TuneCore Finds A Way To Contribute To The Cesspool of Mediocrity: Tunecore claims it can get unsigned artists on digital stores including iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, and Rhapsody, for roughly $30 an album.

“Twenty years ago, an artist with an acoustic guitar and a four-track demo would need to find a label to get her album on the shelves at Tower Records. Getting that contract was a long and painful process for the few who could navigate it; for most, it never led to anything, and that four-track demo was heard only by friends, family, and patrons of the local coffee shop”.
(Ars Technica)

Jeff Price who heads TuneCore tells Ars Technica that “the music industry changed” on the day that TuneCore went live. Any person on the planet “can have access to worldwide distribution; there are no filters,” he says, and he says it with energy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow us to re-write the story. Twenty years ago, an artist with an acoustic guitar and a four track demo couldn’t get the album on the shelves at Tower Records because in MOST cases, it wouldn’t deserve such a prime placement. It wasn’t a distribution problem, it was called mediocre product problem.

Distribution won’t increase your popularity and certainly won’t increase sales especially if you’re an unknown artist. Jeff Price sees a marketing opportunity what he calls ‘worldwide unfiltered distribution’. Price is contributing to the cesspool of garbage and certainly doesn’t seem to care about the consumer or the music. Filling iTunes with unfiltered music is comparable to dumping raw sewage in our seas. We don’t need more music, we need better music.

If you’re a serious passionate artist looking to build a fan base and hoping to bring your music to the masses, then getting your songs on iTunes is not the solution. The solution is writing great songs and finding a producer that will attack the songs, making them even better. The next step is to play live and putting on a killer live show. Sell your CD’s at a live show for 5 bucks and you were certainly make a return on your investment. If your worthy and fans want more of you, then consider a line of merchandise including t-shirts. When you begin to feel the buzz and you’re getting hundreds upon hundreds of legit emails requesting music, then consider iTunes; or sell your songs on your website establishing a direct relationship with the fans.

If you’re that person with an acoustic guitar and a four-track demo wanting worldwide distribution, consider yourself a dreamer, certainly not an artist.

We want to hear new music. Send us great songs and make our day. Email tips@kingsofar.com with link to your myspace and let us know what song we should be listening to.

Today’s culture hasn’t produced as many great artists as it has in the past. Years ago, we couldn’t get to the stores fast enough to get the newest recordings by MANY competitive artists. Who’s on top of the charts now? No one knows. In reality, no one is on top of the charts, they are all in the middle of mediocrity. When great songs are delivered to us in this era, we must cling to it and cherish it.

Great songs simply cannot be ignored, and a great album cannot be ignored. Thriving Ivory has both. Their reflective songwriting and distinct soothing vocals puts them in between Coldplay and U2. Things took off when Music Director Aaron Axelsen of influential San Francisco rock station KITS Live 105 put the track “Angels on the Moon” into full rotation. Check out the official video for ‘Angels on the Moon‘ and listen to Runaway.

“You’re used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?”

Since internet usage is uneven among subscribers, Time Warner Cable will have monthly allowances for the amount of data users upload and download. Those who go over the limit will be charged $1 per gigabyte. Subscribers in Beaumont, Texas will be the first in the customer trial.

Users who who download movies or TV shows will be the most concerned of metered internet use. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes.

The truth is metered usage is common overseas and someone needs to finance the infrastructure. The metered model is making a comeback because of consumption. This will slowly change the perception of the internet. One may ask himself, “Is the internet a privilege”?

Internet usage is predicted to skyrocket within the next decade and keeping internet usage down by charging more makes sense.

Major CD Distributor Calls It Quits: Major music distributor Handleman Corp. has announced that it is exiting the music business. “The Wal-Mart chain has been Handleman’s biggest CD customer. Handleman president/CEO Albert A. Koch said, “CD music sales have been declining at double-digit rates for several years, both industry wide and at our customers’ stores, resulting in a sharp drop-off in our business.”Unfortunately, even the significant steps we’ve taken over the past two years to reduce our costs have not enabled the company to return to profitability.”

Recommended Listening: Electric Choir by The Hoodies. The band just finished new recordings with producer Mark Trombino (Jimmy Eat World).

Dispute Between Prince and Radiohead? Prince covered Radiohead’s “Creep” at Coachella. Ok? So big deal. Radiohead singer Thom Yorke said he heard about Prince’s performance from a text message and thought it was “hilarious.” Fans went to YouTube to view the live performance of ‘Creep’ performed by the little prince only to find the video was pulled due to a copyright violation. According to news outlets, Prince blocked the video. Whatever…

War on Piracy: “Last week TorrentFreak reported that Cleveland Police had arrested a user of OiNK, who was questioned and later released on police bail”. Oink which was an illegal site, was shut down last October, and was the biggest source for pre-releases.

Interview: Edgar Bronfman CEO of Warner Music Group talks to Chrystia Freeland, US Managing Editor of Financial Times.

Edgar says digital sales are still narrowly focused on ringtones and iTunes but it will eventually grow rapidly and expand beyond those platforms. Edgar doesn’t believe uniform pricing is appropriate for artists. When will the music industry return to growth? (He says) no one knows..

The transformative surge of the internet has every business scratching its head. The general criticism of the music biz is it has been to slow to adapt to technology.

Edgar says even if we were the most ‘forward thinking’ people, no one has shown him yet what we (record industry) could have done. No one showed him a business model that worked that he failed to adapt.

Edgar says once the mp3 file became transferable across every computer in the world there was no technological business model to take advantage of that. We certainly agree to that..

The Bottom Line: When will the music biz return to growth? when we have a resurgence of new interesting artists that will offer a full body of work.