Author Archive

FREE Download–The Reworks Project By Erik Rico

Hello kids! And lovers of old soul alike! Peep the latest cut of Erik Rico’s The Reworks Project as a FREE download.
Fresh remakes of classic works by the likes of Stevie, Marvin, the Purple One, Sade, the Reverend Al Green, and the late Godfather these are covers done right!
All you have to do is go [...]

NEA Receives Funding Increase In House Subcommittee

I want to share with you some good news for the arts amidst the gloom in the news. Last week the National Endowment For The Arts (NEA) received an initial $15 million increase in the House subcommittee for fiscal year 2010. This increase brings the agency’s current budget up from $155 million to $170 million! [...]

Matt Morris Live Versus The Recording

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to sit in with some UMPG colleagues to listen in a new singer/songwriter by the name of Matt Morris. After playing about five songs, I must say I was blown away. His great storytelling, lyrical depth, vocal control, rhyme, and heavy use of Christian references and imagery all bring [...]

Rank And File The Music

I love, love, love technology. The robots provide me hope whereas the humans seem to repeat their mistakes millenium after millenium. This past Monday’s conference at the SanFran MusicTech Summit seems to have displayed what could be the indies’ and underground artists’ best marketing tool to reach never-would-have-been-found audiences.
The speed and accuracy of the “semantic [...]

Ping It Everywhere

I like most things new, and we’ll be sure to use software like Ping.fm. It supposedly allows you to send a single update to multiple networks simultaneously. Hence for our purposes it’d be cool to get the word out on all our artists and their music all with one click. But what if the web [...]

Will The Web No Longer Be Free?

Who can we blame but ourselves for this music industry collapse? From misfired lawsuits against grandmothers to imprisonment of the creators of The Pirate Bay, I’d prefer to believe we are a people of ideas rather than a people who cave into fear and top-down, market controls.
I can sympathize with those who have held onto [...]

Performance Rights Bill Passes Through Judiciary Committee

Yay! What better day, than on Stevie Wonder’s birthday to hear that the House Judiciary Committee favorably reported the legislation yesterday by a vote of 21-9.
“Today the House Judiciary Committee approved the Performance Rights Act (H.R. 848). The Bill will close a loophole in copyright law that allows music radio stations to earn billions of [...]

Free Music On Facebook

So I might not be the most savvy Facebook member in their user database, but I have to give props to another one of the web 2.0 modes of getting out some good music. It was only recently that I’d noticed one of my friends to have set up an event on the social community [...]

Call To Action Days - May 11 and May 12 - musicFIRST

As the world’s largest music market, don’t you find it odd that the US is the only country in the world that does not pay royalties to recording artists for terrestrial radio airplay? Let’s change that! Go to the musicFIRST website ( www.musicfirstcoalition.org ) to learn how to call up your local Members of Congress.
For [...]

The Price Is Wrong

Today I’d just thought to jump on the soapbox and share some goodie thoughts on oldie news that iTunes has raised prices on more popular track downloads to $1.29. I, for one, am not in favor of the arbitrary pricing of goods set by their distributors.
Though research statistics have shown that consumers would more likely [...]