Bertelsmann and Sony BMG Financial Tree Prior to Break Off (Bertelsmann in middle)

Indie artists now is your time!! If you really want to know what is going on with music industry don’t look at the TV. Read the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or follow CNN Money. Follow the money trail, the share value. The numbers don’t lie (except for the one’s they may have……hmmm).

Example: Sony BMG & Bertelsmann
As you know Sony BMG has been the powerhouse and yes they are still standing. However, on August 5, 2008 the New York Times reported that “Bertelsmann will sell its half of Sony BMG to the Sony Corporation in a $1.2 Billion deal” NY Times Deal Book, editor Andrew Sorkin. Sounds good for Sony eh? Not really when you look at the numbers.

Numbers on the Sony BMG Deal
“In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sony said Bertelsmann was receiving about $600 million in cash from Sony BMG to redeem part of its stake, and an additional $600 million from Sony Corporation for the rest.” NY Times Deal Book, editor Andrew Sorkin. Some of you are saying what does that mean? Well to sum it all up “the deal puts a value of about $1.8 billion on Sony BMG.” NY Times Deal Book, editor Andrew Sorkin. That is not good!! Think of all the artists that Sony BMG houses. Let me name a few:

Some Sony BMG Artists (not all of them and not alphabetical)

Alicia Keys
Aretha Franklin
Aerosmith
Beyonce
Billy Joel
Barbara Streisand
Chris Brown
Celine Dion
Ciara
Dixie Chicks
Destiny’s Child
Leona Lewis
Jamie Foxx
Bob Dylan
Jennifer Hudson
Outkast
T-Pain
Usher
Luther Vandross
Rod Stewart
Pearl Jam
Mario
AC/DC
Britney Spears
R. Kelly
Pink
Bruce Springsteen
Lil Mama
John Legend
Johnny Cash
Mary Mary
Maxwell
Johnny Mathis
Kelly Rowland
Lauryn Hill
John Mayer
Neil Diamond
Weird Al Yankovic
Alan Jackson
Carrie Underwood
Gretchen Wilson
Kenny Chesney
Fiona Apple
Michael Jackson
Jennifer Lopez
Shakira
George Michael
Charlie Wilson

AND THE LIST GOES ON

Sony BMG In a Little Trouble
$1.8 billion is nothing when you think of what the song rights are worth of people like Luther Vandross, Johnny Cash and Michael Jackson. This means the motion picture and television industry are not using their music in movies or on T.V as much. How do we know this? They’re net worth is around $1.8 billion. Labels make a good portion of their money of Royalties and licensing fees. The music catalogs or Michael Jackson, Celine Dion and Luther Vandross are worth more than the whole label.

Movie Industry and Indie Artists
The motion picture industry is feeling the financial strain of illegal downloading and pirating like their fellow colleagues in the music industry. As a result they are cutting overhead. This means no expensive soundtrack. This is part of the reason Sony BMG and other major labels are struggling. The movie industry does not want to pay a bunch of royalty and licensing fees. The labels make their money off of licensing fees and royalties. If nobody uses their music (movies, commercials, television) they don’t make money. In this economy everybody is cutting unwanted expenses and the movie industry knows they can find indie artists willing to do the job at half price.

Take advantage of this indie artists. Make sure all your music is filed with the US Copyright Office and your a member of BMI or ASCAP. When those movie industry buffs come knocking you better be ready. They won’t wait on you, they’ll knock on your neighbors door instead.

Till Next Time,

Jamille Luney
Music Analyst

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Clive Davis and Leona Lewis

I should have addressed this a long time ago, but it slipped my mind in light of the HotIndieMusic.com attempted launches. Clive Davis is no longer acting Chief Executive of Sony BMG. On the week of April 18, 2008 CNN reported that Clive Davis was “removed from his post. He will now hold the amorphous title of “chief creative officer” at the company, while still working with a handful of acts. But the BMG Music Group will now be overseen by Barry Weiss, CEO of SonyBMG’s Zomba label, who is younger – and presumably less expensive than his predecessor” Leonard, David Clive Davis’ Swan Song. Two of Davis’ longtime deputies Charles Goldstuck and Tim Bowden were forced to step aside as well.

What This Means For Indie Artists
It is evidence that the music industry is tanking and in order to survive it must change (i.e transition). One of those changes was the final ousting of Clive Davis. CNN reported “Davis has a reputation for spending heavily on traditional marketing to sell records. Now labels can break acts much more cheaply on the Internet.” Another reason for Davis removal is that labels are trying to cut overhead to avoid financial collapse. CNN writer David Leonard confirmed this in his statement “Davis also negotiated famously rich contracts for himself as so many old-school record guys used to do. As long as Davis held one of the top spots at SonyBMG, it was hard for his employer to say convincingly that it was trying to reduce costs and adapt to the new industry’s harsh new realities.”Leonard, David Clive Davis’ Swan Song. Digital is the most cost effective method of distribution, sale and marketing (via viral marketing).

The Bottom Line
What worked yesterday will not work today. What worked tomorrow is not guaranteed to work the day after. Indie Artists you must never grow stagnant and you must learn to adapt. Many big named artists such as Madonna are abandoning their traditional mega labels and going out on their own. They’re taking their fan base straight to Wal-Mart and working out deals for themselves.

I’m Not Madonna How Do I Do It?
No you’re not, but you can sell your music through Wal-Mart as well as many other large distributors. Yes!! I showed you how to do this in my past article Cut Out The Middleman Indie Artists. Some of you will figure this out, some of you will not. There are no direct clear cut answers, but the person who continues to try and learn from their mistakes will end up with the next “Master P” type recording contract. The person who keeps scratching their head and say nobody is helping me I just need a hook up and some contacts, WILL NOT!! Do your homework and research and get on the grind. Tough love but I’m telling you all the truth.

What About Master P?
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about when I say Master P type recording contract — there lies your problem and explanation as to why you have not advanced to where you’d like to be. Go research how Master P pioneered one of the greatest recording contracts of all time. His music sucks (just my opinion), but he is an excellent business man and worth millions (maybe billions) to this day. Master P did it without the Internet. You have the Internet so you already have an advantage. Market digitally, sell digitally, think digitally and creatively. Go beyond what has been done and what has been said.

Till next time,

Jamille Luney
Music Analyst

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Shopping For Software

Hmmmm…..the million dollar question of most music producers. Let’s say for example you’re using Reason 3.5 (you guys now I love Propellerheads Reason) and you’re getting a great sound out of the software. However, you notice that Reason 4.0 has recently been released. Should you rush to the store and buy Reason 4.0?

Yes, Rarely The Case
If you plan on buying a new piece of studio equipment tomorrow that only works with Reason 4.0 and is not compatible with your current version of Reason 3.5, than yes you should rush to the store and buy Reason 4.0.

No, The Right Answer 9/10
If you are producing music with Reason 3.5 and the music you are producing sounds awesome than stick with Reason 3.5. In fact, hold off on 4.0 till you have a few hundred dollars to blow or you desperately need to improve your production and upgrade your studio.

The first versions of new software are full of bugs, glitches and driver issues. In fact the first customers are the beta testers for most software companies. Whenever you see that little error message and it gives you the option “send” or “don’t send” error report, congratulations you’ve just become a software tester. Sorry they’re not paying you.  In fact you paid them for their software and you’re doing their job.  The irony!! Don’t rush to the store to be some one’s guinea pig. Never buy the first version of new software, wait about three months or so and let them iron out the kinks.

Till Next Time,

Jamille Luney
Music Analyst

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I constantly wonder about the long term legal ramifications of digital music. How will royalties be tracked and paid once everything goes completely online? This is the million dollar question. A recent article in PC Magazine titled Online Music Sales Muddle Royalties, Lawyers Say (featured on Yahoo news) discussed the royalty chaos that digital music is creating in the main stream music entertainment industry, especially in the United States.

“The current system for getting royalty payments to musicians in the United States is seriously hampering the introduction of new, innovative music distribution models, and that problem is not going to get any better in the era of the digital download, leading music experts said Thursday“

Chloe Albanesius, PC Magazine Online Music Sales Muddle Royalties, Lawyers Say

Opportunity for Indie Artists
This is a blessing for indie artists trying to sell their own music, but a curse for major recording artists and major record labels. Record labels live off of royalty payments especially in an age when illegal downloading is so prevalent. Their record sales are in the tank, it is the licensing fees that generate revenue for the labels and paychecks for their artists. Amaechi Uzoigwe, co-founder of independent record label Definitive Jux, was quoted in the above article as saying “Not getting that royalty check ‘affects the whole food chain’ of people in the music industry“.

Indie artist are unaffected by this as the majority of them do not receive licensing fees. Indie artist rely solely on moving their own product, while major recording artist, whom are illegally downloaded, rely on royalties to generate their income.

The nice thing about Rihanna being all over television, the Internet and MySpace is that she is the one they’re going to illegally download, not you. Take advantage of this indie artists. Start selling and distributing your music online. People will pay for it. More importantly unique and original art is hard to find and considered sexy in this age of excessive commercialism. It’s almost virgin like if you will.

How Does This Affect Me?
Mark Fischer, a principal with Fish & Richardson, was quoted in PC Magazine’s article Online Music Sales Muddle Royalties, Lawyers Say “In the future, we’ll see a much more de-centralized, smaller music industry.” Indie artists step it up. Sub par is good enough for the major record labels and recording artists with multi million dollar marketing campaigns, but it won’t cut it out here on the indie scene.  Your music must be hot, not just mainstream.

Till Next time,

Jamille Luney
Music Analyst

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Attention music producers:
one of the best ways to get in the game is a “remix” of a big named song. If you have an indie artist your producing and promoting, put them in the remix so their vocals are paired along side a grammy winner.

How To Get A Remix?
So how do you get the opportunity to produce remix for a big named artists? Do you contact their management team or send a demo? You can do that but unless you’ve got a well known management team like Missy’s, Timbaland’s or mine you’ll be waiting for months. So what do you do? Mimic your fellow indie DJ’s.

Look at indie DJ’s. Do they wait to hear back from Jay-Z or Lil’ Wayne before they make a mix tape? Uhhh no. Instead they grab their favorite tracks and mix them how they want. As a producer the only difference (from DJs) will be adding your music and your artist to the mix.

How Do I Get The Tracks?
The harsh reality is that most of you probably not call up Young Jeezy’s audio engineer or manager and ask him to send you some vocals for a remix. You can however, holla at your local Indie DJ’s and ask them if they have any accapella tracks of big names artists. You can also surf the web and look for acapella tracks of big named artists.

After you find an accapella track mix your music with the acapella. If you have a song with an artist your producing you can mix in their vocals as well so it sounds like Keyshia Cole or Ashanti are singing a duet with your artist. After you produced your hot remix, start promoting and submitting your remix to labels, management teams even try the radio stations. Some radio stations view it as a “DJ mix” and will play it (you know how they do the DJ mix around 6:00p.m where they mix old and new songs?) Others radio stations are not too comfortable with the idea and will not play it. Don’t let that bother you move on to the next one.

YOU CANNOT SELL THE REMIX
The downside about the “remix” is that it cannot be resold. Why? The voices of big named artists are property of the labels or the artists themselves (depending on their recording contract). You can however use it for promotional purposes. Just make sure you do not sell the remix.

Get to mixin’ till next time,

Jamille Luney
Music Analyst

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How did the Soulja Boy Song catch fire on the Internet? In an interview with Billboard Music magazine Soulja Boy revealed that he intentionally mis named his song after famous song names on the Billboard charts so people would download it.

How He Did It
What? How? Soulja Boy said in the interview below he would go on Billboard music and see what was the #1 song. He would then name is song as the #1 song (ex. If Usher’s “Yeah” was #1 he would name is song Usher “yeah”). This made people download the song and also made him turn up higher on search engines.

Think outside the box people, Soulja Boy did! Till next time,

Jamille Luney
Music Analyst

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How do most people discover new things?  The Internet.  How do they find things on the Internet?  Google and Yahoo (for the most part).  While working over at HotIndieMusic.com we were looking for some indie R&B artists.  We found some disturbing news.  Either very few people know what true R&B is or they just don’t title their music properly. 

Our Experience
We’d click on an R&B indie artist and next thing you know we’re listening to a hard west coast, east coast or dirty south rap track.  We understand some artists are trying to be discovered so they place themselves in multiple categories.  However, here’s the flip side.  If a talent scout, A&R, or CEO is looking for the next Alicia Keys (this is highly feasible considering Alicia plans on retiring within the next 3-5 years) they do not want to hear ‘Shoot em up Shoot em up’.  A&R’s and label execs have very little patience.  Don’t you get annoyed when you Google something and a whole bunch of crap you don’t want comes back at you?  We almost ran out of patience over HotIndieMusic.com and we’re supposed to be the open minded music industry vets.

Don’t Let Your Music Go Unnoticed
Try to categorize your music as honestly as possible.  If there is not a genre that defines your music, that needs to be somewhere in the header or description of your web page,  preferably where it effects the search engine (so people type in your style of music and bam you come up).

This is the age of the Internet and technology.  People want what they want then, there and now.  Make sure people can find your music quickly.

May the best indie artists be discovered,

By Jamille Luney

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Really Poor Web Design

till October 5. Why? BECAUSE YOU ALL SAID SO!! At least some of you did (well over 2500 of you). You guys voted and said the site was difficult to maneuver and follow, some of you said it would not even load on your screen. HotIndieMusic.com was up all of 3 hours September 9 and many of you liked the concept but HATED the interface. Or maybe you hated the survey, but we felt many of the complaints were well grounded. Therefore, we’ve decided to make it more interactive.

That Being Said
We appreciate all of your feedback, but this is the last time we will be listening to it for a while. We have to launch and leave it up. We have too many awesome artists like R&B undiscovered sensation HoneyBrown (click and take a listen), Mycle Wastman a young man who makes Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke sound like, well just click on his name and and you can finish that sentence yourself.

All Genres, Non-Commerical True Undiscovered Talent
We have artists of this caliber in all genres from Alternative to Country waiting to be heard. This is non-commercial pure talent. After October 5, we will still accept your feedback, but we will not take down the site for redesign unless it is an absolute emergency.

Thanks for your feedback, patience and understanding.

Till October 5,

Jamille Luney
Music Analyst

I’ve given numerous lectures on the importance of having your own registered barcode for digital sales and physical sales. I’ve also told all my fellow indie artists how to purchase one. If your new to the site and have now idea what I’m talking about read the following post to catch up Got Barcodes? Got Registered?

I’d like to add one more method of purchasing a barcode. Are any of familiar with the Indie Artist Alliance? As you may have guessed this is an organization devoted to supplying indie artists with resources. They also offer barcodes and registration with Nielsen SoundScan. Here’s the link to purchase and register a barcode through them (Barcode and Registration via IAA).

Who Should Do This?
If you’re already using CDbaby, TuneCore or SongCast to sell and distribute your music digitally, I recommend obtaining your barcode through them. Still remember to confirm it’s proper registration with Nielsen SoundScan.

If you are not with any of the above, do not have a barcode, and the distributors you’re using do not supply barcodes you may want to check out the Indie Artist Alliance.

Till Next Time,

By Jamille Luney
Music Analyst

Sorry I’ve been away guys, I’ve been busy working on the new upcoming website HotIndieMusic.com. Speaking of websites how is yours coming?

We’re reviewing a number of indie artists right now and when we visit their MySpace pages most of the time their music does not play. Luckily for these indie artists we have a little more patience then record label A&R’s and talent scouts.

Big wigs in the industry will not sit around and try to get your page to upload when there are millions of others they can scroll through. Make sure you have your own website that you can update and edit yourself in addition to your MySpace, FaceBook and other web pages.

Till Next Time,

By Jamille Luney
Music Analyst

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