The CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival has announced its first round of performing artists including:

DeVotchKa, Surfer Blood, Two Door Cinema Club, School of Seven Bells, Bad Books (feat. Kevin Devine and Manchester Orchestra), Four Tet, The Drums, Ghostface Killah, Greg Dulli, Helmet, Lissie, Foreign Exchange, Katzenjammer, Kristen Schall & Friends, Dean & Britta, Bayside, Senses Fail, Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, Salem, The Blow, Small Black, Big Freedia, Dominique Young Unique, Angus & Julia Stone, Frankie and the Heartstrings, Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr, and Langhorne Slim.

Hundreds of additional acts will be announced in the upcoming weeks, so make sure to visit www.cmj.com/marathon for continuous artist updates. This year’s CMJ Music Marathon will be held from October 19^th-23^rd.

CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival 2010 has partnered with SonicScoop.com to present “Studio Time,” an intensive two-part program focused on music production at New York University’s Kimmel Center.

Open to all CMJ badge holders, “Studio Time” provides emerging artists, engineers and producers with recording and mixing insights and inspiration from expert music creators.

Studio Time’s “Part I: Mix Reconstruction” sees three top mixers taking the audience through their personal mixing process. Each mixer will discuss how they approached and ultimately mixed a song from their discography, playing pre- and post-mix examples to illustrate how they work. Basic techniques and creative solutions will all be examined in this illuminating event.

Featured Blog:

Beehivecandy
http://www.beehivecandy.com/

Beehive Candy is a blog and writes about all different genres. It includes new music, live concerts, rarities, and memories.

Featured Podcast:

Weekly Leader Podcast
http://weeklyleader.net/

The host of The Weekly Leader Podcast is a maritime and leadership blogger and podcaster as well as principal of a small social media consulting firm that works with maritime organizations, nonprofits and small businesses.

Featured Blog:

M is for Music
http://www.misformusic.com/

M is for Music is an all-purpose music website. Consider them the anti-Pitchfork as they don’t want to be a select little club in our own little bubble,. This site is all inclusive and wants you to be part of it. If you like an album, then review it. If they like your review then they use it. You teach them new things, they teach you new things, that’s how we roll. They’ll bring interviews, new band representation, blasts from the past, the latest reviews and release dates plus all the latest gossip from the music world. This isn’t an in-crowd, this is THE crowd.

Former vocalist of Come & Live’s Holding Onto Hope, Cory O’Keefe has launched his long awaited project, LUVD.com.

“LUVD is certainly not mine, it belongs to everyone. This is 100 percent a family,” O’keefe explained. “Each one of us has the capacity to inspire and uplift another human – the first step is just believing we are capable.”

The site is designed to be a community for the arts. Whether its music, fashion, photography or whatever you feel your creative calling to be, LUVD.com has something for you.

Inside the Circle is an online destination for news, information and conversation about Zune, Music and Community. The site began in July of 2008 as a place for readers to engage in open, thought-provoking and stimulating discussion. Inside the Circle is also proud to help give voice and exposure to musical acts of different genres and styles — both from the indie and mainstream areas. This is done through: interviews, reviews and free music downloads (both embedded from the blog and links to locations of free music).

Q) Tell us a little bit about your site. What inspired you to start it?

Come sit on The Couch every Monday when Vinny Bond will chat with unsigned artists, artists who are self-producing and artists who have signed with labels to discuss their songs, their journey and what is in store in the coming months. This is where you will find the success stories of tomorrow!

Q) Tell us a little bit about your site. What inspired you to start it?

A) I began writing about music on my ‘home blog’ Big Leather Couch (www.bigleathercouch.com) about 2 years ago.  I love music and wanted to share new, unsigned artists with my readers.

It began as a review of their music and then developed into a written Q&A with the artists and a posting of one or two of their songs.  My readers were asked to vote in a poll as to their feelings for the artists.

Fresh from the launch of one of the newest and hottest boutique radio destinations, Lynnbriggsunplugged.com, adds NFL veteran and five-time Pro Bowl football player, Flozell Adams to the Executive Blog Team.  Adams will be sharing his perspective on current NFL events and other issues close to the hearts of sports fans.

“I’m really excited to be a part of the LynnBriggsUnplugged.com family.  Lynn has recruited some of the best in the business to share the type of news fans really want to hear.  The possibilities are endless when you keep it real with killer grooves and a diverse team of bloggers that aren’t afraid to expand boundaries,” said Adams.

Located in Florida and/or the UK, POP! Stereo has been subjecting readers to their warped taste in music for almost three years.

Their mission is simple, to share with their readers/listeners the music that they love themselves and the music that needs to be heard by the masses. They’re here because they believe in good music!

Q) Tell us a little bit about your site. What inspired you to start it?

Last year, John Rancik (Pope JTE) and Todd Severin (Racer X) of The Ripple Effect music site and radio show were asked if The Ripple Effect would be interested in releasing previously unearthed material from legendary Proto-metal rockers, JPT Scare Band.

After much soul searching, and hours of research, the duo responded with an enthusiastic “yes,” and Ripple Music, the record label, was born.

Since then, Ripple Music has amassed a stellar roster of guitar-oriented, rock-based acts that range in style from Roots Americana to psychedelic Proto-metal, and everything in between.

The first release will be hitting the streets on June 22nd, 2010 with JPT Scare Band’s Acid Blues is the White Man’s Burden. The heavily fuzzed-out blues-based rock outfit has been hailed by Classic Rock Magazine as the “Lost Pioneer” of Heavy Metal.

Twitter is a great tool for musicians to market their music, but many musicians are unsure how it can be helpful to them. The typical musician spends much of their time being musically creative, but many musicians who should be using Twitter to market their music aren’t sure where to start or how to use it to its full potential.

Luckily, Twitter is simple and easy. The only work that really needs putting in is a little thought and some time on a regular basis, and I’d like to share a few ways that this popular social network can supercharge your music career:

Find New Fans of Your Music

Many people are on Twitter these days – and many of them are music fans that live in your town, and the cities you visit. With Twitter’s search function, you can find local music lovers who enjoy the style of music that you play. Twitter also allows for two-way communication via replies and direct messages, so you have the opportunity to make true connections.

Host of the PC Podcast, featuring eclectic music from around the world:http://pcpodcast.blogsome.com and The Dub Zone, featuring the very best dub reggae:http://thedubzone.blogsome.com and PCP{2}, a deeper look into the musical genres explored in PC Podcast: http://pcp2.blogsome.com

Plus he is the co-host of “Made In The UK”, featuring some of the very best UK music, for the world: http://madeintheukshow.co.uk and AMPed, the weekly digest of the Association of Music Podcasting at: http://musicpodcasting.org

Q) How can a podcaster become a part of Association of Music Podcasting (AMP)?

In an ideal world, the music is all that would matter. You would play and the legions of fans would come. This is not, unfortunately, an ideal world, which means that you need to market yourself if you want to be successful. Fortunately, we are living in a time when marketing your music and yourself has never been easier. The Internet has brought the whole world closer together, and this has made it easier and cheaper to both contact your fans and potential fans as well as made it easy to give them a wide variety of stuff to sell. But marketing can seem overwhelming, so here are six ways to market yourself and your music:

Have an Online Presence