It’s a hashtag that’s going around on Instagram at the moment. It’s very cheesy and full of hyperbole. Nevertheless, I’m not one to miss a bandwagon, so here are 9 albums that maybe didn’t change my life, but are important to me somehow.
bands
Episode 03
PodcastsDOWNLOAD THIS PODCAST FROM ITUNES
(AAC, 17.1MB, 18:02)
The third episode of the Matt Keil Podcast. In this episode:
– Five Extra Revenue Streams for Bands and Musicians
– Review of Rockmate app for iPad
The Battle with Sony Music
BlogAs you may have heard from the last Episode of the Matt Keil Podcast, my band Le Monnier found ourselves in a dispute with Sony Music over rights to a song we uploaded to YouTube.
We think Sony may have been making money out of our music by falsely claiming one of our songs as their own. Are they doing this to other bands? We hope not. After Sony finally removed their claim to one of our videos, I posted this blog video on the band’s YouTube channel.
Spotify Apps – Get Yourself Prepared
BlogYesterday, Spotify announced that would be adding ‘Spotify Apps’ a free service allowing you to install add-ons to your Spotify software. This is going to be a pretty big deal for bands and musicians when it launches as it allows listeners to easily extended their listening experience to things like reading song lyrics, check for gig dates and connect to the artist through social networking websites. Although it’s not launched yet, bands and musicians ought to get ready by signing up to the likely partners that Spotify Apps will be incorporating.
Record Companies are Dead – What Now?
BlogIn the 21st century, record companies are losing their relevance. Why? It’s simple. The Internet.
Record companies failed to respond quickly enough to the benefits and challenges that the World Wide Web brought. For example its early failures to deal with Music piracy and the lack of availability of music online in the late 1990s. Today, we’re spoilt for choice and can easily shop around at various retailers for online music such as iTunes, Amazon, Napster, 7digital etc as well as the various streaming services such as Spotify and Last.fm.
Linkin Park Ideal for Rockin’ Musical Futures Lessons
Blog, Education, Musical FuturesI’ve recently been working on ‘In at the Deep’ end projects with Year 8 students at school. Usually with this type of lesson the kids pick some very awkward choices of songs that are hard for them to learn over several lessons. This is especially so when you have them picking ‘Grime’ tracks that they’re supposed to be able to play on a couple of guitars and a drum kit.
Why Are Good Drummers Are Like Gold Dust?
Blog, Rock/MetalWhy is a good drummer so hard to find? My band has recently started looking around for a new drummer and it’s really, really hard.
The thing about drummers is, they are usually mental. I know this, because I used to be one. We’ve tried different approaches, advertising in practice studios, online etc, but we’re not having much luck. The best drummers I know are frantically busy with session work, already in other bands, working in education etc… So you’re hardly likely to be approached by a drummer. No – it’s us that will have to do the chasing.
We even tried the approach of looking at students at University who haven’t yet been snapped up by someone else. Trouble with this approach is they are either a) Incredibly unreliable or b) Not good enough to the point you’re surprised they’re doing a degree in it.
So what I’m really looking for is some alternatives for this situation. At this rate we’ll do away with the drummer and have a drum machine… at least it’ll be on time to band practice…
Blast From The Wasted Past
Blog, Live Music, Rock/MetalIf you’ve read the About Me section of this website, you will note that I used to be in a metal band called Wasted. We were a bunch of Metallica wannabes at the time and to be honest, we sounded more like a cross between Venom and a bunch of pissed mates doing their best to be metal.
One cool thing we did was a Metallica medley at a bunch of gigs with a mixture of new and old songs including St. Anger (it had just come out). Recently the guitarist and singer dug out an old VHS tape of one of these gigs and hastily uploaded it to YouTube. I’m proud to say I’m about to post it here. I’m semi-relieved I didn’t suck as much on drums as I thought I did…
Five WordPress Plugins That ALL Bands Should Use
Blog, Digital Music, Internet, Music Marketing, Social Networks, TechnologyIt goes without saying that all bands should have some sort of online presence such as an online profile on MySpace or a Facebook fan page. Bands or artists looking to have a more personalised and controlled online presence opt for their own website. The success of these websites depend largely on the content and amount of interactivity available. If you have the same content, pictures and information as your online profiles, users don’t exactly have an incentive to make those few extra clicks to your own place on the web.
Having a media rich website with interactive content is vital in today’s web 2.0 world, which can be a tricky thing for unsigned bands or artists trying to create their own web presence. There are many content management websites available such as Drupal, but the WordPress blogging platform has worldwide popularity and rightly so. You can get your website up and running with minimal programming/designing experience, however the more you delve into customising your website, the more likely you are to get bogged down in CSS, HTML or PHP code.
Upgrade Your MySpace Music Profile
Blog, Digital Music, Internet, Music Marketing, TechnologyMuch in the spirit of MySpace’s incredible lack of pace in upgrading their service to cope with the demands of it’s users, they have finally upgraded their service for music profiles. With a ridiculous inability to keep up with other music profile websites, MySpace’s previous insistence on having to paste CSS code to customise the look of your profile was irritating at best. This is especially so when the ‘free’ MySpace editors that are all over the internet put their own advertisements in the code they give you. So it was to my delight having logged into MySpace for the first time in months to see that it appears to be changing.
Matt Keil 