Friday, September 18, 2009

Us In The News

Missouri Lawyer's Weekly did a short article on S&E Entertainment's Matt Nagel. You can read the article here:

Lawyer Taps Passion For Music-Soccer


Thursday, September 17, 2009

Music As A Business

I stumbled across this article by Bruce Houghton. It speaks complete truth and highlights one of things that we push at S&E Entertainment.

"How can I make music when I'm expected to spend all my time on Twitter and Facebook?"


I'm sorry if this comes as a surprise, but it has never been enough to just make great music. Every generation of musicians has had to face their own challenges which forced them to go beyond creation and recording.


Frank Sinatra made movies to reach a bigger fan base. Elvis's hips and haircut were as much a part of his success as his recordings were. David Bowie learned that image and imagery could propel him to greater heights. After Saturday Night Fever, dance steps helped propel many live shows and for a time MTV made being visual an important component of success.


Whether it's getting in a van and giving an endless string of memorable performances or sitting on the phone for hours talking to journalists, there have always been skills beyond just making music that, if not required, certainly made success more likely.


So when Amanda Palmer tweets her latest exploits and Imogen Heap spends hours answering questions in a forum, they are just doing a modern version - their own version - of costumes, haircuts and dance lessons.


Great music is where it all begins and ends, but in between the path to success is always changing.
- Bruce Houghton

The Decline of MySpace

This article is copied from HypeBot.com. You can read the full article here:
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/09/the-steady-decline-of-myspace.html

MySpace's sloppy layouts and big brother corporate ownership has made it an easy target. But its hard to deny that for the last few years MySpace has been one of the most useful sites for garnering new fans and general band to fan interaction.

But things are changing. Slowly but steadily page views and unique visitors to MySpace are dropping even as the numbers at Facebook, YouTube and elsewhere continue to grow. The August auto-tune shut-off may have contributed to the decline in MySpace stats, but the reasons behind the decline go much deeper.



Others on the web are evolving and messy old MySpace is struggling to catch up with the comparison to Facebook the most dramatic. But even without comparisons, MySpace traffic fell 6.73% last month according to Compete and a total of 22% over the last three months according to Alexa measurements