Tuesday 30 November 2010

Musician Insurance Is A Given

Accidents happen















 If you're an independent musician there are several things that we reckon you should be doing from day one. We're not saying that you're stupid if you don't do these things but you'll definitely be missing a trick. You've probably already read the millions of articles out there teaching you 'online marketing essentials for musicians' and how to 'improve your bands SEO'. The fact that there are a million of the previously mentioned articles knocking about suggests that these things are in fact important and we agree that they are. There's not however as much info pertaining to the importance of  something as simple as insurance for your equipment, but don't let this lack of information lead you to believe that it's not important - if you've invested a lot of your hard earned cash into your gear, you need to make sure you have adequate cover for it. Music rights management specialist Sentric Music recently published this excellent blog post which shows the average cost of a bands equipment and what the band would have to do in order to re-coup their losses.

A lot of musicians rely on their household insurance to cover their gear but it's often a very murky area when it comes to what's covered and many people have been caught 'with their pants down' so to speak and left out of pocket. Household Insurance may not cover your equipment outside of the UK - European and Worldwide cover is available on most tailored musician insurance packages. If you travel abroad with your instruments you're most probably going to need a tailored insurance policy and should seek some advice.

Another problem in relying on household Insurance to cover your equipment is that there is often a payment limit per item, e.g. the maximum you can claim per item could be £1,000 - thus, you're snookered if you have anything costing more.  There may also be a limit on the amount of cover provided for those items that leave the house with you.  Household insurance may not cover the instruments whilst they are in an external venue such as a pub or on the road, especially if they are being used for commercial purposes - which makes gigging a bit of a pain! Hopefully we're giving you an idea of the questions you need to ask when deciding what kind of insurance you need.  If you're a gigging musician or band it's just as imprtant to understand public liability.

Also, if you've ever tried to get a quote for your music equipment over the phone, you've probably been really perplexed at the randomness of some of the questions asked by insurance companies. It doesn't seem necessary to know your age, marital status and underwear colour (if this is asked, you should be worried) however, all the questions - however silly they may seem - are required by law.  The nice people at YOUR Insurance offer a quote and buy online facility so you can buy your insurance at a time that suits you and hopefully avoid having to speak to anybody!

To save you a lot of headache, misfortune and money in the long run musician insurance is extremely useful.

Monday 29 November 2010

Music Monday: Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx - NY Is Killing Me














Talk of a collaboration between Jamie from The XX and Gil Scott-Heron has been doing the rounds for some time now and it turns out the project is going to be Jamie xx remixes of studio sessions from Gil Scott-Heron's album 'I'm Here Now' and will be imaginatively entitled 'We're Here Now'.  The full album release is set for the 21st February 2011 but as a teaser they have released this track and intriguing accompanying video.  The track is an almost 6 minute long, brooding, dubby remix that echoes elements of the Florence And The Machine track that he re-worked earlier this year. You can buy NY is killing me here.

Thursday 25 November 2010

Music Executives Accuse PC Mag Of Encouraging Music Piracy

PC Magazine have riled several music industry executives after they published an article that gave an insight into the best places to illegally download music on the back of the Limewire shutdown.  The PC mag article gives half a dozen torrent sites and trackers they recommend for downloading music and attempts in vain to avoid a backlash with the disclaimer “all of these services should be used for legal downloads, of course.” - What can actually be done about this I'm not sure but one thing is true, it's been an excellent PR stunt for PC Magazine.

The full story can be read here
Read the article that has caused all the controversy here

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Dolphin Music: Roland Interactive Webcasts

The lovely people over at Dolphin Music have got together with Roland to offer access to their new interactive webcast sessions to showcase their gear and answer users questions.  There are three different webcasts on Saturday 27th November...

  • 11am-12pm: Drums with Craig Blundell
  • 1pm-2pm: Synths and Production with Luke Edwards
  • 3pm-4pm: Guitar and Amps with Alex Hutchings
I f you'd like to watch these webcasts live on the Dolphin Music website, simply click here and fill in the sign up form on their website...easy as that

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Artist Resources: Bandcamp

Get past the American Pie innuendo inducing title and you find a real gem of a website that is a must for all independent artists looking to get their music online. About a year old now, Bandcamp provides a home to host and display your music and ultimately if you so wish, flog it easily to your fans. Services like this have been around for many moons but what makes Bandcamp different is it's willingness to keep it's nose out of artists business and allow them to customise their pages as they see fit. When you visit a Bandcamp page you see exactly what the artist wants you to see and you don't get Bandcamp screaming in your face, nor do you get pesky third party advertisers popping up every five seconds promoting teeth whitening services and other highly irrelevant tosh.

Furthermore, a Bandcamp account is free for artists - they make their money by taking a 15% revenue share on sales. If an artists makes over $5000 in sales revenue, the share that Bandcamp take is reduced to 10%. If somebody buys your music from Bandcamp, the money goes directly into your designated Paypal account, Bandcamp don't hold on to it and pay you as and when they feel. If you want a great looking, easy to manage home for your music online then Bancamp is the only sensible choice.

And here's some lovely tracks from Bandcamp... Yeah, they let you embed your tracks on other websites too!










Monday 22 November 2010

Music Monday: Kanye West - Devil In A New Dress



Taken from his latest LP My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, 'Devil In A New Dress' is vintage Kanye with it's beautiful chopped up Smokey Robinson sample, authentic live drums and ghostly strings it's a welcome break from his recent auto-tune laden efforts.  This is the kind of production that first made Kanye West stand out on The Blueprint, it's very much along the same lines as 'Never Change' which sampled the legendary David Ruffin and was one of the best tracks on the seminal Jay Z record.

Here's the Smokey Robinson And The Miracles track which 'Devil In A New Dress' samples...try and spot it if you can ;)

Friday 19 November 2010

MySpace’s “Mashup with Facebook”

Today, Myspace announced ”Mashup with Facebook” allowing users to port their Facebook Likes to Myspace to “create a personalized stream of entertainment content.” By offering new users signing up through Facebook Connect a way to populate their stream, users are more likely to stay engaged until they can establish friendships on the network. Meanwhile, existing Myspace users can augment their stream. The integration operates under the assumption that while everyone has a Facebook profile with Likes, there is content from these publishers that is unique to Myspace. Click here to read full article at Inside Facebook

Thursday 18 November 2010

Yamaha: In The Studio With Four Tet



Keiran Hebden aka Four Tet puts the Yamaha Tenori-On through it's paces.  Learn more about this instrument at Dolphin Music

Ebo Taylor - Love & Death



Another great release from Strut records and Ebo Taylor's first ever internationally released studio album.   Love & Death the title track from the record is such a beautiful and delicate sound that it immediately stands out.  It's a re-make of a track recorded on the album Ahuru Yenzu in 1980 - in fact the original was played by Gilles Peterson on his show this week which you can listen to here... it's about an hour and eight minutes in.

Listen to Love & Death on Spotify

Wednesday 17 November 2010

Egyptrixx - Start From The Beginning (Video)


Egyptrixx - Start from the Beginning from Datdatdat / A. N. Fischer on Vimeo.

Start from the Beginning“ - Egyptrixx / Bible Eyes LP (Night Slugs 2011)
Animated short by Berlin artist A. N. Fischer / Datdatdat.

Egyptrixx hail from Toronto and are signed to Night Slugs which is Bok Bok and L-Vis 1990's record label.  They're due to release an LP on Night Slugs in 2011 so look out for that.

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Egyptrixx MySpace
Night Slugs
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Anfischer
Datdatdat

Monday 15 November 2010

Win a day of recording studio time @ Flesh & Bone studios

Sound Collective UK have teamed up with the excellent Flesh & Bone studios to offer our readers the chance to win a day's recording time.  All you have to do to enter the competition is fill in the entry form below and we will draw the winner at random on Tuesday 7th December 2010. Good Luck!


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Tick to enter the competition and accept the terms and conditions, if not, you will be entered for this competition but your details will only used for this purpose and no future campaigns or third parties.


Tuesday 9 November 2010

Believe the Hypem – MySpace is Still Essential for Artists

 MySpace has been wounded animal for quite some time now - the Titanic of social networks, sunk by an iceberg of its own poor programming, bugs, glitches and stagnant format whose users were left to swim ashore to the new world of social networking, the promise land. Facebook has constantly adapted its system while MySpace on the other hand has shown little in terms of resilience and ingenuity - currently it resembles a beaten-up boxer on the ropes, the bookies odds stacked against the once great social networking titan.  Just like the wily veteran boxer on the ropes, MySpace still has the ability to land a knockout blow at any second, it still has a secret weapon and a foundation of skills that have served it well since day one: this prize asset however has been ignored in the futile attempt to compete with Facebook in its own back yard.

What the MySpace lot need to do is use their loaf and admit that they are no longer a social network - it’s no good for finding out which one of your friends ‘Likes’  ‘Cute Kittens With Fainting Goat Syndrome’ or has ‘just checked in at: Greggs The Bakers’, because your friends aren’t there – but it does have its uses.  There has been a lot of talk about the soon to be re-branding of MySpace and we’re in full agreement that something needs to be done to bring the service up to date. However, anyone who suggests that musicians should ditch MySpace completely is a few ladyfingers short of a trifle.  MySpace is still one of the best Google ranking pages a musician can set up.  Take this example for instance; we looked at the current most blogged artists as listed on The Hype Machine (hypem.com) today and Googled their names to see if they had ditched MySpace and if not how their MySpace page was ranking. The list looks like this:

Kanye West

Ok so Kanye is bound to have a MySpace page as well as every other possible online channel, platform, animal or mineral available to man. However, this should suggest that if MySpace is that dead, it would be drowned in a sea of other sites. No such thing: MySpace is the fourth highest Google result after his website, the G.O.O.D Fridays site (which has been a really nice series by the way – check out ‘The Joy’ with Curtis Mayfield) and Wikipedia.

Smith Westerns

Pop the name of blog darling of the moment, Smith Westerns into Google and the top result you get is MySpace.  Investigate a little bit further and you find that they last checked in today and still keep their tour dates updated and even have contact details for their management, booking and PR team...Old school but still it seems very relevant for this band.

Tame Impala

This is becoming a reoccurring theme in this research...YES MySpace is the top Google search result.

Warpaint

Warpaint.com 1 – MySpace 0
MySpace is only the second highest ranked page for much knickers-wetted-over Warpaint. It still beats Wikipedia and Warpaints record label Rough Trade

The Decemberists

The lowest chart position so far for MySpace, coming in at a not so shabby fifth

From this little bit of research it seems my point is well and truly proved; it’s doubled in size, I’ve whacked it in the oven and I’m now enjoying the mouth-watering taste of freshly baked success.  Terrible puns and gloating aside, the point is if you’re an independent band/artist, one of the first things you want to do is get yourself a good quality MySpace page, branded in line with the rest of your social media presence and updated regularly with tracks, events and other good stuff.  You don’t have to use MySpace as a marketing tool, simply jump aboard its SEO train and ride that sucker ‘til the wheels come off.