Radical.fm is part Pandora, partturntable.com. When it launches later this year, this personalized streaming music service includes the ability to “RadCast” streams in real time. A related service,Radical Indie will offer a free, worldwide internet radio service for musicians and fans of unsigned artists. A DJ feature allows musicians to host their own programs and speak directly to fans.

How Indie Artists Can Get Involved Now:

Got videos of your band? Want to make a little passive cash. Slap some ads on that hoss. Here’s how.

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I was at a digital music event earlier this year, and was shocked to find out how many people had not heard how easy it is to monetize your YouTube channel through Ads.  YouTube will pay you for doing what you already do! Take your money!

Here’s how it works…..

YouTube offers revenue sharing for their ‘Partners’ through advertising that they show on your videos and pages.  You are eligible (in fact, they want artists!) to become a partner by filling out the Partner Application.

Please note that you cannot become a Partner if you cover songs on your channel!  You need the global rights to all video, images, and audio used on your channel.  Just don’t use anyone else copyrighted content and you will be good!

The main benefits of being a YouTube partner:

• Gain advertising revenue
• Advanced channel branding and design (Customize Top Banner and Side Box - See Example)
• Access to YouTube’s Content ID, which lets you track, monetize, or block any uploaded videos using your songs

Ever wish you could sneak a peak at real major label record contract? You can, thanks to Benjamin Burnley, frontman of hard rockers Breaking Benjamin. He’s fired the band guitarist and bassist, Aaron Fincke and Mark Klepaski, and filed launched a lawsuit against them. Burnley claims they have making decisions on behalf of the band, like releasing a greatest hits and remixing some tracks, without his authorization. They’ve countersued, but the real winners are the musicians who get to look at this major label contract between the band an Disney’s Hollywood Records.

The entire court filing is available thanks to Tunelab. The actual record contract starts on page 25.

If the external PDF isn’t loading correctly into the viewer below, you can view a version hosted directly by Google Docs.

These Breaking Benjamin court documents are public record. These are the court documents in full, with the exception of sensitive personal information being redacted.

Via Hypebot and Tunelab

Artists and music marketers have been using Facebook heavily for some time now, often working with external startups like RootMusic to ensure their pages are working effectively. Now Facebook has published a document called the Musician’s Playbook, which aims to “help you begin or refine some ideas and best practices for how to integrate social experiences into your direct to fan strategy to drive results”. The document – published on Scribd but soon to be hosted on Facebook itself – is divided into two main sections: one focusing on advice for using Facebook pages, and one on integrating Facebook Connect into the artist’s own site. Facebook has been sending the link out to labels, and plans to keep the Playbook updated in the coming months and years as new features are rolled out.

Via Music Ally

You would be hard pressed to NOT have heard of Google+, the newest social networking and sharing tool from Google which after one month of existence boasts around 18 million users. Artists are already bombarded with a plethora of tools to help them connect with their fans, but Google+ truly adds some unique features which have great potential for integration into a musician’s marketing arsenal.

Overview:

Google+ consists of a content stream, photos, sparks, hangouts, and chat. While these features are nothing groundbreaking, the feature pulling all of the others together is Circles. Circles allow you to put contacts into different, self-defined groups, which control  what content you see and share. Since there are a number of good articles explaining the basics of the platform, let’s get into how each feature may be utilized by an artist.

Note: Currently only personal accounts exist and Google has suggested that businesses (artists) postpone creating accounts until special business accounts currently under development are made available.

Read more @ MTT

Plug and play people. Sign up, jack all your other feeds, sites and social data into this and you’ve got yourself a website. For the truly lazy amongst us all.

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Onesheet aims to solve that quandary by providing musicians with a way to tie together all of their online outlets in one place: from music to videos to concert dates to online stores to social sites, etc.

The service was founded by Brenden Mulligan, who has been involved in the music industry for five years, doing everything from working at a major label to living on a bus as a band’s road manager. Mulligan is also the founder of ArtistData, which allowed bands to distribute info across all of their web presences at once (that service was acquired by Sonicbids).

“I think a band having their own branded web presence outside of social networks is incredibly important,” Mulligan says. “Bands are told they need their own website, but setting one up and keeping it maintained is sometimes too much effort. So they either need people to help them, or their website becomes stagnant quickly.”

Via Mashable

Tour diaries: They are the satisfying sustenance required by every hardcore music fan to feed a band addiction. A glimpse into the backstage, on-tour-bus life of one’s favorite band. Now, thanks to the marvels of modern technology, it’s easier than ever to create a highly visual tour diary to sate the appetite of your friends and followers. One word, my musically inclined friends: Instagram.

Instagram, that increasingly popular photo app that launched near the end of 2010, has become the darling of many a news outlet and brand, but has yet to really catch on among the musician set.

Still, according to Josh Riedel, head of business development at Instagram, more and more bands are getting hip to the site. The most popular is undoubtedly The National (@ntnl). Riedel, for one, hopes to see more bands joining the platform.

“We see bands on stage, but most people don’t get to go backstage,” he says. “Through photos, you can let fans in on what happens when you’re not performing, which I think helps fans develop more of a personal connection with the band.”

Go get the top 10 @ Mashable

Are things getting a little crowded online these days? It’s getting a bit tough to stand out. MTT has some ideas and hips a few services…two you already know about and how the industry uses them to keep tabs on you.

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Social networks provide far reaching opportunities for musicians, the only trouble is they don’t work for the overwhelming majority of bands and aspiring artists. Critical mass and huge opportunity creates overcrowding.

What always struck me as strange was how musicians on myspace.com actually thought that having a million friends was a good thing (despite the fact those friends were all musicians who only ‘friended’ so that they can get more ‘friends’ for themselves).

Can people spot the problem here? It’s a fake market, a bit like the sub-prime mortgages that bought the banks down.

A large proportion of musicians use social networks to build a fan base and launch their own careers. However, without adequate finances and marketing expertise it is very tough for a band to break through to reach public awareness. It is possible, but tough!

Read more @ Music Think Tank

Out of ideas on how to juice your bands profile in the greater world wide web? This might be a place to start.

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Author David Meerman Scott made a honest and realistic quote, “if you want 20,000 fans you must do 2000 different things that each generate 10 fans.” This wasmy favorite quote from 2010 and I am going to take this on as a challenge for 2011 for an ambitious project to give you 2000 different things you can do to generate 20,000 fans.

Some of these items will apply better for larger acts, some items will work for any act. Some may work for you, some may not… not yet. Some these can be done with little effort, some will take some web development, some might even require some significant development. Some of these have successfully worked for me over the years. The point is to create a list of items that would cover a wide range of acts and abilities.

1. Reply to every Tweet that mentions you.
2. Let your fans lead you – What did you get for KISSmas.
3. Ask your fans to submit photos of their tattoos.
4. Select a fan of the week.
5. Share what is on your iPod.

Read more @ Micheal Brandvold