Music Marketing Today

The music business today is a very competitive arena. Musicians starting out generally have to put in a lot of work just to get noticed. The days of getting discovered by an A&R while playing at your local pub are almost ancient history. Today's artist has to self promote using a plethora of mediums and gain a following on their own in most cases just to be looked at by a record company. (Deadmau5 (in the pic) had a 1 year world tour before signing with a major label) With all of the money lost by the recording business from the digital revolution they have no money to waste on taking big risks on artists. You have to prove yourself marketable first. Many artist have smartened up and realized that if they're going to do all of the due diligence to get signed they might as well sign themselves and not give up 85% of their profits. Many artists today start their own labels and/or do limited partnerships with larger labels. http://www.musicbizacademy.com/articles/cs_survival.htm Doing this allows an artist to keep more of their money and royalties while also having the backing power of a larger label to get them into better venues. Once recognized many artists are also becoming multi talented entrepreneurs starting clubs, restaurants, clothing companies, etc.

YouTube has also been monumental in getting new artists noticed. MTV, BET, and VH1 have found that reality television is a better profit engine and have almost dumped music videos all together. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/02/mtv-drops-music-television-from-its-logo.html YouTube fills this void at the present day. All of these differences in the music industry have companies scrambling to make changes that will keep their profits up. I personally like the way things are going today because it puts more money in the pockets of the talent and also makes it easier for the average person to get their music exposed. I believe that music is wonderful and that everyone should have an opportunity to share their art to the world.

Bill and Nancy

I spent some time watching a bit of news and stumbled upon a fantastic anchor by the name of Nancy Grace. I found myself immediately entertained by her keen ability to ask mind numbingly pointless questions to her guests. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2010/03/19/ng.aruba.possible.skeleton.cnn This talent is surpassed only by her bossy southern mother speaking style and her show's true lack of organization. Her story topics tend to revolve around family tragedys and scandals. I feel that her show's audience is comprised of the same type of person that might reach for the National Enquirer at the local grocery store. She seems to report the news with more of a (this is my opinion) type of way although I wouldn't call it an opinion show. Another anchor I watched was Bill O'reilly. He is pretty conservative and admits just that. His show concentrates on political matters and he often has a variety of political guests as well as other guests who work for Fox. No issue on the show is presented in a balanced way and everything has a spin leaving me to question the whole "no spin zone" thing. Again, the show is rather entertaining to watch but you don't really ever get the whole story. He is known to yell a lot, cut of guests in mid sentence, and generally controls all conversations on the show. He doesn't really seem to side with any particular presidential candidates and is very good at making sure that in any situation he'll be able to talk about what was wrong with something. That's just good journalism appearantly. All in all I think that both of these anchors could take some cues from one Anderson Cooper if they plan on "reporting" news and if entertainment is the idea than let's leave it to Stewart and Cobert. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wgkha9o6_Y

The Reality Of It All

Have you ever really taken a look at reality television and wondered how much of it is actually reality? First we must define "reality". Reality, according to Merriam-Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reality) is the quality or state of being real. I suppose that you could say that this applies to everything then. In my opinion reality television is a partial reality. In most cases real people (as opposed to fake people) are dropped into an environment that has been pre-structured to encompass particular situations that will evoke almost predetermined responses from the participants. By being able to pre-qualify candidates for these shows and extensively interview and run psycho-analysis testing on them, they can already have determined a series of outcomes to different situations, thus making these shows almost as well planned and organized as your average sitcom with one distinct difference...CASH MONEY! (http://www.businessinsider.com/jersey-shore-stars-want-a-raise-mtv-should-give-it-to-them-2010-1) Jersey Shore stars are still finalizing negotiations to earn them upward of $10,000 per episode This is a punch in the face when you consider the advertising money brought into MTV by the show. Real TV stars would never accept this. Remember a little show called Seinfeld? Peep out the link to learn what a good salary in television looks like.(http://www.hollywood.com/news/EXTRA_Greedy_Friends_or_Justified_Friends/312238) Reality television has simply found a way to keep the masses busy watching a different type of nonsense while "The Man" (always wanted to say that) amasses great wealth all while influencing our decisions with product placement. I wish I'd have thought of it. As much as we all try to pretend that we are individuals that make decisions based on our own needs, many of us fail to realize that most of those decisions are skewed toward what others want us to need. All of these shows influence us making us do and act in certain ways. Media can be a very powerful thing, especially if people believe that the reality that they see on TV is real. At the end of the day though, it's a crazy and confusing world out there and at least there is a balance to all the chaos.

I gotta read the paper?

As a teenager and young man, I used to read the newspaper quite regularly whether it was to browse the want ads, buy a new car, look at houses or just see what the world was up to. I haven't done this for a very long time and I'm guessing that a lot of others have put up their papers too. With Internet today being by far the best and most up to date medium for information the newspaper is obsolete. I took a look at the Washington Post today to see how it fared when put up against the Internet. I found that although the news information wasn't quite "old", it did lack that "This Just In!" feeling that I get online by refreshing a page. The Post's front page is full of gripping headlines that may convince political aficionados to take a gander, but I am still unswayed to buy this paper dinosaur. My car is in the shop so I thought I'd check out the car ads to look for a deal and to my surprise there was less than half of a page. I can't justify buying it nowadays. In the past few years the price of the Washington Post has more than doubled which in a sense is needed to maintain profits but also has more people asking themselves if they are getting any value for their money. Washingtonpost.com will give you all of the same articles and up to the minute information for free! Why would I shell out 75 cents to a dollar for a paper that just ends up in my recycling bin when I can get the information literally included in my Internet bill? Newspapers need to focus on having an online presence as well as cellular phone applications if they plan on staying in business much longer. The paper will soon be dead unless they can get some bogus legislature passed. http://www.mttlrblog.org/2009/08/19/posners-idea-to-save-the-newspaper-industry-get-rid-of-the-internet/ At the end of the day, progress is about learning to adapt. There's a new generation coming and they don't read newspapers; they do use internet; and if news companies can't realize their profit potentials online they'll be replaced by companies that can.