LIVE AT GUITAR CENTER: Live365.com, the "global independent Internet audio community," has partnered with Guitar Center for the DJ Spin Off Grand Finals. In addition to featuring a complete re-broadcast of the event, Live365.com will award the winning DJ with a cash prize and feature broadcast streams by the top three finalists in a specially designed section of its website (www.live365.com). The event, scheduled for September 19th, 1999 at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, is the culmination of a nationwide DJ Spin Off competition. Grand Finals will feature the winning DJs from seven regional events held earlier this year. Launched in June, 1999, Live365.com provides an outlet for independent DJs, unsigned, independent or amateur musicians, music-lovers, writers and aspiring talk-show hosts to broadcast their content to a worldwide audience.
BLAZING THE HIP-HOP TRAIL: BLAZE, the new hip hop culture magazine from the publishers of Vibe, has an online version of the magazine, BLAZE Online (www.blaze.com), and they are inviting underground rappers and MCs across the country to submit their demos as well as part of their Street Dreams Online showcases. Tracks submitted will be judged by hip hop afficionados such as BLAZE Online editor Keith Murphy, Jive Records' A&R Tabari, and DJ Freedom Child, who will then post the best of the submissions at the site, offering them up to voting by their viewers. The chosen tracks will be posted in MP3 format for downloading, and monthly winners will be posted and featured. The site itself is a bit busy, and takes a while to download in its entirety, due to heavy use of graphics, including banner ads, but does feature news as well as typical industry-generated fluff and advertising.
RIFFAGE: Founded by Ken Wirt, the guy behind Diamond Multimedia's RIO MP3 player, Riffage.com is another site dedicated to indie music and MP3 files. Similar to MP3.com, they are inviting indie bands to set up their own Riffage page, upload their bios, music and photos, sell downloadable tracks (although most are free), and set up chat rooms and email lists of fans. Music fans to the site are offered their own personal playlist page that they can customize, then share with other viewers. Any opportunity for a free web page for your music is a good opportunity, and Riffage.com seems to have all of this stuff together, with a website that seems very powerful on the search and database side, is visually attractive without being too busy, and downloads pretty quick. Although their concept of trashing all of your CDs and LPs after MP3ing them is a bit of a stretch (their press kit arrived in a trash can), they are another welcomed professional site for indie artists everywhere.
MJUICE: Here's a new, MP3 music site that features tracks from major labels, downloadable in a new, "secure" MP3 format. Mjuice.com (formerly Audio Explosion) boasts "cutting-edge music from today's hottest genres, including scorching hip-hop, rock and electronica," featuring music from such labels as Bad Boy Records, Dreamworks, Ubiquity and Alternative Tentacles. They have a library of over 3000 tracks, including new cuts from Puff Daddy, Tilt, Lagwagon and Sick Of It All.
EAT'M 2000: Missed this years' Vegas-based indie music conference and showcase? Wish you didn't? The 2000 EAT'M Conference is slated for May 17-20, and their website (www.eat-m.com) offers a mailing list you can add your email address to to be notified of the latest info on next year's showcases, including deadlines and entry info (the site also includes photos of 1999 conference).
MP3DOM: With the slogan "New Music That Doesn't Suck," New York-based music attorney/manager/producer Josh Futterman (Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, LL Cool J) is launching another MP3-based indie music site, open to musicians worldwide, but filtered by Josh and other music professionals. The site is free to musicians and visitors alike, and gives artists a free page for their songs, bios and photos - if you make the grade. You can reach Josh at 212-662-2052, or email jofut@mp3dom.com.
BORDERS BOUND: Many musicians are opting out of the club scene, or atleast complimenting it with a more the cerebral and less competitive environment that Borders Books can offer. As a large national chain they offer musicians the opportunity to perform and promote themselves and their CDs across the United States. Many musicians and acts are even playing national Borders tours, crossing the country playing only the chain's locations. Jeff Reichman, an indie musician who has done just that, has posted tips on how to book a Borders tour, as well as what to expect. His page (www.jeffreichman.com/borders.htm) gives good advice to anyone hoping to follow in his footsteps, from planning to booking to promotion and distribution, including advice on how to get around their "pay with gift certificate" policy.
FEMMUSIC: FEMMUSIC.com (formerly GRRL ROCK) is an online magazine devoted to emerging women in music. Although based out of Colorado, it focuses on female artists worldwide, with articles and interviews, reviews of live performances and CDs, and featured artists of the month. They also offer three separate bulliten boards, for Colorado-based , national and international women musicians. You can subscribe to any of the lists at the site.
FIRSTLOOK: With founders including Miles Copeland and former A&M Records chairman Al Cafaro, Firstlook.com is a new music site for established and new major label artists to preview new singles, which are then available for purchase at the site. Viewers can rate the tracks, though information on why the site should attract any more attention than the hundreds of others started every week are lacking in the press release. What is featured in the pre-launch material is advertising rates with a stress on how indie, up-and-coming artists, by paying to be on the site, can be featured along side major-label acts. With Copeland's and Cafaro's contacts, it is sure that many major-labels and their artists will be involved, so here's another business model for major music corporations looking for ways to make - and spend - money online.
WEBTIPS: NEAR CD-QUALITY?MP3 files are great for the Internet - sound quality better than any online format previously available, with a compression scheme than crunches a 45 MB file down to between 3-4 MB. Many websites are offerring these files for free, although more and more are selling these tracks as well, even burning them onto CDs. These online music sites are trying to position themselves as the music providers for consumers in the next millenium, but what exactly are consumers going to be getting? How about 10% of the music.MP3 compression, like any other compression scheme, throws away data to get the file size down. Throwing away up to 90% percent of the original CD audio file means you're giving up alot - like dynamic range, signal-to-noise, frequency response and clarity. Listen to a CD track of almost anything, then listen to an MP3 version of the same track, and you'll be convinced that MP3 offers more - more distortion, more noise and more hype. So what, it's a great and mostly free format that has opened up the Internet and indie music in general. Although I applaud anything that shakes up the music industry tree, the talk amongst music producers, engineers, and manufacturers is not the degradation of sound quality, but a new high-end audio format (from the current 44.1 khz/16 bit to a DVD Audio standard of 96 khz/24 bit) that greatly improves digital sound quality, and adds multi-channel 5.1 capability. As an artist that takes alot of care in the quality of the music I create, the last thing I want is for my music to be sold in a format that sounds worse than audio cassettes. When you buy a CD from MP3.com or a number of other music sites, they burn you a CD copy from MP3 files uploaded by bands, meaning that they take 4 MB files and "re-convert" them to full 40 MB CD files, but now including the distortion added in the original MP3 process. This seems like a great way for indie bands without their own CD - potentially - to sell some music. But for any artists who has taken the time and money to produce their own CD, perhaps it is better to let people sample your music with free MP3 clips, in the hope that they will then buy your CD, with enhanced multimedia content, original packaging artwork and high-quality audio, all things artists should provide, and consumers should demand. MP3 files cannot replace CDs as long as sound quality is important. Otherwise, why pay for music at all when you can just download it off the Internet for free. |
© Music Connection Magazine 1999.