I've launched my first public test for DropTracks! Everyone can go to the first beta test at test1.DropTracks.net and try it out from the fan's point of view.

International Standard Name Identifier is new metadata to resolve name ambiguity for contributors to creative works. This number can define a person, like a writer, artist, performer, producer, etc., or it can define an organization, like publishers, studios, aggregators, etc..

The newest metadata standard for music is here apparently and it is RIN-M. Soundways has a free plugin that gets saved in your DAW when you are creating the tracks and you can add everyone's information and send it along. It is a cool idea on solving the issue with how recording credits are stored and transferred. You can download the plugin here. 

Independant artists have difficulty getting into the Mastered For iTunes program, but if you wanted to try to deal directly with apple to get in here are the requirements directly from Apple. Even if you meet the requirements they may still referr you. On top of that, they also have payment thresholds and you may never get paid if you don't meet the threshold for your first payment. And now the requirements.

Technical Requirements:

This is a common issue that many of my clients don't think about until they're in the mastering studio getting asked about it. Did you mean to not capitalize this word? Well, here are some guidelines.

ALL ATX is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit benefiting HAAM, Sims Foundation, Black Fret and Austin Music Foundation and for their fourth annual benefit concert/live CD they themed it "Austin Rocks The Blues." Je

Recently, I had a client that ran into some problems with the cover art for their project. It seems iTunes has some rather stringent (in my opinion) requirements for the cover art. Part of me understands that there needs to be some requirements or checks in place and I agree with Apple that people should not be 'misleading' in the representation of their music. But, I felt this particular case may have been a bit ridiculous.

Sound Exchange and The Recording Academy have partnered in advocating for legislation and educating the community about performance rights.

Introduced March 19, 2015 the Allocation for Music Producers Act or AMP Act (H.R. 1457) says this:

This week, the authors of The Indie Band Survuval Guide, Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan, spoke at the Grammy Pro Business Summit in Austin. They gave an information-dense presentation of basically everything a band trying to make money needs to know.

OwnCloud is a file sharing platform like DropBox or similar services.  They have paid enterprise solutions and free open source offerings.  Go to https://owncloud.org/ to learn more about the open source choices.  They let you install the system on your own server giving you complete and total control over the files.  This is especially good if security is a concern or privacy is needed.  I was exploring this solution for a file sharing solution that I didn't have to

Martin Theophilus profiled Terra Nova mastering for the Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording. Jerry and I were happy to talk about analog recorders.

Published on Apr 27, 2015