The best I can remember, the class was called something like “the scientific method.” A graduate biology seminar, it consisted of meeting once a week to watch an old science fiction movie, followed by a discussion about the treatment of science in the film. For the students, it was a low-stress way to add a couple semester hours to our schedules, and for the tenured professor who “taught” the class, it seemed like an incredibly easy way to pad his course load.

But unlike most of my college classes, there’s something specific that’s stayed with me. It was the professor’s contention that there is no such thing as a truly repeatable experiment, at least not for biological sciences. The classic scientific method depends on the notion of repeatable results—running the same experiment again should give the same results as those obtained in previous experiments. His point was that no matter how careful a researcher was, there’d always be some alteration in a small detail, such as a different batch of food for the lab animals or the health of the laboratory personnel. He wasn’t implying that most scientific research wasn’t valid, just that there was no such thing as a perfect do-over for most experiments.

Why am I yammering on about science experiments in a music business blog? Well, as anyone reading this post knows, over the past few years, the music industry - from the largest record companies and the biggest selling artists down to the level of self-released artists - has been experimenting like crazy. Free music, pay-what-you-want music, “360” deals, exclusive deals with Wal-Mart sans digital distribution, iTunes exclusives, etc. And after every large-scale experiment (Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” Kid Rock’s no-iTunes strategy, AC-DC’s current Wal-Mart exclusive), music industry analysts, the news media, and bloggers attempt to assess the relative success of the approach.

Yet in all of these cases, “experiment” is probably a misnomer—there’s no “control group” receiving the placebo treatment. Absent a trip to a parallel universe where you could buy Kid Rock’s last album (or the single) from the iTunes store, we really don’t know for certain if Kid Rock helped or hindered his total sales. (It’s possible, of course, that some record companies have been using control groups of some sort. You could make an album available in iTunes for a specific country or region, and compare sales to those in non-iTunes regions. Though the demographics and fan bases probably aren’t identical across regions, so you’re still guessing somewhat…)

And even if we knew for certain if an individual experiment was a relative success, it’s not necessarily transferable. Just because something worked for Radiohead doesn’t mean it would work for R.E.M. Further, in addition to the non-interchangeable nature of audiences and albums, the music retail environment itself is changing on a daily basis.

Yet music is art, not science, and even if these different business tests aren’t controlled, repeatable experiments, there does seem to be a few obvious takeaways. One thing that seems certain is that for acts of a certain stature, deviations from the standard sales approach will result in increased attention, perhaps enough to generate additional sales. Offering free music certainly seems to helped Trent Reznor SELL a lot of music, music that is readily available for no charge. And maybe AC-DC’s new album wouldn’t be selling as well without the promotional push behind the Wal-Mart exclusive.

One problem, however, is diminishing returns. Radiohead got the attention it did for its “In Rainbows” experiment not because it was the first act to offer its music on a “pay what you want” basis. Rather, because they were the first act with that level of name recognition and artistic credibility to do so. Post-Radiohead, a similar experiment by a well-known act might not get the same attention.

What’s less obvious, however, is if free or pay-what-you-want music has the same impact on the other end of the scale. That is, for self-released acts like my own, who are all trying to figure out how to compete in an environment of seemingly endless listening choices.

If you spend some time on the CD Baby message boards, you’ll see that some self-released musicians that are quite indignant over the idea of “free music.” They’ll point to the both hard work that went into writing and recording their music and the hard-earned dollars that funded the recording, mixing, mastering, and manufacturing of their music. They simply want a chance to earn some of that money back.

But offering free music doesn’t mean you don’t expect to get paid for it. For musicians at ANY level, the fundamental challenge is twofold. First, you need to get people to hear your music. Then you have to convince them to buy it. For relatively unknown artists, without access to commercial radio and the mainstream music press, offering free music along with paid versions of it seems the easiest way to increase your listening audience and, eventually, your paying audience.

Anecdotally, there are plenty of examples of how free and paid music can co-exist. A few years ago, when the Strokes released their second album, they offered a free 192k mp3 of the lead single on their website. Yet that song remained their top-selling track on iTunes, despite the existence of a free equivalent. And when I look at our cumulative iTunes sales, the two tracks we’ve sold the most copies of are songs we’ve made available as free downloads.

These examples don’t necessarily prove anything—there’s no way to know if the Strokes would’ve sold more (or less) iTunes downloads if they didn’t offer a free version of the track. Nor do they reveal why some consumers are paying for music they could have legally obtained without purchasing it. Maybe some purchasers of the iTunes tracks were simply unaware of the free versions, or maybe they are deliberately choosing to support the artist by purchasing the tracks.

For our new album, we’re taking the free music plunge, inspired in part by a post by David Rose on this blog. For their 2004 release “Conductor,” the Comas had a level of critical and promotional success that most small bands would kill for—thing like an 8.0 Pitchfork review and strong support and airplay from KEXP (one of the biggest/best known CMJ-reporting stations).

Yet they sold less than 6,000 total units, including physical CDs and album downloads. Would the Comas have done better with a free strategy? Again, without access to a parallel universe, there’s no way to know to know for certain.

But in our case, given our very modest sales, the upside seems to outweigh the minimal downside of potential lost sales. And while it won’t be a controlled or repeatable experiment, there are plenty of things we can quantify over the next few months: our number of Last.fm listeners, web traffic, friend statistics for MySpace and Facebook, and - we hope - increased sales over our previous release.

David Harrell is editor of Digital Audio Insider and has blogged about the economics of digital music since 2006. With his indie rock band the Layaways, he has self-released three albums. The latest, “The Space Between,” is now available for free streaming and download from Last.fm.

So what is a “song”? Is it a copyright? A melody and lyric? Who owns that “song”? What rights do the owners have to control its consumption? These questions are at the heart of today’s debate within the music business. On one side there are the record labels, publishers and a great number of artists, on the other side a large number of music consumers. I have spent a lot of time listening to the opinions of all parties and have expressed a lot of my own points of view. So as this debate evolves, what do I think today?

Well, all parties are correct. Each has a valid list of reasons and a deep passion for what they believe. So rather than keep myself in this ongoing debate, I took the summer off the public speaking circuit with the exception of doing a fun artist brainstorming session with the UK based Musictank group. I left the debate thinking that all perspectives are “right”.

During this time I immersed myself in various psychological, scientific, and wellness books as part of my own personal journey. I did a lot of yoga, listened to a lot of Kirtan music, and traveled back and forth to Asia a few times. Understanding how the brain works made me more and more curios about music and the neurological science behind it. What does music do to us on an emotional level? Looking at how we bookmark our life’s journey to various emotions with music being one of the strongest sensory marks.

The more I soaked this in the more apparent to me is that a song is in fact an “emotion”. When a listener relates to that “emotion”, they attach their own personal emotions to that song. In a sense creating a new emotion or a co-collaboration. This neurological wiring within the brain creates a conscious sense of ownership within the listener based on the emotional level they have infused into the song.

Today such collaborations are seen on many more levels than just a few years ago. The ability to do music mash ups, video mash ups, remixes, perform the song in a virtual space with friends. The personal and social emotional connection is now even more amplified than it ever has been.

I see this emotive impact in how music is used in movies and TV shows. Some music placements have little to no effect on sales, yet others have a profound effect, even if it’s the same song used both times. If the song connects to the emotion being expressed within the visual, it amplifies its effect on the viewer, and the emotional glue now has multiple sticky points. Sarah’s McLachlan’s song “Angel” a 5-minute piano ballad became a #1 hit single at top 40 radio. This would never have happened without its placement in the pivotal part of the movie “City of angels”. Sum 41’s “With me” saw a placement in an emotive scene in Gossip Girls, which caused digital sales to explode over night and help drive the song past 175,000 sales in just a few months as the clip spread through Youtube.

Clearly, the future is not the ongoing debate on control and ownership of copyrights, with the big stick approach of suing fans. Music, along with all the other forms of rich media, is going into the clouds where it will be pulled down from servers when and how the consumer wants. The new values reside in what is behind this media; the meta data. The quality and increase in value of this meta data will have a profound effect on the future. Digital maids will be cleaning up your media locker, moving files to where they belong and propagating your custom and peer based playlists. Digital valets will be pulling down media from these cloud servers and prepping it for the consumer’s consumption. Songs will not only be just the music, but will contain data that will allow foreign lyric translations, edited versions, sheet music, instruction on how to play the song and so on. Future economic models will be based on monetizing the behavior of the consumer by adding true value.

This thought process is not a huge step from what I have been publicly talking about, but it is a key shift in my perception as to music and its psychological effect on us.

Terry McBride is the CEO and one of three founders of the Nettwerk Music Group, which includes Nettwerk Productions (Canada’s largest independent record label), Nettwerk Management (artist and producer management), Nettwerk One (publishing), and Artwerks (graphic and fashion design). Founded in McBride’s apartment in 1984, Nettwerk has corporate offices in Vancouver, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, Hamburg and London. Nettwerk Management’s exclusive client roster includes Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies, Dido, Stereophonics, Sarah McLachlan, Sum 41, Jars of Clay and Jamiroquai, among many others.

Most musicians, when they think about where to get their music heard, think radio. Unfortunately, commercial radio is essentially off limits to indie musicians unless you spend tens of thousands of dollars, and even that’s no guarantee. College radio is in reach, but time consuming. And new license rates have even curtailed webcasting.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. Podcasting has emerged to become the radio of the internet. In fact the September 2008 Pew internet study estimates that 19% of internet users have listened to a podcast. And unlike radio, podcasters are hungry for music to use for their shows. But the best news is that the major labels have made their own music nearly impossible to use on podcasts.

That’s right: podcasts are a major-label free zone.

How Podcasting Works Podcasts are like internet radio shows. They are simply sound files, usually MP3s. In fact, anyone with a computer and a microphone can make one using free recording software such as Audacity. The magic isn’t in making the MP3, it’s in the distribution mechanism. Podcasts use feeds similar to blogs (using RSS or Atom) that allow programs like iTunes to subscribe to them and automatically download shows. It’s similar to how a Tivo will automatically record a show except listeners can download the episode any time after it is released without having to wait for a “broadcast”. Also, listeners can go back and hear all of the previous episodes if they want to. Since anyone can make a show, there are podcasts about every topic you can imagine. To get an idea of the variety, go on PodcastAlley.com or PodcastPickle.com and search on any topic that you are interested in; from the profound to the profane, from the popular to the picayune, podcasts cover it all. Since podcasts are released through the Web, they have a global reach. While some have only a handful of listeners, others have hundreds of thousands. And, best of all, podcast listeners are more engaged than a causal radio listener since they’ve actively sought out the content.

Getting Podcast Play The simplest way to get podcast play is to make your music “podsafe”—a general, non-legal term that lets podcasters know that they can use your music in their shows. Since copyright law sets everything to “all rights reserved”, telling podcasters that your music is podsafe lets you carve out an exception so they can use your music and not get sued. Or, if you want to be formal, license the song under a Creative Commons license. To make it easy for podcasters to find your music, you can register songs at a podsafe music collective—websites that make it easy for musicians and podcasters to find one another. Podcasters routinely go to sites like music.podshow.com or podsafeaudio.org to find music. If you join these collectives, read their agreements carefully and make sure that you are comfortable with the rights you are granting to your music in order to turn them podsafe. In return, podcasters must tell their fans who the band is, and link to you (more than you ever get from a radio station.) Another way to get play is to contact podcasters directly, usually with just a friendly email. While there are music podcasts, you will get better exposure and have an easier time getting played on non-music podcasts. Your songs will stand out better, since they often play just one or two feature songs in the middle of their show. According to PodcastAlley.com, the current top 50 popular podcasts are not music podcasts, instead covering topics such as politics, Harry Potter, and learning Spanish. Most likely, these popular podcasts have tens or hundreds of thousands of listeners—and have a need for music.

We have two suggestions if you get a request: Firstly, give them a high-quality WAV version of your song. There’s nothing worse than hearing your song garbled because the MP3 you sent them got re-encoded as an MP3 a second time. Secondly, mention each podcast play in your own blog and website to give the podcaster exposure to your fans in return. That makes it even more likely that the podcaster will start requesting more of your songs—something that happens the more you get played. We found that after years of doing this, and getting play, they now come to us looking for music. Something we’re happy to give them.

Just think, when was the last time a radio station asked you for your music?

Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan are the authors of The Indie Band Survival Guide: The Complete Manual For The Do-It-Yourself Musician published by St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan in the US and Canada and founders of the open and free musician resource, IndieBandSurvivalGuide.com. They are also lead members of the horn-powered Chicago indie-pop band Beatnik Turtle. Their latest project is the The DIY Music Manual: How to Record, Promote and Distribute Your Music without a Record Deal from eBury/Random House in the UK, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand to be released in February 2009.

How many of your fans have cellphones? It’s almost a rhetorical question these days. There are over 250 million cellphones in just the U.S. alone (over 3 billion worldwide) so there’ a real good bet that it’s close to 100%.

The more and more indie musicians we speak to, (and we speak to a lot at music festivals, music conferences, via email, etc.) we are finding that connecting with their audience via mobile phones is becoming an important, yet simple and inexpensive part of their music marketing efforts. The best part is that artists can now easily create these sought after mobile features using their existing files and the Internet.

Indie bands are taking advantage of their fans’ passion for ringtones and wallpapers by providing their fans with content that best represents their band. Using songs, photos and videos, bands can get creative to offer mobile campaigns that allow their fans to fully customize their phones and enjoy their favorite content with them all the time as close as their pocket or purse.

Besides providing one’s fans with great content, ringtones create great word of mouth buzz every time a bands’ fan phone rings. Similar to word of mouth buzz, mobile content can create viral online buzz by sharing widgets and links. Ringtones, wallpapers, mobile videos, etc. can be offered from your website, your MySpace page or sites with large communities that focus on offering mobile content to their audience. A vital part of a bands success depends on their ability to direct their fans to their physical, online, and mobile offerings.

Beyond just online and word of mouth buzz, artists can promote their mobile content on all of their flyers, promotional items, stickers, T-shirts, album covers and more. You can create customized text codes for each of your ringtones or wallpapers and promote those codes directly from stage or on any of your printed materials. This has a great impact on the fan that is just discovering your music for the first time because they can leave the show with your music on their phone to take home with them. A great guerilla marketing campaign would be to create stickers that only feature customized texting codes for free ringtones, then place them around you local area in bars, on stop signs, and hard to reach places on college campuses; then see how many hits you get.

Traditionally the ringtone industry only dealt with the hits thus providing a market where $1.99 or $2.99 ringtones were the only way to get new ringtones to fans’ phones. As more artists begin to offer ringtones and fans find new ways to create their own ringtones we have found that the promotional value of the ringtone can outweigh the money generated from just sales alone. You may choose to give free ringtones either as part of your promotional efforts, or as means to build up your list. You can even use the free ringtones to help drive sales of digital downloads from iTunes, Rhapsody, Amie Street, etc. or to help sell other merch.

Speaking of lists, indie bands are also creating their own mobile fanlists so they can access their advocates right on the day they are performing to get additional people to hear them play at the venue. New trends in the online and mobile music industry have all pointed to the ability to engage your audience with updates and announcements as a very valuable tool to work with other online and mobile businesses. If you have the ability to get your core fans to download your new release or buy tickets to your shows just by keeping up on your email and text messaging updates you will have the power to run successful publicity and marketing campaigns very easily.

It literally takes only a few minutes to get your MP3’s converted into ringtones and many services are free. Plus, your fans—-virtually on any phone on any carrier worldwide will have access to your content. You don’t have to try and fight to be on a carrier’s “deck”. Why not take advantage of this excellent marketing tool?

The future is a mobile future and it’s here now • Legitimize your band as cutting-edge and ready for advancing mobile technology. • Interacting with fans via the mobile phone will start to create awareness of the mobile phones’ potential to close the gap between artists and fans. • The mobile phone will become a place where artists can handle fan education, sales, publicity, promotions, street team management, and more.

Hello John,

I was thrilled to finally get to see X on tour this year. The band was incredibly tight and the energy of the show was “off the hook”! I’m in the process of forming a new band and wanted to get your take on what to look for in bandmates. Everyone in the last band I was in shared an interest in the same type of music, had similar favorite bands etc. But once we started playing together regularly it became clear we all couldn’t be more different in our approach, work ethic, songwriting and so on. Needless to say it didn’t work out well in the end. What’s the best way to find out if new potential bandmates might be a fit? A friend suggested I put together a list of questions to ask but I’m afraid the “vibe” of that process could be a real turnoff for people who might be a great fit.

I would love to hear what you think.

Thanks,

Jen

hey Jen, Yeah a questionnaire might be way too much like a job interview or some Harmony.com dating service, so . . . NO. How about dinner & drinks? How about just hanging out for several evenings & see if you actually do see things similarly? how about playing cover songs in yr living room? Always trust yr intuition. Be sure you’re in a big enough city to have a “talent pool” that’s large enough. There are always exceptions but it’s rare that you find everyone all at once. Most bands that I know have grown over a period of time. A gtr player here, a singer there, a drummer etc, you get my point. There is something to be said for fate & it seems that the best combinations & meetings have that as an element. best of luck, hope this helps & as always, thanks for writing JD

PS: Make sure to vote on November 4th. It’s important.

If you have questions for John Doe about music, the music business or life feel free to email them to wwjdd@knowthemusicbiz.com.

For more information on John Doe check out theejohndoe.com or YepRoc.com .

I’m in a mood today. So this could read grumpy, or even curmudgeonly (if that’s a word).Things are good, things are above the waterline. Work is good, I’m writing, I just scored a television show and there’s more ahead. I just released a new song called Some Streets Lead Nowhere via iTunes and I’m finding there’s a new flux of listeners finding me. My last tour was successful, more and more people coming out and singing along. My listeners are beginning to help me tell my story. And I’m genuinely moved by this new migration of intimate advocacy. It’s a humanizing hum in all the flash and adverts. But there’s a part of me that continues to feel unsatisfied in the new lawlessness of music and the way it’s internalized.

I don’t wish to mourn the horse-drawn wagon vs. the automobile. But things have changed, and there’s no going back. The days we knew are a boutique, progress isn’t always progress. Often it’s what’s expedient or more thoroughly marketed.

I miss the tactile nature of music. The submersing seduction of artwork. The smell of the ink on paper with the images and the liner notes. The large speakers, the console, the ritual of removing the plastic wrap and inserting the breathe of a world changed by someone’s ability to say and sing something. I miss it. It’s what I wanted for my work. I wanted it to exist for those that needed it, and I wanted my work to hopefully confide and insist that things are always on the verge of exploding into a perfect opportunity. I’m confused by the homogenized experience of downloading music now. There’s no physicality to it now. There’s no unique sensation to the event. It’s a click and a few seconds and then a declaration of war vs. instant judgment. Now, the quality of music itself has been compromised for speed of delivery. The system of delivery is rarely gonna mug you like a sudden rain or burst of sunshine will. It’s more of a cute little machine that looks more like it could light a cigarette rather than unleash Love Will Tear Us Apart, Positively 4th Street or Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World on you.

But it is amazing isn’t it? Even with all the new traffic online, and as compromised as technology has made the width and clarity of recordings, songs still arrest you. Anonymous and handicapped, they still take over a room, shake you, force you to shake your ass or stop cold in reflection, cry and smile. Songs. You can’t fucking kill them. And if you’re song is good enough, honest enough, clear enough…. It will create a universe all its own through the migration and delivery in cold places like email and Yousendit. And on the end of those strange transmissions lie ears and a heart still wanting to be moved.

So I say, give your music away. Not all of it, but consider which song of yours at this moment is the ONE song you’d want anyone to hear. That’s the song you should unlock the cage for. Be smart. Pay your rent. Work hard. Stay open and hopeful. Don’t buy into subscriptions and donations and other silliness, If your songs are good enough they will speak for themselves. You should lean for life outside of your cult. People value what moves them. If you engage people, they will engage you. And eventually they will tell your story for you.

When we do our jobs, when we deliver on our promises, we’re rewarded. I suggest that we understand that. Listeners, lovers of music, want artists that full fill their promise. And in return, they understand the reality of it. They will become patrons of your work. They’ll come to your shows. They’ll buy your t-shirts. They’ll pass your music along with genuine heart and advocacy. Because even still, music is one of the few things that can connect, comfort and rile us in such a pure way. It has value because (watch out, this is gonna get redundant) when it has value, it has value. It’s indefinable, scary and dangerous. The new world can’t be bought. At least the halls of truly meaningful music cannot be bought. The Jonas Brothers and other drivel will always exist. It’s brainwashing. It’s bought and designed and sold and bought and re-invented and sold again. But the halls of the meaningful have to carve their own path, it has to exist ultimately based upon its merits and some collective willingness to understand or feel it. Those merits are cousins to magic, and it depends on its ability to confide something that everyone knows, but can’t manage the words let alone a melody. That’s the work of artists. You gotta be willing to release those songs like a bird into that great wide open. Cause you know, if you love something, set it free. If it never returns, it was never yours. If it returns to you, it’s yours forever.

Matthew Ryan first debuted in 1997 with May Day (A&M Records) and since, has amassed an impressive catalog of critically lauded major label, DIY and indie releases to date. Matthew Ryan vs The Silver State is Ryan’s 11th record released by Brooklyn indie 00:02:59.

No, not shellfish philanthropy – SELFISH – what I mean is this – GIVE of yourself – open up and HELP someone other than yourself – it will PROBABLY help you way more than spending the same amount of time doing the same old stuff you have been doing and not getting the amazing results you read about on the side of the cereal box.

Lets look at a tiny example – putting up posters….....you could put up another 50 of the same posters that no-one has really been taking any notice of for the show that you haven’t sold many tickets for – OR, offer to help another band (maybe an out of town band you’ve connected with through the internet) don’t try and hash out some quid pro quo deal before you do it – I LIKE the idea that I’m allowing someone the option of totally ripping me off – that’s the best way you can see very quickly what they are really made of – and, when its only a few posters and a few staples (and a parking ticket and a trip to the emergency room because you stapled your hand to a telegraph pole) – then its a pretty cheap litmus test of personality – ok?

So, what might happen – well, the out of town band might also ask if you know of a place to stay – do you?, they might also ask if you know where they can get their mellotron fixed, or they might think that here is a guy that’s DOING SOMETHING in a city they need help in – and what would happen if you were actually on the bill??? Maybe, after doing this for ten bands you meet the promoter(s) in town. Believe me the ones that are really doing this will NOTICE someone who is running around putting up posters – instead of talking the talk and then binning them! They will see you here and there and register this activity – so that, when they have a problem with a show that needs some extra work and all of their street teamers are off touring with their band or sick or sick of touring or whatever – you will get the call. Maybe you’ll just get to know the people at Kinkos and get a discount or meet your new guitar player (been there, done that).

I’m not saying, hang on tight cos next week you’re joining the fucking BEATLES!!!!!!!! I’m just offering up some different ideas.

Peace Love Respect

Martin Atkins

Since you’ve asked me, the owner of the lowly but scrappy Bloodshot Records what we look for in a new artist, and not David Geffen or the CEO-of-the-month at DynaMusicTechNet Global LTD, I will assume that we all understand my advice and taste and goals all come from the staunchly independent perspective. We don’t have to worry about shareholders or making sure the CFO’s housekeepers at the Caribbean island getaway are paid, nor do we deal with pie charts, Venn diagrams, oily A&R men and focus groups. We don’t care how many MySpace friends you have (I actually heard some VP flack at SXSW say somewhat haughtily into his cell that he doesn’t even LISTEN to a band unless they have x number of friends on their MySpace page). I am a lifelong music fan who got lucky and gets to put out records I like for a living.

To start, there are a few questions you need to ask yourselves before even approaching a label. What are your goals? Expectations? Be brutally honest with yourselves. Why do you even want to make a record? Seriously. It seems like a basic question but one that needs to be asked. Is it for fun? Vanity? Cuz it’d be “neat” to have one? Because you sell out the local watering hole and everyone gets drunk and has a grand time? That’s great, I love bands like that, but put the record out on your own and be happy to sell a few hundred. If you have a full time job, familial responsibilities and no intention or ability to do the road work, leave us out of it; be content to play for local friends and fans, there’s no shame in that. If you look to the label deal as a magic bullet for your band, think again. Countless bands over the years have told us in effect “once we have the deal and are selling records we’ll be willing to go on the road and support,” or “we are ready to finish our songs once we have an agreement.” Thinking that the label deal puts you on your way is like thinking that putting some greasepaint under your nose makes you Groucho Marx. Making a living in this racket is hard, dirty work; nothing can replace that. You need to have the confidence, arrogance and awareness to overcome the unceasing obstacles that’ll come your way. Oh, and it’s not a meritocracy, either; many a great band gets shunted aside in favor of some couch potato-friendly pablum. The septic tank metaphor (usually only the really big chunks rise to the top) is all too apropos. What we are looking for is a band or an artist that HAS to create, HAS to perform, that is committed to their art regardless. We want to see an unstoppable drive. We cannot care about your career more than you do, nor should anything like a lack of a label prevent you from your craft.

Click the link above to read Rob’s entire blog post!

A Question from Matthew in Liverpool

Hi John,

I’m a big X fan and I love your solo work particularly, ‘Meet John Doe’...a great album, I hope maybe Rhino may remaster it.

My question is something I’ve already emailed Peter Case about, I play guitar but find that when I try and flat pick I can’t get the right sound. I use 12’s on an old EN acoustic, I’m fed up of playing finger style and want a tougher sound. Are there any tips you can give me about flat picking? Should I be using a thumb pick or a particular plectrum?

Yours with Respect.

Matthew

Click the link above to read JD’s response!

If you have a question for John Doe about the music biz email it to wwjdd@KnowTheMusicBiz.com.