Less than 3% of all new artists actually get to gold or platinum status. This article is for the other 97% + of all artists out there…

Whether your band is #1 on the alternative radio charts or your album just debuted in the top 24 on the top 200 soundscan chart or you just got your first support slot on a nationwide tour with the hot band of the moment or maybe your band is working hard for the break like the most of the bands out there living the vision and bleeding for the passion – one things still remains common to all bands at all levels – to be truly successful as a touring band, you have to be focused on selling concert tickets and t shirts.

In an ever so competitive market where records sales and profit margins are shrinking and artist development is of the past, bands today need to be more self-reliant now then ever. One of the few areas where a band still can maintain its creative control is merchandise. Hitting the road to tour so kids from city to city can be a part of your lifestyle is a major part of the business model in creating that “break�. As equally important as the music you play and how you play, is what kind of merchandise you offer at your shows and on your website. It is a priceless promotional value of when a fan buys your band’s Tshirt and wears it to school the next day.

Bands today need the knowledge of how to properly manage and develop the merchandise line. In today’s market, you don’t have to have a retail deal to turn your brand’s logo into profits. Merchandise income when managed correctly enables bands to see their visions grow at a time when other avenues of the music business seem to be shrinking. In lieu, bands should focus on the business module of merchandise early in their career and find new and creative ways to self promote.

The age of the internet shows no boundaries, no limitations; it is the entrepreneur’s ultimate canvas. The internet has become a 24 hour 7 days a week 365 days a year gateway to your every wish. The internet can be your music, video and merchandise distributor. If this all sounds a bit overwhelming and need to tools for success, here is a company that helps bands get off their feet and get affordable merchandise so that bands can start their own music career… www.sicscreenprints.com

Check out new music from unsigned NYC Blacklist.
The track

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 captures the dark NYC east village post punk vibe. For more information contact the band.
Next Show:
November 3rd – Sesac/CMJ day party @ The Delancey

 

KOAR posted several editorials on the ‘novelty’ of myspace. Check out the new article in the Washington Post, ‘In Teens’ Web World, MySpace Is So Last Year’.

Teen Web sensation MySpace became so big so fast, News Corp. spent $580 million last year to buy it. Then Google Inc. struck a $900 million deal, primarily to advertise with it. But now Jackie Birnbaum and her fellow English classmates at Falls Church High School say they’re over MySpace.

“I think it’s definitely going down — a lot of my friends have deleted their MySpaces and are more into Facebook now,” said Birnbaum

E.J. Kim chimes in that in the past three months, she’s gone from slaving over her MySpace profile up to four hours a day — decorating it, posting notes and pictures to her friends’ pages — to deleting the whole thing.

“I’ve grown out of it,” Kim said. “I thought it was kind of pointless.”

The high school English class cites several reasons for backing off of MySpace: Creepy people proposition them. Teachers and parents monitor them. New, more alluring free services comes along, so they collectively jump ship.

Myspace is just the recent online fad. Before Myspace, the place to be was Xanga, and before that, Friendster, MiGente and Black Planet.

Evan Hansen, a sophomore at Falls Church High School, said he didn’t buy into the MySpace hype and is waiting for the craze to die.

“Over time, people are going to get sick of talking to people on the computer,” he said. “I just think people will want to spend more time with each other — without the wall of technology.”

Unsigned The Vanished will be releasing a new EP. The First single includes  “the Longest Goodbye,” which has accumulated airplay in the last several weeks inlcuding  KLAQ (El Paso), KDJE (Little Rock), KDGE (Dallas), KMOD and KMYZ (Tulsa) and others. The Vanished will be on the road in Novemeber with Blue October, Bowling For Soup, and Angels And Airwaves. Legal is Mike McCoy. For more information contact Ronnie Raphael or 214 691 1908.  Check out the track

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.

Secondhand Serenade which KOAR talked about in a myspace post signs with Glassnote, a label started by industry vet, Daniel Glass.

“The CD as it is right now is dead,” Levy said, adding that 60% of consumers put CDs into home computers in order to transfer material to digital music players.

But there remains a place for physical media, Levy said.

“You’re not going to offer your mother-in-law iTunes downloads for Christmas,” he said. “But we have to be much more innovative in the way we sell physical content.”

Record companies will need to make CDs more attractive to the consumer, he said.

“By the beginning of next year, none of our content will come without any additional material,” Levy said.

CD sales accounted for more than 70% of total music sales in the first half of 2006, while digital music sales were around 11% of the total, according to music industry trade body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

CD sales were worth $6.45 billion and digital sales $945 million, the IFPI said.

Bottom line: That’s right CD’s are dead. People just decided one day to wake up and not decide to buy CD’s anymore. This happened in one day and was not a gradual process. It has nothing to do with the ‘actual’ music. Nope, not that. Instead, one must invest more time hiring better art designers so the consumer will buy more physical CD’s. The record business is based on science rather than science and art.

YouTube have now established the new model in the Google Nation:

Step 1: You create the art;

Step 2: Google steals it from you;

Step 3: Google makes you chase them to take it down;

Step 4: If you can afford to chase Google to try to make Google take it down and Google does take it down, the work Google stole will suddenly reappear;

Step 5: See Step 3;

Step 6: See Step 4;

Step 7: See Step 3;

Step 8: See Step 4;

Step 9: See Step 3;

Step 10: See Step 4;

Step 11: See Step 3;

Step 12: See Step 4;

Step 13: Tired of this yet?

Step 14: See Step 3;

Step 15: See Step 4;

Step 16: Tired of this yet? Got any money left?

Step 17: See Step 3;

Step 18: See Step 4;

Step 19: Now if you’re tired of this, or you don’t have any money left (and since we are billionaires) what we could do little artist is give you a share of the advertising revenue we are/could be selling on the pages with your artistic works. Approval over advertisers? Oh, no, we don’t do that. And of course we will do whatever we want to try to commercialize your name, likeness, song titles, genres, and the clothes that you wear. And that revenue share? We’ll decide what’s fair because we are Google and we do no evil. CONTINUE READING

Press Play
Diddy
TW 170,463
*the lowest first-week total of his career

Extreme Behavior
Hinder
TW 75,726
Total 1,047,986
*What other rock single is clocking 75k a week?

Sam’s Town
Killers
TW 61,715
Total 479,246
 

Eyes Open
Snow Patrol
TW 25,125
Total 837,790
*Nice gradual build on this one.

• Talent Agency is Hoping to Find Next Web Video Stars.
  The United Talent Agency  best known as the home of comedians like Vince Vaughn and Jack Black, filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan are placing bets that Web video is on a growth curve similar to that of cable television a generation ago.Hence, they created an online unit devoted to scouting out up-and-coming creators of Internet content — particularly video — and finding work for them in Web-based advertising and entertainment. The goal is to recruit the next generation of television and film writers and directors from the relative obscurity of sites like YouTube and Revver and to help the major Web portals that are hungry for original content to find the creative people they need — just as movie studios have long turned to talent agencies when looking for new directors, screenwriters and actors.

“In the old days, i.e., two months ago, it was about signing up those clients and immediately figuring out how to flip them into traditional media,� Mr. Weinstein said. “Now we can look at an artist and say, that might be a goal, but in the interim, or while we’re doing that, or instead of that, how can we monetize their interests online?�

• Spitzer and Payola: Old Habits Die Hard.
  Last week, Blackground Records/Universal, purchased ads that enabled the song, “Too Little, Too Late� by the teenage singer JoJo to climb to the No. 2 position on the nation’s mainstream pop radio chart.

“Radio promotion executives are still under enormous pressure to use tools that maximize radio airplay because airplay still sells recordings,� said Rachel Stilwell, a Los Angeles lawyer who has written about payola and who worked several years ago as the national director of promotion for the Verve Music Group, a Universal subsidiary label. “Old habits die hard.�

A spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer, Juanita Scarlett, said yesterday that the attorney general’s office was “aware of the possible violation of the terms of our agreement with Universal and we are looking into the matter.�

• SRC/Universal Motown Records has entered into an exclusive distribution deal with Miami based Coalition Music Group
• Roxette signs new U.S. deal with Capitol Records