Video Recap: I dO Music - January '09

Here's the video from the last installment of "I dO Music:

Panelists: Ray Daniel (Manager, A&R) - Senor Kaos (Artist, Entrepreneur) - Fort Knox & Big Tah (Management, Entrepreneurs) - B. Rich (Manager, B.O.B.)





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R.I.A.A Is Scheming

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are attempting to recruit Internet service providers AT&T and Comcast to assist them in a new anti-piracy campaign. The new campaign would have these companies send warning notices to repeat file-swappers, eventually suspending or even terminating their accounts. Nothing is on paper as of yet but its looking grim.

A collaboration with ISP's would make good on the RIAA recent announcement that it would end its war against individual file swappers, and the efforts of the major labels to get "three strikes" or "graduated response" file -sharing laws that are active in Europe and other places.

The RIAA may disclose participating ISPs as soon as next month, a music industry source told CNET.

Source: CNET


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I dO Music Event ***Next Thursday***

February Edition!

Where: "I dO Music" at Apache Cafe in Atlanta
When: Thursday, February 5th
Time: @ 8pm

Topic:
Werking The Biz: Open Q&A
Get honest answers to all your industry questions!

Panelists:
Tremayne Anchrum, Ascap
Moses Davis, Warner Music Group
Vaushaun “Maestro” Brooks, Music Producer (Most Recent Werk: Lil' Wayne, Carter III "Prostitute")

Schedule:

8p-8:30p- Open Networking & "Spotlight Interviews"
(PROMOTE what you 'do' on our "I dO Music" feature video)

8:30p-9p- I dO BEATS - Play Snippets of Your best Beats!!
(sign up @ 8pm)

9p-9:30p- I Freestyle - Spit Your Best 16 bars!!
(Only 5 spots---sign up at 8pm)

9:30p-11:00p- Perform on the best stage in the city!!
(Submit your music to marketing@patchwerk.com for next month)

11:00p-12a-"Let's Talk Business" Panel



Come out and experience "I do Music" for yourself on the 1ST THURSDAY OF EVERY MONTH!


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B.O.B & Playboi Tre: Interview

Always on the move my fellow blogger brother Senor Kaos caught up with Mr. "I'll Be In The Sky" B.O.B and Playboi Tre at V-103. Check it out.


Señor Kaos Inteviews B.O.B. from Señor Kaos on Vimeo.




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Collab Anyone....?

We all need each other and that is a fact. In the indie community most of us have a set goal to be discovered. But, how many of us will get discovered, all at one time? Not Everyone... Which is why we need to have a support system catered towards us, the independent movement.

The more you rely on the next man to get you a deal or to get you known, the more your setting yourself up for disaster. Everyone is thinking the same of course. What do you do in the meantime?

Get with fellow independents that have the same goal and music direction as you. Who knows maybe a group or band could be formulated by this decision. Surely we all know that we all can't be the stars.....you may have to be the supporting actor before you can when the Grammy's. You see individuals like Busta Rhymes, Justin Timberlake and Kanye West play the backseat. Their success shows that the hard work under the public eye can accomplish much.

So what do you think?



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Show Me The Master

So you have created your masterpiece. Now let me ask you? Is it truly a MASTER piece? Everyone dealing with music has to stop and ask themselves this very serious question. Before your project goes to the press its important that mastering is fit into the planning and budgeting of a recording project. Never knocking whatever equipment you choose but many a times mastering goes unspoken and falls short of a sure shot single.

Mastering has been described as the last step in the creative process and the first step in the manufacturing of a recording. Nothing can take away the clarity of impartial and experienced ears listening to your work.

This last step includes making adjustments to the final mixes, stitching together pieces, and forming the MASTER piece. Any of the following processes could factor into the ending project:

• Spectral Refinement and Correction with EQ & other tools
  
• Dynamics Enhancement and Optimization
  
• Stereo Image Enhancement
  
• Song Editing, Sequencing, Spacing, Fading
  
• PQ Coding (setting the start and stop times)

Maybe you decide to utilize your recording studio to master it as well. Convenient? No doubt! Grade A material? *crickets* Immediate warning signs go up with this approach. The engineer who tracks, mixes and masters an album, using the same room, the same set of ears, and the same perspective can end up compounding problems that wont be apparent until the work is all done.

Mastering rooms whole set up is different then your average recording studio. The need for equipment and tools to shape the song is eliminated. Its more like a great sounding, calibrated living-room. The perspective is what your looking for.

Excellent recording engineers recognize the value of quality mastering and build their relationships with mastering studios. Please understand that nothing can substitute a quality mastering job. NOTHING!!!!!



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Will The Blanket License Help the Industry?

I'm sure that we have informed you about blanket licensing and what it does to the industry. Well what exactly is it doing for the industry? The Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the forerunner in promoting such a trend.

Voluntarily collecting licensing a.k.a blanket music licensing is a way to legalize files to Peer 2 Peer networks that specialize in sharing music, while compensating artists and the rights there of.

Imagine everyone streaming music at will. Everyone would be able to hear anything but how would you keep track?

Would Bit Torrents make a multimillion dollar fortune?

Choruss a non-profit organization wants to add a fee to American university students to re compensate for the loss of money l in sharing. This will create a system of distributing rights to the actual holder.

What do you think?

Source:Billboard

According to the Opinions of Chris Castles



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Interscope Clips Staff

Don't think for one minute just because you deal with the industry your living lavish. Life is all about services and when there is a opportunity to minimize budgets the pink slip effect rolls in. The powers that be at Interscope Geffen A&M have done just that. Billboard reports over two dozen staffers were cut Friday morning. The layoffs included the A&R, marketing and promotion departments and left a big hole in mostly mid-and entry-level staffers. Talk about the timing of events. With albums from 50 Cent, U2 and Eminem upcoming the advertising is gonna be a cold one.

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Bleep + Warp Records = Merged

Bleep and Warp Records has official merged! UK based Bleep was one of the first developing DRM-free tracks, a company which has sold over a million of WAV, MP3, and FLAC files.

English Warp Records is a label that specializes in Electronic music. They have used the recent merging action to enhance their Warpmart. A store that sells only the music of their label. However, the new Beta Bleep will feature over 300 independent labels. The new labels include Beggars,Domino, and !K7. The site will feature CD's Vinyls.

"Several new features have been added to the site, including a new music player that allows users to create their own playlists and has a recommendation tool which pinpoints new music making an impact on the site."

Source: Billboard

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Hicks Named Def Jam Executive VP

Chris Hicks has been named executive vice president at Def Jam Records, a source told Billboard.biz. Hicks was previously senior VP of A&R for Warner Music Group and Warner Chappell Music.

Hicks, a Richmond, California native turned Atlanta resident, began in the music industry with his own independent entertainment company, home to songwriters Johnta Austin and Bryan-Michael Cox. He's also co-managed Usher and Mary J. Blige. He worked his way up through a number of A&R projects and has signed Lil Wayne, T.I. and Dr.Dre to publishing deals during his career. Hicks will report directly to Island Def Jam chairman and CEO Antonio “L.A.” Reid.




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I dO MUSIC On The Scene: Pison Flo

We have a new series added to the blog called On The Scene and the basis consist of artist, producers, djs, songwriters, engineers, etc that we catch in action. Doing what? Making and spreading this wonderful message we display daily. MUSIC.

I dropped in on Apache Cafe Tuesday night for Tru Skool Tuesday hosted by Strong Arm Management. Shout out to Big Tah and Fort Knox! Pison Flo took the stage and displayed the Flow for real. Check it out!






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Best Recording Microphones: Exhibit A

As perfect as your voice is, you will still need the proper assistance with the recording process......So with that you will need the perfect mic.

Take a look@ the Earthworks SR-30 Matched Pair. The technology of this mic is influenced by none other than David Blackmer's philosophy of extending a microphone's frequency response outside the normal range of hearing that will permit much higher-definition sound. Now, if its acoustic and percussions you want, the sounds are almost ideal to this mic!





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I dO MUSIC Interview- Royal Flush Pt 2

I dO MUSIC Interviews- Royal Flush Pt.2 from I dO MUSIC on Vimeo.



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Goodbye Koch

Koch Records announced they have changed their name to E1 Records as part of a rebranding effort by their parent company, Entertainment One. Koch Distribution will now be known as E1 Distribution and Koch Publishing is now E1 Music Publishing. The name changes are effective immediately.

Bob Frank remains president of E1 Music and E1 Music Publishing, Michael Rosenberg remains president of E1 Music Distribution and Michael Koch remains CEO of all three.

Koch was purchased by Entertainment One in June 2005.

Source:Billboard





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Term of The Day:

Blanket License:

Traditionally used by radio stations for obvious reasons, this is a license which allows the music user to perform/play any or all of millions of songs in a Performance Rights Organization's repertory as much or as little as they like. Licensees pay an annual fee for the license. The blanket license saves radio stations and other music users the paperwork, trouble and expense of finding and negotiating licenses with all of the copyright owners of the works that might be used during a year and helps prevent the user from even inadvertently infringing on the copyrights of PRO's members and the many foreign writers whose music is licensed by PRO's with reciprocating blanket license agreements in other nations.




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I Do Music Interviews- Royal Flush

A few weeks ago I got the chance to check out Jeron Ward and Rick Wallkk of Royal Flush Productions at Stankonia Studios. These are the producers of the Grammy Nominated track 'Royal Flush' by Big Boi featuring Raekwon and Andre 3000. We talked about everything from the startup in the biz to what 2009 has in store for the duo.




I dO MUSIC Interviews- Royal Flush from I dO MUSIC on Vimeo.



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Barack Obama Does Music

I was just wondering what our new president might look like rocking an I dO MUSIC Tee.






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Facebook Tagged "It" with Music Industry Professionals!

Who would have thunk that you could find so many music industry professionals using Facebook? Not Me! But, now that I know, I've fallen in love with Facebook all over again!! Its like the grown up, sophisticated , maturer sibling of Myspace. It's excellent for networking and finding people. I have found sooo many music industry people on Facebook. And get this! They are actually using it themselves, not just having an intern update their statuses and pictures for them like on MySpace...Let me know if you find anyone you thought would never use Facebook.




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Blog Love: illroots

As this I do Music lifestyle sweeps the nation we got to give our Blog Love to illroots.com. A big shout out to mikewaxx and the whole illroots family!




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Dynamic Producers Atlanta @ PatchWerk Studios

Photos from Dynamic Producers Atlanta @ PatchWerk Studios






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An Ode To The Execs

This is for the A&R's and Managers who read the blog that only look at the Cd's lack of visuals...that they forget with the rest of them. As a promotional rep I totally understand the consistency with lackluster Cd's being handed to you (which can be very annoying). So what do you do? Well if your like me you throw the Cd's away forgetting that it ever got noticed.

Well what if you thrown away the "next hit"? What do you do if your trash becomes the next man's million dollar protege? We know that this is a hard thing to do but we really have to take some of these artists' seriously. The ones that you see at the shows and open mics who actually have built the relationships.

I was cleaning out my ride today (which I don't normally do),when I found a couple of Cd's in the backseat. I popped a few of them in my CD player.... and like others I came across the "wack" everyday ones, but then I came across this one artist that grabbed my ears. I listened to it for the whole day, this artist gave me what I needed for Hip-Hop. Of course I don't want to mention his name without consent, but this particular artist was what I needed to hear, he portrayed the message that our generation needs. I really think that the A&R's and execs need to find treasures before it gets discovered.




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The World Famous G-Mack(Video)

I dO MUSIC Interviews -World Famous G-Mack from I dO MUSIC on Vimeo.



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Ayo Techonology

At the beginning of every year new gadgets get put on display for the consumers at the Consumer Electronics Show. This year served as no different as a few gadgets could definitely be a good look for music lovers all around the world. Allow me to highlight a few gadgets that you will be amazed by this year.


Palm Pre: A touch-screen smartphone employing the new multimedia- and online-friendly WebOS operating system, designed to let you shuffle active program windows like a deck of cards. Potentially capable of unseating rivals the iPhone, BlackBerry and G1, it offers wireless on-demand song downloads from the Amazon Music Store.


Sirius MiRGE: The best two-for-one deal on satellite radio yet: Meet the first receiver with the ability to seamlessly jump between XM and Sirius broadcasts



Samsung P3 Media Player: Tap or swipe the 3-inch, touch-sensitive 16:9 widescreen display on this portable audio, video and photo player to literally feel good vibrations while accessing digital content, FM radio and voice recording options. The slick-looking models will ship in 4-32GB sizes.



SanDisk slotRadio: Aimed at the entry-level market, said low-cost ($99.99 with music card) portable MP3 player cum FM radio runs microSD cards preloaded with 1000 songs in all genres by Billboard topping artists. Extra cards run $39.99, with artist and track info displayed on an attractive 1.5-inch OLED screen.



Creative Sound Blaster for iTunes: A Flash drive-sized USB add-on for computers that enhances audio quality and enables wireless transmission of digital ditties to headphones, receivers and speakers from Mac or PC. The gizmo works with both iTunes and unprotected MP3 songs.


Cisco Media Hub and Wireless Home Audio: The former is a family of networked, high-capacity storage devices that warehouse and provide a one-stop hub, wirelessly accessible via PC or remotely through Web browser, for music, movies, pictures and more. The latter, a line of streaming audio devices — including an amplifier, stereo-attachable player, standalone music system and touch-screen remote — which can be mixed and matched to enjoy songs in any room of the home.


VTech IS9181: A manufacturer primarily known for cordless phones and educational electronics extends its reach with this WiFi Internet radio receiver with integrated 3W stereo speakers and 10W subwoofer with class D amplifiers. Music fans can access 11,000 free online stations, wirelessly stream digital audio from Mac/PC and connect to MP3 or CD players via built-in 3.5mm jack.








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News:Video Killed The Radio Star?

You were probably wondering why some music videos on Youtube get pulled so fast. Well one situation between Warner Bros and Youtube has cause bitterness between the two corps. David Eun VP of Google commented about the ordeal by claiming that most record labels are too defensive. Generally meaning that Label only protect what the know and not necessarily what they should know.

Eun goes on to say that there must be other ways of managing one's core business (in reference to Warner Music). There is a certain culture in the music biz that states "these are my intrest meet them, if you can meet them maybe you can have acces to our content" adds Eun. With that said we can take the fact that there is some imbalances in the biz with communicating certain goals."There's really not a concern for the other person's business (ie. Google's) - (they say) 'if you can't figure out how to make it work, that's your problem'. If that becomes systemic, you decrease the number of partners you can have."

The Solution: VP Eun is making closer parnership with existing co-operators. Google is also adds that they will continue to warn users about copying infrigment with the videos. Eun concludes by saying:
"You can't force someone to be a good partner - you can force them to follow contractual obligations, but you can't force them to be a good partner. The way you become good partners is to give them incentives to go beyond what the obligations are."





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Avoid The Crash

What is your most prized possession in your studio? If you don't think your hard drive is please focus on what your doing. Its cool to keep your documents and files on your cpu but when dealing with music files it is just caution to have your hard drive close by. I've seen too many producers lose work due to not backing up files or just being without.

First and foremost Back it Up!!! Nothing in life is certain except death and hard-drive failure!! Hard drives can fail due to either physical problems or logic problems. Most failures are inevitable but if you catch it in time, you may be able to salvage your data. A broken read/write arm, scratched platters, and bad drive bearings are deadly. Baby your drives-don't bounce them around and pad it well if you move around much and of course don't drop them.

Logic problems such as bad drive sectors and disk fragmentation can wear on the drive. Understand when you delete a file, it isn't erased. It is deleted from the directory, allowing the computer to gradually overwrite those blocks. This creates fragments. Since large audio and video files require big blocks of free space, they become fragmented far more quickly than smaller files. More fragments mean more work for the drive to find scattered pieces. This creates heat and stresses fragile, precision parts. This will lead to drive failure. De-fragmenting is your friend. Check out the signs:

Warning Signs

• CPU taking a long time to boot
• A disk utility reveals bad disk sectors
• The drive is hot to the touch
• The"click of death"-this indicates a read/write error during a seek. Meaning your drive is about to crash!
• Cyclic redundancy errors-indicates the computer cannot make an accurate copy.

Preventive Medicine

• Save often and do backups faithfully
• Leave free space
• Keep cool
• Give it a rest
• Perform regular maintenance
• Don't record audio projects to your boot disk

If you can detect something strange going on with the hard drive once again back it up and have it checked it out. Nobody wants to hear your session magically disappeared. Handle it!



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