CD LABEL PRINTING 101
The CD label is equally important as your album’s booklet and packaging. It makes your CD look professional because people would know you really had your album manufactured in a professional CD manufacturing house. Besides, the CD is your main product so you should make the CD label look great. Printing the CD label is […]
CD Packaging: Minute Papillon- Second Language
Minute Papillon is Second Language’s latest and most ambitious curatorial exercise yet. It comprises of 60 one-minute-long tracks purveyed by a pan-global retinue of left-of-centre artists. It is packaged in a deluxe, silver foil blocked jewel box with magnifying glass. The text is so small that it’s painful to read without the use of the […]
Music is dying. Music is Thriving. Which is it?
Music is dying if you believe the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). Music is a growing business if you believe Apple, Google, Spotify, Yahoo Music, Artist Direct, My Space Music, Pandora and hundreds of other options. They’re right – all of them. The ‘good ol days’ are gone. Everything lives in phases – music […]
Merch: More Tips to Sell More Merch
A few months back, Billboard* provided a list of three tips designed to help a band maximize their merchandise sales. While Billboard’s sage advice is very useful and can definitely help increase the revenue of bands with all sizes of followings, the tips are somewhat little limited and ignore quite a few of the more […]
5 Reasons Why You Should Still Release Music in CD
With all the gloomy reports and statistics about the dying CD format, why should musicians still release music in CD? Everyone’s using Spotify, so why spend hundreds of dollars when they can sell their music without spending a cent? Here are some of the venues and situations where CDs are still very necessary for musicians: […]
Effective Music Marketing Strategies To Get Your Music Noticed
In some music business schools, they still give students assignments that go like this: “Assume that you have one million dollars. Make up a marketing plan on how to promote a band.” Here’s a realistic assignment: “Go to MySpace. Pick a band. You have zero dollars. Now go promote them.” Although most bands would like […]
Featured Designer: Joshua Marc Levy
About Joshua Marc Levy: Joshua was born Jan 27- the same day as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lewis Carroll. He graduated SVA with honors in 1998 and worked in Entertainment Advertising and the Record Industry afterward. Shortly after leaving SVA, he won many awards including Young Guns, Art Director’s Club and a “First Place Student […]
Indie Musicians: Top 21 Music Licensing Companies
There are many legal requirements you should comply if you want to have a career in music: you need legal permission if you want to cover songs, you need to trademark your band name if you don’t want another band to use it, your performance contract, and many others. If you want to make […]
Indie Musician Advice: Give it all you've got or just don't do it
You have dreamt about this forever and ever and a day. You can’t think of doing anything else. Ever. You finally get your musical ambitions in order–maybe your artist has just finished an overdue release, or maybe this is your first album. Whatever it is–in every case–money, blood, sweat, and tears have been poured into […]
Music Packaging: PLAY the box set while LISTENING TO the box set!
The box, which includes 3 CDs and 2 DVDs of ACDC rare tracks, recordings and videos, also includes a 12″ LP, numerous memorabilia reproductions as well as a 164-page hard bound book containing rare and unseen photos spanning 1974-2009 plus full-size re-prints of original press releases, tour itineraries, tour books, test pressing labels, advertisements and […]