Cubase 6 and Cubase Artist 6 offer enhanced workflow features within the Project window. The newly introduced Track Edit Groups option refines the work with multitrack recordings, allowing related events on multiple tracks to be grouped and edited simultaneously, while the new Lane Track offers convenient multitake comping for selecting and consolidating audio parts to form the perfect take.

Steinberg’s Cubase 6 is available now for $599 / €599. More information on Steinberg Cubase 6.

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Not too minutes ago in the town my friends and I were hounded in the street by people fund raising for the latest tsunami survivors of whoever asking for money, this is never fun. If you twin that with the fact that people like you and me always want something for free, people giving out flyers and postcards are still proving to be a great way to promote upcoming gigs and performances at local bars, festivals, nightclubs, theatres or even shopping malls, things even the mighty interwebs will never be able to do. Having a quick blast around the internet for something that was reasonable in price and convenient for both huge super groups, just-starting-out bans or any buisness at all for that matter. I bumped into nextdayflyers.com.

Next Day Flyers will print promotional/club flyers and marketing postcards in a wide variety of sizes from 1/8 of a page to full page (A4).

Tickets for performances can also be custom printed with the date and time of the concert, this I thought would give any local bands that extra push on other local acts to look that bit more professional. Paper options include a thick durable card stock which can have a glossy or matte finish, that seems to be the most serviceable  as a gig poster as well as a 100 lb glossy paper. Your own designs can be customized by a nice easy-to-use user friendly graphic design tool on-site and uploaded directly to the Next Day Flyers site, alternatively there is an option to create your layouts using an array of  defult templates in the ‘Online Design Center’. All these little easy to use helpful bits have made nextdayflyers.com RouteNote’s weapon of choice.

The turnaround on printed materials is quick and items can be ready as early as the same day. The website is user friendly, offering helpful tools such as online chat and instructional videos, naturally a customer service representative can also be reached by phone.

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Filtatron is a new real time audio effects suite and studio for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Filtatron is produced by Moog Music who normally focus on more traditional musical equipment.

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We thought that all RouteNote artists might be interested in a new free service from Amazon, called Artist Central.

Artist Central allows artists to add their own content to Amazon.com Artist Stores. This helps music fans on amazon.com discover artists and their work more easily, and leads to greater sales.

Users can upload photos, a bio, videos, and audio for promotional streaming, as well as utilize new features like a Twitter widget and customizable banners to create a robust, customized Artist Store on Amazon.com, ultimately helping customers discover artists and their work more easily. Check out the artist store for Band of Horses (www.amazon.com/bandofhorses) to see these features in action.

Artist Central is completely free to anyone selling their music on Amazon.com. Getting started is easy and only takes a few minutes. Just go to Artist Central (http://artistcentral.amazon.com) and sign in with your Amazon account to claim your artist. (If there is currently no artist store for your artist, you can click “Create a new Artist Store”.) Claims are usually approved within 1-2 days.

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Thumbplay (who is partnered with RouteNote) has one of the best free music ringtones services available. Thumbplay’s Open platform allows artists to signup for free and create mobile content from their music. Thumbplay open is completely free for artists to use and will allow them to sell ringtones to 100 million US Verizon Wireless subscribers. For more information check out the Thumbplay Open website.

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Here is a step by step guide on how to get your music chart eligible for the UK.

1. Ensure your release complies with the ‘Chart Rules’. There are rules that apply to physical formats, and rules for digital formats. If your release does not adhere to the chart rules it will not be eligible for any of the published charts, although OCC will still track sales of the product providing it has been registered correctly.
   Full copies of the chart rules (singles and albums) are available to download from here
2. Obtain a catalogue number and barcode for each of your physical formats. We can only track sales of those products  with a unique barcode (UPC codes are provided FREE on RouteNote).
3. Obtain an ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) for each of your individual digital tracks and a digital barcode for each of your digital formats. We can only track sales of those downloads with an ISRC and digital single or album formats with a digital barcode.
4. Finally you need to head to the PPL Repertoire site: http://www.ppluk.com/repertoire. Once there you need to register and upload your music to the PPL Repertoire database. Contact PPL Repertoire Database via email on chart@ppluk.com or by telephone on 020 7534 1122 if you have any problems.

Thats it!

Make sure that you never pay any money to distributors for this service, because anyone can get access to the PPL Repertoire database for FREE.

For more information check out the Offical charts website.

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This seems like a very interesting tool to allow fans to provide feedback during the song making process, which can only increase your fan loyalty. Check out the video below and let us know what you think of this new service.

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With iTunes you really need to promote yourself within the walls of iTunes, and this goes a long way to help you sell and grow your fan based across other sites.

Here is a step by step process on how to promote yourself within iTunes. Please remember that this does take a lot of time, but overall can really get some great results.

Step 1 – Sign up to iTunes and Buy Some Music

The first thing you should do is signup and buy some music (your and your friends), this gets you familiar with the process of buying, plus this will come in handy when you ask your fans to buy your tracks later.

Step 2 – Create at Least 5 profile accounts

Did you know that with each credit card that you register with iTunes you get 5 separate accounts? iTunes designed it this way so families in one household can all use one card.

All profiles are kept completely seperate and not interconnected. One of the profiles will be use by you as your main account, but you can use the other 4 accounts to help promote yourself.

TIP: While you are creating these profiles: Think about your target audience – who are they? Older dudes that like prog rock, or teenagers that like Britney Spears? Create profiles that would fit the types of people who like your music. Choose a name for each profile so they each have an individual personality. Give them distinct personalities and even imagine where they might be from.

Step 3 – Review Other Artists

With each profile – individually begin to review other people’s music. You definitely want to review three or four other artists that have nothing to do with you or your genre so choose some of the artists that have influenced you or artists that you like and create some reviews.

Step 4 – Create iMixes

You will need to create 2 categories of iMixes:

1: iMixes that have nothing to do with you and your music

Examples:

• Best of Madonna
• Great local bands from your hometown
• Best of Bob Marley
• Best of the 1970’s

2. iMixes that INCLUDE YOUR OWN MUSIC

Create mixes that include your own tracks with other complimentary tracks (artists you get compared to and who you are influenced by that sound good when played next to your songs). When you create iMixes think of yourself as a DJ or a curator and piece together thoughtful lists.

TIP: Add some of the top sellers from each week in your genre and style as buyers will already be looking for the top sellers when they come to iTunes.

TIP: You should create an iMix at least one time per week per account.

Step 5 – Vote for iMixes

Make sure you vote on as many iMixes as possible. Vote for your own iMixes using all of your profiles.

COOL: iMixes that begin to pick up votes rise to the top where other buyers will begin to respond to them and purchase your iMixes.

A Note about iMix voting: People who are key users who are also heavily promoting their own music sometimes can be competitive. They may try to vote your iMixes down so that the iMixes that they have created rise to the top.

What my friend says about this: Being malicious on iTunes is awful. Don’t give other people bad reviews. Stay away from this type of negative behavior. Just focus on your own voting and contributions.

Step 6 – Master iMix Sandwiching

When you create an iMix, you want to sandwich yourself between hot chart-toppers in your genre, and add artists that already have five-star reviews.

For each iMix, make it at least 20 songs, but you can go to 40 or 50 songs. To stay on top of the charts for your iMix, you must get the most votes and the most stars.

TIP: Don’t forget to vote for other people’s iMixes so it looks like you are well-rounded.

This is where registering different credit cards and different personalities so you can actually log in and vote for yourself comes in handy.

Step 7 – Remove Unpopular iMixes & Update Them

If your iMix fals below three stars you should take your iMix down from iTunes, add some new tracks to it, and then add it again as an updated iMix.

It will take a few hours for your updated iMix to show back up into the iTunes profiles, but you don’t want to have a poorly rated iMix sitting in the iTunes system with your music in it.

How To Update an iMix: In order to update an I-Mix: Click on the arrow on iTunes. Then click on “update,” and add some new tracks,

TIP: Don’t rename your iMix

iMixes are good for a whole year, so you want to make sure that you start voting, when it goes back up. It takes between 6 to 12 hours for a newly edited or a new iMix to show up.

Here’s The Wrap Up:

For each profile you create: Their iMixes to match their personality:

1. Create then wait for your iMix to show up.

2. Log in as each of your different reviewers and users.

3. Vote five stars from each of the profiles you have created.

4. Start watching your music sell

5. Go in two times per week and create new iMixes.

6. After a while to stay in the most recent, you must continue to make new iMixes. Vote, vote and vote.

7. Remember, you must log in and submit votes for each of the iMixes with each of your separate accounts and many sepearte times. This is the most time consuming part of the process, but if you do this, the rewards and the sales will pay off deeply

8. Log in and vote for: Was this review helpful? And click yes per account. This will help your iMix move up the charts.

9. When you make an iMix, don’t only include the chart toppers, but also include what appeals to you as a listener and what the fans of this iMix might actually like.

10. Remember, you are creating a useful contribution to the iTunes community. The key is make iMixes on Mondays because on Tuesdays the new release schedule will kick in and that’s when your iMixes will show up

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• Book sessions and assign rooms, staff, resources etc to each one, then easily edit them.
• Easily track tasks by assigning jobs, tickets, and to-do lists to staff, setting due dates and priorities.
• Track your equipment and reserve it for sessions.
• View calendars for every room, staff member and piece of equipment, or get an overview of the whole studio in one place.

Of course you can also manage staff calendars etc on Google Calendar or even Outlook, and having all your studio’s co-ordination happen online can be a problem if your internet connection goes down, but this does seem a neat way of collating all the necessary information and making sure everyone’s on the same page. The basic version, for smaller studios (like ours) is free, but if you’re managing a massive organisation with tens of projects and multiple simultaneous recording sessions you’ll need to pay for a premium version (up to $399 a month!). That said, they’re running a month’s free trial at the moment, so you don’t lose anything by taking a look.

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Band Metrics

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