The first time I heard Katy Perry’s summer hit, “California Girls,” I could only think one thing: a blind baboon on a Blackberry could write a better song than this.

So do it!

If there’s ever a time for a wannabe band to break out, it’s at the beginning of summer, with a fantastic summer song. And sure, it’s a bit of a gimmick, but of all the gimmicky song types, it’s the least incriminating.

The other great thing about summer songs? They’re incredibly easy to write! Music critic Peter Robinson hit the nail on the head when he said that musical tastes relax over the summer. “People stop trying to cover up the fact that they like simple pop music,” he explains. “Pretending you don’t like music with a very catchy tune is tiring, so people take the summer off.”

In fact, there’s a pretty simple recipe for cooking up a summer hit. If you’ve already figured out how to write a song, here’s all you need to do:

Use Your Words

It’s not a must for summer songwriting, but it sure helps to talk about summer-y themes, and use summer-y words in your song. For example, try writing about:

• Summer, summertime, summer girls…
• Sunshine, sunny days, here comes the sun…
• Heat, hot, hot heat…
• The beach, sand, the proverbial boardwalk and its nether regions…
• Cruising, getting around, rollin’ with the top down…

With the recent news of GarageBand.com, the indie music store, discovery /review service and online community, discontinuing its services as of July 15th, 2010, after 10 years catering to artists and indie music fans alike.., I am left to ponder the fate of the music industry once again.

The latest news – worldwide sales of recorded music fell by another 10% in the last year, digital piracy is still on the rise; accounting for a 30 percent decline in global music sales from 2004 to 2009 and digital services are not enough to stem the tide of falling compact discs sales …

Wow! The industry is a mess and still, it continues to adhere to the same business model and practices it ushered in a century ago. Why? And why are they not dead yet?

Is it at least on its last leg?

Well, every morning when I get online or take time to listen to the radio, flick on television or flip open the pages of a newspaper, the same dinosaurs that are supposedly becoming extinct, are still  running rampant and eating everything in site.

Let me explain. I can’t get online without knowing what is going on with, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Beyonce or whoever else the flavor of the month is. The billboard top 10 still looks the same now as it did 10, 20 or 40 years ago; comprised of mostly major music artists’ right down the freakin line. These same (major) artists are still sipping on Pepsi; it’s just a different commercial. When an indie artist goes viral online, guess who gets first crack. It’s usually the biggest one in the room (music industry)… Even in today’s television market, signed artists from American Idol are usually the hottest ticket.

Over the weekend, Barcelona played host to its annual indie rock festival, Primavera Sound. Three days of live music featuring everything from the most obscure of Spanish rock bands to big names like The Pixies, Pavement, and Broken Social Scene. So it’s not a celebration of independent music exactly, but there’s no shortage of indie rock on tap, along with a fat slice of Euro bands that you’d never see at Coachella or Bonnaroo.

And this year, there was a new addition to the scene – the Adidas Originals stage – a venue dedicated to showcasing independent acts, hand-picked by the almost surely good people of Adidas, and rarin’ to break into the European market.

The bands on offer – like any indie showcase, really – were a mixed bag of hits and misses. Predictably, the most memorable presence was that of Adidas. They didn’t just sponsor a stage, they took over an entire quadrant of the festival grounds, handing out pins and fans, taking Polaroid shots of festival goers, and trying to create buzz around live graffiti art installations – the usual slightly off-point grab-bag of pop culture offerings generated by corporations in an effort to connect with their demographic.

This Music Brought To You By…

You’re working on a new album. How do you release it? If you have any fans at all, chances are your record will be copied and spread all over the internet before you can say ‘final master.’ On the other hand, maybe you’ve got no fans and even if you do release your album for free on your website, who’s gonna care?

You can operate as did Joanna Newsom, for her hotly anticipated new album, Have One On Me. ­Newsom recorded the three-disc epic in an environment of absolute secrecy in order to prevent, er, leakage.

So that’s one way to go about it. However, many of this spring’s other big indie releases are taking a decidedly different approach. Over the last week, a flurry of bands have been pre-releasing new albums on major news websites. The albums are set up to stream – every song complete, no lame 30-second samples – for the week leading up to their official release.

Broken Bells

Broken Bells, the new collaboration between DJ Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley, DANGERDOOM, Ghetto Pop Life, The Grey Album) and James Mercer (The Shins), are streaming their self-titled album on NPR. Broken Bells, officially scheduled for release March 9^th, is a unique new venture for both artists, melding genres in a way that may not pique the interest of indie or electronic fans. By streaming the album online, Broken Bells invites listeners to get hooked on the music before they buy. And they will get hooked. Broken Bells may be one of this year’s best albums, and Danger Mouse and Mercer are betting on its strength to sell mucho copies and concert tickets.

There are many ways to use the internet for music marketing and the promotion of your music. Today I want to go over a couple of ways other then MySpace and Facebook to do this. The very first thing I would like to talk about is “keywords”.

These are words that people type into search engines. The reason a lot of internet marketing fails is because people do not know how to select keywords that will align buyers with a product. Keywords such as your group name itself can be one of the many phrases you will use in order for people to find you and your music to no you exist.

You have to look for certain terms such as “Hiphop Music In Houston”, this is what they call a long tail keyword, its very specific to what is being searched for and around that term is how people will find you. Now of course this is just an example of how this is done. You will have to do your own research in order to find what applies to you.

Marketing is all the activities and processes of planning, communicating and executing a product, with a price, the promotion and the placement of an item to an end user. Your music is your product which you are then supplying to the end user – the music fan. Between you and the fan is a big space on how to bridge this gap. You may think that if you just get a record deal with some label, your prayers are answered and this instant bridge is built across that space. This is for the most part, not how things work today.

As an aspiring indie or unsigned singer, songwriter, or a musician in a band you can not do just a few things to promote yourself and expect success in your music career. Offline and online music promotion and marketing exposure is an ongoing process in this DIY age. Music companies are looking for artists that already have fan bases, sold CDs, and are proven ready to move up to a higher level. Presented here are more than 100 tips and ideas for you to think about and tweak as you will, to get noticed, gain fans, and get heard. You have to find a way to stand above the crowd, for talent alone is not enough.

Mathieu Persan tells fans ”no need to have a record label if I have you.”

The recession has hit the music industry hard, and in many cases, the indie artist has been hit hardest of all. This week, TheBuzz spoke to Parisian songwriter Mathieu Persan about his experiences in the days since his indie label was forced to close its doors.

“It was very frustrating,” Persan says. “When you are a musician, releasing your very first LP is something very special. I had work so long and so hard on this record that it was really devastating.”

You have just seen a great performance by a new independent band touring the country.  You are already a fan after hearing two hours of fresh heart-thumping sound, and stopped to pick up their self-released album earlier during the concert break.  You gaze over at the crowd surrounding the merchandise stand, contemplating whether or not you should join the masses. 

You are hesitant because the line seems long, filled with other eager fans hoping to speak with their idols of the evening.  Many concert-goers are paying for posters to have signed by grateful band members, and some are proudly donning their new T-shirts.  Do you wait and sacrifice another hour of sleep?

When I found this article, I had to laugh because I was  guilty of this offense. Hopefully I can spare other artist from committing this, so I decided to post it.

I’m going to use up this entire article dealing with one subject, because I think it’s vital to the success of your music promotion efforts. Every day I see the same mistakes being made in this area and feel I owe it to you to drive this crucial point home.

Suppose you walked into your local record store and one of the employees (a complete stranger to you) came up and handed you a box filled with CDs and said, “Here, these are extra promo copies. You can have any CD you want out of the box.”

Now let’s pretend that you were not familiar with any of these artists. As you picked up each CD to consider whether or not you wanted it, what would be the first question to pop into your head? In other words, what basic question would you need to answer first before you could make an intelligent (and quick) decision on which one you’d take?

Would it be “Who produced this CD?”

No.

Would it be “What record label put this out?”

No.

How about “What are the names of the musicians and what instruments do they play?”

No.

Would it be “I wonder how great these folks think their own music is?”

Loren Weisman is an accomplished music producer based in Seattle,
Washington. Having worked on over three hundred albums, Loren has also
worked on numerous television, film, video game and radio productions,
from New York to Los Angeles, Boston to Seattle. Loren is also the
founder of Brain Grenade Entertainment LLC, and the author of the
Freedom Solutions Recording Plan.

Seriously. It’s time for some artists to get a clue about social networking sites, specifically MySpace and play counts, page views and friends. It has gone from ridiculous to completely freaking insane.

For those of you who might not be aware, there are a number of artists out there that actually spend money on “marketing firms,” as they have been calling themselves, to get more Myspace hits, friends and plays. This is foolish. This does nothing positive for these artists’ careers.

In fact, it hurts them. Now while a few people might think they look cool because they have hundreds of thousands of friends, the industry as a whole is recognizing it for what it is: an artist who is wasting time trying to present a false fan base and a presence that truly does not exist.

Yes, at one time lots of hits, friends and play counts on MySpace had a small level of significance. These factors stood as something that people paid attention to some four or more years back when MySpace was new and these “add or play bots” did not exist. As MySpace was in the forefront and more artists were joining, there was a large and wide differentiation of who was being looked at and who was not.

Howard Archer is the founder of EmpoweredFanClub™ a site dedicated to the support and promotion of Independent Music Artists and Fans. Currently in pre-launch, they are inviting indie music artists to have a sneak peak during the month of April. On May 1st, 2009 the paradigm shift begins.

Few people understand just how difficult it is for young emerging music artists to sustain their craft, let alone make a living at it.  The world is full of talented musicians, singers and rappers who struggle every day to get their music heard and who have no real economical distribution channel for reaching the masses.  The internet should have made it easier, but in fact it’s become harder than ever to rise above the noise of the millions of artists trying so desperately to be heard.