Coolfer

I just updated the sidebar, as you can see. I actually think it looks crap so I may change it, but the idea of having a display of recent posts is kind of good.

More importantly, I added a couple of blogs that I've been reading recently. Most importantly, Coolfer. Coolfer is a blog devoted to finding music industry news and analysing it with some level of depth. Which is good. Read about the kind of profit margins Live Nation makes, etc.

One interesting series of posts was about the idea of the long tail in music. While pop artists get the lion's share of profits, thanks to various circumstances it's been suggested that indie artists have more exposure these days and, thanks to the lower cost, may be making better margins for their labels overall. Coolfer disputes this, basing his arguments on statistics and surveys rather than wild speculation, which is refreshing. It's amazing how much even senior people in the music business conduct their affairs like some sort of voodoo: they rely on rituals that they performed on a previous band that became successful, hoping that the ritual had some part to play in that success. They never know, and it often seems like no one bothers to really examine what works and what doesn't.

Everyone just blindly wanders about, hoping that their album will sell, despite not knowing why any albums sell in the first place.