Keeping In Touch With Your Tour

Say hello to perhaps one of the most important resources a touring musician could ever have.  The app called Tourch is only found on iPhones will be your new best friend. It is a mobile application created to make musicians life easier when it comes to handling merchandise, touring, etc.

Tourch accounts and tracks all of your merchandise sales on any given night of your tour. A great way to keep organized and up to date with how much merchandise you're going through and how much you need to keep on hand.

This becomes a must have for any tour manager considering you can create multiple accounts for each artist and/or band being handled.

There is a journal section so that you can track things such as:

-load-in & load out information
-club owner dynamics
-mileage
-how the show went
-photos of your receipts, venues, band mates, audiences, etc

Expense: Keep track of your expenses on the road & export your information to a spreadsheet to manage your Profit & Loss

Category totals: Keep track of your different merchandise categories and how much you sold over the course of the night. Create quick recaps of how many CD's your sold, how many t-shirts you sold etc. Find all these categories in one place!

Product totals: Keep track of your different product totals including CD's, t-shirts, hats, USB drives, books, etc.

The key to heading out on tour is thorough organization and now we have an app that can make it 10X easier to execute! This is an app well worth the $5 considering what you get in return.


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YouTube's Mistress

There is a war going on outside no man is safe from! Deception is at an all time high. Ever wondered how extremely horrible videos receive such a high view count? As you may already know there are a few "buy hits" websites all over the net. One of the more popular YouTube channel platforms made available are Vagex which is partially held responsible for this disaster.

The views are by real people mostly held in the United States. They price credits so cheap that you could possibly go on eBay and Fiverr and sell 2000 views for $5! If you choose not to do this then you can earn credits by downloading one of their free viewers and letting it "watch" videos for you in the background.

Remember in December when YouTube put the hammer down on the major labels for faking the funk? Check it out:

Sony/BMG: 850 Million to 2.3 Million
RCA: 159 Million to 120 Million
Universal: Lost more than 1 billion views, now stands below 6 Billion

The biggest fail about this is yeah you generate hits but make no real fans at all. You hear that all my indies? No future in your faking!

The FAQ for Vagex lists these benefits for using their services:

• Greater perception of popularity
• Your video will show up as suggested/related more often
• Higher search rankings on Google and YouTube
• In search results, people tend to choose videos with more view

Check out the website MusicThinkTank for examples of how it goes down. This is just a travesty in my opinion. I'm pretty sure anybody that would use their services wouldn't admit to anyone anyway!

Source: MusicThinkTank 

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5 Ways To Tame A Hoarse Voice

Have you ever had a studio session approaching only to find that you have a hoarse voice? This can be disastrous when schedules have been set and money has been invested. Rest assured, there are ways to prevent hoarseness and techniques you can try to get your voice back in shape. Here's a few from a well known vocal coach and artist development expert. She has worked with Donald Fagen from Steely Dan, Courtney Love from Hole, and the band Journey.

• Drink lots of water. Eat healthy fruits and vegetables, which have lots of moisture. 99% of the time, dehydration is the number one cause of a hoarse voice.
• Be sure to get sleep! As artists, living a rock star lifestyle is fun and sometimes necessary, but also leave you with a dreadful voice the next day. Learn to balance your time to get those zzz’s in.
• Technique- Gently pull the laryngeal muscles down (check the video).
• For long term correction of a hoarse voice:
• Get a vocal coach to learn to sing correctly. Maybe you are straining your vocal chords while pushing those melodies out.

If your hoarseness last more than a few days, go to an ENT (throat doctor). It could possibly be a reflux issue.

-Amber L.

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Gangnam what?!?!

The viral video “Gangnam Style” from Internet K-Pop sensation PSY is officially documented in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most liked video in YouTube history. Also, it has been viewed over 850,000,000 times, surpassing Justin Bieber’s hit “Baby”. The electro-influenced record has reached the number one position in across the world in countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and the U.K. But why? Before we break it down, peep the video:



Besides having a sick up-tempo beat that easily translates across cultures, and ridiculous lyrics to match, Gangnam Style also has some cultural relevance that fuels it's success. The term Gangnam refers to a district in Seoul, South Korea, which resembles the well-known district of Beverly Hills, California. Ironically, this video is portraying the exact opposite of what the Gangnam district is understood to be. But as we all know - irony has always been entertaining and not to mention a good strategy to make people pay attention.  Note and execute!

Joel Grant

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Thousands Not Claiming Royalties. Are You One?

Attention Artist/Indie Labels! SoundExchange may have royalties waiting for you to collect. They have done extensive outreach to make the music industry aware of this through online news outlets, targeting individuals via social media channels, attending conferences/speaking on panels, and hosting informational/educational webinars. They have recently released a list of 50,000 sound recording owners and performing artists that have yet to receive their royalties with amounts ranging from $10 to over 100,000 to be collected. You can now use their searchable database to locate unclaimed royalties. (link below)

SoundExchange recently reached a peak in their 3^rd quarter payouts, which amounted to 122.5 million. This shows that there are many artists that know the importance of registering with SoundExchange, but there are still many that don’t. 

According to SoundExchange, some of the reasons why artists/labels don’t register are:

  ·  Too good to be true: Believe SoundExchange isn’t for real, or that there are strings/payments attached to money

·   Lack of differentiation between copyrights/performance rights organizations (PROs): Believe that ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC membership covers all performance royalties for them, or believe that registering with SoundExchange will jeopardize other PRO status.

·  Lack of education: Don’t understand what SoundExchange is, where this right/royalty/revenue comes from.

·   Confusion about who may be owed digital performance royalties, and who can claim them.

·   Procrastination/confusion: Have heard about SoundExchange or digital performance royalties, but are understaffed, busy, and haven’t gotten around to filling out the forms.

·  Low/incorrect expectations: Potential registrant does not register because they think they will not have a large enough check to warrant the effort or believe only big-name labels are eligible.

·  Data confusion: believing SoundExchange requires: ISRC codes, tax ID, etc.
Registration Frustration: Potential registrant has trouble with registration process; doesn’t want to fill out forms, etc.

Full Article: http://www.soundexchange.com/2012/08/17/royalties-waiting-find-out-in-our-new-database/

-Amber

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What Ever Happened To "What's His Name"?

You know that guy... the one that had a couple hit singles but then mysteriously fell off the map. Yeah, that guy! DON'T BE HIM. Be the guy that's actually remembered after you've sung your last tune? More specifically though, what will we remember? What legacy will you leave behind? These are the questions that should be ringing in your head as you make creative decisions about your image, sound, or style. 

STRIVE TO INSPIRE: As we think about the great artists that have come before us and the artists of today, it's easy to identify all the different reasons why we remember them. Primarily, they inspire our creativity so we pay homage to them in our own music.Needless to say, as an artist you should strive to create something that will be remembered for many years to come and be used as a device through which others can find their own inspiration. 

Whether you'll be remembered for your music, your creativity, your style or your business savvy, you should always keep in mind HOW you want to be remembered. Decide what legacy you want to leave behind and let it guide your every move.

by Raymond Bernard.

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SHOW: GADIVA @ Eastside Lounge

Our home girl "GADIVA" is doing her thing on this coming Tuesday, November 20th, at Eastside Lounge. She always puts on a good show. If you ask us, she's definitely one of those artists you just have GOT to know (ya know!?) Click the flyer for details.

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Sampling Without Stealing (VIDEO)

For all you producers out there, the question is, “How do you sample 70’s soul records without completely stealing the artist’s recording?” Well, here are a couple of lessons from Kev Brown to help start you off. Kev Brown has produced tracks for Goapele, Raheem DeVaughn, Busta Rhymes, Marley Marl, and Pete Rock, just to name a few. Here are some of what he suggest:

Step 1: Find a DOPE piece of a record (key term is “piece” )

Step 2: Chop the piece into small phrases or samples

Step 3: Time-stretch your sample

Step 4: Arrange a unique loop (this is where you can get really creative)

Step 5: Add drums to give your production a nice swing

(swing = feeling of the track)

Viola! You have now arranged the anatomy of a classic hip-hop soul record! Give yourself some props, not everyone is capable of creating a DOPE joint. Now check out the video below for more Kev Brown.

Post by Joel Grant

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