The Texas Tenors’ shows have been known to garner applause, tears, and laughs all in the same hour. If you haven’t been able to catch them live, you’re in luck because they’ve just released their first HD DVD, The Texas Tenors: Live in Concert! Shot in the famous Starlite Theater in Branson, Missouri, the DVD features hits such as “Mountain Music,” “The Climb” and the song that arguably started it all on America’s Got Talent, “Unchained Melody.” Smoothly blending country, classical, gospel and Broadway with a touch of humor and charm, The Texas Tenors: Live in Concert gives you a front row seat to one of the hottest shows around. To catch a sneak peek, click the link below.

Sneak peek – http://bit.ly/zGrxKN
For info on purchase- http://bit.ly/Alarja

Pinterest, a virtual pinboard which allows users to post and manage collections of images, is the latest social service to shake up the web. At just under two years old it has become the fastest site in history to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark, hitting 11.7 in January (comScore). The Palo Alto based company also drives more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn combined, falling just short of Twitter (Shareaholic). And perhaps most impressively, Pinterest users spend 98 minutes per month on the site placing behind only Tumblr and Facebook in terms of engagement (comScore). A fast growing user base, high clickthrough and engagement rates, and a ton of buzz make Pinterest seem like a no-brainer for musicians. However, its style lends itself more to retail brands.

Musicians looking to jump in would find little room to inject music into the service as there are no special profiles or tools available to them. Photo shoot and concert photos would be better served on Facebook where users have more options to interact.

Verdict: Wait
Currently, Pinterest is not suited to engage music fans. However, the site is young and may eventually come to support other creative areas. Unless you are highly style-focused and just can’t wait, your time is better spent engaging fans on Facebook and Twitter.

-V. Graham

These days, for aspiring musicians social media is a no-brainer. It’s pretty much the next step after settling on an awesome band name. But now that you’re all signed up, how do you best use each platform and what do you post about? Is that post about your socks really engaging the fans? It’s hard to know, but that’s why we’re here. Below we shed light on everything from user base differences to the best uses of each platform. Enjoy and post away.

Facebook
This IPO filing giant is simply too large to be ignored. Facebook’s numbers make it the most diverse platform by far. Virtually every group, gender, age, race, and location is represented.

Pros:
• With more than 800 million users worldwide, you can connect with fans in just about any country.
• Timelines make for visually interesting and highly personalized profiles.
• Facebook lets you do it all: create groups, post photos and videos, host events, and sell music and merchandise, all without leaving the site.

Cons:
• Comments, comments, comments they can be your best friend or your worst enemy if left unattended.

Best Uses:
Facebook is generally the first stop for fans after your website so the content should be similar. Post photo and video content regularly to give a personal touch to your background info. Take the opportunity to direct fans to music, merchandise, and events.

Twitter
Communicate with fans in an instant. Twitter’s users are young, extremely active, college educated, and generally live in urban areas.*

Pros:
• At upwards of 350 million, Twitter’s user base sits in a nice middle ground between the others.
• Twitter is the pulse of the people, your band can both build awareness and participate in on-going relevant conversations.
• Twitter allows for instant updates, comments on current events, and real dialogue with fans.
• From instagram to wordpress, Twitter has apps covered.

Cons:
• There are very few options for customizing profiles.
• Those same instant updates can backfire into a disaster. Take a second and think before you tweet!

Best Uses:
This is where that socks post goes, it’s a micro blog use it as such. Share exciting tour moments as they happen, quickly reply to fans, and most of all let people know you’re a real person with thoughts and feelings.

Google+
The new guy has potential. Not even a year old, Google+ is home to creatives and early adopters in tech, education, and artistic fields.**

Pros:
• Hangout with up to 9 fans in video chat.
• Seamlessly place your album in the Android market with a musican’s profile.
• Organize fans into circles ie: separate fans by region and post targeted content.
• YouTube integration

Cons:
• Google+’s user base is currently around 90 million making it the smallest of the three.

Best Uses:
Google+ is quietly the most feature-rich of them all. Take advantage of Hangouts: let fans interview you, livestream a studio session, or use them as a way to make the most loyal fans part of your digital inner circle by running song ideas and lyrics by them, the possibilities are endless.

* Pew Research Center Internet and American Life Project
**Bime Research

-V. Graham

“To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes” – H.R. 3261.

These words begin House Bill 3261 otherwise known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Defenders of the bill say it saves American jobs and protects intellectual property. While, opponents say the bill amounts to more than just Internet censorship, it has the potential to “break” the Internet. But what does SOPA mean for the music industry?

It depends. For bloggers, aspiring music professionals, upcoming artists, and fansites it could spell disaster. When aspiring to do or become something, the best advice is most often to just start. Want to become a music photographer? Take photos at local concerts and performances. A musician? Upload some covers to Youtube. The passing of SOPA could jeopardize many of these avenues into the industry due to copyright issues.

Established musicians, on the other hand, could benefit from the take down of illegal download links from websites in and outside the U.S. Record labels may see a sales jump as options for attaining music dry up, although it’s hard to predict just how fans would react to such a bill passing. There could be a huge backlash, gradual acceptance, or a third more likely option where piracy slows for a month or two until someone finds a way to circumvent the barriers put in place.

There is no doubt something needs to be done about the rampant piracy in the music industry. However, instead of looking to impose blocks on ways to pirate perhaps it is time to look at why people pirate in the first place. The real issue here is helping consumers understand and appreciate the value of content. Quite literally the billion dollar question is, how do we change the mindset of a steadily growing population of people that were raised not believing music is worth paying for?

*As of January 20, 2012 SOPA and PIPA have been suspended indefinitely. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) stated “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”*
-V. Graham

Last month, we touched on several tips for aspiring musicians, including the use of direct-to-fan platforms. Sites like Bandcamp, Topspin, and ReverbNation provide a host site, tools for promotion and marketing, real-time statistics, and a convenient way to sell music and merchandise. Recently, one of the three, Bandcamp announced some interesting statistics. In December alone, Bandcamp artists made more than one million dollars in music and merchandise sales. Great numbers indeed, but that’s not what’s most surprising. Bandcamp had been tracking the starting point of every sale that occurred on their site for a few months and found some very optimistic news about the industry. Fans were buying music they initially planned to pirate. Searches with keywords like “torrents”, “hulkshare”, and “FLAC” resulted in purchases when fans found links to artists Bandcamp pages in the search results.

You can look at this in a number ways:

• Music fans still believe in paying for music, provided there is a convenient way that provides a great user experience.

• Name-your-price music may be the way to go, as 40% of the time fans pay more than the asking price.

• Can direct-to-fan sites like Bandcamp provide a viable platform for publishing and distribution in the near future?

• As major labels consolidate and downsize, are we moving towards a D.I.Y. direct-to-fan future?

But, perhaps the most important item to consider is choice. The multiple formats Bandcamp provides for its users is staggering, including FLAC, Ogg, and Apple Lossless to name a few. Just by virtue of the many options they offer, they show up in the search results where pirates often look for tracks. That placement combined with a wealth of format options and a name-your-price model makes a Bandcamp purchase pretty tough to turn down. Either way you slice it, this is an exciting bit of information that one should keep in mind when planning for the upcoming year.
- V. Graham