Six Reasons Why Recorded Music Should Be Free

"I've always looked at this problem from the musician's angle. Did you see the Bieber numbers recently? They split the royalties for the song ‘Boyfriend,' the fourth-best-selling download of all time. You look at the splits and it just doesn't make sense: $390,000 to the label, which makes sense; $200,000 to iTunes; and only $83,000 to Bieber, with a couple of songwriters that get around $2,000 per year.

Then you look at Bieber's tour. It's like $52 million. I'm thinking about this, going, ‘If the fourth-best-selling download [has the] artist making sub-$100,000, and there are probably deductions [to recoup the advance from his label], something's not right here.' The distributor, iTunes, is making twice as much as the artist… and yet the tour is making over $50 million. It's clear that in ten years, the incentives are going to align so that music should be free, because it's going to sell everywhere else. Why should the music industry as a whole care whether or not the walletshare comes from a tour with a $100 ticket or $100 in CD purchases over the year? In the end, it doesn't matter."

Six Reasons Why Recorded Music Should Be Free

Fans cry foul as tickets sell out in 58 seconds flat

Garth Brooks may have had "friends in low places," but on Saturday, a lot of his fans were probably wishing they had some highly placed acquaintances.

Some 15,322 tickets to the country superstar's highly anticipated July 12 show went on sale at 10 a.m. and were snapped up in 58 seconds - the fastest sellout in the Calgary Stampede's 100-year history.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Fans+foul+tickets+sell+seconds+flat/6461676/story.html#ixzz1s6yqkdZd

Fans cry foul as tickets sell out in 58 seconds flat:

18-year-old's music career launched after Mercy College contest

(Danny is one of our pop music students that is getting a lot of attention lately)

For 18-year-old Danny Spadaro, it was just like any other day in high school. He was sitting in the library waiting for his next class to begin when he came across an ad in a magazine for a singing competition. “Discovered: Unsigned Artist Competition,” was looking for contestants, ages 14-26, to submit auditions through videos on the Internet. The winner would receive a recording deal with a small record label called DISCOVERED Records.

“I thought to myself, this looks pretty cool and scribbled down the information on my hand,” says Spadaro, who is a Wayne, N.J., native.

More Info >>