Future of Music Coalition

The path to success in the music industry is difficult for anyone, and the late-singer songwriter Vic Chesnutt had a harder road than most.

Vic, who passed away in 2009 on Christmas Day, had written songs since childhood. At the age of eighteen, a car accident took away his ability to walk and gave him just “limited use” of his hands. A gifted guitar player, Vic could now play only simple chords. This is something that every musician out there who uses their hands to create has likely contemplated, if just for a moment, but for Vic, it was a day-to-day reality.

Now, Vic’s many friends and admirers are holding a pair of concerts in his memory at Athens, Georgia’s 40 Watt Club. read more

For those of you who watched the Grammy Awards on Sunday night (and apparently there were more of you this year than any year since 2004), you may have had a feeling of déjà vu when you saw virtually the same group of stars that clustered together in 2009, 2008, etc. Does this perhaps remind you — at least a little — of the 1993 film Groundhog Day? You know, like Bill Murray’s character hearing “I Got You Babe” every morning?

Now, if you happen to want to hear the same song at the same time every day, that’s fine with us. But sometimes it’s fun to let the needle find a new groove.

Today happens to be Groundhog Day, which is why we bring it up. And if the modern artist or fan feels like they’re “stuck in a loop” when it comes to music on commercial TV and radio, who can blame them? Perhaps the industry is a bit like the groundhog, who hopes that if it waits long enough, springtime will finally arrive. But what if it’s already here? read more

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve heard a lot of chatter about “breaking” new musical acts. The current bone of contention: can a truly DIY artist sell more than 10,000 albums?

The debate kicked off in mid January when Tom Silverman — founder and president of the legendary hip hop label Tommy Boy Records — was featured in a series of articles on musiccoaching.com. During the first interview, Tom referenced 2009 data from SoundScan, the company that tracks retail purchases of music, which indicated that only 112 records reached platinum status in 2009 (that’s 1 million albums). He then focused on the other end of the sales spectrum, pointing to the dearth of artists that have broken the 10,000 sales barrier without label help. Tom said:

In 2008 there were 1,500 releases that sold over 10,000 album units. Out of that there were only 227 of them that were artists that had broken 10,000 for the first time. So in the whole year only 227 of the artists were artists that had broken what we call the “obscurity line.” When you sell 10,000 albums, you’re no longer an obscure artist; people know about you. […] We looked at the 227 and identified that only 14 of them were artists doing it on their own and all the rest were on majors and indies; a little more than half were on indies.

By now, you’ve probably heard all about the iPad and seen the pictures of Steve Jobs displaying his new “tablet” in a manner undoubtedly familiar to the late Charlton Heston. So far, reaction to the device has been mixed at best, with some people already lining up to take potshots at Apple’s latest doohickey.

We still think it’s pretty neat, mostly because we’re curious about what it could mean for the music biz, which is still struggling to find an attractive replacement for physical product. And as long as whatever new gadget plays nice with independent and unaffiliated creators who want to join the digital party, we’re cool.

But back to the gadget in question. read more