One of the first things I do every morning is read or scan through a variety of blogs, most of which are sent to my inbox. The blogs range from music related to business related, and factual news to ideas or concepts that I have to twist a little to apply to music. On the ideas and concepts front, many of the writers are reading what each other have to say, which is good for all of us. This is how good ideas start.
Subscribing to RSS feeds is a great way to scan headlines and find the information most important to you. I recommend subscribing to all of these and trying to dedicate 30 minutes a day to a little reading about the industry.
1) Digital Music News – Reports on the latest headlines in the world of digitized music. Not a blog per se, but it’s the first thing I read every day and it gives me a heads up on what I might run into on other blogs.
2) Hypebot – News related but with an editorial slant.
3) Seth Godin – Marketer and author, usually unrelated to music but his thoughts and positive attitude are relevant and motivate me to try new things.
4) The DIY Musician Blog by CD Baby - An always helpful resource for independent musicians. If you find their blog helpful, also check out their podcast.
5) New Music Strategies – Author Andrew Dubber writes about many of the issues today’s independent musicians face, and offers some nice solutions to common problems.
6) Derek Sivers – Founder and former owner of CD Baby, Sivers always thinks about the little guy in the big picture.
7) Music Think Tank – A community of music bloggers riffing on their ideas.
8) Sound Music, Sound Money – Author/bassist Doug Ross offers some great advice on having a career as an independent or freelance musician.
9) Lefsetz Letter – Bob Lefsetz is highly opinionated and his newsletter will piss you off. But if you can get past his crudeness and negativity, his passion for music will strike a chord with you and his underlying perspective will make you think about your own music.
10) Bob Baker’s Indie Music Promotion Blog – Great tips for low cost indie promotion ideas and guerrilla marketing.
I would love for you to look at my blog. I am just getting started and would appreciate your feedback.
Hi,any and all who come across this.
I am just another person trying to incorporate as much music and good times at my guesthouse and on the internet and maybe someday even make some cash for all the work I am putting into this machine.
I found onlinejamsessions and it has opened up my eyes to the wonderful possibilities out there. I want to be a part of playing live with people from anywhere in the world and be at home. plus I want to learn and teach.
Hi, this is to Mitch and everyone else regarding onlinjamsessions, which charges you $50-60 a year to access the video chat room. You can find the EXACT SAME VIDEO CHAT ROOM FOR FREE at about 10 other sites. Save your money ang go to http://www.onlinejamsessions.webnode.com for a list.
Indie Connect Magazine is a blog set up in magazine format that is packed with videos, artices, podcasts and more on various aspects of the music industry. It is a ‘must’ for all singers, songwriters and musicians.
If you’re a musician, it’s a good idea to keep up with everything related to music – wages – trends – deals. And if you’re trying to get your work out there, try Music Contests as well – like Hooked In 60 Seconds.
Hey man, I’m a musician and writer as well and found your stuff to be just delightfully informative. Keep that car runnin, and out of neutral. Thanks for the advise.
theexcitableboy
Thank you so much for posting this, I will point my Readers to your post in the next few days. I just started doing musician interviews (new to the scene) and I think this post could help some of them out!
Best Regards
Regina S.
Hi,
I’m kind of a novice at the music business, so I have a question. Is there a program or software that I can get to put the music I hear on sheet music. For instance, there is a song I want to learn how to play, and there is a tutorial on YouTube, but I could learn it better from sheet music, although I play mostly by ear.
Thanks for the insight. These are great resources for musicians to stay ahead of the game and keep themselves up to date and relevent.
Great information. As an up and coming music artist,staying on top of this kind of information can be crucial in order to keep your band moving forward.
reading here has updated me without even leaving my house. I also use onlinejamsessions.webnode.com and its great.
Great list Cameron! Thanks for the effort of providing us this list. Specially to a Musicians like me who is looking for a great and cool blog like this. I would love to see more post from you soon.
Nice list mate. Going to do some bookmarking and have a good read through :)
Don’t forget about CD Baby’s DIY Musician Blog! :)
http://diymusician.cdbaby.com
New articles daily. Lot’s of tips, tricks, marketing strategies and more!
Chris B
CD Baby
Does anyone know of any blogs or sites to post information for a Musicians website. I know this site is perfect for that, but can anyone suggest other blogs?
Thanks
Pat
Hello Patrick,
I have stumbled upon a wesbite once in which you can find information about musicians and post information as well.
I will post the link here whenever I find it in my History pages.
Cheers!
Please check out my new site..I would love to get comments nd suggestions to make the site better for all musicians..
http://www.musicianstakeout.com
Thanks
Pat
This is a cool top ten list and I too frequently browse Seth Godin’s marketing blog. I find all too few really interactive music blogs online so let’s develop all we can!
Nice blog, plenty of info for up and coming musos as well as older . Cheers. Calum
Great blog, thanks for sharing!
I think people should look to other ways of exposing their talents, who needs booking shows ;)
I happen to like Lefsetz’ writings. After reading just a little, I agree with about 99% of what he says. Nothing is ever going to change if everybody just pretends everything is peachy when it’s not. The ever pretentious will ridicule him, and they will do the same to other folks who are not afraid to call B.S. what it is.
I’m looking for the best/cheapest software to use for industry standard (or close to) recordings for my p.c. Something like mac’s garage band.Anyone got some suggestions? fingers.
Hey John,
The best is up for debate, but here’s two very highly suggested ones around the block:
1.) ProTools is the industry standard DAW, as I’m sure you know. It’s pricy, but if you’re wanting to do work in certain scenes, you’ll probably be required to use that.
2.) Barring that, Reaper is starting to make some headway as a DAW comparable to any out there. It even has 64 bit support. The best part? It’s free to try indefinitely, and if you decide to use it (that’s when you should buy a license), it’s very reasonably priced. Here’s the link: http://www.reaper.fm/