Ah! Here we go again, more good news about Internet Radio. If you have read my previous articles about Internet Radio, you’ll probably not like this one either, especially if you’re an Internet Radio owner. I’ve been on the Internet promoting my music for over ten years now & believe me it’s not getting better boys & girls. The Internet (originally) was supposed to be about promoting indie music. indie artists were blocked from attaining main stream commercial radio air play. Why, because Bill Clinton signed a release in 1996 allowing billionaires or any one wealthy person or persons to buy up commercial radio stations. Before that, it was not possible. One billionaire owns 2,500 radio stations & he can dictate what he wants to be played on them. How do ya like them cookies people. So much for technology! This is why the Internet was supposed to be a “God” send for indie artists. The more I surfed the Internet, the more I started seeing Internet radio stations playing main stream or record label artists. My first thought was, why were these Internet stations playing these artists when there are so many indie artists whom need promotion & how do they plan on paying royalty payments. Then I learned that these stations were playing main stream artists licensed music without the record labels permission. I was kind of pissed, because basically all these stations were doing was trying to get famous by playing main stream artists. Where as there were still lots of stations staying true to independent music, still I witnessed more & more stations playing main stream artists. Then the RIAA stepped in & gave them all a good thrashing. The cry babying started up about the RIAA throwing a stick in these stations spokes, thus making them pay high royalty payments to the RIAA & these main stream artists whom they had ripped off! If you drive with a suspended driver’s license, you’re going to get the shaft. I believe they call it breaking the law. Breaking the law seems to be the thing to do these days, as well as on the Internet. The mentality is, “I’ll steal from you but don’t try it with me” or” I’m going to do what I feel like, when ever I want, when ever I please”. The business savvy of these Internet Station owners is pretty lame also. It takes some real business savvy & well thought out planning to make a radio station successful. That’s what’s missing on Internet radio for the most part. You can’t throw to many artists at the listeners in a disorganized way. Commercial radio has a top 40 & 20’s list & they usually stick to one genre of music. How do you think you came to know the main stream artists you like? You had to have heard their music a lot to come to like them. It’s kind of hard to come to like an artist when you only hear their music once every eight hours, right! One of the main problems with the Internet, is it’s full of badly recorded music & amateur musicians who have very little experience in music writing & playing abilities. I have noticed that Internet radio stations are now expecting professional artistic quality recordings to be submitted to them now. In fact, a lot of them are now accepting only pro studio recordings (pressed Cd’s) which to me is a nose up snub off to the word “indie”. Most pro indie artists only have so much money to work with when producing their music. They use recording software programs ( which are of pro studio quality) like “pro tools” & “cue Base” (the software I use) to record they’re music. What gets me is the fact that most of these Internet stations are real non pro looking. They look like they were designed by a high school student, yet they are demanding pro music to play on their stations, LOL. It seems to me that since the RIAA has come down on them, it’s turned them into some real jerks. It’s amazing how many of them are still playing licensed artists music. I wonder where they’re all getting the big bucks to pay out in royalty payments? Maybe they’re still breaking the royalty laws. It sure wouldn’t be worth it to me to play licensed music. What’s even funnier is that they ask listeners to give them donations to pay these royalty payments & operating expenses. What’s even funnier than that is the fact that all a listener has to do is turn on their home stereo & pretty much hear the same music for “free”. So I ask, who really needs Internet radio? Unless you want to hear what’s goin down with indie music, what’s the purpose in listening to Internet radio, none that I can see. You can get the same music on your home stereo FM or AM oldies stations or new music stations. I always find it interesting that when I see a list of Internet radio stations, they all claim to be the best on the net, LOL Not only do these Internet stations lack in business savvy, but they lack big time in professional manners! I made the mistake of emailing & telling one Internet station manager to, quote “have fun paying those royalty payments” because he mentioned he only played licensed music sent to him & he called me every dirty filthy word his pea brain could think of! Unfortunately, the Internet is full of idiots like this & it’s what’s going to take Internet radio down, unless the Internet becomes regulated with laws to govern it. No body wants that, but that’s usually what happens when things get out of control & you can thank jerks like the aforementioned when it happens. I view the Internet like I do my local news paper, you pay for what you get. Those who have the bucks get lots of exposure & attention & those who don’t, well you get my point. The Internet started out with; if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. People helping people & both benefiting, but now its selfish business as usual. With just about every indie artist out there giving their music away for free, it’s put a strain on indie music sites. They’re not making any money from music sales, so now they’re objective is to squeeze it out of the indie artists. This is one of the reasons I put out letters like this one, to warn or wise up indie artists about these facts. Very few indie artists are selling music on the Internet. Those whom are, are making sales at gigs & directing people to where they can purchase their music on the Internet. When you see sites that advertise 1,250,000 songs for free to download, where’s the need to purchase music? These sites are all over the Internet & you want to know why, because they’re the ones making money off music sales not the artists. They charge a fee to enter their sites & download the music. ipod has benefited tremendously off of free music. Isn’t that what corporate fat cats do, get rich off of the workers or little guys backs? I’ve seen personal blogs where people are given links to free music sites. So as you can see, all artists are for these days, is to be taken advantage of by not only greedy business people, but the public itself! The public has come to the mentality that they “DESERVE” or are “ENTITLED” to music for free & basically they mainly search the Internet for it. We’ve seen generation X perform, now what we’re seeing is the generation that feels their “ENTITLED” to what ever they want. Yes you pro Artists, your job is now to spend your hard earned money & time creating music just to give away to the “ENTITLED” on the Internet. With the Internet full of amateur quality, poorly played music being given away for free, you also are expected to follow suit. And if those (great) well designed, well mannered Internet radio stations decide your worthy of having your music on their stations, well, wa-la, you just might get your music played for all the no good it’s going to do anyway. My advice is to stick with your job & don’t give your music away for free & don’t hold your breath when endeavoring to promote your music on the Internet or you very well will die.
Here are some things to definitely think about!
1. Do not license your music, it’s not worth it & it’s expensive. If you do license it, it cannot be played on non commercial radio. In other words it becomes worthless. If you get an offer to put your music on TV, commercial, etc. then & only then would it be worth licensing. Although it may only be used once, you’ll still be making some money off the use of it, which is better than no monies received.
2. People who give things away, either do not think much of their work, their well off & don’t need the money or their silver spoon fed by mom & pop.
3. Never pay to promote your music on any site, you’ll end up in the poor house & it will do very little for you & your music!
4. When yo yo’s write & tell you that your music sucks, take it as a compliment, because the reason usually is, their jealous. Believe me, there’s a lot of jealous losers out there.
5. Just about everybody hates Record Labels & say that their greedy, but their just a reflection of society. Why is it, that no one hates greedy Billionaires, they make Record Labels look like their sucking their thumbs.
6. Resolve yourself to the fact that the best musicians, bands & Artists have already came & gone & will never be replaced, as was once true in the past.
7. Never settle for good enough when it comes to musicianship, song writing or singing because only the pro’s will shine through.
8. It’s nice to dream, but reality is hard work & persistence, without it you’re nothing! You’re not “ENTITLED” to any thing. All one needs to do is read the story of some of the successful Artists from the past & you’ll fast see that to be the case.
9. Negative doesn’t go far, even though it may be the norm of society. Only positive works in the real world when it comes to your music!
Written by Wes E
