I Ate Your Microphone

There was a time when radio stations were community owned. Your local D.J. made the programming choices and most local bands got their foot in the door by getting A and B side rotation on the local radio station.

Those were the good old days. Today, in 2006, the ballgame is different.

Former President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which was basically the death blow to community radio stations. Corporate moguls, Clear Channel, started buying up mom and pop stations, upgraded the equipment and then, started dictating the play lists and the artists to be played. This left the local artist out in the cold.

In the old days, the local D.J. was the program manager. For these big corporate conglomerates, your program manager may be 300 miles away in another town. These big wigs don’t know your community and the communities listening style.

Radio was created to serve the community at large. Corporations have made much mint off of stripping communities of its sound that defined them. Can you imagine if this would have happened to the local radio scenes in Detroit, Memphis and Trenton N.J in the 60’s?

As an indie artist, there is still a way to get to your audience. Many cities still have thriving community radio scenes that play great indie music. You can find these stations on the internet by Googling “Community Radio Stations”.

Even though the corporate big wigs think that they are getting over, the community radio scene is going to come back through the Internet and alternate routes to getting heard.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Label Bashing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Yes Sir Boss! I was willing to do anything to get famous and get off this merry-go-round of being an unknown artist. I just signed my first record contract and we go into the studio with a by the numbers producer. I don’t even know his name!

Yeah partner! The record company said that they would take my masters and keep them for me! That is so sweet of them. They just know that we’re going to be the next hot band in America! They even advanced us 50,000 dollars to do the album, video, pay the producer and pay for a swanky spot in Beverly Hills while we record this!

Our agent is brilliant! He told the publishing company that we signed with that we don’t need a revision clause as far as publishing with them. It’s an 80-20 deal and that’s peanuts because we’re going to sell millions and millions of records! The record company is setting us up right now. We’ll be bigger than the other bands that came before us!

We owe them a CD every 8 months and if the previous one doesn’t sell, then they would take the profits from the second CD and put it towards the balance due for the first one not selling! Gee, this is great business practice.

I’ll let my manager and agent handle all the business stuff! I don’t have time for all of that.I’ve got songs to write and girls that will scream over me! Sometimes, I feel like I’m in jail, but at least the jail has a nice bed and is air conditioned.

As an indie artist, you need to master your career and be the master of your destiny.

As you are chasing your record deal, stop and think. Will you control the Master or will the Master control you?

Yes Sir Boss! I was willing to do anything to get famous and get off this merry-go-round of being an unknown artist. I just signed my first record contract and we go into the studio with a by the numbers producer. I don’t even know his name!

Yeah partner! The record company said that they would take my masters and keep them for me! That is so sweet of them. They just know that we’re going to be the next hot band in America! They even advanced us 50,000 dollars to do the album, video, pay the producer and pay for a swanky spot in Beverly Hills while we record this!

Our agent is brilliant! He told the publishing company that we signed with that we don’t need a revision clause as far as publishing with them. It’s an 80-20 deal and that’s peanuts because we’re going to sell millions and millions of records! The record company is setting us up right now. We’ll be bigger than the other bands that came before us!

We owe them a CD every 8 months and if the previous one doesn’t sell, then they would take the profits from the second CD and put it towards the balance due for the first one not selling! Gee, this is great business practice.

I’ll let my manager and agent handle all the business stuff! I don’t have time for all of that. I’ve got songs to write and girls that will scream over me! Sometimes, I feel like I’m in jail, but at least the jail has a nice bed and is air conditioned.

As an indie artist, you need to master your career and be the master of your destiny.

As you are chasing your record deal, stop and think. Will you control the Master or will the Master control you?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 9:10 am and is filed under Label Bashing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.