And I don’t mean musicians on tour – it’s more about people changing their location, moving between cities and even countries. While it’s generally obvious how to prepare for a long travel if you are a freelance writer or run a small online business (after a brief check I’ve found that there is a myriad of great resources for that, e.g. Location Independent or Free Pursuits), musicians might need access to not so evident things – like a recording studio.

And here I remembered the site that had been pitched to me few months ago, called Open Studio. Sounds like an appropriate deal, so let’s take a look at it.

Connecting Musicians And Rehearsal Spaces

Image credit: aileenrobot on Flickr

Rand Rognlien, Chief Musician’s Advocate at Music Nomad noticed that twenty percent of musicians utilizing the encyclopedic information at his site were looking for studio space. Inquiries were said to be from touring professionals and garage bands alike.

“We have over 250 studios listed on our site.” remarked Rognlien. “And we’ve researched every one to make sure it’s a legitimate business. Many studios are listed on sites like craigslist, but we’re the only site that goes the extra step to insure our musicians are dealing with reputable companies.”

And so he launched Open Studio, “allowing to hourly and monthly rehearsal studios to list their available rooms, and musicians to find available studios in their area using their zip code or city.”

If you’re a space owner, you can set up a profile of your studio and any room you have available. You can set up additional room profiles, and when a room becomes available, visit your profile page, check “Available,” and anyone coming to the site can now see your listing.

Promised to be added soon is a waiting list of musicians in any area that are looking for available monthly rooms.

If you are a musician, just enter your location and sort available studios by distance.

What might be not so attractive for bands and musicians at this point is that the site lacks what it is supposed to have – a large list of available studios (there are 25 listed when this post is being written). It might be due to very recent launch of the start-up (it’s still in the beta mode), so if you own a studio – be sure to add it to the directory.

What Open Studio also needs to become a true creative nomad’s assistant is support of more countries, though I’m not sure if this exists in the founders’ plans.

But if you need a rehearsal space in the US or own one – check out the site and let me know your thoughts.

Do you know any other services created specifically for musicians living a life of a traveler? Any tips? Share them in the comments!

The social buying and selling feature is an addition to TheIndie.biz’s Frindie application launched in April. Frindie is based on the concept that like-minded people (friends) tend to have like-minded tastes in music and is the basis for the social buying and selling feature.

The Indie

“We’re truly happy to be offering this unique opportunity for fans to be able to buy the music their friends are listening to right from their social media profiles,” said Damon Cleveland, TheIndie.biz’s CEO. “There really isn’t anything out in the market like it and we’re excited to be the first to offer this to our fans and member bands. This is what TheIndie.biz is all about, giving independent musicians and bands the avenues to sell their music to new audiences, while offering music lovers a taste of what their friends are listening to so everyone’s music experience is enhanced.”

In addition to allowing music fans to expand their music choices and enjoyment, with the social selling feature bands will be able to reach a growing, fan-driven audience as users listen to and post their favorite songs to their social network feeds right from TheIndie.biz. As people see the music their friends are listening to, they will be able to listen to and buy the songs that they like directly from their friend’s profile.

Independent musicians, labels and bands can post their music for sale and distribution through three primary options. The first package lets bands sell an unlimited number of songs and includes full membership to TheIndie.biz for a flat fee of $149 a year, plus a 15% fee per song sold. The second and third options are $7.95 per song, or $19.95 for three songs, plus a 30% fee per song sold.

The representation of the not too revolutionally new idea is pretty intriguing, in my opinion – give it a look.

And thanks to Rockethub’s newly launched community site, that’s about to get a lot easier.

“Musicians should know that crowdfunding regardless of the platform is still work,” cautioned Brian Meece, one of Rockethub’s founders. “It takes a strategy and organized thought to make the campaign come together.”

But formulating that strategy can be daunting, and finding information about what works and what doesn’t is difficult; crowdfunding is a relatively new idea, and aside from the odd user of the crowdfunding hashtag on Twitter, most artists, already unfamiliar with the demands of fund-raising, have few places to turn.

RocketHub

That’s where Rockethub.org comes in. The site was founded, Meece explained, on the idea of “learning [from] and supporting each other.”

To draw users and curious crowdfunders to the site, Meece and his partners wrote something they call The Crowdfunding Manifesto, essentially a road map that anyone can follow, “to galvanize both our community and help the overall ‘Crowdfunding for Creatives’ movement,” Meece explained.

The Manifesto helps artists understand what’s required to successfully fund projects based on their size, the importance of rewards, and what kinds should be offered, and more. Its insights can be applied to any crowdfunding platform, whether it’s Rockethub or a competitor like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo.

That is one of the most important things about Rockethub. “We really consider the other platforms colleagues in this new sector,” Meece stressed. “We share mentions by bloggers, radio shows, news articles etc. – and have a lot to learn from each other. In the end, choice stimulates demand for the overall market – and the pie gets bigger, which is good for all of us.”

Whether that means gaining insights into Kickstarter’s “fund and follow” approach, or chatting with fellow crowdfunders in Rockethub’s forums is up to you. The important thing is that there is now a place for you to do it.

Courtesy of WeAllMakeMusic.com. Reposted with permission.

Following the hot topic, Ultimate Guitar’s Joe Matera interviewed Anthrax’ Scott Ian last month. The guitar player talked about the latest happenings in the Anthrax world (there are many), and his take on the music industry. An excerpt below, you will be able to read the full interview this week on UG read the full interview right here!

Image credit: revista_offline on Flickr

Did you ever think that some 30 years later along with Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer, you’d still be here doing what you love and influencing a generation of other metal bands?

It is fuckin’ amazing. I started this thing 29 years ago, I co-founded the band with Danny Lilker and its amazing to me. And I’m sure it is not only for Anthrax but for all four of the bands involved in the Big Four as well, they feel the same. It is like about 26 years since our first album came out and the fact that on a worldwide level, so many people still care about what we’re doing and that it means so much to so many people all around the world, that just makes me feel great.

And the fact that after all this time it is the first time that the four of us have ever played together, and that its happening after all this time on such a massive level, it is just incredible. These upcoming shows are probably going to be some of the biggest gigs any of us will ever play.

Aside from your musical endeavors, you have a passion for writing comic books?

Yeah last year I put out my first book for DC Comics. I wrote a two issue series for their character Lobo. A two issue Prestige Format and each book had 64 pages, so it was like 128 pages of Lobo and it was called Lobo: Highway To Hell. It was so much fun for me and was a dream come true. It was something I have always wanted to do. I spent a long time, about a year working on the book with Sam Kieth the artist and it turned out great and I loved the whole experience.

I’m currently working on my second thing for DC Comics right now for another character which I can’t mention at the moment as DC are going to announce it soon so I can’t really jump the gun on it. But it is coming along great and it is even more story intensive and more layered. And obviously the more I do the better I’ll get at it all. I’ve been reading comics my whole life and to be involved in that world is something I never thought I’d get to do.

Finally out of all your years spent in this tough music industry, what’s the most important lesson you’ve learned?

To just do things your own way, the business is a necessary evil obviously, but you just got to have your own vision as an artist. And you have to know what you want and you have to know who you are because if you don’t, somebody is going to mold you into something you’re not and then you are going to suck.

We’ve only ever done things our own way and that is the only way I know how to do it and whether it is right or wrong. That’s the best lesson I’ve ever learned. So you better show up with a good sense of who you are as an artist otherwise, you’re going to get fucked.

Photo by: Steve Wampler on Flickr

Thankfully for the more corporate enterprises, though unfortunately for the independent musician, the aforementioned big guys have started to see the benefits that can be reaped using the internet. Public broadcasting is a much wider option on the internet than it is in more conventional methods, such as television and the radio. General view counts will usually be lower on the internet, but only as long as popularity is limited. Once a broadcaster reaches a reliable, wide-reaching audience, the potential for reaching even higher view counts than television. One of the main reasons for this is that your chosen piece of music is constantly available, rather than being singularly broadcast. Much less money can be earned by showing off your music online, but once you reach a certain level of popularity the income begins to fly.

In taking advantage of this, some rather interesting stuff has found it’s way on to the internet. My main example here would be things like ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’. This is a web broadcast musical, forty-two minutes long and released in installments. Rather than just music, the internet allows the perfect tool for anything that can be created, regardless of budget, cast or preparation. Advertising in these manners is usually done entirely through word of mouth. However, since the company making the video or music file already have a considerable amount of capital behind them, they can put their work out for all sorts of international syndication. While they will undoubtedly spend much more money putting their work onto television, it could easily garner a much reduced reward when it comes to the outcome.

Creating music videos, at a low budget, is an incredibly common thing for any band or musician to indulge in. While some promoters are internet based, and can thus advertise your work all across the internet, but there are still limits to it. On the internet, everybody is on an even playing field. You put your work out there, usually in the same places as most of the more popular content, and hope that it draws attention. From there though, it’s out of your hands. The content can be passed, traded and downloaded, regardless of file size or type. This, though, is where the independent musician has an advantage.

For the independent musician, peer to peer file trading is the absolute best thing for their continuing popularity. If it’s just one or two people pooling together to throw out a track, it’s no big loss to have it traded for free between a few dozen people. For the big company throwing it’s weight around, they’re looking at a gigantic loss between the flight of thousands of free copies.

In a digital economy, big business still loses millions, while the independent musician has nothing but gains.

Tom Colohue is a fiction writer and music instructor from Blackpool, England. Though his main works are in the realms of fantasy, he also writes modern fiction for multiple websites, as well as theoretical and practical music lessons for magazines.

Read also: Effects Of The Internet: Musical Mobility, The Effects Of The Internet: Contract Giveaways, The Effects Of The Internet: “Making It”, The Effects Of The Internet: Music Distribution

Read few exclusive excerpts from Amy Kelly’s UG interview before it goes live in full next week:

Do you feel any pressure from your label at this point in your career?

The label doesn’t really pressure us per se verbally. With the industry as fickle as it is, you kind of put that pressure on yourself. Executives, bands, and record stores – everybody is dropping like flies. Here today, gone tomorrow. You’ve got to keep being viable and give enough reasons for your record label to keep invested with the band and keep invested in you as well.

In buying the record or buying the single from iTunes and buying concert tickets, that’s keeping your shit going. I used to get really caught up with where we were on Billboard and how many records we had sold and where the single was and how much MTV was playing us. Honestly, I don’t even look at that. I have no idea where the single is. I have no idea how much they are playing our video. As long as I wake up and play a show and people are there and they know the words to the song and they’re having a good time and we get to do this for a living, then I’m happy.

I’m extremely happy that we can do that. Success isn’t the charts anymore. As long as I can keep doing this for a living, I’m extremely happy.

Photo credit: Chad Martel

What would you suggest for the business side? Do you think that touring as much as possible is still a viable approach to marketing?

That may work for some people. I don’t know. I really think that’s a complete waste of time, going to all these cities where people don’t know who you are. You go to a bar and play for 10, 15 people that are there for the drink specials. Maybe if you’re really good, then there will be 30 people. I’ve heard that. It never worked for me! I was always like, “Why did I take off work and spend money to go play at some show.”

I think nowadays it’s completely different. There is so much you can do on your own now. That’s what you have to do now as a band because no label has money to spend on breaking in an artist. The more you can do on your own as far as your MySpace, your Facebook, and your YouTube or your merch, the more you can do on your own and the less of a risk you are to a label, the better chance you have of getting it. The chance of a major label picking you up and wanting to spend a gazillion dollars on you are slim to none. Unfortunately that’s the way it is. Buy a van. If you make enough money, buy a van and the label doesn’t have to worry about it. Anything you can do on your own is going to give you more bargaining power with the label.

I will post the link to a full interview when it’s up, great read.

Remember when you’re talking with music execs that your band is like a company. You have to convince them that you are worth investing in, and you do that by talking in business terms. Any executive is going to be impressed by someone who knows what the record label is looking for and possesses it in abundance.

1. Your music doesn’t mesh with this record company

Photo credit: tumblr.com/tumblelog/teemafia

The structure of a record company is actually a funny thing; even though we think of record labels as being huge, monolithic structures, they aren’t quite that. When people talk of getting signed to a major label record deal, they usually aren’t specifically referring to one of these labels (EMI, Sony, Warner, Universal). What they are usually referring to is a contract with one of the sub-labels that the major owns.

Major labels operate in such a way that that the chief label is usually more of a holding group than anything else. They have various kinds of labels underneath them, to specialize in certain types of music. Most major labels have smaller labels that specialize in rap, R&B, country, and rock. Your job is to find a label that focuses on your own musical direction. Do a little research. If you’re a death metal act, send your demo in to a label that specializes in metal. Match your strengths with theirs, and you become more attractive to the company. There’s also the added advantage of fewer levels of bureaucracy to wade through at a smaller label.

2. You don’t have a distinct identity

Photo credit: Emerson Merrick on Flickr

Who are you exactly? What do you play? What kind of people do you appeal to? These are the types of questions that you have to answer to appeal to record labels. If you’re torn between metal and acoustic folk music, you’re obviously going to alienate fans who would be drawn in by one or the other, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be this obvious. If you switch the type of music you play from one night to the next, you run the risk of driving away fans, even if it’s something as simple as focusing on crazy instrumental solos one night and focusing on simple, understated lyrics the next.

This isn’t to say that you can’t be an artist and combine your influences: going back to the example of folk and death metal, you can combine the two to form a cohesive whole, and attract fans to the music that that produces. You have to have your priorities straight: are you a pop band that has solos, or are you an instrumental improvisational band that has some pop melodies? Without a distinct identity you can’t sell yourself to your fans or the music company.

3. You don’t have a vision

Photo credit: weheartit.com

This is strongly linked with the last point. Where do you want to see yourself in four years? Give yourself an achievable goal, high, but within the realm of possibility. Do you want to hear yourself on the radio, or do you want to tour non-stop? Your vision of the band is going to decide what it grows into and where it grows to. If your focus is on touring, you need to focus your energy in that arena and partner with a record label whose emphasis is on high-touring groups and whose strengths match your desires. If, on the other hand, your desire is to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, you want to push your music and energy towards that goal. Think about what you want to do when you’re creating your music and looking for a label-your music should match where you want to go.

4. You don’t have any contacts with the music business

Photo credit: paperdolls.tumblr.com

This is a relatively easy thing to accomplish, compared to all the soul-searching that the previous points would take. When you know of the sublabel that you want to recruit, find out who the people are. Look them up on Facebook, LinkedIn, or any networking site. If you’re friends-of-a-friend, you’re in luck. Make friends with promoters in your area. Talk with the people who run the concert venues; they can connect you with touring bands, their managers, and perhaps even minor label workers. Make 50 e-mail addresses and write 50 different sets of e-mails to employees of the sublabel. Be creative. Woo your contacts.

5. Your stage show sucks

Photo credit: fuckyeahindieboys.tumblr.com

This point seems rather obvious, but some musicians simply don’t realize what their stage show fails to produce. Pantera labeled for years and were dismissed as crap because of faults in their live show. After they got together with Phil Anselmo they cleaned up their live show and signed to a major label, with tremendous success. Live shows are often the first point of direct contact for a major label interested in a band. Make your shows interesting: liven things up. There are already myriads of articles on this topic; there are so many things you can do to improve your performance from crowd interaction and style of playing to lights and special effects.

6. Your demos are crap

Photo credit: owlbookdreams on Flickr

Besides stage shows, this is the other point of first contact with labels. Sometimes bands will actually cut a few songs and send them in without objectively looking at the results (something that hurt Lynyrd Skynyrd in their career). A crappy demo tape will sink any chances you’ll have with a label. In the same vein, a demo can also lose a lot of what it is that makes your band unique. Whenever you’re cutting a demo, be sure that it captures your identity and vision from points 2 and 3. Even if your live show and your songs themselves capture you as a band, your demo may need some tweaking to show that to the label workers. It may even be something as simple as tweaking the levels—double-checking your work is worth your while.

7. You aren’t popular enough — you don’t have enough fans

Photo credit: no3rdw on Flickr

This may seem like a “duh” idea to most people, but it’s not quite as cut and dried as it may seem. Panic! at the Disco was able to sign with a label before they ever played a live show. You may also be in a town where there aren’t as many people as a city, so you can’t acquire the volume of fans that other bands can. In this case you have to show the label that you have the ability to draw in a high percentage of the people around you. A band from nowhere with 500 fans is more attractive to a label than a big city band with the same amount.

Make your case with the label executives: tell them about your drawing power. It’s a principle to start small before you expand on a much larger scale, and if you can make the case that you succeeded on at your own small local level, it can be very persuasive to the executives. But this doesn’t mean that you should content yourselves with the fans you already have. As a musician you should constantly be trying to reach out to fans in any way you can, through myspace, by posting videos on youtube, giving free concerts, playing at fans’ birthdays, writing thank you songs, etc. Again, there’s a wealth of material written on how to connect with fans.

8. Your music’s good, but I fell asleep when I was talking to you

Photo credit: Laurence 2 on Flickr

Somewhat linked to stage presence, this deals with the fact that some people can play guitar like gods but are incredibly boring to talk to. They lack any charm or charisma when they’re involved in a one-on-one conversation, and this is a kiss of death for any major aspirations for success. If you lack this skill, that puts a cap on the top end of your success, which decreases your value in the eyes of the music industry. Improve your personal skills. Act confidently. Reading up on how to handle interviews will help you out in this area.

9. It’s the Recession, sorry

Photo credit: andrewinpompey on Flickr

This is the dumbest excuse on the list. This is simply an excuse for something else. If you are attractive to a company, they will sign you. This just means that you’ve got to work more on the other items of this list than you would otherwise. Sell yourself to the company, use items 1-8 to prove to them that you’re well worth the investment. You’ve just got to be more persistent and make them see the incredible opportunity they have to invest in you as an artist.

10. You’re from the middle of nowhere

Photo credit: Simon Pais-Thomas on Flickr

This is a point that’s been made easier to overcome through the digital revolution, but is still one that can handicap your desirability to record companies. The obvious answers to this are to move somewhere else and to tour frequently in larger cities to put yourself in front of a large group of fans and record executives. You can also help to overcome the obscurity of your origins by pushing a lot of your music on the internet and promoting things that way, but this alone probably won’t cut it.

If you want to strike it big, you’re going to have to have a decent-sized fanbase in a city to prove yourself to a major label, but you can also go through the stepping stone model by signing to an indie, using that label to help you out touring and recording, and then once you’ve established a large enough base, signing with a major label.

Conclusion

These are ten of the most important reasons that record labels will reject you. If you can successfully work each of these factors to improve your position, you can make yourself very attractive to a record label. Good luck – remember to use knowledge about the labels to your own advantage.

Ben Histand is a fourth-year Business student with an interest in finding out how pop culture works, and has spent entirely too much time finding out how Marvin Gaye is the same as Led Zeppelin, and why Led Zeppelin sold a whole lot more albums.

Reader’s Wives

Do you study how the music industry works? You seem to have a lot more knowledge about the music industry than some other musicians.

Yeah. I kind of made it my business. When I was younger and was doing the acoustic stuff, I had something musical to contribute, but didn’t really know where to start. I just got out among the conventions, and as a manager myself. At the time I did that, the whole digital thing was breaking, which everybody knows has turned the music industry on its head. But what I came away with as an artist was that I really need to know what I’m doing in a business sense. There’s no point in being good at music, and being no good or not knowledgeable about the business side.

We have a manager now as I said, but it’s still good for an artist to be knowledgeable enough to be able to talk to their manager on that level. I think most artists think that way now, but for some reason, they don’t want to be seen as boring to know a little bit about it, but I see it as exciting. It’s exciting to think that you can own everything, and still make great music. There’s something finally very punk rock about that; punk rock was a burst of energy, but it was supported by a major label system. What we have now is as good a burst of energy, but we can own it all.

Watch the Reader’s Wives video for “Victor’s Mother Juliet“:

Well, there appears to have been some confusion in the last post about the record label that I’ve started. This article is aims to clarify any and all confusion brought about by the last article, which itself was simply a general outline about the way one runs a record label. If you have any questions about the general mode of operations, refer back to the first article.

The in-depth look at this organization starts with a look at the original idea. In our case, the idea originated in a business class, in a group whose goal was to come up with an original business proposition, and thereafter to draw up a business plan. The idea floated around to create a record company, niched in such a way as to reach previously unreached consumers; in other words, we believe that there is a latent market that remains untapped by any other record company (at least in our area). To that end, we decided to create a structure around the idea, to probe the market and find out if our idea is feasible on a large scale.

Our situation is enviable: we have access to a couple local bands, all of whom are friends with some, or all of those of us on the team. We also have ready access to a Pro Tools rig and have familiarity with many of the bars and restaurants in our area. In other words, we have all the equipment needed for physical recording readily available to us, as well as a deep and talented stock of already-established musicians. With these assets openly available to us, we have an easy way to determine if our idea could survive in the fractionated music industry.

Photo credit: ~colorless on at deviantART

With the idea set into context, it’s important to take a look at the team behind the idea. In the minds of venture capitalists and serious investors, the business team that’s working to implement the idea is the second most-important factor in deciding whether or not to fund a business, a fact that works to our advantage. Greg is a musician who used to be involved in some of the aforementioned bands. He’s played in numerous locations around town and is personally acquainted with some of the owners. Jill doesn’t have musical experience per se, but she is very intelligent and usually plays the devil’s advocate role. If an idea has a flaw, she’ll probably spot it. Hector is a graduate who’s been involved in small business, so he has experience in some of the role multiplicity that plagues these sort of ventures. Lastly, what do I bring to the table? I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching music business so that I have an understanding of the costs and procedures involved, as well as a very concrete knowledge in regards to recording music.

So far we’ve got a rough business plan in place, and we’ve been having preliminary talks with an investor that we’re connected with through a mutual friend. If the preliminary talks succeed, that should bring significant resources to bear on solving our entrepreneurial problem. Should our talks succeed, we’ll be able to create an almost perfect replica of our vision, one that would be able to expand our small entity almost instantaneously into something more substantial. What this leads to in the meantime is an almost wait-and-see attitude among our team. We’re not exactly sure what resources we’ll have available to us, and hope to plan accordingly.

With our idea and business still at a preliminary stage, we’re little more than a team and an idea, the nucleus of a business. We have our resources in place, and we’re slowly beginning to mobilize them. We’ve talked to bands that have pre-existing music recorded, and they are more than willing to let us handle their music, now and in the future. What’s needed now is action, which is going to happen this week. What are the plans? Well, We hope to be able to post our company website, in whatever form it is. On it we should be able to see our logo and hear clips of some of the songs that we have in the bank thus far. The goal is also to expand our roster of available bands by talking with some other local groups to see if they’re willing to be a part of our team. Slowly — progress.

Ben Histand is a fourth-year Business student with an interest in finding out how pop culture works, and has spent entirely too much time finding out how Marvin Gaye is the same as Led Zeppelin, and why Led Zeppelin sold a whole lot more albums.

First off is the official formation of a business. Fortunately my location allows single proprietorships without any paperwork, so I don’t have to fill out any forms to operate a business.

Next up comes the more music-specific business items. I’ve got at least one act who is interested in recording and releasing music on my label, so I’ve got to figure out what I have to do legally to protect mine and their rights. We want to make sure that any music we make is going to be protected from would-be intellect thieves, so we’ve got to register with a provider who is going to issue and protect copyrights. Copyright registration can be done electronically (copyright.gov) for $35, a fee covering all of your works (as the songwriter — form PA). If you’re the publisher you also need to fill out another form, form SR. This doesn’t need to be dealt with until you’ve produced original lyrics, but you can’t forget this step. After a copyright is issued, the next step is to register yourself with BMI, SESAC, or ASCAP. They’ll do the dirty work protecting your copyright, but again you’re going to need to pay both a songwriter fee and a publishing fee to get protected for five years.

Photo credit: El Mariachi 94 on Flickr

Now, you should be protected by copyright! What needs to be figured out next is how to record the album, physically manufacture it, and how to distribute it. Here things have become much more streamlined in the past few years. It’s quite easy to find bulk suppliers of blank CDs, cases and CD labels. For a thousand dollars you should be able to set up a mini-manufacturing facility, ready to press professional-looking copies.

Staring you in the face is the prospect of distribution. Physical distribution companies are no longer nationally-independent — all nation-wide distribution companies are owned by their respective record labels. That’s one reason the music business is so domineering and top-heavy, because distribution channels are mostly clogged up.

The good news is that online distribution is a much simpler affair. There any aspiring artist can have an album distributed for anything from $45/year to a 9% royalty. After much research, I decided to use Tunecore to put up music available for download online. Other options are Songcast and CDBaby. Tunecore also provides a free UPC generator, something we’re going to need if we sell CDs in stores.

So what’s left is the task of promoting and distributing the CDs we make. This is going to require a lot of footwork on my part, but this shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve got to work at securing gigs and talking to individual store managers to get my physical product in. This is where I’m at right now — I know what needs to be done, but I’m a long ways from engaging in the entire process yet. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’ll keep you updated — I foresee a company web site in the future — but until next time, stay classy.

Ben Histand is a fourth-year Business student with an interest in finding out how pop culture works, and has spent entirely too much time finding out how Marvin Gaye is the same as Led Zeppelin, and why Led Zeppelin sold a whole lot more albums.

Read more: Starting A Record Label. Part 2: Who We Are