1. Work Along Side Technology

Austin’s got a thriving Technology community. Not only do we have some key anchors in the gaming community, we also have software developers, social media experts, creative online advertising agencies, hardware developers, wireless developers, the list goes on and on….

Technology has always driven music. So it stands to reason, working with them closely to find the new drivers of music revenue is key. Come build some real relationships with Austin’s Technology Sector – Rumor has it, Facebook is moving to town….

2. Strong Economy, Affordable to Live

While we rebuild the industry, we might all appreciate a little break, financially.

3. Hip Town

This town is hip as fuck. And it’s not trying. It just is. A good friend said today, “If Hollywood and Hipsters had a baby, Austin would be it.”

Now is the time to look forward. What are you going to do with the year 2010? What didn’t you get done in 2009? It’s time to take a look at the groundwork you’ve already laid, write down some things you want to achieve, and begin to take action in 2010.

Rome wasn’t built in a day - same is true for your craft, whether it be writing songs, or building your creative service business. It takes time, it takes planning, setting realistic goals, and to stay focused with forward thinking. Here are some suggestions to get started:

1. Always make a wish list. Knowing your long term and short term goals are important and there’s no shame in putting them on paper.

Booking agents and their databases… every new band wants access to either one of them. Pollstar is cool, but most of their venues are built for midlevel bands on up… it’s not where you start.  In our investigation of another source of booking information, we found Indie On The Move (www.indieonthemove.com), a 100% free venue booking resource.

This site was created by road warriors in a band called ZELAZOWA. In two years, they did over 500 shows. They not only lived to  tell about it, they organized all their venue relationships in one easy to use site.

Indie on the Move encourages you to send them your own venue contacts and comment on the club experience as well. Indie on the Move also has some cool features. One is a social networking community where you can find like minded bands in other cities and states. It’s important for new bands to work together and share their fan base. It’s not only a great way to share fans, but it’s a great way to start a scene.

I wonder if this is a message not only to consumers, but also to the vehicle itself.

IT took 30 years of playing guitar in Grand Central Terminal and on New York City streets, but Luke Ryan finally landed a corporate sponsor.

Mr. Ryan, 58, usually plays a couple of mornings a week at Grand Central, making him a fixture there, whether commuters notice or not. On Thursday, Mr. Ryan had set up his microphone and speakers in front of where the Times Square shuttles scoot in and out, and there were near constant lines of people heading in both directions. Some people glanced at the source of the sound, some even tugged at their pockets as they passed as though retrieving a dollar, but no one dropped in any change.

by Laurie Sullivan for MediaPost News

U2 continues to play larger than life on its latest tour, and streamed its show live from the Pasadena Rose Bowl on Google’s YouTube Sunday night. The concert began streaming live worldwide just after 9 p.m. PST Sunday — but before the show U2’s Bono told a French news agency in an interview that the band will play, but the focus should be on the audience for making history.

About 1,600 people with general admission tickets stood in line to get good spots on the stadium floor when the gates opened at about 5 p.m., reported the Los Angeles Times. Nearly 100,000 people were expected to attend the sold-out U2 concert, but millions more took advantage of the opportunity to watch online.

The massive technical challenge to stream the concert live on YouTube creates new opportunities for Google’s video site. The bigger question becomes whether the site will take on sites, such as Justin.tv.

Philadelphia’s eclectic World Café Live is expanding to Wilmington, Del., and will be located at the town’s Queen Theater – itself being revived by a two-year public/private collaboration that has already raised $21 million to begin the restoration.

Eventually, it’s hoped the project is a catalyst for a $250 million revival of the city’s Market Street corridor.

A public/private group put together the $21 million in funding to restore and reopen the Queen Theatre as the cornerstone of the larger redevelopment project in downtown Wilmington.

WCL Wilmington at the Queen is expected to open in 2011, featuring the same “clubhouse” environment as the original dining and entertainment hub in Philly.

WCL venues in additional cities are in the works

Jack White’s record label Third Man Records is bringing a shop toLondon for the weekend.

Arriving on October 30, the pop-up shop will be located in Shoreditch Church in east London.

Selling a range of records, t-shirts and merchandise from The Dead Weather, The White Stripes, and The Raconteurs, the shop will also be selling some exclusive merchandise made specifically for this London location.

In London to play Brixton Academy and The Forum with his band The Dead Weather, the pop-store has also travelled to New York and Los Angeles, but this will be its first appearance outside of the US.

Jack White’s Third Man Records And Novelties shop will be open on the following dates:

October 30 - 11 am to 6 pm
October 31 - 11 am to 9pm

From Pollstar:

The proposed merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster may still be under the U.S. Department of Justice microscope, but from the looks of voluminous Oct. 22 Securities and Exchange Commission filings by both companies, it’s clearly business as usual as they move forward.

And it’s clear the execs for both companies are rooting for the merger to pass muster given the proposed post-merger employment contracts included with the filings, along with a prospectus of the latest version of the merger proposal to shareholders.

Ticketmaster Entertainment CEO Irving Azoff will serve as executive chairman of Live Nation and CEO of Front Line Entertainment, the management firm he co-founded with Howard Kaufman and folded into Ticketmaster last year.

The new chief executive of MySpace has told the Financial Times that the company is no longer interested in competing with Facebook, in effect conceding defeat in the race to become the largest online social network.

Owen Van Natta, a former Facebook executive who replaced Chris DeWolfe as chief executive of MySpace six months ago, said the company instead aimed to become an online hub for music and entertainment. “Facebook is not our competition,” he said. “We’re very focused on a different space.”

The change in direction at MySpace comes as the NewsCorp-owned site has fallen behind Facebook. In September, Facebook represented more than 58 per cent of US social network traffic, according to Hitwise, the online research firm. MySpace, once the largest social network, saw its share slip from 66 per cent a year ago to 30 per cent.

A media critique by Wayne Friedman

The NFL’s blackout rule is not in effect in the Rose Bowl this Sunday. There is no need for it — no one is playing football.

The event is a music concert by U2, and the popular Irish band has sold out all of the Rose Bowl’s 96,000 seats.  With that in mind, the band will stream an entire concert live on YouTube this weekend — free.

NFL has a TV blackout rule for its football teams when they can’t sell out their home stadiums. So far big musical acts haven’t figured out how to incorporate this into their business models.

But musicians may be way ahead in this area — giving away lots of their content (either voluntarily or otherwise), all with different degrees of sales performance results. Some bands, such as  Rage Against the Machine, have left it in the hands of fans to decide what to pay for a new album.