As a professional writer and occasional music manager, I often encounter bands and solo musicians that work very hard to attract attention from music management agencies. Unfortunately, a legion of grifters uses the raw desire for success against many smart, talented music professionals. If a representative from a music management agency contacts you, use these [...]

There’s a new trend that’s popping up that’s kind of interesting. It’s called “crowdsourcing” and it’s a pretty interesting concept. The idea behind crowdsourcing is that a band can raise money to record and press an album by going to their fans. In contributing money, the fan buys a stake in the album; in other [...]

Internet forums and discussion boards have become a valuable medium for establishing an online presence, building a reputation, networking with peers, and getting feedback on relevant topics and ideas. With that said, there are many forums and discussion boards on the Internet specific to music artists, musicians, and songwriters. These music forums are packed with [...]

A few years back I read an article that asked several famous and successful people what was the best best advice that they’ve ever received. Most of the advice was pretty cookie cutter; it’s what you would expect to read in an article like that. There was one piece of advice that was pretty good [...]

Here’s a fun article that I found on practicing on the street and getting paid as a street musician and getting paid for it. If you don’t already know, I live just outside New York and have seen street musicians all of my life. A recent development (within the past few years anyway) has been [...]

Have you ever faced your time to shine, and felt overcome with an intense hesitation or worry about an upcoming performance? As the time nears for you to address your audience, do you suffer from sweaty palms? Is there a lump in your throat? Do you experience tremors, tension, stuttering, upset stomach or loss of [...]

In the world of business literature there’s always talk of “networking” and how to do it. It’s smart really as networking is a means by which you can get support when you need it and stumble upon unique opportunities that you wouldn’t have gotten if you didn’t know the right people. For your music career, [...]

I received an e-mail with a request for a post. It’s from Dan, a member of the NY/NJ based band Havoc Effect [dead link removed]. Dan writes: Hey man, love the blog, read it everyday (thanks to my RSS feed). I was hoping you can address the topic of a Rider, and when to use [...]

The other night I was having a discussion with my friend. We were talking about how far along home recording technology has come; with the tremendous advances made in the technology, and the effects compression has on all recorded music, it’s very difficult to distinguish a well produced home recording from a studio recording. The [...]

Yesterday was a pretty good day for music news, in that there were a few interesting articles that showed up in the mainstream press. The first article that caught my attention was about a study that was done, showing that rock stars have a lower life expectancy than most people. While the deaths of rock [...]