cool music site: mbsolutions

Music Business Solutions is the music business website of Peter Spellman, Director of Career Development at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Peter has written several excellent books about the music business (The Self-Promoting Musician is one I would highly recommend), and the goal of the site is "Helping musicians, songwriters and industry careerists start and grow successful music businesses through vital information and creative management strategies.". It has lots of helpful articles and links and is one of the sites I refer to often.

cool social networking site: reverbnation

I discovered ReverbNation last week and really enjoy it. There are tons of social networking sites out there, and whether you like one or not tends to be highly personal, but this has some features that I really appreciate - the ability to create a custom playlist from songs available on the site, to name just one.

And to give you an example, here is our ReverbNation profile. Still developing, of course.

cool music site: the secret music life of kat

The Secret Music Life of Kat is one of my favorite music business sites - and actually it is one of my favorite sites, period. Kat is a thirty-something stay at home mom who states on her profile "I love music. I love technology. I love business.". She writes about great resources, music promotion, productivity and organization, links to great blogs, and it's all written in a personal, easy-going style that makes this one of the first blogs I turn to on my daily "blog-rounds".

cool music book: the creative habit

To start things off - no website, no podcast, but an old-fashioned book :). This book, The Creative Habit. It was given to me by our band's cellist a few years ago, and it is an excellent book for anyone in a creative environment - whether you're a musician, a writer, a dancer, a chef. It's about creativity, how to foster it, how to release it, and while that may sound vague, it isn't. The Creative Habit (subtitle: Learn it and use it for life) is written by choreographer Twyla Tharp, and it is the type of book that I read again once a year, just to refresh the ideas and concepts, and to remind myself that creativity is something I need to work at and foster.

And by the way, dealing with books and music I will usually post a link to a site like Amazon.com, because that's an easy place to find books and there usually is a decent description and some reviews.

cool music resources

I am a singer, musician, songwriter, booking manager, publisher, marketing manager, publicist - in short, I have my own band and music is my life. It's a lot easier to do all these things, to get your music out there and manage your own band, in this era of the Internet and technology. There are thousands of fantastic websites, social networking sites, blog, books, podcasts, ebooks, articles out there - the problem is not that it isn't there, it is finding the right resource for you. Now, that is probably a very individual process, and on size definitely does not fit all, but as someone who tries to find helpful tools and resources about music and the music business I know that when I find a book, website, podcast that I like a lot usually other musicians love it too.

So.... the reason for this blog? To find and post one cool link or resource per day. It can be a website, a title of a book, a podcast, another blog, an online article - but it somehow has to relate to music and the music business. I'll post it - it will be a nice reference for myself, and a good discipline - and I hope that perhaps some other musicians and music lovers will find this helpful as well.