Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: You say you want to make money in the music business and you don’t care how. Let’s see if you’re ready. Greedy? Check. Ruthless? Check. Predatory? Check. Okay, you just might be well-prepared to screw artists by putting on a music [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: In blending soul, R&B, gospel, and rock, Solomon Burke had the ability to reach from the stage and shake listeners to their very core. The might and majesty of Burke is honored in this updated version of a review of his [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: David William Kearney is a guitar slinger who will happily do axe-battle with you using blues, R&B, or rock. He’ll take on all comers with sweet toned ballads or psychedelic frenzy. And as this long-lost nineteen-ninety-eight article shows, the man has [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Joke book or important guide to the music industry? Author and compiler Jeffrey Weber believes it is both. One thing is certain: you will laugh, wince, howl, grimace, and laugh some more. Two musicians walk into a bar. One doesn’t order [...]

Music Industry Newswire Column: Playing in rock bands, creating soundtracks for motion pictures and television, and writing modern classical music would be an impossible combination for most people but composer/performer Jocelyn Pook is succeeding in all of these arenas. Jocelyn Pook does not hear sound [...]

Music Industry Newswire REVIEW: Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington’s music is not often discussed alongside the work of Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok, and Arnold Schoenberg, but Reed College professor David Schiff convincingly makes a case for comparing and contrasting the creativity of each of these composers. [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: The sound of threatening and dangerous music almost changed forever with the genre-bending tracks from White Zombie. They blazed briefly, but the economics of their situation caused an implosion and music is the loser.

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: After several visits to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the primary reactions were trepidation and consternation. The building itself is quite impressive but the well-packaged contents of the RARHOFAM are often silly and ultimately insignificant.

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: His name was Paul Atkinson and he played electric guitar. He made music in the most inventive of the British Invasion bands, The Zombies, whose gorgeous harmonies, infectious hooks and intriguing jazz-pop blend made huge sellers of ‘She’s Not There,’ ‘Tell Her No’ and ‘Time of the Season.’

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: When you hear the word ‘image’ you may think of a pretty picture or the manufactured persona of someone who is famous for being famous. But if you say ‘Baron Wolman image,’ suddenly you’re talking about beauty, truth, and iconographic permanence.

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Got a new product to announce? Then have a launch party! Got a cause, a business, a candidate? Launch party! But what’s the recipe? You line-up these ingredients: venue, food, alcohol, DJ, band, singers, photographers, videographers, and ink-slingers like me. Stir together and serve chilled.

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Some of today’s rock music has excitement, power, and a terrific touch of sinful intent. But in addition to those things, Punk music had danger. By looking back, can we look forward to a rock resurgence?

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Smoothly written and dynamic, Sean Wilentz’ book is full of insight, commentary, and historical perspective about songwriting’s greatest poet. Like his subject, the work is reflection and refraction of fact, fancy, and fable.

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Storytellers are to be cherished and Clark Terry should be on a pedestal for his thoroughly entertaining autobiography. Brimming with life, love, music, and great characters, this book is as much a history of the twentieth century as it is a history of his ninety years (and counting!) .

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Not a musician, yet a giant of jazz. Undiplomatic, but an ambassador of American culture. Often impolite, but always truthful. Unequaled, yet a champion of equality. And that just touches the surface of Norman Granz, producer of more music than one [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: You may think of spoken word recordings as esoteric or antiquated, but in Jacob Smith’s new book they have a different purpose: to illuminate the roots of today’s society. When NASA launched the Voyager missions during 1977, the two spacecraft contained [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Rock and roll allows for a wide range of styles, including music that shocks listeners, attacks social conventions, intimidates casual onlookers, and angers the vast majority of people. A band called Foul Play accomplishes all of those things. Fortunately, they are [...]

Music Industry Newswire REVIEW: Mysterious goth band The Catholic Comb created a disturbing smoky concoction in 2005 and then apparently remained underground. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of them, either, but now that I know, I’m a convert. Sometimes a good album goes unnoticed. For a [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Larry John McNally uses emotion like a paintbrush when creating songs. You may not know his name, but you’ve heard his work performed by Eagles, Bonnie Raitt, Don Henley, Aaron Neville, Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, Jennifer Warnes, Atlantic Starr, Average White [...]

REVIEW: From his smooth writing style to his commitment to interviewing nearly every possible source involved with the material, there’s a lot to like about Joseph Vogel’s new book on the King of Pop. In fact, considering the poor quality of much that has previously [...]

REVIEW: Singer and professional vocal coach Teri Danz decided to put her own private lesson plan into a book with accompanying CD. The results cover less than fifty pages but singers will find something valuable on every page. You can sing, right? You hit all [...]

REVIEW: Playing together since 1986, Dennis Davison and Jonathan Lea have now done the impossible: they have created an original Christmas album that still rocks (well, folk-rocks, anyway). Plus, it covers all the emotions that surround the season, not just the traditional upbeat ones. That [...]

REVIEW: Music of the avant-garde is for those who are open to outrage, shock, conceptualized art, and boundary-pushing ideas. If you fit in that category, you will enjoy these tales of pioneers wrestling with the 1960s triumphs of their tragedies. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Until a few days ago, Nektar was nothing more than a puzzling footnote to me. According to everything I had read, this band was a standout progressive rock outfit in Europe during the nineteen seventies. Not making it big in the [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Buddy Holly. Songwriter. Rock and pop star. Not a one-hit or two-hit wonder, but a 27-hit wonder, all in about 18 months of worldwide fame. Born September 7, 1936, died February 3, 1959, but his songs will live until there is no more music.

REVIEW: Hearing one of the softer tracks from this album playing in my studio, a visitor dismissed it as “NIN lite.” I hear it as something much more complicated: “NIN expanded to include the invasion and conquest of modern classical music.” A chameleon alters its [...]

REVIEW: If his name sounds familiar, you are probably already a fan of rockabilly. But even if that genre’s blend of rock and country ain’t your thing, these songs are so much fun that you might become a Burnette-ette by the time you get halfway [...]

REVIEW: Before seeing the singer perform live, this album sat around the studio for a few months. After playing it a couple of times at various volume levels, the urge to write about it became too palpable to pass up. While several tracks leave me [...]

REVIEW: Noisemakers unite! Calling all anti-composers and radical music theorists! That was the idea of a group of wildly unpredictable academics and stars of the experimental music world back in “the sixties.” Cage, Oliveros, Neuhaus, Reich, Budd, Foss and dozens more appear in this collection [...]

ARTICLE: You already know that pitching songs to music supervisors can be a good thing. In fact, everyone else also knows it, from players and songwriters to publishers and managers. That’s part of the problem. Too many people involved with music are aware of the [...]

REVIEW: Back in the early 1990s, Randy Poe authored a book entitled “Music Publishing: A Songwriter’s Guide.” Several revisions, editions and rewrites later, Poe returned with “The New Songwriter’s Guide to Music Publishing” (Writer’s Digest Books, 157 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1582978048, $18.99) and I am here [...]

MusicIndustryNewswire COLUMN: Quick, take this test: Which of the following names do you recognize? Eddie Kramer. Elliot Scheiner. Matt Forger. Ken Allardyce. Michael C. Ross. Rafa Sardina. Joe Chiccarelli. Brent Fischer. Time’s up. Pencils down. Anyone have some answers? (Anyone, anyone, Bueller. . . ?) [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: It’s eleven o’clock at night and I am being driven down a pleasant tree-lined residential street in Van Nuys, one of the three dozen cities in a section of Los Angeles called the San Fernando Valley. Or just “The Valley,” as [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Not in my house! How many kids have heard that phrase from an outraged parent who is nearly apoplectic over the latest sonic creation of artists in rock, pop, rap, modern country, goth, death metal, etc.? From the Andrew Sisters’ “Rum [...]

MusicIndustryNewswire COLUMN: Some songs sound special. There are recordings where there are licks that are tasty and satisfying every time you hear them. Recordings with such a powerful groove that you dance even if you’re sitting down. Recordings where the atmosphere or the feel is [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: For the first twenty years of rock ‘n’ roll, brand names were not often associated with band names. The prevailing view was that corporate sponsorship represented crass commercialism. But by the time of The Rolling Stones 1981 tour, things had changed. [...]

COLUMN: There are friendly battles between many organizations in the music industry. Competition brings that out. There are also some interesting love/hate relationships. You know, like when companies want to fight Apple, but only when they’re not trying to get into bed with them. So [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Ahh, the Stupor Bowl, that great annual montage of violent sports and commercials. Sixty minutes of football, obliterating nearly four hours of running time. Sixty-eight commercials, obliterating all vestiges of credibility and good taste. True, there were some fine-looking spots and [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: You cannot teach someone to write good song lyrics. That’s just how I feel. And yet, I kind of changed my mind after reading “The Art of Writing Great Lyrics” by Pamela Phillips Oland (Allworth Press, 260 pages, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-58115-093-3). [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Imagine a world in which you receive money every time your music is played. There are firms that appear to be working to make this dream a reality. Representatives of Soundmouse, Landmark, ASCAP and APM spoke about the intriguing possibilities on [...]

Music Industry Newswire Column: While I tend to cheer for whatever team is competing against the USC Trojans, I have to admit that the University of Southern California campus is magnificent, as is their annual Institute on Entertainment Law and Business, co-sponsored by the USC [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: When BMI announced they were teaming with Digital Hollywood to present a day-long conference entitled “Content, Copyright & Commerce,” a few thoughts popped into my head. First, it seemed that the title was a brilliant and concise description of where we [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Unlike the USA, music lovers in Europe are likely to embrace multiple genres and styles. As international music artist Anand Bhatt puts it, “The tastes of music buyers in Europe aren’t as dependent on what’s piped through major media. They’re much [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: The title of this article is the same as the title of a book that should be owned by every songwriter and music publisher. That book is: “Music, Money and Success: The Insider’s Guide to Making Money in the Music Business,” [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: The answer to that question is “no” because we all hear differently. This is not a big deal for most situations in life, but it can be critical in the music industry. Your music moves you. My music moves me. But [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Let’s say you want to make some money in the music business. Let’s also say you have no scruples about how you get the cash as long as it looks somewhat legit. There are many dark alleys down which you can [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Getting information about songwriting and music publishing is easier than ever because of the Internet but the problem is that the Internet presents more information than anyone can assimilate. Compounding the problem, some of the information is just plain wrong. That’s [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Ted Cohen is considered a visionary in music and technology, and I agree. After all, he played an important role in devising the licensing agreements that helped create the Rhapsody subscription service and the iTunes Music Store. He got started in [...]

Music Industry Newswire – COLUMN: Ambrose Bierce began his “Devil’s Dictionary” in an 1881 newspaper column. His definitions were sometimes funny. For example, he defined rum as “fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.” Many of Bierce’s ideas hold true today, such as his [...]

Music Industry Newswire – COLUMN: Music revenue is poised to reverse a decade-long descent. Yes, you read that correctly. Despite all the dire news stories of the past several years, there are reasons for optimism in the music business. Slowly, inexorably, the economic picture is [...]

Music Industry Newswire – COLUMN: Reading recent posts by music industry analysts Bob Lefsetz and Paul Resnikoff, you might think the entire concert part of the music industry has gone down the tubes. This is not to imply that the contents of the Lefsetz Letter [...]

COLUMN: “Why make music?” The question was full of disdain and contempt. Spit out at me by a distant relative, it was insulting as well as irritating. While my girlfriend at the time instantly responded “Why not?” all I could think of in reply was [...]

COLUMN: Since I started managing a music publishing company, many songwriters, singers, bands, managers and composers have sent me e-mails asking about decisions they need to make in their careers. One of the most common questions is “Should I sign a non-exclusive agreement with a [...]

COLUMN: There may be a world of money waiting for songwriters, publishers and performers, but collecting the revenue internationally can be perplexing. It is so complicated, in fact, that the California Copyright Conference (CCC) dedicated one of their monthly programs to the topic. The CCC [...]

COLUMN: There was a strange shift in the cosmos in 1999. “That’s when ‘mp3′ first overtook ‘sex’ as the top search term on Yahoo,” notes Tim Quirk of Rhapsody. And why was that change taking place? Because there was “a new piece of software written [...]

COLUMN: Okay, I admit that those four dreaded letters, DMCA, do not actually stand for a law that prevents copyright holders from making a living. DMCA actually stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And what that stands for is allowing big corporations to make more [...]

COLUMN: You can find many excellent books about music, songwriting, and music publishing. I know because I own some of them, like “All You Need to Know About the Music Business,” by Donald S. Passman, which is the most entertaining fact-based book on the subject. [...]

COLUMN: How much money have you earned from your songs? At any given moment in time, it is difficult to know the answer to that question. For example, eight of my albums are on iTunes but they are distributed by an indie record company and [...]

COLUMN: Right this minute, one of your songs could be playing somewhere in the world and you may not know it. Your composition might be on terrestrial radio, internet radio, broadcast television, satellite radio, cable TV, satellite TV, in a nightclub, at a bar, or [...]

COLUMN: The description on Amazon was interesting so I purchased “The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution” by David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard (Hal Leonard/Berklee Press, $16.95, ISBN: 978-0-87639-059-7), not realizing it was written in 2004 and released the following year. Sure, [...]

COLUMN: Music was at the heart of nearly three-quarters of the eleven million commercials that aired during Super Bowl XXXXVMLCDMIIEEEEE or whatever they were calling it. And music was the bleeding heart of the halftime break. Even some segments of the game itself were set [...]

COLUMN: Sure, the magnificent array of musical products known as The NAMM Show was just a teensy bit smaller than in years past, but you would never know it once you were walking through aisle after aisle of shiny, flashy, nifty displays. Could anyone get [...]

Music Industry Newswire staff editor Scott G reports on his visit to this year’s Winter NAMM 2010 in Anaheim, Calif. While there is always more to see than the brain can always assimilate, Scott has picked out some of the things which called to him [...]

COLUMN: Songwriters need to be savvy about song structure, chord changes, modulation, harmony, and lyrics. A songwriter might know all that yet still remain poor and undiscovered. If that describes you, don’t despair and don’t give up. There are a number of ways to make [...]

COLUMN: You are driving through town, one eye on the traffic and the other on the stereo, when suddenly you hear something every musician dreams about: your music is being played on the radio. And not just any channel, we are talking about a highly-promoted [...]

COLUMN: Before you have your artist sign on the dotted line, what exactly is in that music contract? You could be launching their career into the stratosphere or making a mistake that will haunt both of you for the rest of your life. Many music [...]

COLUMN: Attorneys, accountants, music publishers, and copyright defenders came together in Los Angeles recently and the result was a spirited and passionate discussion of rights and money. It was a lot more fun than you might expect from a room full of businesspeople. First, because [...]

INTERVIEW: Writing and producing songs, composing film themes, and creating music for advertising are distinct art forms. Or perhaps they are commercial enterprises. Or both. Doing all three quite well is a rare accomplishment but that’s what Shari Verona does, day in and day out [...]

COLUMN: When I was asked to join a program encouraging kids to stay in school, I said yes. Did I do it for the right reason? Nope. It was a selfish act at the start. But I changed my attitude. After reading about the plan, [...]

COLUMN: You go through your musical memories and up pops that long lost classic, that awesome album from years gone by, that ideal example of “the way music used to be,” that shining beacon of sonic excellence that puts today’s posers to shame. “I’ll purchase [...]

COLUMN: You probably noticed that the music business is more about business than music. As a music publisher, this fact is made clear to me every day, but it really hit home this month in events held by the CCC, NARIP, AIMP, PMA, and NMPA. [...]

REVIEW: Two fast-paced and entertainment documentaries in the same week? Yup, and both saturated with superb music from fade-in to fade-out. “It Might Get Loud” has the pedigree (director Davis Guggenheim won an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth”) but “I Need That Record!” has the [...]

REVIEW: Jazz. Wait! Don’t stop reading. Sure, the very word frightens some people. But there are all kinds of jazz. Smooth jazz is pleasant, bop is pulsating, West Coast jazz is cool, and free jazz is way out there. But all of it can be [...]

COLUMN: You have heard music from the clients of Jan Linder-Koda many times in your life. Today’s music scene features several artists who have worked with Linder-Koda and her Angel Diva Music firm (angeldivamusic.com), including DJ Ashba (Motley Crue, Guns ‘n’ Roses), Penn Badgley (“Gossip [...]

COLUMN: People have been sharing my music ever since I released my first album in 2002. True, I offered free tracks from “Grin Groove” to DJs, producers and remixers, but those efforts garnered publicity that led to revenue. Plus, it introduced “The G-Man” to other [...]

INTERVIEW: Music does not hook up with money very often these days. In fact, they’re not even dating. Piracy, both personal and corporate, affects the creators of music in many ways, none of them good. But there is a glimmer of hope that is currently [...]

BOOK REVIEW: Punk meets metal, punk loses metal, punk gets metal. That is one of the themes of Steve Waksman’s “This Ain’t the Summer of Love” (University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-25717-7), a sometimes down ‘n’ dirty but always scholarly examination of the flashpoint where [...]

COLUMN: If you want to hear new music in the future, good luck. Musicians and songwriters are being pushed out of the marketplace. Take a look at this simple but unassailable logic: “When you turn on your tap, water comes out and you’re billed for [...]

REVIEW: Thank you, Grammy Awards, for not entirely embarrassing the music business this year. Sure, there were problems with the presentation, but this show had fewer eyeball-rolling moments than any awards program in recent memory. Usually, the Grammys have so many cringe-worthy moments that I [...]

REPORT: There were so many great products at this year’s NAMM show that we just didn’t get to cover everything in January’s article. Here are more neat and nifty noisemakers to consider for your music manipulation needs. Allen & Heath While they were announcing an [...]

REVIEW: Creating a song can be joy or toil, art or craft, pleasure or pain. What it cannot be is free from effort. Certain aspects of human existence must be utilized in the making of music: your brain, your heart, your soul. Otherwise, noise is [...]

COLUMN: People in the business of presenting live music bear some responsibility for the current turmoil in our industry. Bob Lefsetz has written passionately about the outrageous overpricing going on for arena shows, but there are also problems on a smaller scale at local shows. [...]

REPORT: First of all, let me say that attending the NAMM show is a great experience. It seems to feature hands-on displays from every manufacturer even remotely concerned with music. The only gear maker I could think of without a booth was Apple, but one [...]

EVENT REVIEW: There used to be a big difference between a concert that sold out and a band that sold out. But for many artists, that difference no longer exists. Many examples of this new economic reality were examined at a fact-packed expo entitled “Bands, [...]

EVENT REVIEW: Blue Microphones this past week threw a private party (November 6, 2008), to demonstrate their latest products and it turned out to have the most security of any event in the city. The site was the Gibson/Baldwin Showroom which is right next to [...]

COLUMN: Artists need publicity, public relations, media management, hype, hoopla, and buzz. In every major city can be found oodles of failed screenwriters, unpublished novelists, unsung musicians, and nameless poets who call themselves PR specialists. Does that sound unfair? Remember, I’m one of them. Sure, [...]

REVIEW: These Thousand Emotions — Have you ever thought about what is inside the sounds you like to hear? Harmonics and overtones are in there, for a start, but it can go way beyond that with some artists. A few special people are able to [...]

COLUMN: Payola is a fun-sounding word that may make you remember coloring with a Crayola 64-pack when you were three, but the word essentially refers to bribery. To be precise, bribery in exchange for promotion of a product, as in payoffs for the airing of [...]

INTERVIEW: When you hear the name DoubleVision, you may think it’s a byproduct of too much drinking. Instead, DoubleVision is a singing duo of identical twins from South Australia. Recording in a country-pop style, Candice and Nadinne are making waves down under and having a [...]

COLUMN: Scott G says we shouldn’t be too hard on Maxim magazine for reviewing an album they hadn’t heard. They are pioneers in a new form of rock journalism.

COLUMN: Scott G was happy to ogle the tons of software, DAWs, gadgets, guitars, and gear galore at the NAMM show, but an Apple demo seemed to predict the way the industry is moving.

COLUMN: Proving once more that bigger does not mean better, the 50th Grammy Awards event was bombastic, bumbling and bloated. Scott G watched and would have been appalled if he wasn’t so bored.

COLUMN: Going behind the scenes and inside the shenanigans, Scott G peers through the smoke and tries to avoid the noise as he accompanies Giannetta Marconi to the Los Angeles Music Awards.

COLUMN: Like everyone who loves music, Scott G has noticed the ad world’s insistence on borrowing old songs to set the mood for commercials. Is it because they’re too lame to come up with original music? And how much does it hurt the music business?

INTERVIEW: Managing at least 5 interlocking careers, Los Angeles-based Sheena Metal maintains a wickedly funny view of her life on the radio, on stage, and behind-the-scenes in the swirling worlds of music, movies and TV. The first time I saw Sheena Metal perform was in [...]

COLUMN: Record companies, radio stations and iTunes don’t fully control what music you get to hear. Scott G examines the ever-changing role of the music supervisor for motion pictures and TV.

REVIEW: Blending big ballads with confessional lyrics, Sheva touches listeners at the core of their emotions. Scott G gets lost in the melodies of “The Closest Thing” even while admiring the sonic textures of her band.

REVIEW: You’ll find clever lyrics, strong melodies, and excellent musicianship on songs in several genres on the new Rob Kendt album. But as Scott G points out, this may be too much of a good thing. Rob Kendt is a tall quiet fellow who writes [...]

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — You won’t hear “shhhh” at this event: the Los Angeles Public Library teams up with L.A. Music Network to launch a live music series in all styles and for all ages. In an arresting new live music series, “LAMN Gets Loud [...]

INTERVIEW: Lead singer of indie bands Pope Jane and Junkie Cousin, film actress, political clothing designer, and outrageous singer/songwriter, Danielle Egnew has a huge voice, legit stage training and a compulsion to rock. Scott G interviews the forceful yet friendly femme fatale. G-Man: You have [...]