Rolling Stone has just named “Is This It” the #2 album of the decade and though I’m now here at Little Wing Marketing and Vinny is working for a major label we couldn’t be prouder.  The handful of us at It’s A Gas really believed in what we were promoting and were really proud to play our role in making the album a success.

Check the RS article.

For the record we also promoted the Radiohead album “Hail to the Thief” which appeared at #89 on the list and we worked the first Kings of Leon record “Holy Roller Novocaine” which, while not on the list, was the start for the band who appeared on the list three times at the number 39, 53, and 80 spots.

#89 | Radiohead: Hail to the Thief

Inauguration day was coming to an end, another dozen balls and the first couple could finally call it a night. Throughout the day, a nation buzzed with happiness over the end of the rein of Bush the Younger and the beginning of America’s 12-step program back to fiscal and national health.

But before the day gave way to celebration and eventually arguments about a stimulus package and appointees with tax issues, Aretha Franklin had to get her singin’ on. Unlike the performance of Yo-yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill, Aretha, 65, sang a difficult song with no leading melody while wearing a large gray hat complete with embedded Swarovski crystals.

Though not the song of choice at the time, how do you spell R-E-S-P-E-C-T? For artists who labored on the chitlin circuit, endured the worst racism our country has to offer and literally achieved the American dream by changing popular culture, Obama’s ascent to Ruler of the Free World was the culmination of everything they had endured. It was the realized dream of Dr. Martin Luther King. It was the final nail in the coffin of the Civil War South.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the moment or the people that worked so hard over the years to realize it.

For an entire race (if not an entire class) of people, r-e-s-p-e-c-t was the real reason for the joyous inauguration atmosphere. That’s why Aretha Franklin’s voice was so powerful. The respect was a long time coming.

If there’s another song that summarizes the feelings of that day it was Etta James’ “At Last”. So powerful the message, it was chosen to be the song that Barack and Michelle Obama first danced to. Etta even got a 45 second tribute right before the couple took the stage.

Then the misstep: Beyoncé sang Etta’s song.

I have nothing against Beyoncé. But the first dance shouldn’t be sung to karaoke. Even if that karaoke singer is one of the best in the world. No one – and I mean no one – can do Etta better than Etta.

The day after the performance, no one seemed to notice that Etta sat in the audience while Beyoncé performed the song. I, however, was pissed.

Barack Obama has done wonderful things in the days since his inauguration. He’s revamped the Freedom of Information Act, closed Gitmo, stopped US torture and to a large extent, rendition. All of these are larger decisions than which performer sang a song at a celebration. But Etta James should not be overlooked.

To me, it will be a footnote in history: the first mistake by our new President.

For the longest time after that evening, it seemed like Etta had no opinion on the subject. She never expressed a desire to switch places with Beyoncé on stage. That is, until a concert in early February in Seattle when she finally cleared the air. Sarcastically calling the singer “The great Beyoncé” Etta said:

“I tell you that woman he had singing for him, singing my song, she gonna get her ass whupped.”

She went on.

“I can’t stand Beyoncé… [she] had no business … singing my song that I been singing forever.”

She even slammed the President himself. “You know your President, right? You know the one with the big ears? He ain’t my President.”

Now, those who know Etta personally can tell you that there’s a mixture of righteous anger and tongue-in-cheek showmanship in her words. Days later, she clarified herself:

“I didn’t really mean anything,” James said. “Even as a little child, I’ve always had that comedian kind of attitude. … That’s probably what went into it.”

And then the kicker: she went on to say that she was “feeling left out of something that was basically mine, that I had done every time you look around.”

For Etta, the short tribute by Beyoncé was not an adequate substitute for being on stage and singing her song herself for the Obamas and for us..

Doing so would have capped an amazing career and would have allowed her to feel as so much of the rest of us did that day. At Last!

Earlier this week the Center for Social Media, a project at the School of Communication at American University in Washington DC, released guidelines on fair use practices for video.

These guidelines provide valuable insight as to what is and isn’t allowed under the fair use statue in Copyright Law as well as shed light on how the courts have interpreted fair use over the past 150 years.

The panel shows that while four types of considerations are mentioned in the law regarding fair use, judges have returned time and time again to two main questions:

- Did the use “transform” the material taken from the copyrighted work?

- Was the material used, in kind and amount, appropriate for the use?

The panel is careful to point the role good faith plays in answering these questions. The underlying consideration is whether the user acted in good faith, in light of general practice in his field.

The Center for Social Media issued six guidelines, complete with examples to help readers understand the way “transforming” the material is covered under fair use.

What’s surprising is just how fair fair use can be.

For example, users can videotape their videogame sessions and post them online under fair use. This falls under the fair use provisions the describe in guideline #4 “reproducing, reposting, or quoting in order to memorialize, preserve, or rescue an experience, an event or a cultural phenomenon”. This covers Stephen Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006 and all those Guitar Hero videos that I posted on YouTube.

Equally interesting is what guideline #5 articulates, “copying, reposting, and recirculating a work or part of a work for purposes of launching a discussion”. Here, the guidelines say that it is legal to post cultural content when it is specifically intended to provoke a discussion. This means that items such as music videos, controversial comedians, political speeches, etc. are all fair game for posting online. But, the purpose of the copying and posting needs to be clear. The mere fact that a site permits comments is not sufficient indication of intent.

It’s guideline #6 that addresses mashups, “quoting in order to recombine elements to make a new work that depends for its meaning on (often unlikely) relationships between the elements”.

Here, the mashup is covered under fair use if the meaning of the copyrighted material has been transformed. The guidelines give two examples. The first is for the video “Bush Blair Endless Love” the second for the ubiquitous “Dramatic Chipmunk“. In both instances, fair use is extended because the juxtaposition creates new meaning. The works stand as cultural pieces all on their own.

The document also discusses common fair use myths, including:

- If I’m not making any money of it, it’s fair use.

- If I’m making any money off it (or trying to), it’s not fair use.

- Fair use can’t be entertaining.

- If I try to license material I’ve given up my chance to use fair use.

- I really need a lawyer to make the call on fair use.

The panel that put these fair use guidelines for video together are drawn from a distinguished panel of lawyers and scholars including professors from Harvard, USC, MIT, UC Berkeley, Georgetown University, and the Pittsburgh School of Law. They too have a good track record. They have previously released guidelines for documentary filmmakers that have greatly reduced copyright claims in that area. Additionally, Miro and several public broadcasters have already endorsed the guidelines.

Also worth a look is the rest of the Center’s fair use section on their website as it contains a wealth of valuable information.

Michael Robertson, founder of mp3.com and persistent tech entrepreneur posted on his blog today about a new music service called Lala.com under the headline “$20 Million Dollar Experiment to See if You’ll Rent a Song for 10 Cents”.

In his post he talks about how the new service works. The site allows users to purchase a song for a dime. When they do, that song is put into your account. You can access this account from any place with an Internet connection.

The catch? There’s no way to download the songs to your hard drive or to a portable device.

All of the major record labels are on board and Warner Brothers has invested $20 million to help them get started. Their total capital investment is $34 million, the remainder coming from the large investment group Bain Capital.

If you’d like to try the service out, you can sign up here.

Michael’s big beef with the whole thing is that the site is betting that people are willing to pay ten cents a song for web only music. He doesn’t see that as a reasonable proposition.

He may well be right. iTunes has the brand and the cache among non-tech users. It’s certainly reasonable to think that this site may have trouble bridging the generational gap. It’s reasonable to expect that a certain amount of the success of the site has to do with how well the site is promoted and cross-branded.

It’s also true that Michael missed one key feature of the site: you can buy non-DRM versions of all of the songs for $0.89. It remains to be seen if they integrate their store with iTunes the way that the Amazon store does. (Really, the Amazon store is very clever in how they implemented that feature.)

From this angle, it seems as though Amazon is their natural competitor since they both share a lower price ($0.89) and are available as non-DRM files.

More accurately, I believe the site isn’t meant to be the online retail behemoth of iTunes. It’s meant to satisfy users who spend a lot of time online and who currently listen to their music via iMeem or Last.fm. It’s conceivable that this service could make a great addition to Internet radio stations.

To me, the site looks like an attempt to answer Tim O’Reilly’s quote from Star Wars in how copyright holders should treat music listeners: “Give the wookie what he wants.”

If you love making and sharing playlists online, a dime a song sounds imminently reasonable. If you want to take the music with you, it’s available for purchase in a non-DRM format cheaper than you could get it through iTunes.

It fills the niche between Pandora, Rhapsody, and iTunes. Will it be successful? Only time will tell. But just by signing up your first 50 downloads are free.

So take it for a spin and let us know what you think on the discussion boards.

In the summer of 2007 news that the Copyright Royalty board was set to raise the amount Internet radio webcasters paid in performance royalties hit the Internet.

The Huffington Post, Ars Technica, Wired, and Daily Kos, among others carried dire warnings that the new performance royalty rate would be too high for most webcasters to pay thus driving them out of business.

The story was a perfect David and Goliath. In this case, David was played by Pandora, everybody’s favorite custom Internet radio station. Playing the part of Goliath was SoundExchange. They’re a non-profit company started in 2000 by the RIAA, the association that’s suing music listeners for copyright infringement. To most Internet savvy music listeners, that means SoundExchange is Satan’s spawn.

Add to this one little fact: SoundExchange collects performance royalties on all music played on Internet or satellite radio, regardless of whether or not the artist is signed up with SoundExchange to be paid those royalties.

This fact seems to confirm that they are as dirty or dirtier than their corporate parent. Suing music listeners wasn’t enough, now they were out to kill Internet radio!

At least, that’s the story that was told to those of us who were keeping tabs on the issue.

And then I happened to attend an interview session at Loyola University with John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange at the end of April. I thought of every possible scenario I could come up with that could coax the appropriate response from the head of the organization birthed by the devil, but during both the Q&A with George Howard and further still in my discussion with him after the interview, he did something I thought impossible: he made me see the David vs. Goliath setup in a whole new light.

First, let’s get their association with the RIAA out of the way. After being formed as an unincorporated division of the RIAA in 2000 they were given the right by the Copyright Office to collect performance royalties for Internet and satellite radio beginning on January 1, 2003. They were spun off by the RIAA in September 2003 as an independent, non-profit company. In the interview, John Simson claimed no relationship with the RIAA and that he purposefully acts to instill the opposite mindset from the RIAA in the organization.

Next is the idea that SoundExchange is out to kill Internet Radio. Since I grew up playing with computers and the Internet, frankly, it just sounded odd to me that a rights organization should be able to collect royalties on non-on-demand streaming audio. It just seemed crazy to me that a user could download a song for free, but if that same song was played over the Net in a stream then royalties would have to be paid.

As it turns out, it is crazy, but probably not how you might think.

The rationale goes something like this. If you use music on your website, you owe a performance royalty to the artist whose music you’re using. For example, if you get a MySpace page for your band and upload a song – you, by law, are given the ability to collect a performance royalty. The same is true for Internet radio. If your music is played on an Internet radio station, then you are entitled to a performance royalty. But only in the case of Internet radio does the site owner have a place to go to pay that royalty. In all other cases, websites are either infringing on the artist’s rights or they have made their own deals directly with the artist.

In the case of MySpace, in signing up to get a profile you give away your right to collect royalties from MySpace for its usage. That is the deal you agreed to. In this case, they give you the ability to put your music on MySpace and they agree to use it on their site without paying you to do so.

For most small webcasters, striking individual deals with artists would be both time and cost prohibitive. Rather than do that, as long as their revenue is less than $1.25 million a year webcasters can pay SoundExchange $500 a year in exchange for playing any music they want.

Think about that for a second. Is $500 going to shut down most Internet radio stations? Probably not. This current deal is good through 2010 but John stressed that they’d like to extend it to 2015.

But what if you’re an Internet radio station who only plays indie music where nobody is signed and all the artists are just looking for exposure. Would the radio station have to pay then? According to John, webcasters are free to make their own individual deals with artists giving them the rights to play the artists works for free.

By now, this isn’t starting to look like such a bad deal. But SoundExchange does collect performance royalties for non-members. Surely that’s bad and unethical.

However, in order for it to be bad and unethical, SoundExchange would have to be able to keep all uncollected money. Yet, if you go on their website (I’d give you a direct link but they helpfully built the entire site in Flash) they maintain a list of names of unregistered artists so one can easily find out if they have money to collect.

There seems to be a time limit on when you can collect but you have to remember, that’s a government imposed limit, not part of SoundExchange’s (non-profit) business plan.

So rather than coming to kill Internet radio, SoundExchange feels much more like a rights’ facilitator. It makes it easy for small Internet radio stations to pay the $500 performance royalty annual fee and gives them the entire catalog of music in return. For artists, they make it easy to collect performance royalties and easy to find out if you’re owed performance royalties even if you’re not a member. They also give you the ability as an Internet radio station or an artist to go out and make your own deals that exclude SoundExchange altogether.

I came of age during the height of gangsta rap. The albums that defined my high school years were 2pac’s “Me Against the World” and “All Eyez On Me”, Snoop’s “Doggystyle”, Bone Thugs n Harmony’s “E. 1999 Eternal”, Biggie’s “Ready to Die”, Cypress Hill’s “Black Sunday” and Wu-Tang’s “Enter the 36 Chambers” just to name a few. I even wrote a piece for my freshman English 102 class titled “Lyrical Assassins” that explained the history of the East Coast/West Coast rivalry of the mid-90s.

Like every other teenager growing up in suburban America I was angry. We were the kids that came four years after Nirvana and took parental rebellion to its logical conclusion. It culminated in the anoinment of Eminem as our collective voice; one of anger, resentment, self depreciation and, oddly enough for a bunch of white kids from the burbs, black power.

It’s not like we were breaking ground or anything. The songs of southern plantation workers were the basis for the blues which was the foundation for rock n roll. Robert Johnson meet Bret Michaels.

The blues were often about the plight of black America. According to Tupac and others, gangsta rap was the new blues articulating a life of economic disparity and dirty living just to get by.

To fans of gangsta rap, myself included, we saw the nuance in the lyrics. If the lyrics sounded like code to outsiders, black culture was the primary decoder ring. Listening to rap was an immersive process, one that required knowledge of people, groups, associations, and affiliations. Unlike any other music genre I can think of, it created a near genre wide narrative thread. This narrative, created and nurtured in the streets but shined and polished in the studio reflected the urban minority experience like like a hall of mirrors but like a hall of mirrors, each reflection still reflected a real reality, a real truth.

But, gangsta rap also reveled in its excess and its growing popularity, especially in bedrooms like mine, caused concerned parents to blame gangsta rap for societal ills. Like 2 Live Crew’s hypersexual lyrics and Led Zeppelin’s music played backwards, gangsta rap was another way that the recorded arts was destroying America.

To that end, Tupac was interviewed by Tabitha Soren for MTV in 1995 where he was asked “do you feel like rappers should be more responsible with their lyrics?”

His answer. “Yes.”

“What would you define as irresponsible?”

His answer was remarkable. “You talk about murder and death and you don’t talk about the pain. Or you talk about killing, robbing, and stealing and you don’t talk about jail, death and betrayal and the things that go with it.”

To Tupac, his idea of the moral high ground was to provide context. It’s not just a video game life of big tits, big guns, big money and big fame, though those dreams exist within hip hop. Nope. They occur and contrast themselves against it being a hard knock life with consequences and negativity around every corner. His music was a reflection of this contextualization of black urban life. It ran the gamut from songs about Mom (“Dear Mama”) to teenage pregnancy (“Brenda’s Got A Baby”), booty calls (“What’z Ya Phone #”), to getting out of jail (“Picture Me Rolling”), reppin his set (“California Love”) to taking time out to set a woman straight (“Wonda Why They Call U Bitch”).

And yes it also included ego trippin (“Me Against The World”), gang banging (“Troublesome ’96″) and claims of sleeping with Biggie’s wife Faith Evans (“Hit Em Up”). If you take those songs out of context, out of the narrative then what you’re left with is a video game view of gangsta rap. It’s when that happens – the lack of context – that you turn into Bill Cosby.

The AP ran a story on April 15, 2008 quoting Bill Cosby contrasting his new upcoming album with gangsta rap. Cosby said that his album is “the opposite of what I think is the profanity for no particular reason, the misogyny for no particular reason”, referring to gangsta rap. He’s got it right: it’s all about context.

Immersed in albums from Nas to Scarface, Tupac to Biggie, Luke to the 69 Boyz, and Will Smith, in the mid-90s listeners of rap knew the lay of the land. But new revelations make me question the importance of keeping it real.

It’s all Akon’s fault.

Akon is the popular R&B singer best known for singing R&B hooks on rap records with 21 Billboard Hot 100 credits to his name. He’s the most popular R&B/rap crooner since Nate Dogg. His backstory (remember the importance of narrative), explained time and again in interviews, is that he was the leader of a notorious Atlanta car theft ring with four chop shops that served criminals and celebrities alike. He got ratted out by some underlings, did 3 years in jail where he fought daily and honed his songwriting ability. Upon release he got a deal, called his label Konvict Muzik and his second album “Konvicted”. His music is a reflection of that narrative.

The only problem is, he’s a fake.

For a genre that’s based on “keepin’ it real” after wholly embracing him, this has got to be a problem.

The Smoking Gun is reporting that Akon’s criminal record is nothing more than cynical marketing exaggerations. His story is one that he’s perpetrated in order to identify with the “real” part of his audience. White America may control the Billboard hip hop charts but they still like their thugs with a prison record. 50 Cent had to get shot 9 times before we’d buy his records.

So this revelation that Akon isn’t the thug he says he is should be a devastating blow to his career. If this had happened in the mid-90s I would have said his life is in danger. He’s a fake thug, a busta, a wanksta. According to the narrative of gangsta rap, he’s done. What will be interesting to see is if that actually plays out.

Many people have argued that gangsta rap passed into parody long ago. If it remained intact through the bling era, surely the imitators of the bling era had to be thought of as the XFL to Snoop, Pac, Dre and Biggie’s NFL. But, I think this will be the first real test to see if that is true.

I think you could make a pretty good comparison between gangsta rap and comic books. In both, the figures are bigger than life. The actions are bigger than life. The rewards are bigger than life. And in both, the tits are huge. In Comics, there were the various factions: X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor, the Brotherhood of Mutants, the Justice League; the various personalities: Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Wolverine; and the dramatic universe-altering story arcs. In gangsta rap you had the various factions: Death Row, Bad Boy, Dungeon Fam, No Limit, Wu-Tang, Flipmode Squad; the various personalities: Pac, Dre, Snoop, Suge, Biggie, Puffy, Busta Rhymes; and the dramatic rap world altering story arcs. Keeping tabs on the factions, personalities, and feuds while providing an outlet for anger was basically what sold records (and comics). If the X-Men had the Dark Phoenix saga, rappers had the rebirth of 2pac at Death Row.

To this point, the issue of “keeping it real” was supposed to matter. My guess is that it has always mattered more the closer you got to the hotspots of rap. But my sneaking suspicion is that “keeping it real” means much less to your average angry surburban teenager than it does on Crenshaw Blvd. To rap’s target market, pop culture has room for a healthy dose of ironic self-parody.

This is a crowd who would find an Akon and Milli Vanilli mashup funny.

That being said, I do believe that Akon’s outing to be a line in the sand. Either his career is over or gangsta rap in the pop music sense has truly ceased to be a voice for truth and an outlet for the voice of the disenfranchised. It will have as much in common with the explosive lyrics of Ice Cube and 2pac as Bret Michaels does with Robert Johnson. The qualities that separated the narrative of pop music gangsta rap from comic books: keeping it real, will be gone leaving only a comic book narrative.

Now that’s keeping it real.

Shouts to Alicia Keys and J Smooth.

The day when digital downloads would exceed physical media purchases has long been expected. For the deafest of deaf in the music business, the proof is finally in the pudding. The CD is dead. The nightmare is real.

How real is it? For one, digital music buyers buy tracks while CD buyers have to pay for the whole thing. The result: fewer tracks sold and less money made. That goes a long way towards explaining the 10 percent decline in music spending in 2007. According to NPD’s research, 48 percent of US teens didn’t buy a single CD in 2007.

Now that’s real.

It’s enough to make you think Flo-Rida and T-Pain were talking about music profits when they sang, “shorty got low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low”.

January’s Digital Music Forum: East revealed a new enlightenment among the music establishment. DRM was being tossed by the wayside, new models based on accessibility and meeting the customer’s needs were being discussed. It was if the music industry was creative again.

Just the other day the Times Online reported that Warner, EMI and others were talking with ISPs and mobile phone providers to supply their entire catalog on a subscription basis. The two sticking points for the majors: their percentage of the revenue split and their insistence on shackling the consumer with DRM music. This would prevent music from playing in all players (such as iPods) and would also lock a customer out of their music once their subscription had ended.

These old tactics only prove that the elegant solution has yet to reveal itself. In that, Apple can take some satisfaction. Reports are that they too are in talks with the majors for an all-you-can eat approach. Until that’s all sorted out, Apple can enjoy doing what nobody else can do: outsell Wal-Mart.

You’ll have to excuse me if this editorial seems a little more stream of consciousness than normal. I’ve been listening to Ghosts I from the new Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV that I downloaded from the official ‘leaked’ torrent on The Pirate Bay.

“This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective – dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams.”

Trent’s right. It’s the kind of music you might dream of after too much NyQuil and having watched The Ghost in the Shell or The Animatrix.

I like it. It reminds me of many bits and pieces from The Fragile.

It’s fun to write to.

But for all the talk across the Net about Trent’s newest release, I haven’t heard too many people talking about the music itself.

Not that it seems to matter. The album was dropped on an unsuspecting public and immediately made the frontpage of Digg and other social aggregation sites. Now, several days after the release, I’m listening to my legally ‘stolen’ version (Ghosts I has been released under a non-commercial Creative Commons license) which Trent personally uploaded to various torrent sites. Reports are everywhere that the 2,500 $300 Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition Package is sold out. Ooh, math! That’s a cool $750,000 in 72 hours.

Quick, fire your record label!

Last week there was a report that suggested that Trent only had to pay $56.61 to upload his music to the Amazon store through TuneCore. TuneCore is a service that allows musicians to upload their content to popular web music outlets like iTunes and Amazon for a small fee.

So what does this mean for your average I-don’t-wanna-work-I-just-wanna-bang-on-the-drum-all-day musician? Are the only people that are going to profit in the era of free music artists that made their name on a major record label?

While Nine Inch Nails has had tremendous success in this wild-and-wooly environment, Saul Williams and his album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggytardust attracted less than 20% paying customers at $5 a pop. Reznor, who financed the album revealed the numbers in a blog post on his website and concluded that while recording expenses were covered, “nobody’s getting rich off this project.”

So what are the take away lessons? Are Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails the only bands that get to make a million dollars selling their music online? If Saul Williams can’t make it, what hope do you have?

Lots of hay has been made about how the music industry has dropped the ball reacting to the digital music revolution. There hasn’t been as much discussion about how the music industry has also allowed ego and ignorance to run wild among their musicians. There are plenty of acts on major labels who have trouble keeping up with basic expenses, much less have an idea of how to manage an online identity. Even Trent had to learn the hard way that your business manager will steal all your money if you don’t keep an eye on it.

This new digital era requires work. As much as I and others would love to lead you to believe that all you have to do is x, y, and z and profit!, the truth of the matter is, the artists that will thrive are those that get smart about spreading their art.

Beyond the obvious things: a website, MySpace and Facebook profiles, and YouTube there are an increasing number of ways to get known in the digital realm that end in profit.

First, consider how you want to license your work. If you want to use the Creative Commons license, they have a very nice page that can help you choose which license you want to release your work under. It’s worth a look. (Word to Lessig)

Having your CD is Best Buy is nice, having your CD on iTunes and the Amazon store is essential. TuneCore makes that possible at a very reasonable cost.

Selling music online is an obvious thing to do. Signing up with a music licensing company, less so. Audiosocket Music makes it easy. For $15 an artist can upload up to 4 tracks for their A&R staff to review. Upon making the cut (and they are actively recruiting new talent) you’ll get one of the most fair non-exclusive licensing deals going.

There are several places where people go to find new music. You need to find those places and get there. Last.fm is the UK site bought by CBS that has full-length tracks and entire albums for free streaming from all the major labels. You too can have your songs there for free.

Thesixtyone.com is a site built to satisfy all the aspiring A&R executives out there. Think you know a hit song when you hear one? Now’s your chance to prove it. Think you have a hit song? Upload your music and see what happens. You might be surprised.

It’s these and other new sites and technologies that are going to give the up-and-coming musician who wants to make it in the digital age a chance at also making a profit. It’s not scarcity that will drive profit but availability and convenience.

Look at what Jill Sobule is doing for her new album. She’s pre-raising the $75,000 she needs to make it from her fans. It’s the ArtistShare method at a personal level. She offers fans options ranging from a digital download of the album for $10 all the way up to performing with her on the album for $10,000. Fans have currently raised more than $80,000 for the cause.

What this tells us is that there are no right ways right now on how make a living making music in the digital age. It’s like the beginning of MTV before there was a visual language for music videos. Anything goes.

Remember, Amway is supposed to save the music business.

While you’re contemplating your next move, pop in that first track from Ghosts I. It’s beautifully haunting and will help you remember, that in the end, it’s still all about the music.

I love the Guitar Hero franchise. Even the 80′s version that was only for the ps2 and only had 35 songs but still cost 50 bucks. If you’re keeping score, that makes 4 titles for the franchise, to this point. The titles span all major consoles and according to the publisher Activision in the past 26 months the franchise has generated over 1 billion dollars in sales.

Let me put 1 billion dollars in perspective. It’s a big enough number so that even millionaires say “damn, that’s a lot of money!” but small enough so that no one in at the International Association of Jazz Educators conference in Toronto that I met last week (including the heads of prestigious music schools) had heard of the franchise.

I was manning a booth in the exhibition hall for artistshousemusic.org and on Saturday, the last day of the event a lady came up to me and she wanted to know what she could do to foster a love of music in her 7 year old daughter. My answer: on the way home, go to Best Buy and find the demo versions of Guitar Hero III or Rock Band on the floor and try them. That’s your answer.

And how. On top of the $1 billion dollar announcement by Activision, CNN is profiling the rise of Guitar Hero nights in restaurants, clubs, and bars. MSNBC reports that since October 27, 2007 more than 5 million songs have been purchased for Guitar Hero III at $0.99 to $1.99 a piece. Guitar Hero III has sold more than 5 million units since its release at $90 each. For Rock Band, out since late November, it has sold in excess of 2.5 million songs. This in addition to total unit sales in excess of 1 million for Rock Band through the end of 2007 at $170 each.

Let me back up for the totally uninitiated. When you buy a game in the Guitar Hero franchise, it typically comes with a small plastic guitar controller. It has five fret buttons, a strum bar, and a whammy bar. The game allows the player to simulate playing guitar to all of the songs in the game. It’s a simple concept but one that has a powerful draw. It can give you a musician’s high. Like a real musical instrument, the game also requires actual skill. Activision has been able to extend the value of the game by making more songs available online for purchase.

These purchases are one of the only bright spots in the music business at the moment. Each song costs between $0.99 and $1.99 unless they’re bundled in a pack of 3 songs which costs $5.50. Since these songs are available only on the Xbox Live Marketplace or the Sony network, there is no piracy. People are paying for the experience, but there’s also no alternative.

Now that the floodgates are open, look for future publishers (EA, I’m looking at you) to investigate opportunities to sell music to gamers in a range of titles, from racing games to puzzle games.

These games are good for music and good for the music business. If you listen closely you’ll hear a small cacophony of music teachers telling you what Guitar Hero won’t teach you. No one is confusing one guitar with the other. This game gets kids and adults both excited in participating in music. After years of reading about how the live music scene is dying, one can cry that its rebirth is in the living rooms of America but think about a generation from now when we get great music by a kid first stimulated to play by a video game. The beauty of these games is the ability for the musically untrained to participate in the experience of performing music. The secret isn’t the technology, it’s the experience.

If you’re a soloist, check out Guitar Hero III, and if you’re into the group thing, go for Rock Band. You’ll find that once you start, you can’t stop. You’ll be surprised how good it feels to “play” music.

Five issues, insights, and observations shaping the future of music and the music business from the editors of Artists House Music.

1. An Interview with Swedish Pirate Pary leader Rick Falkvinge

The P2P Consortium has published an interview with Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party (a political party similar to Republicans and Democrats in Sweden that actually exists).

Choice quote: “What was remarkable was that this was the point where the enemy — forces that want to lock down culture and knowledge at the cost of total surveillance — realized they were under a serious attack… for the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle. And it was… nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is ‘thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief’… Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding… When the Iron Curtain fell, all of the West rejoiced that the East would become just as free as the West. It was never supposed to be the other way around.”

2. Time Magazine says that vinyl is cool again

Hold on to your iPods, the vinyl album is making a comeback. It’s got sweet art, retro appeal, and purists out there know that it’s warmer than CDs. Vinyl, it’s not just for DJs and your dad anymore.

3. Should AT&T Police the Internet?

On top of the revelations last year that AT&T captures all Internet traffic for the NSA, now the New York Times reports that AT&T might start implementing technology that would look for copyright violations and block access to the content. Hope the iPhone was worth it.

4. thesixtyone.com wants you to play A&R

Thesixtyone.com is a new site dedicated to helping you discover new music. Unlike the many other iterations that came before it, this site comes with a twist. It makes a game out of discovering new music, in effect ranking your talent for picking good music. If you like a song, you can bump it up – but it costs points, something you have a limited quantity of. It’s a neat idea and something definitely to check out.

5. Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” – It Worked

The name-your-own-price-on-the-Internet album “In Rainbows” by Radiohead showed up in stores last week, and surprise surprise, it’s number one on the charts this week. The New York Times takes a look at the release and ponders the question, why do people pay for what they can get for free?