The goal is nothing less than improving the sonic quality of digital music.  From files, to players to laptops to headphones rapper/entrepreneur Dr. Dre, computer giant Hewlett Packard and Universal Music exec Jimmy Iovine want to upgrade the tinty quality of the music that the current generations find an acceptable audio experience.
“We have to fix [...]

This guest post first appeared on Colette Weintraub‘s blog Deep Dive Marketing. Colette is a marketing veteran whose done extensive stints at Fanscape, Buzztone and Bono’s (RED).  Now she is marketing/strategy consultant with her own firm Deep Dive Marketing.
It’s been a while since someone in the music business impressed me.  Finally, somebody has impressed me [...]

All four major label groups are working together to create a new format for the digital album tentatively titled CMX.  Scheduled for a partial roll-out in November, the new digital format would include liner notes,  lyrics, artwork and videos along with the mp3′s in a single download.
The labels apparently approached Apple about involvement in the [...]

It was another week of poor earnings reports and bad news for the old school music industry: Warner Music losses mounted, RealNetworks‘ Rhapsody lost 50K subscribers and 9% of staff got laid off, concert promoters Live Nation continued its’ loosing ways and its policy of discounting tickets. ArtistDirect even went so far as to pull [...]

A few weeks ago there was a blog post on MTT Open on “How To Write a Music Business Plan”. In the comments section of that post, one of the readers suggested that Mr. English provide a template or example of a plan.
You can now download the free PDF, “Template for Writing a Music Business Plan”, here. [...]

Perhaps with some tweaking, here’s what current wisdom tells you:

Make music.
Give your music away; it’s your best advertisement.
Organize into a business entity.
Go on tour.
Build an audience.
Sell stuff and a bit of music when you can.
Go on tour again.
Sell even more stuff.
And when you stop touring, your revenue stream will slow to a crawl.

As new interactive [...]

 Digital distributor and marketer The Orchard is launching a groundbreaking platform, using an API, to provide its artist and label clients access to third party business solutions within their client Workstation.
These companies are confirmed as Orchard API launch partners:

ArtistData automates the updating of information to artist websites, social network profiles, concert databases, Twitter feeds and [...]

 iLike has been using iPhone apps to extend its reach for several months with some solid results. In May, iLike announced a turnkey system enabling d.i.y. creation iPhone apps featuring concert dates, video messages, photos, blogs, bulletins, games, and exclusive content. Arists post content on the app via the iLike Artist Dashboard which is [...]

Diddy is thinking of an innovative way to promote his upcoming album The Last Train to Paris. He is trying to figure out how to distribute the message, any ideas? (He should hire me lol)
 
 Click to view

The Blue Scholars Sign Label Duck Down
 
It’s not a typo – Seattle’s Blue Scholars did not sign to the sign to the  indie hip hop label Duck Down label. Instead, the band hired the label to handle marketing and other functions for several of their releases. Using money from an innovative partnership with Caffe [...]