About

Music Supported Here is a new movement from the Musicians’ Union.
It’s a campaign for all musicians.
It’s about the simple but important principle that musicians should
not get ripped-off in the digital world.
For musicians, it will be a way to publicise and debate the issue
and to remind fans that you want to control your rights.
It’s a platform for musicians to raise their profile and direct their fans to
their own stores and websites: a source of music controlled by the musicians.
And for music fans it’s a way to say that you don’t rip-off musicians.
By supporting musicians' rights, we’re supporting music.

3 Online Tools for DIY Musicians

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Here are three tools that can help encourage fan engagement, manage your music online and help you easily promote your band on Facebook. In no particular order of preference: Bandcamp BandCamp is one of the best do-it-yourself solutions for selling your music online – either download or physical (you need to manage the shipping). One of the best features of Bandcamp is that you initial...

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Thoughtful GQ article by U2 manager on “free content”

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Paul McGuinness, the manager of one of the most successful bands on the planet U2, has just published a thoughtful and well reasoned article in British GQ on the topic of "free content" and the effect it is having on the music industry. In the article McGuiness discusses some key points: Backlash from bloggers - refers to how Lilly Allen and Lars Ulrich from Metallica were "savaged" by i...

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Foursquare: Can this social app promote your band?

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What is Foursquare? It is a location based social network that uses GPS. It's an app you download on to your mobile phone (iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Palm and others) and use to tell your friends/fans where you are in town. How does Foursquare work? The network is geared on what Foursquare call "checking-in". You check-in to any type of venue or watering hole, add a short note about wha...

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MSH poll results: Streaming music vs CD sales at shows?

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Last week we published this post that discussed the idea of fans (maybe one day) preferring to stream your music from services like Spotify & Pandora instead of buying CDs at your shows. We wanted to know that as a grassroots touring musician, who might depend on the sale of CDs at shows, does this idea bother you. Inspired by this we published a poll to ask the question: "Are you concer...

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The Great Exodus? MySpace (-49%) vs. Facebook (+28%)

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According to the latest Comscore report MySpace web traffic (users) fell from 6.5m in May 2009 to 3.3m in May 2010 - that's a fall of 49%. This is in despite of the anticipated MySpace Music which launched in December 2009. The past year has been a rocky period for MySpace and has seen top level staff such as UK marketing director Lindsay Nuttal and CEO Owen Van Natta leave the company. ...

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