HFA - mechanical licenses for cover songs

"Songfile" can be used by musicians who plan to make and distribute 2,500 copies or less of their recordings to obtain the necessary licenses for cover versions of songs. Licenses can be obtained for CDs, cassettes, LPs, or permanent digital downloads (DPDs).

Customers can create an account with the Songfile service, search HFA’s catalog of almost 1.9 million songs, and complete their mechanical licensing transaction in minutes. Royalties are calculated at the statutory mechanical rate (currently 9.1¢ per copy for songs 5 minutes or less in length, or 1.75¢ per minute (or fraction thereof) per copy, for songs over 5 minutes). There is also a nominal processing fee ($13-15) on each song licensed.

Best Buy To Open In-store Music Centers

Hoping to cater to everyone from the garage guitarist to a recording musician, Best Buy Co. Inc. is announcing a massive new initiative that sets aside store space for an array of musical instruments and gear in dozens of sites nationwide.

The nation's largest consumer electronics retailer will announce Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 85 of the music centers inside its stores by the end of the year and could add even more locations in the future, executives told The Associated Press.

Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include roughly 1,000 different products with well-known brand names such as Fender, Gibson, Drum Workshop and Roland.

"We're not just extending the shelf space in the store, we're creating a designated area specifically for this experience," said Kevin Balon, the company's vice president of musical instruments. "And we're trying to create an authentic and genuine musical instrument store look and feel inside of Best Buy."

The Richfield, Minn.-based retailer - already an industry leader in sales of everything from digital cameras to video games - will use its headfirst jump into the $8 billion U.S. musical instrument market to carve out new revenue opportunities as sales of CDs and DVDs slow, experts said.

When the rollout is complete, Best Buy - already considered by many investors to be a global powerhouse in the electronics retailing world - will become the second-largest instrument seller in the country based on locations.

But some observers are cautious about whether the expansion efforts will reap big rewards, particularly as the nation's economy slows and consumers become even more particular about spending hard-earned paychecks.

"It's not a high-growth area and it's obviously going to take up a lot of real estate," said Morningstar retail analyst Brady Lemos.

Executives declined to comment on how much the company is investing in the project or how much they expect to gain from the store-within-a-store effort.

So far, ten sites are already open, including five in California, two in Illinois and two in Minnesota.

Best Buy's selection will include everything from accessories - picks, sheet music and cases - to high-end basses, guitars, keyboards and DJ equipment. Instruments will be housed in separate rooms and the company also plans to offer group music lessons.

Acoustic guitars will sell between $89.99 and $3,200 and drum kits will retail for as much as $5,000.

A selection of the offerings will also be available online in early August.
"However you want to play, if play means you're just learning and you want to play with a bunch of buddies, or you want to play on stage, we can support any of that," Balon said

5 Lies Indie Musicians Tell Themselves

1. "The internet leveled the playing field for indie music." - Big checkbooks and the marketing campaigns they buy still have the edge. The internet just opened the door for everyone. It's what you do now that you're in the now overcrowded room that matters.
2. "I'm going D.I.Y." - Sorry, but you can't Do It all Yourself. You need a team; preferably an experienced one. Just for starters: manager, agent, web guru, marketing and PR.
3. "The quality of the music matters more now." - It has always started with a great song...or at least a catchy one. That hasn't changed and neither has the fact that after that it's still about hard work, who your champions are and luck.
4. "Now that the FCC ended payola, my music has a chance at radio." - Dream on. There are still gatekeepers and they still don't care about you.
5. "My sales suck, but so do everyone else's." Sure the numbers have changed, but if you can't get people to pay something for your music then you've got a problem...with your music.

Artist Quote of the Week

Record companies, believe me, no matter what record company you're with, they're going to try to hype you, because, really, all record companies are interested in is making money.

-Elton John

Music in China Part II

The arrival of western product in the early 90s came courtesy of ‘saw-gashed’ CDs: Excess stock and deleted titles from western majors attempting to avoid taxation and disposal costs. These CDs had their cases cut to mark them as defective and were then shipped in to China through free-market economic ports like Guangzhou, only to end up on the black market. An end result that can be seen as a partial ‘shooting-in-the-foot’ for the western majors who then had to come in and fight against the pirate networks they inadvertently helped set up.

A standard pirate CD retails for about 60p, whereas the legitimate product goes for around two to three times that - £1.50 to £2. This obviously makes piracy a big business with plenty of people profiting, plenty of vested interests and not a whole lot of will to change. There is the occasional very public haul of counterfeit CDs, but realistically this is already a lost battle when you consider the impending end of the CD format.

CD manufacturing plants are mainly state run but this does not deter rampant ‘third shift piracy’ in which, once the two normal daily factory shifts are completed, a third one goes on through the night to make the same product for the pirate market. That’s right, state-run piracy.

As with most areas of business, the retail sector is a black hole of statistics, where misinformation and mendaciousness are key pirate protection devices. A visit to China will clear this up for you nicely as you only have to wander around a few streets and speak to a few ‘legitimate’ retailers to see the impossibility of gathering any meaningful statistics. Even legitimate retailers like FAB stock some pirated goods and it takes a very keen eye to spot the difference in some cases, although most pirated CDs are laughably poor quality.

iLike Offers New Tools To Concert Promoters

iLike is reaching out to concert promoters with a new set of tools designed to transform its social music discovery service into a more overt advertising platform.

The company has added new tools that let promoters, venue owners, booking agents and bands place advertising for upcoming shows on the iLike system on their own. These tools allow users to target their ads based on iLike members' professed musical tastes and location, as well as provide them various ad-building and distribution features such as the addition of audio song sampling video clips.

These tools add to iLike's existing social networking capabilities, which will allow users to invite friends to concerts they discover via the platform.

iLike says it now has 30 million registered users, and is taking additional steps to not only acquire more, but also add more value to those already on the system. It recently teamed with Rhapsody to offer full-song streaming downloads (25 per month, or unlimited for existing Rhapsody members).

On the heels of the concert ad-network announcement, iLike is also reaching out to third-party Web site developers with a deal that would let them use iLike to become their default music provider.

The service won't launch until later this quarter, but is designed to let developers embed all iLike functionality -- including full-song streaming -- into their sites. It's still unclear what type of personalized integration these developers will have to customize the iLike experience on their sites, or the costs involved.