Hey Everyone,

I’m Jen D’Angora, the Listings Marketing Manager at Sonicbids. My friend Paul Poth passed away this past August at only 38 years old. He had an extremely rare form of cancer, and because it was so rare, his doctors didn’t know enough about it to give him the treatment he needed. Before he passed, he started Target Cancer, an organization to raise money to fund research for rare forms of cancer. His wife has continued these efforts with the help of some great friends.

Paul was a real music lover, and wanted to involve music in the project in some way. Today, Target Cancer just launched the Right Track Music Series. The series includes unreleased and rare songs donated by some great artists – Weezer, The Donnas, Buffalo Tom, The Cowboy Junkies – just to name a few. The songs are only $1 to download, and all proceeds go to Target Cancer.

To download some great music and check out the other artists who donated songs, visit: http://righttracktunes.org/

To learn more about Target Cancer, visit: http://www.targetcancer.info/

If you have a minute, please check out the site, download a song, make a donation, or just spread the word.

Thanks for reading!

We have an open-door policy here at Sonicbids. We take pride in that, as well as our undying love for live music – so much that we’re going to start hosting our own shows.

After last month’s fantastic last-minute performance by The Seedy Seeds right here in the Sonicbids kitchen, we decided to set up a monthly concert series. We’ve even set up a Gig Listing for it, which you can check out here. If you’re near Boston or are just passing through, we’d love to have you — we’ll pay you and provide ample nourishment for you and your band, and have a generally awesome time on top of that.

We actually just booked our next act: Alex Brumel & Janel Elizabeth, who will be playing next Friday (February 12) around 6pm. Check out their EPK here for some great Americana folk.

Even if you’re not interested in playing a show, still feel free to stop by and hang out!

I love pretty much everything about Sonicbids, but perhaps the thing I love the most is how passionate our team here in the office is to help.  Clearly our main focus is helping musicians, but this week we’ve been focused on helping a group of people who need so much more than any of us could imagine.

I’m thinking about the people in Haiti, who have been devastated by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck near its capital of Port-au-Prince Tuesday afternoon.  When we heard about it, we asked ourselves here in the office what we can do to help.

As a result, Sonicbids has opened a Haiti Response Fundraising Page with Mercy Corps and will match donations until we reach our goal of $10,000. Although I’m confident that with the help of our membership, friends and family we can reach far beyond that goal. 

Please consider making a donation for Haiti Relief now at http://www.mercycorps.org/fundraising/sonicbids

Thank you so much. We appreciate your partnership and support.

As you may have heard from Panos, Sonicbids has partnered with SoundExchange to identify over 10,000 Sonicbids members that are owed $4 million in digital performance royalties. Now, you may be asking yourself a few questions here, so allow me to lend a hand. Or, you can log into your account and jump right to the list of bands owed money by clicking on the yellow box at the top of your artist account.

Whoa, is this legit? Yesiree. SoundExchange is a non-profit performance rights organization that collects statutory royalties from satellite radio (such as SIRIUS XM), internet radio (Pandora, Yahoo, Live 365.com and AOL) and digital cable and satellite TV services like Comcast’s “Music Choice” and DirecTV. The Copyright Royalty Board, which is appointed by The U.S. Library of Congress, has entrusted SoundExchange as the sole entity in the United States to collect and distribute these digital performance royalties on behalf of featured recording artists, master rights owners (like record labels), and independent artists who record and own their masters. (more…)

It’s that time of year where people get all generous. We are feeling it, too, and it’s a good time to not be shy about the gear that will help with your music goals next year.

You may have seen in our emails and on our homepage that Guitar Center is doing holiday wish list posters for bands. This is the way you can tell friends and family what you want this holiday season in a creative way, and to give ‘em good vibes about how they’re part of your music, too.

To add to the sweetness of the season, if you create a Guitar Center wish list poster, email your poster to us at guitarcenter@sonicbids.com. You’ll be put into a randomly selected drawing for a $1,000 gift certificate to Guitar Center to give you a head start on all the gear you want.

Check out samples of other artists’ posters and design your own here: http://bit.ly/GuitarCenterWishListPoster

And read the legal stuff here.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I was down in New York City attending CMJ  and meeting a ton of members at our booth.  Some of those members just happened to be Brian, Margaret and Mike of The Seedy Seeds.  We actually took a little video of them at the booth and I gave them my card and mentioned that they should stop by the Sonicbids office next time they are in Boston to hang out and say hi.

Well, a few weeks later I got an email from Brian and here’s what it said:

“Hey Tess… Have you ever had/considered a band actually playing at your office? We travel with a small PA, and have been known to bring some good times to small spaces similar to office environments. What better way to break a case of the ‘Mondays?’ We would be totally down to spread some of the good Seedy gospel at the end of your workday.”

So, I talked to Panos to see if we could have The Seedy Seeds play here in the office or if there would be any problems with noise or the other offices in our building. Of course, Panos said: (more…)

You know what really grinds my gears?
(You can ignore the Family Guy reference if you like.)

I feel like the striking majority of musicians these days are not embracing their creativity – not in the music itself (there are some phenomenal independent artists and bands breaking these days), but the marketing strategies used to promote their music. To be more specific, I’ve noticed quite a bit of resorting to the now-standard social media networks, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and the like. Using these tools presents a band that is completely transparent to its fan base and the media, but in doing so, you have to ask yourself:

1)     Is publicizing your every move what you really want to do?
2)     Is it going to help you stand out?

I am not saying that having a connection to the public through social media is not advisable, because it’s clearly a tried-and-true promotional strategy and measure of a musician’s popularity. However, I am calling for a renaissance of creative music marketing, utilizing new technology and innovation in conjunction with social media tools. One of the problems I see with using social media using the popular model is over-transparency without interactivity: you’re keeping your fans in the loop with your every move, while they aren’t given the opportunity to respond except for a MySpace comment that probably won’t actually be read by the artist, for instance. If fans get bored of your tweets, they start to fall off the map, like Kayne West’s respect after this year’s MTV VMAs. Finally, by restricting yourself to social media, you’re inherently restricting yourself to those who use those respective social networks. (How can you share your tweets with British youth if they don’t use Twitter at all, according to this article?) (more…)