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As a fan of her work in the band Tsunami, when I first heard that its singer/songwriter Jenny Toomey was working with a group of policy and legislative folks in Washington D.C. at The Future of Music Coalition, I was sort of surprised.

Toomey fronted the indie rock band Tsunami for much of the 1990s and a subsequent solo career that she continues today. She was also the co-founder of Simple Machines Records which, between 1990-1997 released over 70 records for acts including Tsunami, Scrawl, Ida, Grenadine, and Liquorice. Toomey's band mate and business partner was Kristin Thomson, who is also a Deputy and Education Director at The Future of Music Coalition. When you put it all together, though, it all makes perfect sense: Toomey is an independent musician who is still looking out for other working, independent musicians.

Continue reading "Episode 041: Jenny Toomey of The Future of Music Coalition" »

Posted by Charlie at 09:00 PM | Permalink

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My wife's family lives in and around Portland, Oregon, so at least a couple of times a year we head west from Boston to visit. The last few times I've picked up copies of the PDX Pop Now! two-disc CD compilations that have been released since 2004. Portland, or PDX as the city has been come to be known due to its airport's truncated ID, has long had a healthy music scene, but the compilations showed how diverse and robust the city's musical offerings had gotten. Each year PDX Pop Now! also puts on a 3-day, all-ages, free festival in Portland, usually in late July/early August (this year's dates are August 3-5, 2007) which brings together many of the artists featured on the CDs in a live setting that is nearly impossible to resist.

Continue reading "Episode 039: Brent Bell of PDX Pop Now!" »

Posted by Charlie at 08:33 PM | Permalink

Listen (TRT 1:46:29): Lo-Fi mp3 > Higher-Fi mp3

Sonicbids is an online service that offers musicians a way to submit their EPK, or electronic press kit, to a number of outlets for consideration. These including clubs and live venues, compilation CDs, festivals, songwriting contests, film, television, + commercial licensing, magazines, awards, college bookings, podcasts, Internet radio, and plenty of other opportunities, as they call them.

The company was founded in 2001 by Panos Panay and is still run by him today. And as of May 2007, Sonicbids is coming up on 100,000 members and 80,000 promoters from more than 100 countries around the globe.

Continue reading "Episode 037: Panos Panay of Sonicbids" »

Posted by Charlie at 05:08 PM | Permalink

Listen (TRT 43:50): Lo-Fi mp4 > Higher-Fi mp3

Pandora is a leader amid a growing group of web sites and services that look to the user to provide their insight about what kind of music or media we like and then the recommendation engine offers up other artists and music to help expose us to new music. Some others include last.fm, Tagworld, Mercora, and LAUNCHcast.

I had the opportunity to meet with Tim Westergren, Pandora's Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, who has been traveling across the country in recent months meeting with listeners at town hall gatherings. Westergren was in New England for town hall meetings in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. To see if Westergren will be in your neck of the woods, visit blog.pandora.com.

Continue reading "Episode 032 : Tim Westergren of Pandora" »

Posted by Charlie at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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I first learned about Brad Powell and Calabash Music from a friend of my friend, Marion Seymour, ironically, both of whom live in Seattle, Washington--a city where Powell and I both once lived before both returning east and now living in Boston.

Hearing about what Powell was doing, I checked out the Calabash Music site and found many a treasure from around the world. I then asked Powell to record a Well-Rounded Rave for a previous episode of Well-Rounded Radio where he talks about Oswin Chin Behilia from Curacao.

Since 2001, Powell has been the shopkeep for what he describes as a "carefully curated boutique" of music from all over the world. As he describes in the Well-Rounded Radio interview, Calabash Music now features several thousand artists and about 20,000 individual tracks. He's now attracting musicians from around the world who want to be included in their catalogue.

Continue reading "Episode 021 : Brad Powell of Calabash Music" »

Posted by Charlie at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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In August 2003, Holmes Wilson and Nicholas Reville created Downhill Battle, a music activism organization that wants to create a decentralized music business and a level playing field for independent musicians and labels.

Now, along with fellow Downhill Battlers Tiffiniy Cheng, Nick Nassar, Rebecca Laurie, and a handful of other dedicated staffers, Reville and Wilson work with a myriad of volunteers to spread the word around the US and around the world.

Downhill Battle's web site states its plan is "to explain how the major [record labels] really work, develop software to make filesharing stronger, rally public support for a legal p2p compensation system, and connect independent music scenes with the free culture movement."

Continue reading "Episode 019 : Nicholas Reville of Downhill Battle + Participatory Culture" »

Posted by Charlie at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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When you ask people about what the future of music will look like, you'll often get a wide variety of ideas on the subject. It's probably because in the last ten years, so much of it has changed (largely due to the Internet becoming a delivery method) that it barely resembles the old model. Since all the rules are changed (and are continuing to change each day), the time is ripe to make up "new rules."

But as Dave Kusek (co-author of "The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution" and Vice President of Berklee Media at the Berklee College of Music) details in the new book, the new model looks an awful lot like the model from 70 years ago, where musicians made their money from performing and other revenue sources and not from discs made of shellac, wax, vinyl or plastic where were released by record labels (or your friendly neighborhood multi-national conglomerate) and sold to you and I. But where does that leave the record labels?

Continue reading "Episode 015 : Dave Kusek, co-author of "The Future of Music" book" »

Posted by Charlie at 08:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)