheating them out of a livelihood. Online retailers are earning a passive income the same way Chinese manufacturers ship so much product; get someone else to do the work and then keep all the profits from that hard work.

I once heard a great musician say that an artist’s finest works were those that brought even the creator to tears, and that they would live on forever in the hearts of those who experienced that art.

I guess it could be argued that a musician is truly making a clear expression of his state when he finds it difficult to listen to his own work, on the assumption that the piece isn’t particularly joyful. It can’t be to hard to listen to a frolicking staccato in C major, right?

Some measure this kind of success by the response of others, and look to see if their eyes mist up, but in my experience it truly is the creator’s tears that matter. Why? Simply because it’s a lot easier to invoke such an emotional reaction in others than in oneself.

There’s a common myth that, in order to be a great artist, one must go through endless amounts of suffering. My opinion on the matter is that suffering does nothing to improve your art - it just gets in the way of creating. As long as this ridiculous myth exists, there is yet another excuse for society at large (and in particular the industry) to make our lives difficult and disenfranchise us of our rights.

Musicians, please, don’t do anything to reinforce this idea among non-musicians (or other musos, for that matter). It’s only going to add to the momentum that gets you screwed over in the end. And to all others who would believe and propagate this idea, even with good intentions, I ask you personally to stop and think about what you’re doing: are you contributing to a belief that makes life harder for others? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding yes.

I have experienced intense hardship in many parts of my life - more than is called for by the number of years I’ve been alive. But it hasn’t helped my art; it has come at those times when things were shaping up well and slowed them down. When those periods pass, my songwriting is still the same as it was.

We don’t need pain to get better. We just need dedication to our art, an open mind that embraces great ideas, and the old mantra that has something to do with practice.

‘The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday,’ said Entertainment Retailers Association spokesman Paul Quirk.

Prince is giving away his ten-track album in an upcoming issue of the UK’s Sunday Mail, but record retailers all over the world are upset about the deal, exercising their opinion that the record retailers should, of course, hold a monopoly over music distribution and, according to the quote above, bully artists in mobster fashion as to where they must sell their records.

In other words, using their economic clout, retailers are blackmailing artists and essentially nullifying copyright law in general. An artist has copyrights in order to grant themselves full control over what they have put their time, money and effort into creating, and thus it’s their choice where and how the music is distributed. Because retailers only care about the bottom-line, unwilling to respect the fact that the music belongs to the creators and not the retailers, they are all too willing to corrode the strength of law that exists for good reasons.

The best thing that songwriters and musicians can do is give their music away, the exact opposite of what retailers want. Big-time musicians and garage bands, it doesn’t matter–in the end, they won’t exist and we can make a living.

From Boing Boing, quote from The Guardian.

There is something that listeners are beginning to crave in massive quantities, because they’ve been so far deprived of it by major record companies: substance in music!

There are those who do not care, and never will, that everything they listen to has no worthwhile meaning. Music is meant to be art, and the word art comes from the Latin word for communication. It’s not a fluke or a case of evolutionary etymology; it’s the purpose of all art, all music. And when nobody’s fulfilling the purpose of their art, people begin to sense the emptiness.

You might say, why is it that so many artists linger at the top of our charts when they are devoid of substance, when you say that people are craving it so much? Notice the trends; a superficial artist, who is always “market-driven” by the record companies, manufactured from the ground up, is pushed into the forefront of public attention and cultural media channels using marketing and public relations dollars. But even though you can pay for attention, to stay at that forefront you need to have something valuable to offer.

That is exactly why so many flake artists hit the top, and then drop away so quickly it seems instantaneous. The gossip magazines tend to remember them a little longer, but by and large, society has forgotten them.

Here’s the thing: substance alone might not get you a bunch of attention. It won’t prevent it either. But once you get the attention using hard work and do-it-yourself marketing, you’ll keep it. You’ll keep it because people see that there’s more than meets the eye and want to stick around and see what that is. They stick around because, as one fan of my music recently told me:

Your music makes me think about things I don’t really think about—when I feel down and I play it, for some reason it picks me up.

Substance might not get your music heard, but it will make sure you keep your listeners.

To musicians and music appreciators,

I urge you to go take a look at Tuneback.net. The Tuneback is a concept that is free for all to use, but has come under attack from those who would bastardize such things for commercial purposes.

If you’re wondering what a Tuneback is, here’s an excerpt from the site:

The Tuneback was a concept created by Joel Falconer in January of 2007, when he resolved to do something new with his music that year; it was only February when the first in the series appeared online. What’s a Tuneback? Essentially, it’s a song that must be conceived, written, and recorded in less than an hour, and then put online. The song’s topic should be inspired by some kind of online, linkable source, (Tuneback comes from the word trackback in the blogosphere, and it was Joel who coined the term tuneback), but it’s not necessary, as the primary purpose is to create and produce a song inspired by something of substance, character and integrity.

Click through to Tuneback.net to find out more.