riskybusiness04  

Tonights guest will be John Buckman, CEO and founder of Magnatune. We'll be discussing his site, internet broadcasting and things that online broadcasters need to know. Also joining me as co-host will be Deb from the Unsigned Musicians show.

Another week, another awesome interview.

Pete Berwick was an awesome guest on the show.  He kept us in stitches talking about the music industry, when he was on Wife Swap (which will repeat on Feb. 20th on ABC) and his upcoming album. 

Some of the things that we talked about go right to the heart of what we've spent the last couple of weeks talking about (and Deb even longer than that on her show <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/unsigned">Unsigned Musicians</a>).  Unless you are with a major label, good luck finding avenues to get your work out.  The major labels practically have a monopoly on the over the air radio stations, there are only so many gigs you can play, and keep a band together living in tight quarters, ect. ect.

But......

We do have the internet!

What the majors hate, is the fact that they can't control that aspect of it, although they are trying to.  JC Martin is having issues at Myspace again, YouTube is pulling videos down for copyright infringement because (you're gonna love this) of music playing on a radio <span style="font-style:italic;">in the background!</span>

How screwed up is that? 

I totally understand the need to protect copyrighted material, the copyright laws exist for a reason, and artists have every right to earn royalties on their work.

Herein lies the problem, unless you are a MAJOR success, you don't see a dime, and yet the licensing fees are paid.  Where does the money go?

Why the overkill on enforcement that benefits so few? 

Just a thought.

You can catch Pete Berwick on Myspace, and on his website <a href="http://www.peteberwick.net/">peteberwick.net</a>.  We played a few of his songs on the show, including a special live performance of "Hello Hand" which was freaking hilarious and a hell of alot of fun to listen to.  It really was an awesome show. 

It is over 3 hours long though, you can follow the blogtalkradio.com link on this page, or my homepage at <a href="http://www.geocities.com/jstrapus/">www.geocities.com/jstrapus</a> and download the podcast.  It'll be worth your while.

Continuing our series on the music industry, the shakedown that the M.O.B. (Muthas of Broadcasting) conducts on people and how the mainstream music industry tends to stifle the Indie artists who are just trying to get their work out there. Working with my good friend Deb from Unsigned Musicians, and tonights special guest Pete Berwick our goal is to educate, inform, and maybe entertain our listeners. Feel free to call in to discuss this topic, call in # is 347-324-3431.

All I can say is holy crap what an awesome show we had last night.
We had JC Martin from Black Angel on the show last night. We weren't sure if he was going to be able to make it up until the last minute.

Deb and I were starting to go into who BMI/Ascap are, and how they've fallen hard and fast from their original purpose when JC called in.

Those of you who aren't familiar with Black Angel, I would encourage you to check out their Garageband page here and check them out. I promise it will be well worth your time. Also here is their Myspace page here in case anyone is interested in checking that out as well.

I almost wasn't provided the opportunity to post that link to Myspace. Why you ask? Well, it would seem that one of the music companies that have a stake in Myspace thought that JC was committing copyright infringement. He uploaded on of his own songs to Myspace, and somehow it hit a trigger that mismatched it to someone else's song. (something called "wasted"?)

After 3 weeks he was able to get it straightened out (thankfully) and can upload music to Myspace again, but he had to jump through about 50 hoops and almost stand on his head and spit pennies to make it happen. Anyway, check out the music, it's totally awesome! In fact I have the Myspace player going right now as I type this.

It was really interesting talking to JC. He's not just some fly by night musician he's been around a while, and lived to tell it....lol After he talked to Deb and I about the Myspace fiasco we got to talking about some of his experiences out there in the music world and some of the stories he could tell and did. It was a really fascinating experience as a radio host to sit back and just talk and listen to the guy.

It really turned out to be a great show, it's in the player right now, take some time and listen to it. Or go to blogtalkradio and download the podcast. You won't regret it.

Also, we'll continue to have guests and talk to them about the music industry as well as their lives in the music world. Check us out every Sunday night at 9 pm (eastern U.S. time) on blogtalkradio we would love to have ya hang out and listen.

Tonight, we'll be discussing the things that are wrong with the music industry. We'll explain who BMI, and ASCAP are, how they stifle Indie artists, and the things that internet broadcasters need to know. This show is part of a series in cooperation with Deb from Unsigned Musicians with special guest, JC Martin from Black Angel!

Hey everyone, Happy New Year.  

For those who have been following my shows on blogtalkradio, we have a very special series coming up.  Deb from "Unsigned Musicians" will be joining me on some upcoming shows about the music industry.  We'll be talking about some of the things the music industry "thugs" (or M.O.B.)(Muthas of broadcasting) do to shake down internet broadcasters, and the effect it has on the Independent artists.

Think about this for a second, when was the last time you heard something not just decent, but really, really good on the radio?  Outside of a random song here or there, it's probably been a while.  It's really hard for new artists, no matter how good the music is (and you can check out the "Unsigned Musicians" on this page if you doubt me about the quality of the music) to break into the mainstream.  Many of these musicians rely heavily on the internet to promote their music, with some success, but also with many roadblocks.

Now, I know what you are thinking.......

"Dude, it's the internet, how hard can it be?"

Well, harder than you would imagine.  Right now, because Sony/BMG have their hands on Myspace (which is a website that is used by many of these artists to network, and get their music out there) they control the content on that particular website.  

The details are still being worked out, but on one of the upcoming shows (hopefully this Sunday) we are going to feature an artist, who wasn't allowed to upload <span style="font-style:italic;">his own music that he had written himself</span> because Sony/BMG decided that somehow they had a copyright to one of the songs.  He eventually was able to get it straightened out (kinda) but this is just one example of the kind of crap that goes on.

We started discussing this on my show on the 28th of December, right now it's the show thats at the top of the player.  Some of this stuff is just totally unreal.

Join us this Sunday, 9 p.m. Eastern time, right here on blogtalkradio!