Eddie's Attic on NPR

NPR Radio of Atlanta (WABE: 90.1 FM) produced a short story about open mic night at Eddie's Attic. It's a good quick listen for anyone interested in the history of this legendary venue that has helped launch the careers of several national acts for almost 20 years, like Shawn Mullins, Jennifer Nettles and John Mayer. If you're interested in performing and competing at the Open Mic Shootout, you'll need to contact them months in advance due to demand.

We Are Listening Launches The 2009 Singer/Songwriter Awards

We Are Listening, a London-based artist and content development group with divisions in artist management, music publishing, and online services for musicians and music fans announces its 23rd Singer/Songwriter awards contest for independent performing artists, songwriters, and lyricists.

The contest is offering a greater variety of prizes this year, divided into six music industry sectors: Songwriting, Licensing, Marketing, Production, Post-Production, and Retail Distribution - for a total of six winners in 2009. Grand prizes range from a week-long songwriting retreat in Stockholm, Sweden; network-sized television placement in the US; college radio promotion and administration; a production weekend in London, England; mixing and mastering services; and CD replication and digital distribution.  The 26-member panel of judges include executives and creative directors at EMI, Universal, and Sony/BMG; producers credited by Sting, Bjork, Dido, and Eric Clapton; songwriters credited by Faith Hill, Lenny Kravitz, Chaka Khan, and Wyclef Jean; and professors at the Songwriting Department at Berklee College of Music.

Performing artists, songwriters, lyricists, or agents acting on their behalf must submit their original music by May 1st 2009. Registration, entry fee, and additional details are available here: 
http://www.wearelistening.org/singer.php

MusicThoughts Redux

Derek Sivers has relaunched MusicThoughts.com, a website where you can post, share or read short thoughts, quotes, insights, adages or other types of expressions relative to musicians, the art of music, the creation of music and the music industry. While Derek said, "I’m not trying to make this a big site of all thoughts about music - just a simple quiet place with a few of the most inspiring ones," it's already beginning to take a life of its own like this example I pulled from the random thought generator. It's a fun site to explore and I like that it's available in 10 languages - nice touch. My only suggestion at this point is to connect MusicThoughts to a twitter account as well like twitter.com/musicthoughts and/or add RSS.

As always, good stuff Derek!

MixMatchMusic Post DEMO

About three months ago, I interviewed MixMatchMusic when they were still in private beta, and I was impressed with the direction of the online music collaboration app they were building. In Today's podcast, I reconnect with the founders, Charles Feinn and Alan Khalflin to hear about their launch at DEMO and their progress since July. During this 10 minute interview, Charles and Alan provide insight about their business model, product offering and community. And I think you will find that MixMatchMusic is one of the more promising music tech startups; its just a matter of time before they receive significant adoption from both musicians/bands and music enthusiasts.

Click here to download the interview with MixMatchMusic

Also, here's the video from their presentation at DEMO - they did a fantastic job:

8th Annual Independent Music Awards Reminder

Don't forget to submit your music to the 8th Annual Independent Music Awards. IMA winners will receive yearlong print, broadcast, online promotion and distribution, as well as performance opportunities through arrangements established with IMA sponsors including: eMusic, PureVolume, CMJ Music Marathon, broadcasters ManiaTV, The StreamTV, HM Magazine, Venus Zine, Planetary Group radio promotions, Hip Video music video promoter, MediaGuide; Burnside Distribution, and the Coalition of Independent Music Stores.

Music categories include: Alt. Country, Americana, Blues, Punk, Children’s Music, Contemporary Christian, Country, Cover Song, Dance/Electronica, Folk/Singer-Songwriter, Gospel, Holy Hip Hop, Hard Rock/Metal, Jazz, Latin, Live Performance, New Age, Pop/Rock, R&B, Rap/Hip-Hop, Social Action, Song Used in Film, TV, Gaming and/or Multimedia, World Fusion and World Traditional.

Submit your music via this application or online via SonicBids. Entries must be postmarked by midnight Friday August 1, 2008, and you may submit as many entries as you like. For more information, go here. Please visit IMA for rules and eligibility.

International Songwriting Competition

If you are interested in submitting your music to the 2007 International Songwriting Competition, don't forget that all entries must be postmarked on or before October 15. The grand prize winner will receive $25,000 cash (USD) and $20,000 (USD) in prizes. Submissions are judged on the following five criteria: Creativity, Originality, Lyrics, Melody and Composition. Production value is not considered. For a complete list of the rules, go here.

Peace.