I’m sure everyone can agree that the business side of music is and has been going through changes. Public radio station WNYC’s show ‘On The Media’ has a fantastic episode bringing up all different aspects with honest and intelligent conversation about each.

For 10 years, music execs have waged a war against digital file sharing — and software like Napster and websites like The Pirate Bay — which have decimated the industry’s profits. But recently, there are signs from Europe that the battle over free music may be changing.

On The Media – ‘Facing The (Free) Music’

Chad Pearson worked for Tooth & Nail Records before starting The Militia Group and currently runs P Is For Panda. He will be contributing articles about his personal experiences in, and behind the scenes of, the music industry.

CHAPTER FOUR.

I honestly don’t know what part I should tell you next. I was in heaven! I had my DREAM job! I was getting free clothes and free CD’s! How crazy is it that my first job was my dream job?! How f’ing cool was that? Well, I slowly started making a name for myself. As one who never likes to leave a job undone, I worked hard everyday in the mail room. (And not because I was homeless…I had a place now.) Going above and beyond is what was expected of me. I tried to be two steps ahead of Bill, who was really my boss. I wanted to be able to tell Bill “Already done man!” when he asked me to do inventory, etc. I wanted to do such great work that everyone took notice. I wanted to make everyone else happy cause I didn’t want anyone to think that I didn’t belong there.

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I would be willing to bet that more than 50% of the music you consume is through the speakers attached (or heaven forbid, built-in) to your computer. There is also a really good chance that you (or people in general) haven’t opted  to buy different speakers than what came with the computer. Let’s forget about the quality, or bit rate, of the music people are consuming for a minute and just ask, how important are computer speakers?

Feel free to also add recommendations for speakers, or anything else that goes along with the topic.

If you’ve got about 4-5 minutes to spare, this short video from Make Magazine showing the process a new, smaller record company uses to press vinyl records is well worth your time.

Video Link

For the last couple of years there has been a resurgence in popularity of vinyl records. Largely due to digital downloads rending the portability of compact discs obsolete, people are starting to gravitate to vinyl as the physical format of choice. In this short documentary from Nick Cavalier we get a behind-the-scenes look at the production of vinyl records at Gotta Groove Records, a new vinyl pressing plant in Cleveland, Ohio.

Sometimes I think people see the music industry as a high jump for bands, there’s a bar you need to clear, and if you don’t, you’re disqualified. The better analogy though would be to see it as a staircase. There are bands at the top and bands at the bottom, but all along the way there is a step for those in between to reside.

Recently I found some old demos for Larger Than Life, a local San Diego punk band. Back then it wasn’t MySpace, but rather Mp3.com where you would stream the lo-fi songs over your dial-up modem. The time travel experience of listening to this 10+ year old music made me take a step back and remember when it felt like there was either locals bands or mainstream acts. Most, not all, but most of the bands I come across are fighting to get heard and even though some can act too cool occasionally, I’m sure they appreciate all of you who take the time to listen to their music.

Let’s be straight forward and honest, most band’s Myspace pages suck. It doesn’t take long before the endless scouring of bands leaves you frustrated with the ability of bands to present themselves appropriately. Here are a few do’s & don’ts for bands that are truly worth it. For those not in a band, please continue reading and leave your comments about what you wish you could change.

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Chad Pearson worked for Tooth & Nail Records before starting The Militia Group and currently runs P Is For Panda. He will be contributing articles about his personal experiences in, and behind the scenes of, the music industry.

CHAPTER THREE: Being Homeless makes you look like a hard worker.

So, I came into the office that Monday for my job training. I don’t really recall anything about my first day. I am sure that Brandon passed me off to Bill Power, who then showed me around the office and went into deeper detail about what I would be doing. I am sure that Bill then passed me off to Darren Vickers, the guy in charge of the mail order. Back in those days, mail order was HUGE. Us kids didn’t really have the luxury of finding our favourite band’s records in Best Buy just yet. And you would be hard pressed to find me or other people like myself scouting out the local Christian record store, looking for the newest Overcome CD. It was much safer and more fun to order from the label.

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2009 was a big year for The Album Project. With the goal of recommending good music to people, we put out not one, but two free digital compilations full of lesser known, yet amazing bands on top of the album reviews and daily recs. It has been a year of good music and besides listing just the top 10 records for the year I’ve also included some other favorites, let downs and random facts. Thanks for the continued support.

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Surprisingly I never really got, or asked for, much music for Christmas except one time I can clearly remember. It was right after MxPx’s ‘Slowly Going The Way Of The Buffalo’ came out, I remember hearing there was ANOTHER MxPx record coming out only a few months after which had 32 songs on it! All of Christmas day I spent listening to ‘Let It Happen’ over and over trying to make sense of the massive amounts of tracks which were fast, rough and just so good.

Get any music, or have any stories?

Chad Pearson worked for Tooth & Nail Records before starting The Militia Group and currently runs P Is For Panda. He will be contributing articles about his personal experiences in, and behind the scenes of, the music industry.

CHAPTER TWO – Hi, My name is Eggly Bagelface.

I still remember the day that Brandon Ebel offered me a job. For those of you who have no clue who “Brandon Ebel” is, he is the founder of Tooth and Nail Records and is pretty much a celebrity in his own right. Let me lead you up to this day.

After deciding to give up on becoming that “rock star” drummer, my mind went full throttle to the possibility of working at a record company, not any company mind you, but Tooth and Nail Records. As mentioned before – Tooth and Nail was my FAVOURITE label. I loved ALL the bands on Tooth and Nail, well, save for Morella’s Forest and Danielson.

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Chad Pearson worked for Tooth & Nail Records before starting The Militia Group and currently runs P Is For Panda. He will be contributing articles about his personal experiences in, and behind the scenes of, the music industry.

CHAPTER ONE – DAMN YOU MATT JOHNSON/THANKS MATT JOHNSON

My story starts in Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea.

Thanks to the fact that my parents decided to become missionaries when I was still a wee lad, I grew up on an island called Papua New Guinea. The first things people usually ask me are “Where the hell is that?” Or “really?” To answer both those questions, PNG is the second biggest island in the world and located on the equator right above Australia. Yes, I wore clothes and had a flushing toilet. Yes, the water does really spin the other way in the southern hemisphere. Nope, we didn’t have McDonalds. Nope, we didn’t have to wear shoes to school until middle school. We drank powdered milk and ate fresh veggies. I may or may not have eaten a bug or two. Kids walked around with machetes. I learned another language. I met my best friend. Over all, Papua New Guinea was the best place to grow up. I still long for the simpler times and when I was able to ride my motorbike around the hills, watch stupid British comedies (Carry On anyone…??) and just have fun with my friends.

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You usually only get the initial reactions for music with reviewers only getting a limited time with the music before giving their impressions. I’d like to go back though over some music from 2009 and update some opinions and reviews.

Editors note: I do [still] stand by my initial reviews/recommendations

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I would assume that most people reading this site and into indie music would be familiar with the band Lovedrug, or at very least have heard of them. The band, which is both grounded in heavier indie rock and piano rock, has put out 3 albums to date and currently working on a fourth.

Although it’s everyone’s [music editors] secret dream to randomly get an email from a band they enjoy asking them to listen to unreleased music, it VERY RARELY happens. Actually never. So when I did get an email like that, I was happy to help. Below are portions of the email with my thoughts on the new material further down.

Hi. This is Michael from the band Lovedrug. We are currently sending out some new songs we’ve recorded to various folks at online zines and places we appreciate to get some feedback, try and get people talking about the band again…

…Thankfully now we are free agents and are trying to build things up again with a fresh start, fresh sound and a new attitude of hitting the streets on our own and getting people to check out what Lovedrug is doing now. We’ve been getting phenomenal responses about the new material already from fans, labels and others whom have heard it. As we all know the industry is changing rapidly and it is becoming harder and harder to make anything happen without a massive support system behind you. It is especially daunting when you are doing it on your own. Thankfully we have a ton of fans out there that still love the band and are eager to help when they can…

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The Album Project is proud to announce the second volume in the ‘Names You Should Know’ series of free digital compilations. This compilation is meant to help promote even further some of my favorite bands that people probably don’t know about.  Please pass the link around so more people will be exposed to these great bands.

Download: thealbumproject.net/nysk2

To recap, the MUTEMATH VIP tour tickets pre-sale was a whole package that came with a digital download of the new album, ‘Armistice’. Because of something going wrong, the album wasn’t available to download until late the day it was released. The reason this was an issue? The people purchasing this package were supposedly the biggest fans of the band and wanted it as soon as possible. If interested you can read the original post here, post which went over the details.

The label, I assume with much prodding from the management and band, aimed to rectify the situation with a physical copy of the album along with an exclusive vinyl. You can see more pictures of the 45, which recently went out to fans, below.

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Running a music website for someone with musical ADD is like someone taking drugs to help with a drug problem. Always having a flood of new music has conditioned me to weed out the mediocre music quicker than I would have in the past, but still results in even the best stuff getting a lot less play than it would have a few years ago. Every once in a while there are bands like Freelance Whales, which really came out of nowhere for me, that have a formula tweaked just enough that it captures my attention for quite awhile.

The life of an album has gotten progressively shorter over the years. There was a time, once upon a time, that a CD could spend a month in my player, but now having anything last more than 3 days means that it’s an amazing record. Is this because of the access to so much music with the internet or is this just me?

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Want some interesting graphs on digital music retailers? Look no further.

I know a lot of independent bands are always wondering how they would be wise to sell their content online digitally, and although the obvious answer is ‘everywhere’, there definitely seems to be a rise of the subscription based music services (unless you’re Napster).

How do you get your music and how do you see this changing in the future?

Source: Gizmodo, charts from Mint.com

Recently one thing that has stuck out to me at concerts is how the band interacts with the crowd. I’ve always been aware of it, but it feels like I’ve been seeing the interaction in a different way lately.

Imagine yourself up on a stage about 4 feet up from the ground, you look out and you tower over all the heads and bodies that you see. The lights are shining in your eyes, both logic and your senses tell you that there are hundreds of people in front of you but you only see a few. You stand there in front of everyone but now what, what do you say to a collective group of people that in a sense can’t respond except in laughter, cheering, or booing. “It’s great to be in __City name__, I love the weather here in __City name__, are you ready to rock __City name__?” That’s what a lot of artists tend to turn to when forced to speak between songs. It’s kind of a shame that more bands and musicians don’t take the opportunity to share their heart, share their passions, or share about opportunities. This is not a “criticize the band” moment, merely an observation and suggestion moment.

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We’ve giving away 1 copy of the new Dashboard Confessional Album, ‘Alter The Ending’, which comes out November 10th.

To win: List all the names of albums from our Twitter picture [below]. Please list all the visible album titles [along with band names] from left to right, top to bottom. First one to do this correctly wins a copy of the album.

Update: CONTEST IS NOW OVER.

Answers

Jon Foreman – Summer EP
Ted Leo – Shake The Streets
The Morning Light – Self Titled
Seabird – ‘Til We See The Shore
Limbeck – Self Titled
Jack’s Mannequin – The Glass Passenger
The Decemberists – The Crane Wife
Cassino – Sounds of Salvation
Leeland – Opposite Way
Sanctus Real – We Need Each Other
This Holiday Life – The Beginning Of The End
Eye Alaska – Yellow & Elephant
The Snake The Cross The Crown – Like A Moth To A Flame
Arthur – Loneliness is Bliss
Mat Kearney – Bullet
The Kooks – Konk
David Crowder Band – A Collision
Magnolia Sons – Jails Everywhere
Capital Lights – This Is An Outrage
Denison Witmer – Carry The Weight
Damiera – Quiet Mouth, Loud Hands
Death Cap For Cutie – Narrow Stairs
Mute Math – Self Titled
The New Frontiers – Mending
We Shot The Moon – Fear And Love
Augustana – Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt
Driver F – Chase The White Whale
Anberlin – New Surrender
Boris Smile – Young And It Feels So Good
Copeland – Eat, Sleep, Repeat
Edison Glass – Time Is Fiction
Jeff Caylor – Okay
Jimmy Eat World – Chase The Light
Yuca – Self Titled

For those who don’t win you can pre-order the new album from iTunes here.

Here at such and such, we’re participating in something called Albums of the Decade Blog Tour, with ten blogs picking their favorite albums of the decade. Yesterday’s was Deckfight and tomorrow’s is Built On A Weak Spot

I’ve decided to take our list in a little bit more personal direction, with a smaller list consisting of albums that were influential in the scene as well as on some kind of personal level. These are neither in alphabetical order, nor in order of favorites.

Brand New – Daja Entendu [June 17, 2003]

Duh.
There’s not a lot to say about this one that you wouldn’t already know. A band redefined the scene with 11 songs becoming THE band to be like and associated with.

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Seriously, The Rocketboys seems to have come out of nowhere. I mean they’ve been around for awhile [since 2005], but it seems like all of a sudden they are on everyone’s tongue, or are in the process of getting to that point. In case you feel like there is some big secret going around, or if you have yet to hear of this band, we’ll all get caught up together.

The band used to be Homer Hiccolm and The Rocketboys, and thus the current, slightly odd, band name explained. Combining with parts of everyone’s biggest love, The New Frontiers, The Rocketboys recorded their debut full length record in 2009 with Louie Lino [who has worked with Nada Surf and Matt Pond PA]. ‘20,000 Ghosts’ is that full length in question consisting of solid indie folk rock songs.

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Myspace has become a place which I don’t think of as a “social networking” site any more even though they practically invented the word and brought it to the mainstream vernacular. Myspace, in my eyes, is now a place to simply host music as a listening station, taking over what MP3.com used to be almost 10 years ago.

I know that bands and labels know that this small site on the web, their Myspace page, can make or break them based on people randomly discovering them. This is where the problem starts, because bands know this page is one of the best chances they have of being discovered, they unintentionally abuse it. Putting up horrific graphics along with the now standard twitter boxes has become almost too much to handle. [See example below]

If the bad taste in graphics wasn’t enough it seems more and more whoever is actually making these pages does not understand where the images should be. Over and over I have gone to a band’s page only to find that I can’t even listen because the player is covered by some picture that’s too big. WHY?!

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A few months ago I wrote an open letter to record labels offering a solution to music piracy. Since that time Sleeping At Last, arguably a band creating some of the most beautiful orchestra rock, has unintentionally put my theory to the test. The band pretty much came out of nowhere with the news that their album was done and that within weeks (about 2 weeks), not months, it would be available for download with pre-order. I got a chance to ask the band’s lead singer, Ryan O’Neal a few questions about putting the album up for download immediately after it was finished.

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We are coming up on being finished with 3/4 of 2009 already and while there are some sites focusing on the best music so far, I think we should take a moment and remember the fallen records. Hype is just as big of a killer as bad music is and that’s why you never want to combine the two.

I was driving the other day when “I’ve Got Friends” from Manchester Orchestra came on the radio. As it played I tapped the steering wheel as few times and sung a line or two but most of the song was spent thinking, “I’ve already forgotten about this album and it just came out”. I decided I would give the band’s record another spin when I got home to see how I felt about now that a few months had passed, but I felt the exact same about it as I did when writing the full review. This whole (mini) experince did get me thinking though, what music has been over hyped so far in 2009?

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There was just something about MUTEMATH that I fell in love with the first time I heard “Control” from their ‘Reset’ EP. I was captivated by their self titled full length record which is arguably one of my favorite records of all time. Roughly 5 years since I became acquainted with MUTEMATH, then Mute Math to everyone, I feel an oddly personal connection to both the band and now their second record, ‘Armistice’.

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By request, I think we will be doing a weekly post about some of the bands and music you need to check out above the rest. I mention any reviews/1 liners that stick out as well as a few bands that you need to check out if you can’t listen to them all.

We also we a catchy and clever title for these posts because I don’t like “Week In Review” at all. Please leave your suggestions in the comments. [Something like 'Music Minute', 'Best Of The Week' but less lame]

This week I’d like to highlight

• Chasing Ghosts – Indie/Rock/Pop [Daily Rec post] [MySpace]
• Sunbears – Indie/electronic/Rock [Daily Rec post] [MySpace]
• Our Interview with the band Surrogate
• Full review of MUTEMATH’s ‘Armistice’
  

There have been a few occasions when I’ve been really excited for an album based on 1 or 2 songs, but when it actually came out have been really burned by it. Without hearing more than the clips and single available to everyone I’m going to take a chance on ‘Genesis Underground’ from Eye Alaska and say this will be one of my favorite album’s to be released in 2009.

There is a medley on the band’s MySpace page previewing about 30 seconds from each song and it doesn’t prove anything for me yet, but it does help back up my hopes for these new songs. When Eye Alaska put out ‘Yellow & Elephant’ it was really different from anything being released at the time and so it probably still doesn’t get the credit it deserves for incorporating such different styles so perfectly together. The band has an incredible sense of groove which comes out in all sorts of ways, most of which are beyond their years.

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The biggest reason given for the decline of album sales and record companies can be summed up in one small, but scary word, “piracy”. I’m pretty sure I’m not smarter than most of the people in charge of spoon feeding the masses their music, but I do have some thoughts on curbing piracy to the point of it becoming an afterthought rather than the leading argument. Keep in mind this solution is not an ‘eat to lose weight’ type of solution only mentioned to grab headlines, but rather an idea which, once put in place, could have an impact in a real and tangible way.

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The Album Project has been around for about a year and a half now and has continued to grow thanks to you. The goal was to simply talk about music we loved, some we didn’t and to recommend music you maybe hadn’t heard of. Hopefully we are doing that but what better way to recommend music that to highlight the best records from 2008. Below is the list along with some other random facts/tidbits about the site.
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We’re coming up quickly on releasing our top 10 list for 2008 but we also want to highlight some of the awesome records that didn’t quite make the list. There are too many albums to list but one of the few that surprised me was King Of Leon with ‘Only By The Night’.

The perfect mix of country/folk combined with classic rock makes this album a gem. Each song has such a depth as well as a unique personality that you become connected to. Songs that are especially good include “Manhattan”, “Notion”, and “Revelry”. Don’t let any preconceptions distract from this great record.