After 30 years, Bob Marley's most iconic album, "Legend," has finally hit the top 10 on the Billboard 200 weekly list. The +1000% jump in sales was due to the album being made available for only $0.99 on the Google Play music store. The extreme discount of the album is part of a growing trend that seeks to boost album reach and concert sales.
Every year, it's becoming more and more affordable to build a professional-quality recording studio. Because of this, many artists are opting to record their music in their own homes rather than pay studio fees that can add up to the tens of thousands of dollars. We wanted to see what kind of studio could be built with $5,000 taking advantage of the latest technology. Here's what we came up with...
One of the fastest ways to waste time in your studio is by not learning the keyboard shortcuts, or "hotkeys," of your DAW. You might be pointing and clicking hours down the drain from your projects. That's why we're doing a series on the essential keyboard shortcuts for recording, mixing and mastering. In this post, we're going to discuss markers.
The last true iteration of Apple's iconic and world-changing MP3 player, the iPod, has been retired. Last week, as Apple announced new iPhones and a forthcoming Apple Watch, the iPod Classic quietly disappeared from their online retail store. This marks the end of an era that redefined our music listening habits and launched Apple on its path to become the most valuable company in the world.
Twitter is launching a new buy button that will allow artists and businesses to sell music, merchandise and products directly to fans through a tweet. The feature will store users' payment information and make purchasing new music directly from your favorite artists as easy as hitting a button on your smartphone. If there ever was a case for independent artists to use Twitter, this is it...
One of the growing trends in music publishing is direct-to-fan sales. Artists of all calibers and levels of popularity look for new ways to create revenue in the face of declining album sales. Some artists like Garth Brooks have opted to skirt iTunes and sell their music through their own channels. While it can be a gamble, it can also mean bigger profits.
Although the possibilities of working with a lot of virtual instruments are incredibly vast, one of the pitfalls is that your music can start to sound inorganic and manufactured. Drums especially can lack character when every note is a quantized sample. Here are three tips that you can use to make your sampled drums sound more realistic and more musical.
Whether you're an amateur or expert producer, one of the most important disciplines is to study and learn from great music. There's now an online tool that can streamline that process and quickly teach the music theory behind thousands of pieces of music, Hooktheory. Here's how Hooktheory may completely upgrade your songwriting process.
HBO released a trailer for its new series 'Sonic Highways' last week and it looks like one of the coolest ways yet to experience the living history of American music. The 8-episode series premieres next month and will follow the Foo Fighters to historic studios in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Austin, Washington D.C., Seattle and Nashville as they record their forthcoming record of the same name.
The Internet has afforded today's musicians some incredible tools for connecting with and building a fan base. And, as online social equity becomes more and more of a status symbol in the music business, it's never been more important for artists maintain and develop a strong social media following. Here are two less traditional tips for building up your Internet fan base.
Having enough headroom from recording is essential to the mixing and mastering process. Also, there's no better way to add headroom than from recording your tracks properly at the start. Here's why headroom matters, as well as two tips for creating headroom in your mix in the recording process.
SoundCloud has announced that it will implement advertisements into its streaming service. Similar to Youtube, the "On SoundCloud" service will allow users the option to allow audio ads to play before their tracks in exchange for a share of the ad revenue. While it will likely prove to be lucrative for some artists, others are decrying the move as a loss for indie artists to commercial interests.
We're partnering with Modern Producers, a music production studio that makes high-quality loops, VSTs, plugins and custom vocal performances for producers of pop, hip-hop, EDM and orchestral music. With the tools offered by Modern Producers, anyone from seasoned producers to bedroom composers can find a unique element to take their music to the next level.
Several key players in the music industry are negotiating a new international standard day for album releases. If adopted, all albums would be released on Friday in every country. The proposal is an effort to reduce piracy caused by albums being released in some countries days before they drop in others.
One of the trade-offs of having your music available everywhere via the Internet is not being able to monitor where and how your music is being used. Because of this, you could likely miss out on a lot of royalty money you're owed. Thankfully there are performance rights organizations (PROs) that can help monitor, collect and distribute your royalty payments. Here's some basic information on how PROs work and how they can help you monetize your music.