Indie Bands Get a Shot At Becoming Rock Band Famous

The Rock Band Network music store is officially live. Will it be the greatest thing to happen to indie music since iTunes? Let’s have a look.

For all you kids not in the know, the Rock Band Network is the newest incarnation of the Xbox Rock Brand, er Band franchise. Network allows bands to put their songs on Rock Band 2. And not just big name artists. Using development tools provided by Rock Band, all indie bands can now, theoretically, have their songs available for sale, download, and play at the Network music store. Here’s how it works:

The Investment

Over 100 songs have been uploaded by music labels to the Rock Band Network, and unknown indie bands have the opportunity to expose their projects. So far, established bands have taken the spotlight, but this is a great outlet for unsigned bands to gain funding and get more fans.

Rock Band Network has allowed independent and unsigned bands to submit their own songs for users to download since mid-January. The offer is  for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions of the game with the intention of providing the most downloadable tracks to Nintendo’s Wii moving forward.

Indie bands can price their songs between 50 cents and $3, netting 30% of track sales. Users of the game will be able to preview songs before they purchase on the Rock Band Network store.

Wasted Space features an array of indie bands in their show schedule.

Wasted Space is co-owned by Action Sports Super Star Carey Hart, Yankees baseball player Jason Giambi, and the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Rockers Benji and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte are partners. Hard Rock’s Cory McCormack will act as Managing Partner.

Wasted Space represents the ultimate depiction of the decadent rock n’ roll lifestyle. The first anti-club of its kind, Wasted Space melds the high-end rock n’ roll culture with fashion, art and design creating a one of a kind atmosphere and nightlife experience.

I’ll be the first to admit that New Year’s resolutions are kind of stupid. They usually involve quitting something (smoking, drinking, eating too much) that I end up doing on New Year’s Day because the party’s still on, and after that, I need my favorite vices to recover from the craziness of the holidays, and by the end of the week, I’m wondering why I bothered making a stupid resolution in the first place, and what’s so great about New Year’s, anyway?

But there is a secret to keeping a New Year’s resolution. The secret, friends, is to resolve to do something totally amazing with your new year. Don’t plan to wallow in miserable self-denial. Don’t plan to change who you are. Just plan on being completely awesome.

Doing great things is a particularly excellent plan if you’re someone whose future depends on your ability to succeed with no one cracking the whip behind you. Like, say, for example, if you’re an indie musician. Inertia can be a killer. So what better time to commit to becoming rich and famous than on January 1st?

The independent albums that I chose have shown a new musical direction. The albums contain originality in arragements and sound, helping to redefine the current music landscape. The list includes unsigned and indie band’s albums/EP’s that are signed to labels.

The indie movement and community needs to keep regenerating. The music is out there, but we just need to keep building an indie music community to help expose these artists to the masses.

The list of indie artists’ albums are not in any particular order.

Wasted Space features an array of indie bands in their show schedule.

Wasted Space is co-owned by Action Sports Super Star Carey Hart, Yankees baseball player Jason Giambi, and the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Rockers Benji and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte are partners. Hard Rock’s Cory McCormack will act as Managing Partner.

Wasted Space represents the ultimate depiction of the decadent rock n’ roll lifestyle. The first anti-club of its kind, Wasted Space melds the high-end rock n’ roll culture with fashion, art and design creating a one of a kind atmosphere and nightlife experience.

Peyote-inspired indie fantasy, or an actual, factual trend?

If you’ve been watching Taylor Swift sweep the music awards circuit this year, you’ve probably also had the depressing thought that yup, country music is back in the mainstream. Does this mean we have to start line dancing again?

But the good news is that the likes of Swift, Keith Urban, and Carrie Underwood are just the surface ripples of a much larger phenomenon that’s taken place mostly in the indie underground over the last decade.
This scene has got a lot of different names, all meaning slightly different things – New Weird America, Death Country, Gothic Americana, Freak Folk/Free Folk, Tex-Mex – but it all boils down to a similar theme.

New Dark Country?

There are a lot of people who would disagree with grouping together these labels. Indie music scene-watchers smirk at the term ‘New Weird America’ to begin with, as a term coined by The Wire’s David Keenan in a moment and relevant only to that moment. Similarly, Gothic Americana and Death Country are genres difficult to separate from indie folk or alt country. But together, these obscure subgenres do create something distinct.

BandCentral.com has created a central hub for you and your band-mates to stay organized. The Web site offers an array of features that would help any band stay connected with themselves and their fans.

I know trying to keep a band focused and informed is a tough task when creating a project. Getting a group of people with other plans, or jobs on their calendar is something most bands break up over.

This site offers many ways to for a band to stay grounded and focus on their goal, which is producing music.

What does Band Central Offer? The answer is simple… Everything.

Wasted Space is co-owned by Action Sports Super Star Carey Hart, Yankees baseball player Jason Giambi, and the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Rockers Benji and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte are partners. Hard Rock’s Cory McCormack will act as Managing Partner.

Wasted Space represents the ultimate depiction of the decadent rock n’ roll lifestyle. The first anti-club of its kind, Wasted Space melds the high-end rock n’ roll culture with fashion, art and design creating a one of a kind atmosphere and nightlife experience.

“I wanted a place where my friends and I could hang out and listen to some great rock music with a cool atmosphere…there were no options in Vegas, so I made my own,” said Hart. “Wasted Space will feature the top rock artists weekly, in addition to the hottest DJ’s in the country.”

The strength of Myspace is in question with its declining traffic, according to Compete.com. With the decline of visitors on Myspace, the outstanding increase in visitors for Facebook really stands out. The social networking site has been losing millions of U.S. visitors in recent months.

Is this a trend indie bands should be worried about?

I would say that bands have nothing to worry about if the numbers were less dramatic. But the site is losing around 4-5 million U.S. visitors per month.

This is detrimental to a band who relies on fans new/old who come to visit their page after checking our their own profiles. Recently, I have seen bands put up links to their online stores and other forms of revenue driven sites. Losing those frequent visitors and new visitors, who check out what is new on those external sites, has the potential to hurt the band’s funding.

Will the band’s effort to create the most innovative Myspace page be a waste of time?

I wrote a post a few months ago about artistfunding (Is Artistfunding A Good Business Model For Indie Artists?) and how it works to benefit indie bands and its fans. PledgeMusic.com has put a twist to the business model by donating 10% of what each album makes through their site.

Pledge Music is not only targeting to help indie bands and benefit fans, but they have taken it to another level. A level that I am respecting and thought was very innovative.

I first thought the artistfunding process was breaking down boundaries that should not be touched between fans and the artists, but Pledge Music his targeting to help the unfortunate.

Independent bands are given so many free online marketing and social media outlets to showcase their projects, which are valuable to a band without a budget.

TweetMySong.com is giving bands and artists another way to promote their music for free utilizing one of the strongest marketing tools right now.

You just need to enter your Twitter username and password in order to user their service.

Breakingband.com provides a free platform, which allows independent bands to sell digital and hard copies of their albums. The Web site also exposes indie music to fans searching for the top indie bands.

Breaking Band’s goal is to create profiles and sell albums for the top 2,500 independent artists in the country, according to the Web site. The Web site wants to create a valuable tool in connecting your band with new fans as well as create a platform to distribute both digital and hard copies of your music.

Their concept is essentially, “A mix between Myspace and CDbaby, but without all the spamming and bad music.”