Dicas Para Músicos: Evite Que Esses Erros Comuns Aconteçam

Tips For Gigging Musicians: Avoid Making These Common Mistakes

 First of all thanks to DiyMusicBiz.com  for this article 

Whether you’re new to playing live or you’re a gig veteran, you’re not immune to some of the common pitfalls of playing live. In this post I’ll describe how to avoid some of the downsides of live engagements.

I have assembled groups and booked gigs, but I have primarily played keyboards as a sideman in the 25 or so bands I’ve been a member of since 1994. I have played regularly in Indianapolis, Nashville, Chicago and Madison WI, and I currently play regularly with 2 jazz groups in the Madison area.

In part one of my two part post, I’ll explore several topics and will share my experience with leading a band, booking shows, promoting, working with live sound engineers, getting paid and writing contracts.

In part two, we’ll look more closely at money (again), co-writing, guest players, substitute players and travel/accommodations.

With that, here are some key concepts followed by some comments based on my experience:

Don’t Get Short Changed

When I toured professionally in Nashville, I was a member of the American Federation of Musicians. For each of our live TV show performances, we named a different band member as band leader. This was so that person could collect a larger paycheck through the union as leader. I think this is a good idea, but you don’t want to rely on it and you should beware of the possibility of getting shorted.

For example, say there are 5 members in your band and you end up doing 4 TV dates in the calendar year. Simple math – one person isn’t going to get leader pay. The intentions were good but one band member never saw the payday that the other band members saw. That sets up the potential for resentmentwithin the band which can be toxic.

If you’re touring as a sideman for a major label artist, consider setting a goal for yourself to eventually become bandleader of that or another band. This helps to develop your leadership skills and will open the doors to a multitude of opportunities. Touring with major label artists allows you to play with some of the best musicians in the world.

Relax, You Did Everything You Could Do

If you’re the band leader and you book a show, on the day of the gig make sure you designate some time before the downbeat to get yourself into a music frame of mind. I have found myself struggling through the first couple of songs because I was still thinking about how I’d find the agent after the gig to give her back the parking passes, how I’d forgotten to get enough cash to pay the sub after the show, that I didn’t have time to eat dinner before the show and I wondered if I’d be able to eat before 10pm, etc.

These are not the kinds of thoughts you want running through your mind as you play your first solo. For me, all it takes is 10 minutes of silence and privacy to get into the musical frame of mind. At crowded venues this is hard to do – sometimes a bathroom stall is the most privacy you’ll get – but it works.

Promote, but Don’t Spam Your Fans

Take the time to promote your gig on Facebook and Twitter, but don’t spam your followers. Be sure to tag the venue and/or the booking agent in your post so that they’re aware you’re promoting too. It’s also a good idea to list the gig in the entertainment section in the online edition of your local newspaper and/or TV station websites. The listings are almost always free.

A couple of years ago, I discovered that the community editor for one of our local newspapers noticed one of my listings and he wrote a short piece about my upcoming show in the events section of the newspaper. It was an unexpected promotional boost ahead of the event and as an added bonus I was able to link back to the article in my social media posts.

Everything Is Negotiable (Remember That)

I’m a firm believer that all bars and restaurants with live music should provide at least some food and/or beverages to all of the musicians. Sadly, in some bars and restaurants, food and drink is the only form of “pay” you’ll receive – no show pay, just a $25 gift certificate and maybe some free tap beer. These venues clearly don’t value your time and services, they just see you as a way to keep warm bodies at the bar for a longer period of time.

Some venues do buyouts (a small amount of cash per band member instead of food/drink) but usually they won’t do this for you unless you ask. It doesn’t hurt to ask – the worst they can say is no? If you don’t get what you wanted in one area, ask for something in another – for example, a small bump in pay for the next gig. Everything is negotiable.

One of the best outcomes of good negotiating is that it shows that you take your profession seriously and that you and your band acts accordingly. Also make sure you understand how and when you’ll be paid. If you are the band leader, keep enough cash on hand to pay your band once the gig ends in case the venue pays you with a check.

I have had to run to the ATM after a gig so that I could pay my band when the venue unexpectedly presented me with a check. I recommend that band leaders sign up for Square since some venues might like to pay via credit card, plus with Square you no longer have to wait and worry about a check clearing.

Money In The Bank

It’s a good idea to ask the venue for a deposit, especially for one-off private events. When signed contracts aren’t present, I look at a deposit as earnest money. It shows the buyer’s good faith in the transaction. I think it also makes it harder for either side to back out of the deal.

Contracts Help Prevent Cancellations

Cancellations are a pain, but they do happen. So far it has probably occurred to me less than 10 times in my career. If you’re the band member, there’s not much you can do to prevent the cancellation nor is there an avenue of recourse if it’s not your fault and you don’t have a contract.

Usually the gig is just rescheduled, but I have seen gigs get cancelled when the venue suddenly decides they’d like to have another band for that particular night. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Stay away from venues like this. If you have a contract, specify a cancellation period with the full final total payable to you in the event of a cancellation.

The Pecking Order

Avoid gigs where the sound engineer is paid first followed by the band. There shouldn’t be a pecking order because it usually means someone is about to get shorted. In addition, the crowd didn’t pack the bar to see the sound guy, they came to see your band. Great live sound engineers are hard to find and are worth their weight in gold, but if you’re stuck doing a gig in a mediocre venue with a mediocre engineer that’s paid before everyone else, make that the last gig you ever do there.

I hope you found this information useful. Stay tuned for part two, and feel free to contact me with questions or comments. Thanks to Greg Savage for posting this and for continuing to provide valuable information for composers seeking commercial placements.



Steve Banik, professionally known as STACKTRACE, is an American hip hop producer and musician from Madison, Wisconsin. He is best known for his keyboard harmonies, atmospheric synths and creative uses of sampling. From 2003 – 2006, Steve was based in Nashville where he was the touring keyboard player for several major label artists. Steve is the founder and owner of Stacktrace Music LLC, a music production, engineering and licensing company.

7 Startups de Música Que Foram Apresentadas no "Canadian Music Week"

Meet The Seven Music Startups That Were Featured At Canadian Music Week

Note tracks CEO Kam Lal, winner of Canadian Music Week’s Startup Launch Pad (image courtesy of Canadian Music Week/Grant Martin).

Mugatunes

Nobody is better known for finding the next big thing in music before the masses than young people, so why not really tap into those tastemakers and see what they can discover? Mugatunes seeks to find those college students that have the best taste and a knack for what’s going to be huge and put them in one place online. It is sort of like an online radio station, but created by over 200 kids all around the world.

Interestingly, Mugatunes doesn’t accept just anybody when it comes to its curators. The company has a fairly well thought-out application process where students need to really explain why they are perfect for this site, and even then they may not get picked. As if they hadn’t already gone through enough applying for things…

Audiokite Research

Music is usually a guessing game, even at its most scientific. Just when a group of producers and songwriters feel like they have it all figured out, one track that was supposed to be huge flops, while another tune that nobody expected to do anything becomes the biggest hit of the year. There is just no telling what the people will love, but that doesn’t mean educated guesses can’t be made or that there’s nothing left to learn.

Audiokite wants to figure out the appeal of a song or a video before it goes to market, and the company’s real goal seems to be to help every musician become not only better, but more commercially viable. Artists can upload their songs to the platform and select pre-designed surveys, which everyday music listeners will be paid to respond to. Those potential fans will be honest about what they liked or didn’t like about the track, which the original composer can take to heart and consider before creating another possible hit.

SongCat

This Irish startup aims to make producing high-quality music much more affordable and convenient for musicians at all points in their careers, though the deals likely appeal to those just starting out most of all. Instead of having to know people in an area or traipsing from studio to studio, SongCat has everything the modern musician could need, but it’s all remote. From backup vocalists to session musicians and even all manner of mixing and mastering services, everything necessary to create a finished piece of art is available on the site, and for fairly reasonable prices. The company even offers consultations if somebody doesn’t know what to do next with their work-in-progress.

Mission Control Management

One of the most difficult choices a professional musician needs to make is that of who will manage their careers, and some end up deciding that they will go it on their own and manage their lives and jobs. That’s a risk, but sometimes it can work out for the best. For those who have opted to be in control of themselves, Mission Control Management wants to help. The company is an online consulting and coaching service that aims to help those going down this road to understand what they are truly getting themselves into, and to help them be as successful as possible in doing so.

Notetracks

Being referred to as the “Google Docs for musicians” certainly had my interest peaked from the get-go. Notetracks is one of several new companies in the music startup space that aims to help people collaborate on music no matter where they are based. Music is better when people work together, but until recently, there wasn’t a great way for anybody to collaborate long-distance, which is a great problem to fix. Artists of all types can write and record pieces of music, and then make notes on the recordings so that their partners can see. It sounds fairly simple, but of course the people behind Notetracks created a well-designed product that was worthy of its win.

Aybo

The messaging space has become very exciting in the past few years, and it has also gotten much more musical. There have been plenty of new apps that allow people to insert music into their various forms of messaging, and Aybo is looking to be a standout player in the field. The app is an iOs plugin that lets users send just a snippet of a song or movie quote within their messenger. It’s sort of like a meme or an emoji, but only with audio.

Trebba

Perhaps the vaguest of the bunch, Trebba comes off as a streaming service of sorts, though it is aimed at a specific demographic. Instead of going for mass adoption like Spotify, the company is attempting to appeal to younger generations (tweens and the like), promising them a free music experience that still benefits the artists they already love and the ones they’ll discover on the platform. Marketers can get in on the fun, learning what the kids like and using that data to sell them on things elsewhere, though the company isn’t sharing much more on its site just yet.

Estes Mini-Fones Permitem Ajustar o Som do Mundo ao Seu Redor

Magical Earbuds Let You Tune In and Out of the World Around You

ABOUT FIVE MINUTES after Eden, the 20-year-old Irish phenom you really ought to hear, took the stage at Rickshaw Stop, the sound changed. Profoundly. It was as if I’d pried the stage out of a tight, sweaty club in San Francisco and dropped it into Carnegie Hall. Everything felt enormous, the sound reverberating off cavernous ceilings and expensive upholstery. A moment later, it got quiet. Eerily so. Eden looked the same, still brooding and banging on a synth, but the volume of the room dropped by half.

Then my left earbud fell out and everything went back to normal. Turns out my superhuman ability to control how the world sounds is only as good as the fit of my earbuds and the life of the battery powering them.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve worn Doppler Labs’ Here earbuds all over the place. To concerts, on the train, at home and work, in restaurants, and, once, in a public bathroom. In short, these two round, white buds provide almost total control over how the world sounds. You can amplify certain sounds—human speech, the bass guitar—and attenuate others—the airplane drone, the subway screech. You can shut out the world entirely. Or you can tweak things, like Mickey Mouse conducting an orchestra of the world. Add some reverb to that falling broom, give me just a smidgen of flange, and for Pete’s sake turn down that bus! This is augmented reality, people. It’s not just goofy headsets and crazy flying jellyfish. It’s what you’re hearing.

Here isn’t perfect, and the interface is occasionally clumsy. At $1991, the buds are expensive, given what they do, and given how often you’ll remove them because you’d rather wear actual headphones that let you listen to actual music. (My primary volume control on the world is a pair of crappy headphones and deafening pop music. It works just fine.) But every time I use them, and every time I show them to someone, they’re remarkable. They feel like a magic trick.

Inner Ears

Before we get to any of the technology, let’s talk about the buds. If they don’t look cool and they don’t feel good, the technology isn’t worth a damn (the Glasshole Maxim.) Here buds are neither beautiful nor inconspicuous, but they’re tolerable: wearing them looks and feels like having quarters sticking out of your ears. Not quite Her-style seamlessness, but you’re not The Great Gazoo, either, with giant antennae for ears.

The designers made Here comfortable enough to wear for a few hours at a time, which is the life of the battery and the longest you’d want to wear them anyway. These aren’t for all-day use. They’re for the concert, for takeoff, for nap time. Then you take them out and do other stuff after sticking them in a charging case about the size of a big pack of gum. It charges and protects the buds. Once you’ve paired them—an amazingly simply process that takes about 10 seconds—the buds turn on the moment you pop them out of their charging pods.

Devices like the Bragi Dash put most of the UI on the buds so you can control everything with taps and swipes. Here features an app where you play with the equalizer, choose various effects, and reset everything once you’ve gone totally off the rails and made the world completely unintelligible. Controlling it all through an app is far easier than learning a new gesture language. The downside is you’re that guy, constantly pulling out your phone and loading a blindingly white app to fiddle with frequencies. Here makes the best case yet for an Apple Watch; being able to quickly tap filters on and off from my left wrist is infinitely better.

Here relies upon a complicated mix of signal processing, frequency filtering, and software algorithms, but Doppler tries to blur all of that in favor of simple commands. I want the bus to be quiet. I want the Rickshaw Stop to sound like Carnegie Hall. I want to hear this concert the way Tiesto might have mixed it, which is always “like this, only with 10 times more party.” And can do all of that and more. But such tricks are merely an add-on to Here’s music features. Doppler did a big partnership with Coachella this year, and it’s working with SoulCycle so you can tune the music to be a little less SoulCrushing. This is very much a live music product. You put them in, tune them, and forget they’re there.

When you’re wearing the earbuds, even with no filters on, you’re not hearing the real world. You’re hearing Doppler’s processed version of it. It occasionally felt like I had water in my ears. Given all the tech involved, and the processing it does, you never get perfect sound fidelity with Here, and your ears will hear the difference with careful listening. Moshing at the Warped Tour? Not an issue. Standing in line at Starbucks, fine-tuning the sweet guitar strains of whoever replaced Norah Jones on the playlist? You’ll notice.

By far the strangest thing about wearing Here was growing acutely, Spidey-sense aware of how everything sounds. I don’t know yet if this is a good thing, or if it will drive me insane. So many drivers blare their horns outside my office, joining the cacophony of screeching tires and rumbling trucks that fills every city. Construction just started on the building next to my apartment, and I hear every shovel, every hammer, every angry guy yelling from the deep hole where the foundation will go. I swear I can hear everyone on earth chewing. I could keep going. (Have you ever noticed the air conditioning on the subway? It’s so loud!) Once I started paying attention to how loud the world is and enjoying the ability to tune it out, it became increasingly obvious that this infernal racket is a real problem we must solve.

I found Here most useful at work. I can tune out catchy songs at coffee shops, or turn down all the chatter that I normally can’t help but totally eavesdrop on. Filters like “Bus” and “Car” and “Subway” are self-explanatory, but my favorite is “Office (Loud).” Turn it on and the world vanishes. It’s like watching a silent film of the world. To be fair, though, this also describes earplugs. Doppler makes those, too, and they’re much cheaper than Here.

As someone who doesn’t go to five concerts a week and, let’s be honest, will probably go deaf anyway thanks to loud music and a general disregard for my eardrums, I’m probably not going to buy Here. But I think a lot of musicians might—Doppler’s certainly done a good job of signing up name-brand artists and composers. And they’re right to be excited. If you want what this product offers—a mixing board for the real world—you should buy it. It delivers. Personally, I’m looking forward to the long-term vision, to the real-time translation stuff and the music stuff and the voice-interface stuff. Doppler’s ten-year plan is really exciting. And maybe by then I’ll be a little less self-conscious about these discs in my ears.

1 UPDATE: An earlier version of this piece misstated the price of the Here earbuds. They’re actually $199. Hurray!

Spotify Lança 12 Originais Shows em Vídeo

Spotify To Launch 12 Original Video Shows

thanks to 

• in Music Industry News by Bobby Owsinski

Spotify recently announced that it was getting into the original content business by launching 12 new shows, and guess what? They’ll all be on video. According to the company, the video shows will be “centered around three main themes – music performances, music profiles and music culture,” and the episodes will be up to fifteen minutes long.

The foray into original video programming comes on the heels of the service successfully showcasing clips from Comedy Central, ESPN and MTV within the app over the last year.

One of the shows is Landmark, which is a documentary series centered around important moments in music history. A second, Rush Hour, forces two artists to quickly collaborate on a setlist of songs that they must then perform live. Yet another features veteran actor Tim Robbins who will produce a mocumentary about a competition that becomes the next dance music craze. Also planned are a number of animated and comedic series “tailored to the service’s young audience.”

Spotify didn’t provide a launch date, but indicated that late summer or fall is targeted. The company did say that the shows will be available to all users on both paid and free tiers, and initially available in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden.

It’s pretty interesting that Spotify should jump into original programing, and especially video programming as well. Getting away from its streaming music core may be a stretch, but on the other hand, an audio-only show might be construed as trying to follow Apple Music’s Beats 1. Still, 12 shows is an ambitious agenda that requires not only a fair amount of corporate will, but the funds to match as well.

A year from now we may look back upon this decision and say how brilliant the execs at Spotify were, or we may say that they got away from the company’s core business. Only time will tell.

YouTube Não Precisa Mudar, a Indústria Da Música É Que Precisa!

YouTube Doesn't Need to Change, the Music Industry Does

It’s not YouTube’s job to duplicate the revenue that came from a pre-Internet business model.

For many music fans, YouTube is one of the best things that ever happened for finding and listening to new artists, much like radio used to be. Some players in the music business, however, see the service as being somewhere between a dodge and an outright scam that takes advantage of artists.

Legendary musician manager Irving Azoff, whose client list includes Christina Aguilera and Van Halen, is pretty clearly in the latter camp. In a recent post on the Recode tech news site, Azoff argued that YouTube pretends to care about music and the artists who create it, but pays them a “pittance,” while allowing a copyright infringement free-for-all.

Instead of removing songs that have been uploaded illegally and keeping them off the service forever, YouTube “hides behind” the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor provision, Azoff says. Under that clause, services like YouTube  GOOG -0.28%  are protected from copyright infringement claims, provided they take action to remove infringing content as soon as they become aware of it.

And what is Azoff’s solution to this alleged problem? He says YouTube should either join the music industry in rewriting the DMCA, or it should not allow music on the service unless it has specifically been given permission to host it by the artist.

In fact, as YouTube star Hank Green pointed out in a response to Azoff’s post, removing content from YouTube isn’t as difficult as he makes it seem. The service’s ContentID system allows artists and their representatives to detect content and then choose whether to have it removed or license it and get a stream of revenue. And YouTube has paid more than $3 billion to artists via that system.

Azoff’s proposal that YouTube shouldn’t allow any music to appear unless it has permission also leaves out a fundamental aspect of copyright law, namely the concept of “fair use.” Under that principle, copyright has not been infringed if the use of a song meets a number of tests, including whether it is “transformative.”

Much like the rest of the industry, Azoff would no doubt prefer it if fair use didn’t exist. But it’s worth noting that while he complains about music not being taken down, YouTube also has a problem with the exact opposite: Namely, record labels and their representatives forcing the removal of content that they either don’t have the rights to or that are covered by fair use.

This issue was highlighted by a court decision last year in the infamous “Dancing Baby” case, in which the judges ruled that anyone who sends a DMCA take-down notice must consider the principle of fair use before doing so. The case was originally launched by Prince’s record label in 2007, after a woman uploaded a 29-second clip to YouTube of her child dancing with one of the artist’s songs playing in the background.

The larger context behind Azoff’s letter is that the music industry is trying desperately to roll back the clock and re-fight battles it has already lost, including a fight against the principles included in the DMCA (not to be outdone, Recording Industry Association of America chairman Cory Sherman would apparently like to go back and re-write the rules governing radio as well).

In a nutshell, the music industry wants digital services to pay enough to replace all the money that used to come from the traditional music sales before the Internet came along. But that’s never going to happen. Spotify and other streaming services are already paying so much that they are incapable of making money even with 75 million paying subscribers, yet the industry argues they still aren’t contributing enough.

In Google, record labels see a rich corporation that can afford to pay them the billions they feel they deserve. But why is it Google’s job (or Spotify’s, for that matter) to recreate the same amount of revenue that used to come from a completely different music ecosystem? Shouldn’t the music industry be the one adapting its business to the new model, instead of trying to force that model to fit its existing business? That’s how innovation works.

Qual o Gênero de Música Nós Gostamos Mais? (Somente nos EU)

Which Genre Of Music Do We Like Best?

If you were to listen to a week of nothing but radio, you'd think that all we listen to in the U.S. is pop and country music. If you were to read a week's worth of the music news, you might think that dance/electronic/EDM was close to the top of the heap in what we enjoy. The problem with those assumptions is that they're wrong, at least according to the 2015 Nielsen Year End Music Report that, among other things, looked at the genres of music we liked the best last year.

When taking into account the total amount of music consumption, which includes physical and downloaded albums, downloaded tracks, and streams, here's the order of music genre preference that the study determined:

Rock - 24.5%
R&B/Hip-Hop - 18.2%
Pop - 15.7%
Country - 8.5%
Latin - 4.5%
Dance/EDM - 3.4%
Christian - 2.8%
Holiday/Seasonal - 1.7%
Classical - 1.3%
Childrens - 1.1%

When it came to number of albums consumed, Rock was far ahead at 32.6%, followed by R&B/Hip-Hop at 15.1% and Pop at 22.6%.

For streams, R&B/Hip-Hop came out on top at 21.1%. Rock at 17.5%. and Pop at 14.5%.

Rock might not be the hippest genre and it's frequently portrayed in the press as spiraling downward in popularity and relevancy, but it still continues to out-perform other music genres, for better or worse.

Concertos de Realidade Virtual Começando no Próximo Verão

Virtual Reality Concerts To Begin This Summer

First of all thanks to my friend Bobby Owsinski for this article.

I'm a big proponent of virtual reality, especially when the audio is done well, and many have predicted that the technology will eventually be a boon to concerts. We're going to see soon enough as virtual reality concerts will actually begin to roll out this summer.

NextVR, which has been a leader in VR broadcasting of sporting events, has teamed up with LiveNation to broadcast a series of concerts, although no artists have been named as of yet. There will be a limited number of VR music events this summer, with a full schedule planned for 2017.

The NextVR broadcast will be available via Samsung's Gear VR using the Oculus Home app, although they will also most likely be available on other VR platforms as well.

LiveNation/NextVR aren't the only companies jumping into the concert broadcast game. iHeartRadio and Universal Music Group previously announced that they would also broadcast VR concerts this year.

Virtual reality concerts hold great promise because it gives the viewer a feeling of actually being there and watching from the best seat in the house, which many feel may eventually eclipse attending an event. Paying $200 for a nosebleed seat might not be a suitable option when you can get a better view from your home while still feeling immersed in the event.

The same can be said for sporting events as well, as NextVR recently signed a 5 year deal with Fox Sports, although there may be more technical challenges in this niche than with music.

One thing's for sure, VR is taking beginning to take off, even though it still hasn't hit the general public yet, as more and more companies are jockeying for position.


Read more:  http://music3point0.blogspot.com/2016/05/virtual-reality-concerts-to-begin-this.html#ixzz48LerEkgW