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CD Baby celebrates 20th Birthday & $600 Million in Artist Payouts
If you're like me, you probably remember the old days of uploading your songs to MySpace and Soundcloud. It was cool to hit the charts and get a ton of plays, but there wasn't a readily available way of monetizing those plays. The best you could do on these streaming sites was link people out to your own shoddily built website and hope people trusted […]
5 True Music Myths People Want to Be False
The history of modern music is draped in the power of music myth and rumor, from the “Paul is dead” buzz to Led Zeppelin’s filthy mud shark incident. Sometimes, the stories that serve as the foundation for such mythos are so fantastic, so cool, or so flat out weird, it doesn’t much matter whether they’re true, they’re false, or they exist in the space in […]
Can We Mix the Kick Drum & Bass in Stereo?
A fantastic email came in today that was so good that I dropped everything else I was doing to address the question at hand regarding stereo bass. The question involves the information found in one of our most popular and earliest articles called Mixing Bass and Kick for Low-End Balance. With nearly every genre now emphasizing the low-end to drive the groove and create the […]
How to Set Up Your Audio Interface to Record Audio
Our most recent question that was generalizable enough to benefit the entire community is a very fundamental hurdle that nearly everyone runs into: how to use an audio interface. Being a musician usually involves learning an instrument and some music theory, of course. But rarely do we anticipate needing to learn our way around computers to enhance our hobby. And that's what happens when you […]
How MTV’s TRL Met Its Slow, But Inevitable Demise
You couldn’t get away from Total Request Live at the turn of the 20th century. Their formula of counting down the day's top videos was the anchor of MTV's programming for years. Even if said videos skewed immensely heavy toward throwaway bubblegum pop or rap-rock/nu-metal that in retrospect hasn't aged too well, TRL still dominated. But by the time it left the airwaves in 2008, […]
A School Boy's Yearbook Ambition to Sell a Million Records (Alice Cooper)
This is one of those stories that has a surprise ending, so stick around for the reveal! Strange and interesting things are happening around us all the time. It used to be that you'd hear about some story that happened to your friend's cousin's neighbor's dad and you'd dismiss it with a chuckle because it was too far fetched. But now, with the internet, these […]
Musical Anhedonia: Deriving No Pleasure From Music
For most people, music is an exercise in catharsis. A snappy tune by The Beatles may bring a smile on our face. Spinning Adele’s “21” after a breakup provides a layer of empathy to our distress. Note that we said, "most people." That's because there are some people that don't like music regardless of artist, style, or genre, because it's like watching paint dry to […]
What Do Speaker Spikes Actually Do & Do I Need Them?
We received a question recently that nearly drove me bonkers as I started to think more about it. I had formulated and sent my own answer back before reading some opinions on a few audiophile forums. Let's just say I'm not surprised to have read professionals in that crew stating the exact opposite conclusions from the same set of facts. Audiophiles don't exactly operate in […]
Chuck E. Cheese's Robot Band is Breaking Up for Good
This is sad news indeed for many of us musicians, old and young. The animatronic band that graced the stages of Chuck E. Cheese locations across America are finally throwing in the towel to enjoy a well-earned retirement. Chuck E. Cheese & ShowBiz Those of us born in the late 70's and early 80's will remember ShowBiz Pizza Place and Billy Bob the Hillbilly Bear. […]
How Long Does it Take to Develop Calloused Guitar Fingers?
Most of the questions we receive usually reveal a gap in our content and today's question was no different. What we did manage to do this time was publish a full length post related to the growth of calloused guitar fingers before we managed to post the Q&A itself. If you want the long explanation, you can find that here: How to Build Guitar Calluses. […]
8 Recent Music Publicity Stunts Gone Stupid
Let today's post serve as a lesson on how not to execute a publicity stunt to drum up interest and sales in your new album (while our last 'Lessons' post showed a great marketing example by 50 Cent). There’s no such thing as bad publicity, or is there? It’s a cliché, but it tends to carry gravitas. This is especially the case in music, where […]
Why Are Some Guitars More Expensive Than Others?
A reader recently asked the question "What makes a guitar expensive?" that seems obvious on the surface until you realize you haven't really considered the details. We all tend to brush questions like these off, as if "well, duh, because they're better" is a sufficient answer. That's actually a non-answer and we'll have none of that here! So let's get to the bottom of why […]
How Does a Guitar Tone Knob Work?
There's nothing like diving head first into a new instrument. We're all as familiar with each various instrument as anyone else, but once you start studying one you realize how much you took for granted. What seemed obvious isn't so clear cut. And that's where the author of today's question finds himself: "What does a tone knob do?" I love these kind of questions because […]
Can I Lay My Studio Monitors Down Sideways Instead of Vertical?
Today's question about having your studio monitors on their side relates to a common discussion online that rarely ventures into a real answer. For some reason, there are a lot of people who are convinced that it's a matter of preference, when this couldn't be any further from the truth. Please don't hesitate to email us with any questions of your own, as long as […]
Where Does Audio Latency & Microphone Delay Come From?
We received a question recently that made us realize that we hadn't covered the topic of audio latency. Not only had we not covered it clearly, but we hadn't touched on it at all. And that explains why we received a question that didn't really make sense, related to microphone delay. You'll see why as we correct the misconception and explain latency in haste. You […]
6 Forced Music Genres that Should Disappear Like the Dodo
Music is more compartmentalized now than ever before. Not only are we well beyond the days of merely designating music as "good" or "bad," several subgenres have cropped up in recent years to further hyper-categorize certain sounds. While some of these sub-categories like indie folk or trip-hop seem to have staying power, others should head toward the dustbin of history with some luck. This list […]
6 Satanic Songs that Aren’t - The Backmasking Panic!
Rock has been known as “The Devil’s Music” since the first backbeat was laid down. It was bad enough when Elvis swiveled his hips, but things went turbo-stupid a couple decades later. The connection between rock and Satan arguably reached its peak in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when an overly-alarmist religious crowd began accusing bands of inserting hidden Satanic messages into their lyrics; one that […]
Yoko Ono Needed Two Takes to Perfect Her “Dead Rat in a Shoebox” Solo
Nobody in music draws the ire of rock fans more than Yoko Ono. While some of this naturally stems from longstanding accusations that she broke up The Beatles, it’s also derived from the fact that she’s done some weird stuff in the name of music (and attention) for decades. Perhaps nothing is weirder than her insistence on recording a "dead rat in a shoebox" solo […]
Radiohead’s Secret Program Hidden in OK Computer Reissue
Radiohead’s “OK Computer” is 20 years old. While this mark of time is bound to make Gen X'ers that bought the landmark album feel ancient, it’s also a perfect anniversary for a re-issue. Of course, since Radiohead is Radiohead, the band can’t be content with merely re-issuing an expanded album packaged with just demos and outtakes. Instead, Thom Yorke and company managed to sneak in […]
Musicians & UFOs - 15 Close Encounters with Flying Saucers
We've uncovered cave paintings, medieval and renaissance artwork, military radar videos, and have sightings of UFOs even up to this day. It's no real surprise that some of our favorite musicians have had their own close encounters with unidentified flying objects. What is surprising is that they've admitted to it, sometimes on national television, since that usually seals the deal on your career. That's how […]
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