What should the price of recorded music be?

by | May 27, 2008 | Question, Retail

DJ Cro supporting Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings in Birmingham One of the problems of recorded music is the issue of price. With mp3s being an essentially infinite and perfectly replicable resource, the market price is a theoretical (and quite often practical) zero....

Is 'pay to play' ever a good idea?

by | May 19, 2008 | Promotion, Question

This one’s easy. No, no, no, no, no (yes, occasionally) and no. By and large, venues, festival organisers and promoters who insist that musicians bring a certain number of ticket-buying punters to their gigs should pretty much have their licences revoked in my...

How can you sell mp3s at gigs?

by | May 12, 2008 | Media, Question

I’ve had this question in a number of forms. The most common one is the artist who doesn’t really sell many CDs through retail, but every time they perform live, they go through 20, 50 or even 100 CDs over the merchandise table. The question is – if...

So what should be on my MySpace page?

by | May 9, 2008 | network, Question

An entrant in Ze Frank’s Ugly MySpace Competition Another one I get asked an awful lot – particularly by musicians who are just getting started in the online environment. They’ve heard about MySpace, and that it’s where all the musicians are...

Is MySpace over?

by | May 8, 2008 | network, Question

I get this question a lot. Because you hear this a lot. And musicians want to know, because most of them rely on MySpace as an integral part of their online strategy. Well, as much as it pains me to say this, I have to come back with the answer: No, I’m sorry...

How do I find time for the internet?

by | May 4, 2008 | Productivity, Question

One of the biggest problems of integrating internet strategies into your already busy music industry life is the problem of becoming overwhelmed with information. Now that you’re using the internet, there are all these sites to maintain, update, and provide...