If you’ve never seen it, that’s Roy and Moss from The IT Crowd with what should actually be your first step in any computing problem: the unexpected reboot, AKA ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’. The Roy Ploy. I’ve been struggling with a computer issue all week....

Irish artist and writer Tommie Kelly sent me a link to his wonderful web comic Road Crew, and I thought you might be interested. Clearly Tommie has spent time in the company of musicians, studio engineers, and roadies - because the observation is completely spot on. It’s been going for about...

I love the music business. I think musicians are great. I believe they do amazing things that are richly deserving of great rewards, the lot of them. I think it’s appropriate that everyone gets whatever they deserve. It’s a hard world, a hard way to make a living and times are tricky. As...

Here’s a repost of something I put up on my private posterous account and also twittered about. I had such a fantastic reaction to it (both online and off) that I thought it was worth posting up here ‘for real’ on New Music Strategies. As well as my seminars, teaching and writing, I...

You’re probably aware that I use Twitter. In fact, I’m a bit of an evangelist for it. I think it’s up there with Email and RSS as one of the few absolutely killer online appliances - and pretty much a must for musicians and independent music businesses these days. And yet, it’s...

I don’t watch a lot of music videos on YouTube. But I know that a lot of people do. So the dispute between the UK Performing Rights Society and YouTube is an interesting one. In short, YouTube are blocking premium music videos in the UK, because the PRS is demanding a hefty increase in royalty...

I’m a few months late to the game, but I’ve finally been trying out Spotify properly and using it to listen to music at home. Many other people have written about this service, most of whom seem to be hugely impressed with the depth of catalogue, the reduced buffering and the overall concept:...

You’ve probably already seen this video. It’s doing the rounds. I just wanted to underline the key message it has to offer us. A media artefact has a cultural and creative potential that exceeds its own boundaries. That is to say - when media is open and not locked away, culture benefits. Some...

I asked Stuart Price, intellectual property lawyer and Managing Director of Birmingham’s Young & Lee Solicitors for his top 5 tips for independent music business. These are some pretty good guidelines that might end up saving you thousands one day. ______________________________ Free...

I fail rather a lot. More often, I suspect, than you do. If there’s anything I could be said to excel at, it’s failure. Now, I don’t say that in a self-deprecating way. To me, that’s a positive thing. Because I start an awful lot of things. I would explode if all of them went...