They even beat Haliburton for the title. The Consumerist has the full story.

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Most musicians I speak with about the idea of taking their businesses Online have no clue where to start. The Internet is flooded with sites offering musicians fancy tools and features to help with everything from touring to ringtone sales. It seems impossible to keep up with all the new sites coming up, almost daily. Selling music and it’s ancillary products Online is becoming big business.

With so many choices, how does an artist pick the company that will support his/her interests most effectively? There are several factors to consider when deciding to invest any time, effort, or money into a new venture. First of all, you want to make sure the company is going to be around for a while and isn’t just a site developed for the sole purpose of driving ad dollars. Who started the company? Why? Where are they headed? What is their basic philosophy about music in the new world? When considering sites to build profiles on or create associations with your band or new record you must consider other factors. Sometimes it is the technological expertise that will make a site a winner and other times, as we have seen with Myspace and You Tube, it is about the community associated with the site.

I’ve been researching these sites, new and old, for months. From my research I have come up with various lists to help any artist navigate the mysterious road of self-promotion. I will be publishing different lists over the next few weeks. As I find new sites that I feel will be beneficial, I will post those with links and explainations as well. Please let me know if you are aware of a site that I have not included or if you have not had a good experience with one that I have included. The lists are always growing and changing.
The first lists are Calendars and Search Engines.

Calendars

These are important for two reasons: They allow people to find your event through a variety of FREE listings and they increase your Search Engine Optimization. The more listings you have online the easier it is for people to find you.

Upcoming - Upcoming.org is a social events calendar driven by people just like you.

Eventful - Find events that you and your friends care about, share and syndicate your discoveries with friends, family, and contacts, search the future to receive alerts about events that haven’t even been announced yet, create grassroots campaigns to demand that desired events happen

Myspace Events – Event calendar on Myspace

Media search engines are growing in popularity. Many of them simply crawl the web for content, but some of them are built on content uploaded by users. The top picks for user-generated content are below.

Blinkx – Video search engine

Google video – Video search engine

Live Music Net – Find live concert video, sessions, online radio and more

Mpeg-Search – MP3 search engine with free downloads

Music IP - Unique music matching technology defines relationships between sets of music based on acoustic traits and characteristics

Podziner – Search engine for audio and video podcasts

You Tube – Video search engine

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My Stumble Upon addicted mother stumbled upon a real gem recently.

It is a documentary that examines the Canadian version of an issue we are dealing with in the US. What is piracy? Is it killing the music business or is that just what the Record Associations want us to believe? This is valuable information for anyone in the music industry. All of our futures will be affected by this. You can watch the full movie here: On Piracy: Piracy and the Future of MusicThank you to the filmmakers for a great project that we can all view for free. Visit their website here and buy a copy of the DVD - Piracy Documentary

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Those bullies at the RIAA are at it again. This time they are going after poor college students and strong arming them into paying up to $3,000 to prevent facing a lawsuit. Rather then spend the money going after the students themselves, the RIAA decided to enlist the schools to do their dirty work for them. The plan was to send a list of IP addresses that were suspected of illegal downloads and have the schools send a letter to the student, notifiying them that they can either settle out of court at a website set up by the RIAA or face legal action.

Thus far both the University of Wisconsin and the University of Nebraska have refused. This is from The Inquirer :

“The University of Wisconsin has told the RIAA that it has no obligation to grass up its students out unless it is ordered to by a judge.

The University of Nebraska has told the RIAA that it can’t help them at all because it changes computer’s IP address each time its turned on. It says it only keeps this information for month. After that month, the school has no way of associating an IP address with a computer or its user.

This last excuse has the RIAA fuming because it believes the University should keep its records longer. Of course the University does not have to keep records just to satisfy the needs of the RIAA, and just to indicate how cross they are that the record companies are about bothering them, they have sent them a bill for wasting its IT department’s time.” see full story

And I could not resist re-posting this bit of genius from BBSpot:

“Los Angeles, CA - The RIAA has updated its mission statement from “Our mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members’ creative and financial vitality” to “Our mission is to maximize hatred for the music industry by using creative legal and innovative technological methods which will further destroy our member’s creativity and financial vitality.” The organization hopes the change will more accurately reflect their long-term goals.

Chairman and CEO of the RIAA Mitch Bainwol said, “This change allows us to focus on our goals of ridding ourselves of annoying artists and consumers completely. The Internet has made this possible. In the days before the Internet only a few artists and industry insiders hated the RIAA, now hatred for the RIAA is at an all-time high.”

Bainwol explained that a committee formed three years ago has developed most of the ideas used to foment the growing hatred for the organization.

“We’re proud of them. When more people hate you than the President you know you’re doing something right,” Bainwol said.” see full story
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What upsets me most about is that the RIAA would have you, the artist, believe they are doing this on your behalf. What they fail to disclose is the sharholders of the labels are their clients, not the artists. As a corporation, a company must shows gains every year. Even if they are making billions in profit, each year must show more profit than the last. The RIAA is looking down a long, dark tunnel right now. They know their days of mad money-making are coming to an end and trying to innovate and change direction would be a costly and time consuming endeavor that the shareholders would not appreciate. So, rather than loose money, they are going after families (recently sending a subpeona to a 10 year-old girl to testify against her mother!) college students, and even soldiers. Their actions are greedy and shameful. If you are an artist on a major your record label may be a part of this organization and actually supporting it’s decisions. For more information about the RIAA check out and subscribe to: Recording Industry vs. The People

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