What's Learned In 30 Years Of The Music Biz

As everyone knows, the music business has changed substantially in the last few years. One of the things that's evolved has been the fact that the artist is able to do so much without the help of a record label and still have a chance for at least some modicum of success. That could never happen way back when, where if you weren't embraced by the "music business," you were essentially left out in the cold with no hope for ever getting ahead.

Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips has seen it all over the band's 30 year run, and in this video he explains not only how things have changed, but how the band was always against the grain business-wise, as they operated more DIY before it was even popular or possible. The lesson here is that sometimes trading money for artistic freedom can be worth it.

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Music Marketing With Gummy Skulls

I just love out-of-the-box marketing ideas, but this one may be the best of many already great ones this year. The Flaming Lips will soon self-release their as-yet-untitled, four-song 12 inch EP featuring Neon Indian, which is cool but nothing too outrageous in itself.

Soon thereafter, however, the band will begin to sell gummy skulls - yes, that's replicas of a human skull made out of gummy. As FL leader Wayne Coyne explains, "It's a life-sized human skull completely made out of edible gummy bear stuff. It also has a gummy brain inside of it and, inside of that there's a USB flash drive that has three new songs on it. It's pretty outrageous."

OK, the gummy skull is a novelty, but what I really find cool about this is that they're releasing their music on a flash drive. The great part about distributing music this way is you can not only have your music available in MP3 and AAC format, but also as a higher resolution Wave or AIFF file as well. I don't know if FL are going that far, but I sure hope so. They've gone to this much trouble already, they might as well go all the way.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.