BMI Songwriting Workshop in New York Now Accepting Submissions | News | BMI.com

BMI will offer an eight-week songwriting workshop directed by renowned BMI songwriter and instructor Billy Seidman starting September 12 and ending on October 30 in New York City. Participants will focus on music composition, lyric writing, music theory and production/arrangement techniques as part of an immersive curriculum that includes stimulating assignments and constructive feedback.

Apply Now: BMI Songwriting Workshop in New York Now Accepting Submissions | News | BMI.com

Recoup Lounge Summer Bash

Don't miss your fellow artists/students in action, live in New York City at the Recoup Lounge Summer Bash, May 26, Saturday.   Artists currently finishing their degree here at Bloomfield College will be performing live at the Summer Bash, doors open at 7pm and cover is only 10 dollars!  Please bring ID, must be 21 and over to party and enjoy the festivities!  

NYTimes article on TuneCore

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/business/tunecore-chief-shakes-up-music-with-his-own-words.html?hp

May 6, 2012

Out to Shake Up Music, Often With Sharp Words

By BEN SISARIO

Like any big music company, the offices of TuneCore, a digital distributor in Brooklyn, are lined with official-looking plaques certifying blockbuster record sales.

But rather than the industry’s standard gold and platinum records, they are TuneCore’s own awards for its clients — like a rippled black disc representing 500,000 downloads for Nine Inch Nails — and the first sign of a company looking to challenge music’s status quo.

TuneCore was founded six years ago by Jeff Price, a veteran independent label owner, as a service for artists working under the radar of the mainstream music industry. Without a label, most acts cannot get their music onto iTunes and Spotify, but for $50 a year TuneCore will place any album on dozens of online services around the world and route all royalties to the artist.

That simple model — revolutionary when introduced — has made TuneCore one of the world’s major suppliers of music, and made Mr. Price one of the digital world’s most influential figures. In the United States, TuneCore represents about 10 percent of the 20 million songs on iTunes, and it accounts for almost 4 percent of all digital sales.

“You wake up one day and go, ‘Oh, wow, the customers sold 600 million units of music and earned $300 million off their recordings,’ ” said Mr. Price, the company’s chief executive.

As TuneCore has grown, it has also served as a pulpit for Mr. Price to criticize the ways of the music business. Through aggressive posts on the company’s blog with titles like “How They Legally Steal Your Money,” and occasional outbursts at industry conferences, he has established himself as a particularly vocal gadfly, denouncing opaque accounting systems and sometimes hurling insults at companies he dislikes.

Mr. Price, a trim 45-year-old who speaks so rapidly he sometimes seems to be on fast-forward, says his actions are a form of advocacy in line with TuneCore’s original mission of serving musicians.

“The plan,” he said in an interview last week, “was to start a company that righted a wrong.”

Mr. Price has inserted himself into some of the most contentious issues in the music business, like the legal obligations of streaming services and the complex mechanisms for paying royalties. But his excitable manner — and his tendency to portray business disputes as pitched battles between right and wrong — do not always endear him to his colleagues.

“Typically when you hear people talk about how artists need to get paid, usually some party is posturing for political positioning,” said Michael Robertson, a digital music pioneer who has also fought the industry with his companies MP3.com and MP3tunes. “Jeff has done a fantastic job with TuneCore. But I think his bombastic style drives people crazy and doesn’t always serve him well.”

Mr. Price helped found spinART Records in 1991, putting out music by the Pixies, the Apples in Stereo and others, and learned about digital music through a job at eMusic. By the mid-2000s, with his label winding down, he began to rethink the way artists get their music for sale online. Rather than taking a cut of sales and offering marketing services, as many distributors do, he decided to charge a flat fee to deliver music to retailers and leave the rest to the bands.

“I’m not going to promise anyone they’re going to be a star,” Mr. Price said. “I am going to promise that if you pay me a fee for the service, I will distribute your music to the places you want it to go, and I will deal with all the hassles that come along with that.”

TuneCore can be lucrative for musicians who already have a following or can build one on their own. Major acts like Jay-Z and Keith Richards have used it, and two clients, the rapper Hoodie Allen and the Americana band the Civil Wars, recently hit No. 1 on iTunes after extensive social-media campaigns. But most of TuneCore’s 700,000 acts — as well as the clients of competing services like CD Baby and Zimbalam — have very low sales.

“A real temptation in this industry is to think there’s a quick fix, that all you need is one thing to be successful,” said Travis Yetton, one of the Civil Wars’ managers. “For us, TuneCore was great. They did the service we needed. But if we need them to break a band, then we are doing a bad job, not them.”

Last year, TuneCore expanded into music publishing, which deals with the copyrights for songwriting. Already a daunting business, publishing has become even more complex in the digital age, since songs that can be sold around the world in an instant may still have to filter through multiple layers of international middlemen before all parties are paid. As a result, millions in royalties sit unclaimed around the world; Mr. Price believes that TuneCore’s customers may be owed up to $70 million.

“This is a mighty problem to solve, and not just for the band in the garage,” said Michael S. Simon, the senior vice president of business affairs at the Harry Fox Agency, which processes music licenses in the United States. “Getting royalties for international online exploitation is a problem at every level of the music industry, and many folks are trying to solve it.”

TuneCore’s publishing service offers to register songwriters’ works around the world and collect any money owed, for another annual fee and a 10 percent cut of recovered royalties, which Mr. Price says is necessary given the intensive work. So far, he said, he has signed up 4,000 clients and collected about $41,000.

Recently, Mr. Price has become even more aggressive as an artists’ advocate. In January, after TuneCore releases were removed from Amazon’s download stores in Britain and Europe, he accused Amazon of not paying royalties properly there. Last month, he lashed out against the streaming service Grooveshark, saying that its executives “are immoral and could care less about who and/or what they hurt as long as they make money.”

Mr. Price is far from alone in criticizing Grooveshark, which is being sued by all major record companies for copyright infringement and other issues. But his attack is perhaps the most personal. After his blog post was copied to Pho, an e-mail discussion list about media and technology, he wrote more than 15,000 words in dozens of heated messages defending his stance.

Sam Tarantino, the chief executive of Grooveshark, called Mr. Price’s criticism unfair. He said that Mr. Price had demanded $25,000 for his publishing clients but that according to Grooveshark’s accounting they were owed only $500.

“When somebody comes in and attacks us like this, that’s just intimidation,” Mr. Tarantino said in an interview on Friday. “This space has worked through intimidation and extortion before, and we’re not going to have it.”

When asked for a response to Mr. Tarantino’s statements, Mr. Price wrote — as part of a long e-mail including royalty rate charts and excerpts from correspondence with Grooveshark executives — that he did not know how much Grooveshark owes because it has not supplied necessary data about its streams.

As much as he has been criticized for his tone, Mr. Price has also shown that he gets results. Two weeks ago, he announced that TuneCore’s dispute with Amazon had been resolved and that its songs would be restored. (Amazon declined to comment for this article.) And however tempestuous his public exchanges with Grooveshark may be, the two sides are still negotiating.

“If people don’t take Jeff seriously, they do so at their peril,” said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, a media analysis firm owned by Live Nation Entertainment. “They are confusing his personality with his business.”

Sitting in his office in Brooklyn, where he flipped through a slide show of TuneCore’s successes and excitedly sketched charts of how royalties are paid overseas, Mr. Price disputed a suggestion that his public efforts were meant to attract new clients.

“Yes, I run a business; I am not running a philanthropy,” he said. “But I’m not writing those things because I’m trying to get customers. I’m writing what I write because I believe it.”

“Whether I had this company or not,” he added, “I’d still have a big mouth about it.”

Sonic Geography Contest

This could be an interesting project for some:

Musicworks Second Annual Electronic Music and Sonic Geography contest
Call for entries
Musicworks is holding their Second Annual Electronic Music and Sonic Geography contest. To enter the Electronic Music Contest, compose a piece in one of the following genres: Acousmatic, Audio art, Electroacoustic, Glitch, Intelligent dance music, Microsound, Noise, Turntable art, or Video music. There is no maximum length. To enter the Sonic Geography Writing Contest, write prose to describe how sound influences place. How does sound define the chosen location? Listen to your local coffee shop, grocery store, or commute to work. Choose anywhere—urban or rural, indoors or outside, busy and loud or mysteriously quiet—and literally describe what you hear. Write about language, geography, landscape, urbanization, culture, architecture or people. Maximum: 500 words. Six winners will receive cash prizes.

Deadline: May 21, 2012
http://www.musicworks.ca/contest/contest.asp

Advice to the class of 2012

This is an exciting time for the students that are graduating this May but it also can be a scary time for a lot, especially for C.A.T. majors.  Entering into the entertainment business is tough and takes a certain type of stamina and approach.  I came across an article that does a good job of getting across that point.  That you are better off trying to establish your career as opposed to just fishing for a job. read more

Song Submission Contest

I am not a fan of song contests but sometimes it can't hurt to compete right?  That being said, I was on twitter and saw that MIDEM posted a Song Submission Contest for their promotional trailers and immediately felt like this would be fun and worth it.  For those of you reading this that have never heard of MIDEM: MIDEM is the acronym for Marché International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale which is held been annually in and around the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France. The event, which is billed as the world's largest trade fair for the music industry, has been held since 1967. Several thousand musicians, producers, managers, and journalists from around the globe regularly attend the event, which is currently held at the end of January.(source:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/midem).  The contest has the following guidelines and benefits:

What we are looking for?

• An original creation – doesn’t matter if it’s acoustic or electronic, instrumental or vocal
• Music with a dynamic, cool & joyful sound
• An audio track to act as the keystone for midem’s sound strategy in our corporate communications and mainstream marketing

Benefits

• Access global audience of senior music executives, brands, advertising agencies, artists, and more
• Receive two free registrations to midem 2013
• Get a free one-year SoundCloud Pro account (worth ~€ 250).
• Gain massive visibility in midem marketing channels (including our newsletter, midemblog, social media, and more)
• Your name and copyright will be included at the end of each trailer

Click here  for more information

Summer, Summertime...

The semester is almost over and people are already making plans for fun in the sun!  Seeing how I have lived my whole life in the Tri-state area and have never won the lottery, I have learned to surf the cityscape of New York City with power of frugality!  Unfortunately for you guys the days of being able to make it from Newark to New York with five dollars to cover transportation and food are over.  There was a time when roundtrip on the PATH train was a total of two dollars, but that was a different era.  In the summer there are a ton of FREE events that are fun and exciting!
Most of the NYC parks have their own concert series that are totally free with very few exceptions.  The granddaddy of them all is Central Park Summer Stage that is located by the bandshell near Columbus Circle, the exception here is usually a top tier concert where you can buy tickets.  The free shows at Central Park Summer Stage are strictly first come first serve and are usually crowded.  I personally have watched Chester French, Raphael Saadiq, Gil Scott-Heron, Q-tip, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, and plenty more.  New York City also does movie screenings outside in the park, the mainstay here is usually Monday nights, HBO Presents: Movies after Dark and I'm pretty sure one of the parks down in Battery Park City also show movies after dark on specified days.  For those of you who live in the North Jersey area or within reasonable distance to New York City should keep your eyes and ears open for free and interesting events and I will include a link to get you started, enjoy!
NYC SUMMER STAGE SCHEDULE

Opportunities sprout up in all forms and in the most unlikely places, which brings me to the reason for today's post. My mother, who is a big supporter of green living and organic eating, sent me an email that contains an opportunity that anyone in the Creative Arts and Technology department could partake. I plan to donate my time for this project and I encourage others to do the same! Below is what was contained in the email for your opportunistic dining:

We’re working long hours everyday on our feature length documentary, which exposes more evidence of GMO health dangers than ever before. The timing is just right. California will have a labeling measure on the November ballot, and voters need a big dose of hard-hitting facts that will inspire them to avoid GMOs, not just label them.

For greatest impact, we’re beefing up our visuals and sound, and can use your help. Our wish list includes people with skills in:

• Motion graphics
• Animation
• Visual effects
• Sound engineering
• Sound track production
• Theatrical trailer editing
• Camera work (for shooting additional “B-roll”)
• Translation (lots of languages for global distribution)
• Filmmaking/editing (To use the footage to produce trailers, short pieces, PSAs, and TV commercials)

We also need researchers to search the web for script-related images, footage, articles, etc.

While we have some funds due to the generous donations and matching grant from Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com (thank you all so much), we certainly prefer donated services, so we can stretch our budget for maximum promotion and distribution.

We will not be releasing the film in April as originally targeted, since the project has grown way beyond what we were first planning. This is big. Very big.

Send inquiries to gmovideo@responsibletechnology.org

You can also support this important work by donating to the film today.

Link not working? Copy and paste this into your web browser: http://bit.ly/x8s5KW

Thanks again for your support.

Staff at IRT

Free Webinar by SoundExchange

I urge all music creatives to RSVP for this and check it out live, Soundexchange is the source of income for many artist. They provide royalties for songwriters, producers, record labels, session musicians, and more. It's free and it doesn't not air until April 27th, Friday at 2:00pm Eastern time. Click here to RSVP

Student Garden Ground Breaking

GREEN HEARTS PRESENTS: Student Garden Ground Breaking behind the Deacon's Den this Wednesday March 21st! Come out and be apart of the BC Community of students, staff, and faculty! Enjoy the company of your collegiate neighbors with free food and drinks and special guest performances!