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.”

The residents also have extremely good taste in music. With the new wave of talent growing, both on the ground, and traveling through, Austin makes a great place to to view the beginning trends of future music scenes. It’s not manufactured. It’s just happening.

4. Musical Climate

So many great bands. The creativity is not only thriving on the ground, our young hipster promoters are bringing some great developing national acts through Austin as well.

They are calling it – and the Austinites continue to come out and support.

5. Blank Canvas For the Creative Industries

No one makes up the rules here. And no one here says “That can’t be done.” The people here are genuinely excited to see others testing out new ideas. The Austin culture encourages constant creative thinking. Which brings me to my next point…

6. Creative and Liberal Thinking

Let’s face it, fresh ideas are built in creative spaces. And in Austin, it doesn’t get much more creative. Whether you work at the car wash, or at the bank, or selling insurance by day so your band can go out on the road during the summer… Everyone here is an artist.

Austinites love brainstorming, sharing ideas, and working on projects for the love of it. It’s a lifestyle.

7. No Rules

Your old rules ain’t here. It’s wide open. Knock it all down and rebuild it in a way that makes the most business sense for you.

8. Make Your Own Name

Break new ground –  many people say Austin can’t build a music industry… yet only one or two people try at a time. It’s never been given a fair chance.

Let’s work collectively to come up with new ideas for keeping our industry a healthy player in the business game. It can be done, by people with great taste in music, a desire for independence, and a better way of life all around. The revolution has to happen somewhere. And history shows, it happens on new ground.

9. City of Austin and Small Businesses

Austin’s is known nationwide for it’s help in regards to small business. Check out:

http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/sbdp/

If you dig around, you’ll find all kinds of creative industry assistance as well. And if you don’t find what you are looking for, well, ask the city. They are taking calls and want you hear from you. Bring the ideas – Austin’s strong economy didn’t happen by accident.

10. We Are Screwed If We Don’t Do Something….

Not another word needs to be said… unless you are really breaking some new ground in your area, consider some of the creative and economical benefits Austin brings to the table. We need more people to help rebuild our business!

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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.

2. Pick something and just do it. Don’t worry too much if what you are doing is wrong or right. Think it out, weigh the pros and cons, and always be aware of what you are getting yourself into. But don’t let the fear of doing something correctly stop you from moving forward. This whole life thing is all one big lesson. You learn best by doing.

3. Keep track of your progress. Stop, pick your head up, look behind you, look in front of you, and make your adjustments. Plans are made, but plans also need adjustments with time. A good business owner always knows when to make adjustments.

4. Always try and look at the bigger picture. Don’t get lost in the details or the get caught up in mistakes or problems. The world is full of problems that are randomly bouncing off of people. Mistakes will always happen as long as we are human. Remember to learn from mistakes and you will come out that much stronger on the other end.

5. Don’t give up. Unless you are really not enjoying yourself… It’s a commitment, and it’s not always easy, or rosy, and you can give up any kind of preconceived expectations. We have no idea where things will lead us – leave yourself open to all opportunities, and you’ll most likely take away something interesting from every experience. Don’t let the bumps in the road throw you off.

6. Stay focused. You know what you want – go get it.

It doesn’t matter what profession you are in, if you don’t set goals and deadlines, you’ll never get anything done. And remember if you don’t keep chipping away at it, you’ll find it all passed you by.  Start making lists, start setting goals, make realistic decisions based on real data, and don’t be afraid to test your ideas!

If you’re not sure where to start, give us a call… Whitecrowe is offering consultation services to help you get organized, devise a plan and enable you to move forward.

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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.

Also – I love this. Clubs contact you. Yes you heard it right. If a club connected to Indie On The Move has a cancellation, or just needs to fill a date, the site will send out a gig alert and let you know that a club is looking to book a last minute show. How F’ing cool is that?

Go to the site, support it by sending them your venue info. If you have a lot, don’t worry, just send in one field form. They sort all submitted info out by hand and screen all submissions. These guys are serious about providing you with a real service and useful data. www.indieonthemove.com – Hey check to see if they have the venues up first before sending. It’s really just a group of guys throwing up info for the greater good.

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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.

“Hey, what happened, everyone looks cranky today. Is it a boyfriend? Is it a girlfriend? Is it the economy?” Mr. Ryan said into his microphone, after finishing a growling version of “Piano Man.” “If you need any help with being poor, ask me. I’ve been doing it forever.”

His leather vest was coming apart at the seams, and his black T-shirt with a skull on it had seen a few wearings. (He says he likes buying Salvation Army T-shirts because they are cheap and weird, like the one he bought that says ‘I was driven wild at David’s bar mitzvah.’) Mr. Ryan was going to have fun that morning, even if his audience was not.

“This is New York. Do not make eye contact with anyone. We’re all thugs and murderers,” Mr. Ryan said to the crowd. That got the attention of a young guy in several layers of sweatshirts and coats, holding onto a baseball cap, who waved and grinned. “Amen!”

And the morning seemed to turn a little more profitable. A woman dropped in a dollar, and a guy chewing on a straw, loping toward the train, doubled back to drop in a coin and give Mr. Ryan an approving fist bump.

“Hundreds and hundreds of people have passed me by for years and never dropped a penny in my case,” Mr. Ryan said in an earlier interview, “but you try not to focus on that, because right after you start thinking about them, someone will come down and drop a dollar in your case when you’re just standing there, scratching your head, because they appreciate what you’re doing.”

His legs set wide, Mr. Ryan leaned back against a railing and began picking his next tune. About an hour into his set, Mr. Ryan’s guitar case held a littering of dollar bills. (He had put some in himself to help the morning along, he said.) He had patched the guitar case with green and black duct tape and had jammed into it a cardboard sign that read “Pimp My Case,” a few of his CDs for sale — and a sign for Unilever, the multibillion-dollar global consumer product giant.

Mr. Ryan had found some commercial work. Click here for more

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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.

The channel, youtube.com/u2, offers the opportunity to purchase U2′s latest music, sign up for the newsletter, visit U2.com, and donate to Project (RED). It also streams Twitter tweets, and if the feed was any indication, U2Tube was a rousing real-time success.

YouTube announced early last week that the stream would broadcast to about 16 countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO, who will participate on a panel at OMMA Video Friday in Los Angeles, Calif., says the Internet was not designed to deliver real-time streaming media, but rather built to “store-it-forward.”

When it comes to video, many people believe picture quality is more important. But when streaming a band, audio is just as important — sometimes more. Dropping a frame or two every now and then isn’t a big deal, but fans immediately notice a hiccup in the audio.

“To get audio and video to arrive at the same time you need a lot of bandwidth,” he says. “It’s not like television where the feeds are shared. If they are delivering a million simultaneous streams, every person watching has a unique stream being sent to them. If you have one million people watching, you have one million streams feeding from the content delivery network out to the homes.”

Revision3 streams live content from conferences, such as the Consumer Electronics Show, but not concerts. There are plans to cover more live events.

It’s not clear how many people actually tuned in online to watch the Webcast. As of mid-day Monday, YouTube had not released the number. “This was a big win for the YouTube community and U2 fans around the world,” says a YouTube spokesperson. “We’re still working to pull together the data around this event and will share those numbers publicly as soon as they become available.”

By Sunday night, U2′s YouTube webcast became the No. 1 global trending topic on Twitter. The day of the event, “#u2webcast,” “Rose Bowl” and “Bono” were three of top ten trends on Twitter. U2′s YouTube channel views are closing in on 7 million, the number of subscribers roses10 times since last Monday, and the band’s promotional video received 2.7 million views in less than a week.

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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

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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

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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.

He won’t draw a Live Nation salary, but will instead receive his $2 million annual salary from Front Line, along with an additional $2 million “merger bonus” provided the tie-up is approved. Annual performance bonuses from $1 million to $2 million are included as well as stock issues for himself and the Azoff Family Trust. The contract runs through 2014.

In terms of his two separate pre-merger relationships, Azoff’s employment with TM could terminate while he remains with Front Line as its CEO and vice versa.

Post-merger, the agreement consolidates the relationship. If Azoff’s employment with Live Nation terminates, his position as Front Line CEO will also terminate on that basis.

On the Live Nation side of the ledger, current LN President/CEO Michael Rapino retains that title post-merger. Like Azoff, his contract extends to 2014 and includes a base salary of $2 million.

But Rapino could add a minimum $100,000 raise annually, performance bonus equal to his base salary, yet another “exceptional performance bonus” with a target equal, again, to that base salary and annual grants of 150,000 shares of restricted Live Nation common stock.

And he gets a “merger bonus” too: A $3 million cash bonus and grant of 350,000 shares of restricted Live Nation common stock in equal installments on each of his four post-merger employment anniversaries. Termination payouts of stocks and cash are included.

Of course, it’s all contingent on the completion of the merger, which is still tied up in a DOJ investigation, having already been rejected by U.K. regulators.

How smoothly talks are going depends on who is doing the reporting. While the Wall Street Journal says the merger is getting “stiff resistance” from the DOJ, Reuters reports say the talks are “positive” and the deal could be wrapped up in a couple of weeks. Of course, no one at the DOJ, Live Nation or Ticketmaster will confirm anything yet.

As they say, your mileage may vary.

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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.

However, MySpace continues to be one of the most visited sites on the web with more than 100m unique users worldwide. Facebook, by contrast, has more than 300m users.

Mr Van Natta wants to capitalise on MySpace’s status as a leading online music destination and used a presentation at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday to unveil new features that enhance its music credentials.

The company has struck a deal with Apple’s iTunes store to allow its users to buy tracks without having to leave the MySpace site. It has integrated iLike, a music application company, and launched Dashboard, an interactive tool for bands and musicians, as well as compiling the largest catalogue of music videos on the web.  Click here for more

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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.

This isn’t the first time U2 has decided to give up more of its content for free than is typical. A couple of months ago, the band appeared on “The Late Show with David Letterman” and, for an entire week, played all its songs from a new album.

All this seems against the tide of where online content — especially premium TV, video and movies — may be headed.  Increasingly content owners have been strongly mulling having viewers pay fees for TV shows — as well as having them wade through advertising messages.

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