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When we talk about the music gear industry, we mean the businesses and organizations that record, produce, publish, distribute, and market recorded music. The music publishers, recording industry, and the record production companies have a great impact in molding the US music gear industry.

The growing music industry in the US has enhanced the growth of music gear industry in many ways. There are a number of establishments engaged in the retail sales of musical gear. As the music industry grows hand in hand with technology the demand for their products also grows. The total market share of these musical instruments is about 69% of the overall marketplace.

With the changing trends in the music industry with regard to new genre music that requires techno sound, computer software is made use of to facilitate playback, recording, composition, storage and performance. There are a number of online communities of composers, performers, teachers and manufacturers who have an interest in making or supporting music making with computers.

The growth in the music gear industry has brought about the sequencer software, which is the widely used form of software in music technology. This device allows you to record audio MIDI musical sequences.

The music gear commonly found in a recording studio includes the mixing console, Multitrack recorder, microphones and the reference monitors which are loudspeakers with a flat frequency response. And in recent years these equipments include Digital Audio Workstation, music workstation and outboard effects such as compressors, reverbs and equalizers.

Musicians and composers all along had a desire to integrate stereos, turntables, recording equipments, MIDI keyboards and even electric guitars with computers. The music gear industry soon witnessed a serious computer-based composition with the Atari ST, Amiga and Mac computer systems. Technologists continue to seek more integrated, easier to use and higher performance tools for audio creation tasks. Many current Digital Audio Workstations even support integration with video streams allowing full production.

There is a great development in every sphere of the music gear industry. The developments of new versions of music gear are on the rise as competition is also high. Specialized manufacturers are coming up with new improved versions of music gear.

Some of the latest equipments in the music gear industry are described in the following paragraphs.

The multi track recorder is ideal for a high-quality digital recording studio, with amazing Zoom MRS-802BCD Digital Multitrack Recording Studio with CD burner. It offers eight mono tracks, a discrete stereo track for its drum machine, great zoom effects, and full mixing, editing and CD burning capabilities.

The best selling studio mixer is the Phonic MU802 8-input Compact Audio Mixer. This mixer is known as the box that rocks in the music gear industry as it is designed for both studio and live performances. The Soundcraft Gigrac 1000 studio mixer lets you fine-tune your sound with 1000 watts of power, digital quality effects and a 7-band equalizer for each channel.

Another equipment in the music gear industry that has made a lot of difference in audio recording is the high quality studio monitor. One of the best selling products now is the Samson Resolv 65 Studio Monitor and Fostex PMO 5.5 inch Active Studio Reference Monitor, ideal for remote and small project studios.

Here, we have seen the latest and the top quality equipments that can produce optimum output. This may cost a little more but it is economical. Buying the latest product will save you from all the hassles of upgrading your recording system every now and then. These developments have tremendous impact on the quality of the performane.

By: Victor Epand

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When you first start out in the music industry, especially as a performer, there is a certain level of romance about playing in a smoky club and using a dingy storage closet at your changing room. You think that you are paying your dues and will eventually make it big and can then look back on these simpler times with nostalgia. Never mind the fact that your working conditions are uncomfortable and can even be dangerous.

Music industry jobs working conditions vary from state of the art concert halls and recording studios to grungy basements and run-down clubs. However, as soon as you declare yourself to be a working industry professional, you and your health are protected by OSHA standards. OSHA stands for occupational safety and health administration and is the branch of the federal government that ensures your working conditions are safe.

In order to assure that your music industry working conditions are safe for you, you need to know your rights under OSHA. This means that regardless of where you are playing or what you are getting paid you should have a safe place to change and store your equipment. You should have easy access to drinking water and a clean toilet facility. You should be allowed adequate breaks during your working time; industry standard is generally ninety minutes of playing and fifteen minutes of break. If you feel that equipment or infrastructure is unsafe you should be able to report it to your building contact without fear of breaching your contract.

Music industry jobs working conditions don’t have to be as bad as they are as long as every musician, from the kid with his first live gig to the veteran performer, band together to demand safe and clean working conditions so that they can produce the best music possible.

By: Dewayne Hill

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Music is a very popular form of art that involves sounds and silence in an organized manner. It is very well expressed in terms of pitch, rhythm, and quality of sound. Pitch, rhythm and sound quality are the three integral part of any kind of music that together includes melody, harmony, tempo, meter, articulation, timbre, dynamics, and texture.

The best part of any music is that it keeps on changing with the changing generation with a couple of alterations in the pattern and stimulus. Today, most of the restaurants, hotels and big resorts have musical clippings of the original soundtracks that play an essential role in altering moods of the listeners.

Before exploring the advancements of technology, music was restricted to audio cassettes, CDs, and radios. Gradually, with the advent of technology, innovative means of music sources came into existence. Music industry started adapting itself to the changing needs of the changing generations.

Earlier almost all people had radios but unfortunately that was not enough to rejoice all the best musical notes that an individual desires to hear. Then the evolution shifted to audio cassettes that were good enough to enjoy the rhythmic notes of any music but here too people were not able to get all the desired notes. If they bought one cassette, it may have one song of their choice but not the rest. Eventually, those people ended up taking more and more numbers of cassettes. Later, when the CDs came into existence people were somewhat satisfied with the kind of sound quality and wider choice it used to deliver. Yet, a man is never satisfied be it money, name or even music.

Eventually, a big revolution was brought in the music industry with the introduction of web and Internet. The biggest improvement that Internet brought in the music industry is that every talent can easily reach its target audience without any kind of filter. In the olden days, rich talents used to struggle to make their voice reach their audience. Now, those issues have been resolved.

Today, internet has greatly influence the music world both in India as well as in the international market. A number of web resources have been introduced to serve music lovers with a wide range of their favourite choices and are capable of fulfilling their music aspirations. Now, people can download any number of songs from these web resources. They have an option to search from a long list that is categorized under different sections like singers, music composers, movies, Bollywood songs, devotional songs, old songs, new songs, pop songs and various other denominations.

Furthermore, internet has crossed all the boundaries and geographical barriers that earlier used to restrict the music sources. Today, sitting anywhere in the world, music enthusiasts can enjoy their favourite melodies and dance to the beats.

By: Jennie Gandhi

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In the music business many people will tell you that it’s not about what you do but who you know. This is true to a certain extent. You still need to produce a quality product whether that be music, production, or management, but after you have relatively mastered your skill set, you need to make sure that you are marketing yourself and your music to the right crowd. Especially if you are new to a city or music scene getting the right music industry contact information is a must.

If you have a lot of free time on your hands, you can get nearly all the music business contact information that you could want free from the internet. However, this means spending days, if not weeks, digging through the results of Google searches and laboriously copying all of the information you find on individual musician’s and label’s websites into a full directory. You can try and take a shortcut and look up a free directory such as the one put out by Yahoo! but there is no guarantee that that information is up to date.

Instead, you should save yourself the time and headache by getting your music business contact information from one of the many services that provide annually updated directories of all the music industry people and companies that you should know. For instance All Music Industry Contacts produces a CD-ROM database that contains all the phone numbers, email addresses, and websites that you will need to know to get your music heard by the right people. Other sites provide similar series. There are also paper directories produced every year that act as a specialized phone book for the music industry. When you are looking for music industry contact information, start local and then expand into national and international markets.

By: Dewayne Hill

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A huge percentage of Americans cannot live without their IPOD and personal music library. Rap, Country, Rock, Show, Movie, Easy Listening – in short – Pop Music is big business, but where did it all come from? The Pop music phenomenon grew in the mid 20th-century, partly stoked by the golden years of Broadway as musicals showcased the music of Rodgers & Hart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, Comden & Green, Bernstein, Sondheim, etc. These hugely famous productions routinely produced single songs which quickly sold across America as popular sheet music and recordings, finding their way onto the radio, the home piano and the record player in every home in the land. The popular (“Pop”) song became big business, turning unknown composers into American superstars and doing a huge service to their bank accounts. Would you believe this lucrative side business for composers actually started 40 to 50 years prior with the music of Victor Herbert? At the turn of the 20th-century, Victor Herbert was as big a household name in America as is Paul McCartney today. His popularity was based largely on beautiful melodies which America wanted to hear over and over. Sound familiar?

Herbert was the composer of 43 operettas produced on Broadway between 1892 and 1924, each of which contributed hummable, classic songs into the early sheet music business. “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life,” “Thine Alone,” “I’m Falling In Love With Someone,” “Toyland,” “March of the Toys,” “The Italian Street Song,” “Gypsy Love Song” – the list goes on and on, running into the hundreds and quickly establishing the whole side business of pulling the most popular songs from a theatrical work and creating the public’s desire to hear and play such songs in their home. While Herbert was not the first America composer to have his songs published as sheet music, he quickly became a huge player and influence in the business.

Amazingly, Mr. Herbert’s popularity came at a time when there was no television, no radio and no recordings – a feat not replicated by any other major American composer. During the 1890s, our country’s entertainment came from the piano in the parlor or local saloon, theatrical tours, local band concerts on the “green,” and large professional bands and orchestras coming near their home towns on tour.

Rural America first met Victor Herbert in 1892 when he became the conductor of Gilmore’s Band, also known as the Band of the Twenty-second Regiment of the New York National Guard. He and the Band crisscrossed the entire country regularly, playing marches (civil war favorites), classical arrangements for band, early popular songs and music composed by Herbert. He next became conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1898 and toured that organization all the way to Carnegie Hall as well as around the country for the next 6 years. Finally, he formed his own Victor Herbert Orchestra in 1904 and continued touring the rest of his life until his death in 1924, all the while composing new melodies which citizens wanted to hear constantly.

The Victor Herbert Orchestra also became the first orchestra to record when Herbert signed a contract with Edison’s National Phonograph Company of Orange, New Jersey in late April of 1909. Now his songs were not only on America’s pianos but also on the early “phonograph” in the form of the Amberol Record (more accurately, a cylinder).

Finally, Herbert and Sousa lobbied Congress relentlessly to add composers to the 1909 Copyright Law, thus protecting those wonderful melodies. Herbert went on in 1914 to be the guiding soul of the seven founding members of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), all because of the unauthorized use in 1913 of his “Sweethearts” waltz (from the operetta Sweethearts) by Shanley’s Restaurant in New York City.

A straight line from Victor Herbert to your IPOD – who would have believed it! The next time you download a favorite song into your IPOD, give a tip of your hat to America’s first musical superstar, Victor Herbert, who laid the foundation for that purchase over a 100 years ago.

By: Alyce Mott

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Atlanta is a great place to be if you want to get a job in the music industry. While not as large as New York, Los Angeles, or Nashville, there is still plenty of music being performed and produced in Atlanta, and therefore plenty of music industry jobs in Atlanta, as long as you know where to look for them.

For starters, Atlanta caters mainly to a specific genre of music. If you are into hip hop, rap, or any other variety of the urban music genre, you will be very pleased at the selection of music industry jobs in Atlanta for you. To a lesser extent you will find people engaged in other styles of modern music as well as few jobs available in affiliation with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and its attendant classical music scene. And believe it or not, there is a large enough Indian population in the greater Atlanta area that there are many jobs available for eastern musicians as well. However, hip hop and rap dominate the Atlanta scene.

Another dominating factor about music industry jobs in Atlanta are the amount of dance clubs in the city. Some of the best nightclubs in the country are in this southern town. Therefore, if you are an urban DJ, Atlanta is a great place to look for jobs. You might also look at jobs with record labels such as BMI who have a branch office in Atlanta. There are plenty of urban indie labels in Atlanta as well if you are more interested in the business side of the music industry.

If you like production, check out work as a producer or technician on of Atlanta’s many recording studios. You should also check out the Atlanta School of Music for music industry jobs in Atlanta. There you could teach, produce, or perform.

By: Dewayne Hill

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The degree to which the music industry has ignored the future is criminal. It’s hurt a lot of people. It’s confused a lot of Indie Music types. Including maybe you. Think about American Idol. Here’s a hugely popular show that propagates the dusty old notion that music is still about “getting signed.”

That notion is a virus that will corrupt your mind if you engage it strongly enough. And I have no doubt that far too many of you still have this virus planted somewhere in the dark shadows of your mind. Maybe you’ve already accepted that the music industry has dramatically changed over the last 8 years. Maybe you already understand that the labels are screwed.

Or maybe you keep reminding yourself, “Indie or Die!” That you’re on your own now. But, but…at the back of your mind, there’s still a hushed little voice that says, “maybe I’ll get signed.” Or “maybe the labels will figure it all out.”

I must admit though, over the last 40 years, the music industry has done a masterful job of branding itself as the Gate Keeper. The demi-God. The Adonis. And that branding has still got many people by the balls. But it’s beginning to loosen its grip and break down. Breathe easy now.

Walk with me into the future. There you’ll learn that everything you’ve ever hated about the music industry has fallen apart. From radio, to lack of talent, to fake glamor, to Beyonce’s ever-transforming L’Oreal face. It’s finally about the music now.

To be the future, you have to think the future. There are many lessons that you, the all-powerful Indie music artist can learn and apply from the collapse of the music industry. Here’s a few, which I think are the most important. Burn them into your memory:

ATTENTION IS YOUR GREATEST ASSET
There’s too many musicians making to much music that people don’t have time to hear. There’s too many people producing ideas and things that people don’t want to consume. There’s too much email. Too much information. There’s too much clutter in people’s lives and not enough time.

It’s becoming harder and harder to get people’s attention. But if you can get someone to pay attention to what you have to say or what you have to offer for even just 5 minutes, and you manage to do this over and over, then you’ve acquired a valuable asset. You have their undivided attention. And with that attention comes the opportunity to build trust.

If you can do that with 10,000 people, then you have 10,000 fans. The old way, the major label way, was to find fans for the music. The new way is to make great music for your fans. You don’t need all that many of them either. You just need a few who trust you and love you. That’s attention. And that’s your most valuable asset in music 2.0.

MUSIC CAN BE COPIED, COMMUNITY CAN’T
The RIAA once maintained that copying a CD to your computer amounts to making an illegal copy. What’s next? Remembering a song is copyright infringement? The RIAA is a gang. They’re an old school gang, and they’re 20 years behind the curve. The RIAA is made up of a bunch of crusty record execs living on an analog acid dream. They think that music can still be protected. The way a mother protects her child.

You on the other hand should give less than a damn about protecting your music because you can’t. Don’t waste your time trying. Plastic and vinyl are becoming obsolete, so there’s no value derived from scarcity anymore. You can’t make your music scarce because the Internet won’t let you. And things that aren’t scarce naturally have less value.

But the things that do have value are you and the community and interactivity you create. Your shows and your fan community are the things that have value today because they are scarce and hard to produce. Albums aren’t. Remember, you don’t need a huge following to create value. Just a following that adores you.

DIGITAL IS THE FUTURE
Most of the kids born in the last 10 years will never buy a CD or subscribe to a magazine. They live in a digital world. They are the consumers of the future. Forget CDs and albums.

In the future, to engage these consumers, you too will have to embrace digital. Think mp3s. And remember, your music should never be thought of as a stand-alone product. A song is relatively easy to produce and easy to replicate. It holds little value. It should exist to create community and interactivity.

FORGET ABOUT “MAKING IT”. THINK MARKETING
Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby says, “Creating the music is easy(thought still underrated). Distributing the music is so easy it’s moot. So now, the delicate art of calling attention to your music means everything. Marketing is distribution…Learn everything you can about marketing. That’s the biggest challenge in music now. It’s the one thing you can’t neglect.”

The winners in the digital music era will be the best marketers. Don’t get me wrong, good music is still extremely important and will always be. But if you don’t have proper marketing, you might as well live in a black hole where nothing is seen, heard or felt.

The days of showing up to the record label and outsourcing your marketing are over. Done. Thank God Almighty.

Embrace marketing and especially teach yourself traditional online marketing. Social networking sites matter a great deal, but are of limited use to your profitability if you can’t integrate them with traditional online marketing channels. Remember, you actually need to talk to your people through controlled messages. Not the vomit that passes for conversation on many social networking sites. Think websites, email and good sales copy. Solid marketing will always be your ticket to success.

Go out and embrace the future.

By: Mika Libambu Schiller

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Looking for music beat software? Then you’ve come to the right place. In a second I’ll introduce you to the #1 music beat software on the market. But first let’s talk about what you want make sure you get in a software.

The first and most important thing you need in any beat making software is simplicity. This is key, and for some many reasons. Creativity is the point. Simplicity is the oxygen that feeds creativity’s fire. If you’re trying to make a beat, but the program is too complicated, that program is a fire extinguisher.

Any music beat software needs to be conducive to inspiration. Meaning when you get a beat in your head, you should be able to run to your computer and put that beat down, before you lose it. This is the single most important thing you should look for. Because inspired music is the most easily digestible music for people, simply because it’s what comes naturally. It’s not calculated, it’s just a groove. Trust me this goes a very long way.

Believe it or not, the most popular songs are usually the ones that started off as jokes to the musician. Like the “thong song”. It was just Cisco sitting around with some friends clowning around. But the point is, it’s what came naturally. A natural groove and listeners eat that up. And they don’t even know why. But now you do.

So when you’re looking for music beat software, make sure it’s simple to use. Of course you want it to have good sound quality as well. But the most importantly it has to be conducive to inspiration.