The Internet has proven to be where music can be discovered, reviewed, discussed, shared, and purchased. Musicians know this and get online to upload their music and become a part of the world wide music machine process. They come on the Web at every age, at every experience level – musically and computer savvy. From youngsters starting out to seasoned musicians just learning where the computer on switch is, the workings of being on a computer can be overwhelming with everything else they have going on in their lives.

The Web also allows musicians access to music knowledge. Artists will come across difficult terminology and phrases that they do not understand. Compiled in the following mini glossary are music business, digital, organizations, record biz lingo, computer terms and basic need-to-know info. Hopefully, something listed here will help you navigate music online a bit easier, and so you know, this glossary is an excerpt of an extensive list found on Artistopia.

A&R – Artist and Repertoire, aka talent scouts: a record company liaison whose duties may include to find, select and develop the music artist, band and/or songwriter.
Affiliate Program – a way to earn income by linking your Web site to another site, depending on the action taken by the visitor. See Artistopia’s Affiliate Program
ASCAP – American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers which licenses and distributes royalties to it’s members’ copyrighted works.
Bandwidth – has nothing to do with the size of a band but is a measure of the amount of information (data) that can be sent over a network connection in a given period of time. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits per second.
Bitrate – The number of kilobits per second of data in your audio file. The bitrate you choose when creating an MP3 file determines the size and quality of the resulting MP3. The highest commonly available bitrate is 320 kbps and the higher the bitrate, the closer the encoding is to the original source of music.
Blanket License – allows the user to perform any or all, in part or all, of the songs in the ASCAP repertory. What a warm and cozy license.
Business Manager – an artist or band manager that specializes in the financial matters, including planning, investing, income, taxes, decisions and contracts.
Buzz – to get people talking about a new artist, band, song or album, creating intense excitement and/or rumors.
Clause – a chubby fellow in a red suit is Claus: in a record contract, there might be certain limitations, specifications, or modifications that stipulate the final outcome of that contract.
Concert Promoter – with duties including ticketing, PR, marketing, and booking, this agency or agent responsibilities are for concert event promotion.
Content – to make the Search Engines happy and have pages rank well in a search result, a good quantity of well written text aligning with the site’s keywords and theme updated regularly is a Webmaster’s steak and potatoes.
Cookie – no, not chocolate chip, but a piece of software that records info about your visit to a Web site, then holds the info until the server requests it.
Copyright – a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information, in our case artistic properties, the songs and sound recordings.
Derivative Work – a new work based on or resulting from one or more preceding works.
Digital Licensing – the use of copyrighted music compositions including downloads, on demand streaming, limited use downloads and CD burning.
Distributor – the agency or agent that handles the sales and shipment of the music (records, CDs) to the marketplace or basically, gets the product to the consumers.
Domain Name – a sign post on the Internet, it is a unique name that identifies an Internet site.
DRM – Digital Rights Management is a technology that protects a piece of intellectual digital property such as a music, video, or text file.
Encoding – the process of converting audio to or from a compressed format like MP3 or WMA.
Exclusive Rights – under copyright law, the privileges that only a copyright owner has with respect to the copyrighted work.
Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) – a file format for audio data compression that does not remove information from the audio stream, as MP3, AAC, and Vorbis do.
Grammy Awards – an award ceremony for all genres presented by the Recording Academy for outstanding achievements in the recording industry: a gold megaphone for your mantel.
Groupie – what’s the point of being an act without groupies? Overly enthusiastic fans with much love to offer.
HTML – HyperText Markup Language, programming language for the world wide web. A web browser interprets the code written and displays it for a web page and web sites. Some very basic knowledge of HTML may help on some sites.
Hook – a pirate: a music phrase, a passage, an idea – something (catchy and/or repetitive) that makes the song stand out and be more appealing and remembered.
Hype – sensational and extreme promotion of a person, idea or product.
Indie – an independent artist or band that desires to do-it-all-themselves and/or not affiliated with a larger record label.
Intern – usually a college student job at a record label in a no or low paying position, more of an apprenticeship learning the ropes and gaining business experience.
Internet Service Provider (ISP) – how and who connects your computer or network to the Internet, whether dialup, DSL, Cable, T1 or T3.
Master Recording License – pertains to the recording of a performance itself, which are usually controlled by the record label.
Mastering – the final stage and preparation in a recording before weapons of mass duplication, includes the consistency of audio levels and quality perfecting.
Mechanical License – the use of copyrighted musical compositions for use on CDs, cassettes, record albums.
Music Contracts – all the various bits of paperwork used in the music business, always read the “fine print” to the many contracts – recording, management, finders fee, general release contracts. When the contracts come in – time to get an Entertainment Attorney.
Music Industry – all things pertaining and related to the business of music, dominated by the Big Four major labels: Sony BMG, Warner, Universal and EMI.
Music Publisher – provides services such as marketing, pitching and promoting works written by songwriters. Deals with the commercial exploitation of music catalogs and songs.
Press Kit – aka media kit, a prepackaged set of promotional materials for a music artist or band for distribution including song samples, bio, historical info, photos and contact information.
Producer – duties include: controlling the recording session, guidance of the artist(s), coaching, organizing, scheduling of production resources and budgets, as well as supervising the process of recording, mixing and mastering.
Publishing Royalties – income paid to the writer of a song.
RIAA – Recording Industry Association of America, the organization that represents the interests of record labels and producers in the USA.
Ripping – means to take an audio CD and record it to a computer in an uncompressed file format (wav). Digital audio extraction from one media form to a hard disk.
Roadie – the road crew that travels with a band on tour. These hard working individuals do everything but the performance, are technicians, do the set up and take down, security, bodyguards, pyrotechnics, and lighting.
Sampling Rate – the number of samples taken per second when digitizing sound. The higher the number, the better the quality of the digital reproduction.
SoundExchange – an independent, nonprofit performance rights organization that collects and distributes digital performance royalties for recording artists and record labels when their sound recordings are performed on digital cable, satellite TV music, internet and satellite radio.
Sound Recording – the copyright of the recording itself (what you hear, the entire production) as distinguished from the copyright of the song (words and music owned by the songwriter or publisher).
Synchronization License – aka “synch” license, allows the user to reproduce a musical composition “in connection with” or “in timed relation with” a visual image, motion picture, video, advertising commercial – from the copyright owner of the music.
Talent Agent – or booking agent, the representative of the music artist(s) that sets up the live performances.
Vanity Label – a celebrity recording artist is given a label within a label and runs under the umbrella of the parent label.

Author Bio:

Artistopia – The Ultimate Artist Development Resource http://www.artistopia.com is an artist development and community on the web providing music artists, songwriters and bands all the tools needed for displaying their talent, music business collaboration, marketing and networking. Online since 2003, Artistopia develops advanced technology solutions that leverage the Internet to both the music artist and music companies respective advantage. Full list at Music Glossary Online

For more education on careers in the music industry, check out: http://www.music-career-guide.com

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If you have ever held the guest list power in your hands, you know guest list politics can rival many presidential races. Everyone is angling to get their name at the door, and you’ll never be quite as popular as you are when you’re the one who makes the call as to who gets the coveted spots. But – the guest list isn’t about making sure your extended social circle doesn’t have to pay a cover charge. The guest list is really there so that the bands involved can entice the people who can help them in their careers to come out and see them play. If you don’t manage the guest list correctly, not only could you be depriving the bands of their big shot, but you could also be burning some important bridges with promoters if you keep asking for one more spot and one more spot. There’s no need to let things get out of control, however. Stand your ground, and use these dos and don’ts to separate good guest list behavior from bad.

Ah, the guest list. If you’re in a band, work for a label, or if you’re a music promoter, manager, or agent, you know the drill. The day of the show, suddenly your phone starts ringing, and it’s someone you haven’t heard from in ages. “Hi! Long time no speak! How are you? We really need to meet up soon! Are you going to be at the show tonight? Is there any room on the guest list?” Repeat conversation 20 times. And not only do your long lost best friends want to be on the list themselves, but they want three of their friends, their friends’ friends, and someone’s cousin visiting from out of town to be on the list as well. Managing the guest list can be an extremely stressful job, if you let it be.

Take back control and let these guest lists dos and don’ts be your guide when you’re the one wielding the plus one power.

Guest List Dos:

DO find out how many spaces are available on the guest list well before the night of the show. Of course, if you are the promoter, you have the power to make last minute calls about the size of the list, but if you are a label or band, agree with the promoter up front how many places you’ll have to work with.
DO make sure that the people who can offer you something make it on to the list before your friends. Sure, you’d love to get your friends into your show for free, but when you get a good review in the paper or when some label A&R guy gives you his card after your set, you’ll be glad you gave your sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend’s free ticket to the industry/media person instead.
DO be up front with people about whether or not they are likely to get onto the list. If you know there is going to be a lot of interest in a show, and you know that you don’t have many freebies to hand out, let the usual suspects know in advance that it looks like getting them a place on the list will be tough.
DO consider other options besides the guest list, like reduced price tickets, for friends who want to go to the show, but can’t afford the full cover charge.

Guest List Don’ts:

DON’T press your luck with the promoter if you need more places on the list than you are getting. If you are the support band, sometimes you may not get any places at all, and although it is not ideal, it’s the way things go. Your working relationship with a promoter is worth much more than getting your friends into a show for free.
DON’T feel like you owe everyone a plus one. In fact, you don’t owe anyone a place on the list, period. If you need to ration and are trying to please as many people as possible, the plus ones should be the first thing to go.
DON’T feel like everyone who gets on the guest list has to also get a pass to come backstage, if there’s an after party or a hospitality area. That is supposed to be fun for the band, everyone involved in the show, and their friends – and sometimes that ends up being a different group of people than the guest list.
DON’T have a guest list at a charity show. It happens a lot, but, yuck. So tacky. Charity show ticket prices are often pricey – because the point of the show is to raise money! Giving away free tickets kind of misses the point.
DON’T play the “you put me on your guest list, I’d better put you on my guest list” game. Guest list constraints at every show are different, and you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to keep up with who is “owed” a spot on the list.

Above all else, when the guest list is in your hands, stand your ground. You want to accommodate as many people as you can, of course, but remember that the list is primarily designed to get media/labels/managers/etc in to see a band and decide if they want to write about them or work with them. Everyone else just has to take a number.

Written by Heather McDonald

For more education on careers in the music industry, check out: http://www.music-career-guide.com

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