Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of woody1778a March 9th, 2010 - If you're an independent artist, one of the best ways to make a living from your music is to license your music for use in films, TV, or video games. Of course, it's not as simple as putting your music out there and having the money roll in; you need to work with a company that has connections to businesses that need music like yours. Finding a good company to represent you is a daunting task ... Read More

March 8th, 2010 - These days if you aren't promoting yourself on sites like Facebook or Twitter, you're losing out on a huge amount of potential fans that could stumble on you and promote your music to their friends. Facebook in particular seems quite powerful at connecting your music with new listeners. The problem is that the fan pages on Facebook leave much to be desired. Root Music is a site that connects to your Facebook fan page, and it allows you to ... Read More

March 6th, 2010 - A couple years back, I had a chance to move to Austin for work. More interesting to me than the work, was Austin's vibrant music community. The crown jewel in that community is the annual South by South West conference which combines music, business, and technology all together into a huge party. I've never had the fortune of attending, but it's on my list. Many bands first break at SXSW, and many established bands also play it. Each year, ... Read More

Photo courtesy of 3 Sons Productions March 4th, 2010 - So lately, I've been thinking a lot about sampling. Legally it's pretty straightforward, if you take a piece of someone else's recording then you have to secure rights to do that. Whether or not you agree with the way the legal system is set up, is not what I want to discuss here. I've discussed my take on sampling before and while my feelings on the subject have evolved slightly, I still largely feel ... Read More

February 20th, 2010 - CodeOrgan takes any URL you type in, and converts it to music. By analyzing the body of your content, it can apply keys, chords, and rhythm. Of course, as the content of your site changes over time, so will the music. When I tried it with this site, it started to glitch out. I'm not sure if that was intentional, or if this site was too awesome to render. Probably the latter. CodeOrgan via Geekologie Read More

February 18th, 2010 - There are a lot of different ways to discover music online: internet radio stations like Pandora and Last.Fm, aggregator sites like Hype Machine, and a host of similar sites. I've linked a few such sites before, but TuneGlue seems to have a different vibe. Basically, you search for an artist you like, then you "expand it" which causes nodes of similar artists (determined by data scraped from Amazon and Last.Fm) to appear from the main node. You can keep ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Drake Goodman February 17th, 2010 - This is just a quick tip for Canadians out there who are tempted by the super low prices of music gear and instruments in the US. I've bought a lot of stuff off of Ebay, and since Vancouver is very close to the US border, I am connected to a service that allows me to ship whatever I buy to a US address, so I can pick it up at my leisure. This allows ... Read More

February 16th, 2010 - I'm sure most of you know about the Sundance Film Festival. Well what you may not know is that they have a program that links film composers, or aspiring film composers, with veteran film composers and film makers. Each year, several composers are chosen to be mentored by established film composers, and get together with film makers to learn how to work together (if I make it seem like a battle, it sometimes can be). There are both ... Read More

The guy on the right is my friend Chris who lives in Japan. No matter what music plays, he dances like a maniac...it's infectious. February 15th, 2010 - Derek Sivers is the creator of CDBaby, one of the most popular sites for indie artists to sell their CD's directly to fans. He has since donated the business to charity (although retaining a salary), and the charity sold CDBaby. It's a win-win for everyone, because Derek gets to do something good and create a ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Van Felt February 11th, 2010 - So as many of you know, I live in Vancouver and tomorrow marks the beginning of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. While I think it's cool that people from all over the world are here (though mostly the super wealthy), I'm not a huge sports fanatic. I like playing sports, but I'm not really a fan of watching other people play them. That being said, I will still be proud of the Canadians that ... Read More