An obscure wedding dance posted online became an instant Youtube hit. It featured the song “Forever” by Chris Brown which is now sitting at number 3 in the iTunes chart and is set to sell thousands all over again.

This tells us all something and that is that in the current climate, Youtube has more of a direct impact on your bottom line than a radio campaign. The problem is that radio campaigns take around 8-16 weeks and by the time your song gets saturated radio play, it would have been on torrent sites all over the world resulting in lost sales.

A Youtube hit paired with a direct call to action i.e an iTunes link will result in immediate sales and chart success. Independent labels and artist need to concentrate on generating a hit song with a hit video instead of greasing the palms of PR companies and pluggers who have very little chance of achieving the sustained radio play that your record needs in order to break into the charts.

Furthermore, it is time to throw out the release schedules and make your song available on iTunes prior to any marketing.

Wow ! Imagine this. An “amateur” from the UK, made a movie on his camcorder and is now set to be screen in cinemas all over the world.

“Colin” is a zombie movie filmed from the perspective of the zombie, departing from the “normal” zombie flick storylines.

It made waves in Cannes, has just been picked up for worldwide distribution, and is the perfect “no budget” movie. “Colin” was written and directed by Marc Price, who had no formal filmmaking training but learnt it all from DVD extras. Made for peanuts using every trick in the book to keep the costs low, “Colin” could be the surprise hit movie of 2010.

It’s just a teaser, yes it is a cover but it is just brilliant.

In what appears to be a historic deal, Universal and Tunecore have teamed up to discover new talent. What Universal seem to be doing is creating a number of “service oriented” labels (something which I have advocated for in the past).

This enables artists to hire Universal’s departments for a flat fee rather than licensing or assigning their rights to Universal.

The artist and Universal may still be able to do a traditional licensing or “record deal” by mutual decision.

Watch this one closely as it seems pretty interesting indeed. More at:

www.tunecore.com

We’ve just found this and it is very exciting for CDs/DVD runs. Now instead of spending thousands in pressing up CDs and DVDs you can now get your CDs/DVDs packaged in high quality Digipaks. This is an ingenious idea using pre-made digipaks with stickers, enabling your CD to stand out.

You are no longer limited to brittle jewel cases. Check it out http://www.digipakicreate.com/?lang=en&id=19

Your CDs can now look very beautiful indeed.

MrFuturistic.

Everyone can have their own home studio. With little more than a laptop, monitors (speakers) and a mic, you can record your next hit in your own bedroom. As someone who has been home recording since the early 90s, technology has made it very easy for you to record on your PC. If you’re not confident about mixing, you can even send it to a high quality studio to mix.

Melbourne band The Smoke did just that. They recorded their album in their living room while struggling to hold down day jobs.

Their album however was mixed by a professional mix engineer, who did a rather excellent job. If any of you guys want to be put in touch with him then just send me an email and I will forward your Myspace details to him.

Putting together a home studio for recording is now a very simple and inexpensive process. Go to our affliate store Amazon and grab some bargains in recording equipment.

If you need help deciding what to choose, send us an email and we will help you put together your own studio and pass on some valuable tips in recording Major label records using your humble computer.

MrFuturistic.