What is their age group, are they tweens, teenagers, young adults, old rockers? Are they mostly male or female? What is their lifestyle? Are they still at home with their parents or starting their own families, or have their families already flown the coop?

What artists do they listen to? One of the important things on many sites where you can upload your music is who do you sound like, who influenced you. These tags are there for people to find music similar to the artists they like. Make sure you are genuine because if you are like the artists they listen to, you will build up your fan base more quickly.

How do they buy music? Do they buy on the net? at iTunes? Do they buy CD's in mainstream music stores? In Department Stores? In specialist stores like Marbecks or Real Groovy?

How often do they buy music? Do they buy music themselves or do othes buy it for them as gifts?

How do they discover music they like? Do they hear it on the radio? iTunes? Podcasts? Do they find them by reading reviews in magazines, online, from video's, recommended by magazines?

Where would they go to listen to music? An art gallery? pub? Concert Hall? Cafe?

Where do they buy their clothes? Often the music playing in certain shops might influence them. If there is a cafe that people go to who like your music, give the cafe a copy of your CD and ask them to play it for you.

Have a think about who your fans are or could be and given the ideas above, how could you influence the situation so that people who like your music can find you. There will be more on this in the next few days.

Knowing who your fans are can help in many ways. It should influence what you write, the style, the lyrics (are they accessible to your demographic), how you market your music, where you sell your music and much more.

There is a target for every kind of music form Christian Death Metal to jazz fusion and opera. Obviously the place and way to target eac genre will be very different. Understanding these things means that instead of taking a scatergun approach, you can aim straight for your target market, winning more fans to buy your music, attend your gigs and tell their friends about you.

By the way, I'd really like this blog to be interactive. You don't have to agree with me. I would love to make this a discussion, not just me rambling on........................................

Johnny Nash’s reggae song ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ has been named the most-played summer song of the past year in a new survey undertaken by the UK’s Performing Right Society (PRS).

Originally written and recorded by Nash in 1972, ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ has been covered by many artists over the past three decades, including a 1993 hit version by Jimmy Cliff.

‘Walking On Sunshine’ by Katrina & The Waves came second in the PRS survey, with the Bryan Adams hit ‘Summer Of ‘69’ taking third place even though it only ever reached No. 42 on the UK charts.

The Kinks’ hit ‘Sunny Afternoon’ - written by the band’s Ray Davies - came fourth. Don Henley’s ‘The Boys Of Summer’ (apparently a common nickname for baseball players in America) is listed at Number 5 in the survey.

“The summer’s been a bit of a wash-out, so it’s great to hear these classic summer-time songs that remind us of the best of British weather,” said PRS chairman Ellis Rich. “All these summer songs have stood the test of time, which goes to show the importance of music in our lives and the nostalgia it brings, no matter what the weather forecast.”

The survey’s results are based on data compiled by the PRS in order to pay accurate royalties to its 60,000 composer, songwriter and music publisher members whenever their music is broadcast or publicly performed.

The full Top 10 is:

1. ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ – Johnny Nash (1972)

2. ‘Walking On Sunshine’ – Katrina & The Waves (1983)

3. ‘Summer Of ’69’ – Bryan Adams (1984)

4. ‘Sunny Afternoon’ – The Kinks (1966)

5. ‘The Boys Of Summer’ – Don Henley (1984)

6. ‘In The Summertime’ – Mungo Jerry (1970)

7. ‘Cruel Summer’ – Bananarama (1983)

8. ‘Summer Breeze’ – Seals & Crofts (1972); Isley Brothers (1974)

9. ‘Here Comes The Sun’ – The Beatles (1969)

10. ‘Summer Holiday’ – Cliff Richard (1963).

No publishers are going to be leaping with glee, but Mojo, The Word, Metal Hammer, Classic Rock and Rock Sound's figures aren't bad. Q has shed 18,000 readers in 6 months, Uncut 4,000, NME 8,000 (one in eight) and Kerrang! nearly 17,000 (a whopping one in five!)

The Wire and Plan B don't publish figures through ABC.

Classic Rock 66,632 (67,399)
Kerrang! 60,294 (76,937)
Metal Hammer 48,540 (45,809)
Mixmag 34,073 (35,817)
Mojo 106,367 (106,218 )
NME 56,284 (64,033)
Q 113,174 (131,330)
Rock Sound 22,527 (23,021)
Terrorizer no figures (14,952)
The Fly 105,212 (103,051)
Uncut 86,925 (91,028 )
Word 33,775 (33,217)

Download Info:

RS Links
http://rapidshare.com/files/104625612/Computer_Music_Tutorials.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/104629743/Computer_Music_Tutorials.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/104633628/Computer_Music_Tutorials.part3.rar

www.magesy.com

Sound on Sound is a term used to describe the technique of multitrack recording, specifically process that Les Paul invented for recording one sound on top of another.

Sound on Sound is also a monthly music technology magazine published by SOS Publications Group, based in Cambridge, UK. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, and interviews with industry professionals.

Download Link

• RapidShare

*Scarlett Johansson's cover of Tom Waits' "Falling Down." [Universal Music Group]

*The perfect song length: 2:42 (worth reading for the third line of the essay alone). Also, here is a Muxtape on the matter.

*Local: Billy Bob Thornton (the old man who is supposedly one of my hideous doppelgangers) will be playing MUSIC as part of the Minnesota Zoo concert series. [switchblade comb]

*American Top 40? Hardly. Check out the BBC's Sound Index, a music popularity chart based on scans (every 6 hours) of iTunes, MySpace, Google, Bebo, Last.fm and YouTube. [million music]

*An execrable Star Tribune mini-review of the Minneapolis (well, Maplewood) Kraftwerk show. [mediation]

*MyStrands wants to invest $100k in somebody who has a really smart recommendation engine idea. [duke listens]

*Of the top 25 YouTube search terms for March 2008, 16 were musical, including: Lil Wayne, Low, Chris Brown, No Air, Soulja Boy, Jonas Brothers, Usher, Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus and others. The others were mostly porn. [del.icio.us/mediaeater]

*Is Apple about to start kicking ass in the instant messaging space with Apple Conversation? Some quasi-celebrities say yes.

*What? A Google project that helps you track what music you may be missing from your personal collection. [mediaeater]

*Off topic: An interview with Nicholas Felton, the dude with the personal annual report. [swissmiss]

*I am annoyed by the serif font used for posts in this new layout.

http://ca.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idCAN0548260520080405

I fail to remember exactly what happened to this magazine -- I think it was swallowed up by one of it's rivals -- The NME if memory serves correctly. I know with these articles I should sit there on wiki and painstakingly research stuff but they are, after all, supposed to be opinion pieces and my own impressions. I like wiki, don't get me wrong, but if I were to sit here and churn out what, to me, seemed like a re-hash of the wiki article i would feel the whole thing to be pretty pointless.

Anyway, that aside -- Vox should have served as a lesson to a lot of magazines that came after. It is another magazine that I think suffered from a change of format -- it used to be large and as it's size diminished so, it seems, did it's relevance. For a long time Melody Maker and NME seemed to have been in a handbags at dawn fight against each other -- trying to become in some sense the polar opposite of each other but somehow unable to achieve this. They became almost indistinguishable although I might give the NME that it was that little bit edgier. But neither of those magazines were a patch on VOX -- the articles were better; the ideas were better -- an the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. So, what did it do? In an effort to compete with its perceived rivals it became them -- it threw away every distinguishing feature that it possessed and it dove straight into the formless morass that was the Melody Maker/NME universe and it became as bland and eventually unreadable as they were. The intelligence of the articles slowly evaporated and were replaced with same collection of snarky reviews, top ten lists, and scrapbook quality bullshit that some people seemed to be satisfied with. God, it made you want to cry -- what it did do is make you stop buying it. And like a hand which you aren't sure if it's waving or drowning -- it disappeared under the quicksand of it's own mediocrity.

----------------
Now playing: R.E.M. - Hope
via FoxyTunes

And Resonance, the stylish NW coast-based champion of hip pop culture, is closing after 14 years of documenting cutting-edge indie rockpop, film, books and the visual arts.

But why are music mags going t*ts up like this? 

Simple.  Reduced CD sales because of free digital downloads means record labels reduce adverting spend.  Competitive discounting by online retailers and supermarkets mean small music retailers close down, reducing distribution outlets.  And web sites (like this) supply free news and views which people used to buy in magazines.

Serious fans of grown-up music will miss all three fine magazines.

Gerry Smith

There has been a lot of hype swarming around the "pay-what-you-can" downloadable version of RHs' 'In Rainbows' recent release earlier this month- it's a damn great listening experience if you haven't yet given it a whirl too!

And while the CEO moguls are getting their fanny's in a bind over the drop in sales/revenue, Simon Jenkins at The Guardian keeps consice perspective within his commentary piece,  reminding us that in the end, and with the increase of live performance venues, we really would rather see "the real thing over secondhand cyberspace technology"- so not too worry.  And my guess is that RH is none too worried either, it's never been their point within their art/craft since their musical beginnings.

It's always uneasy to watch dominating profit-driven motives at work, constantly attempting, like the loner at some god-forsaken party, trying to fit-in so painfully awkward, but yet so determined, for all the wrong reasons.  I'm sure the frenzy over the online download is a bit like that, especially for those unfamiliar with RH- it's so "new" and "cool", and everyone is talking about it, writing, posting about it- voila! 

Who cares? RH rock, no matter what version of their musical work they happen to put out there, what about the music itself? Let's continue on with that discussion, shall we?

Paste Magazine according to Red and Black contributor Whitney Kessler has also been inspired by 'In Rainbows' unveiling.  And is offering, for a limited time, a "name-your-price-subscription" in hopes of spiking additional sales and subscribers.  I think Paste Magazine's efforts are genuine, they are a quality varied genre publication, and perhaps are struggling with such a loss of readership for all the various reasons.  But whom else might be sitting back thinking... hmm- I gotta get onboard that gravy train too.

The age old debate of quality vs quantity, that guy/girl at the party, etc. There is this exemplary evolution RH has demonstrated all throughout their musical undertakings, and if you ever have seen them "live", you know how authentic, and genuine that experience is.  Sure, they're artists, and as such, are working their craft, and we pay them for such an experience, but again, if your a RH fan, that's really not the point.

-ciao