Singer Songwriter David Louthan invites you to his 'Musical Place'

David Louthan
Rock Folk Country Palmyra PA USA

Artist Homepage: MySpace Songcast Facebook Twitter
Artist Downloads: iTunes Amazon
Sounds Like: Tom petty, Led Zeppelin, Jim Hendrix, The Doors, Bob Dylan

Review by: Simon Adams - MyMusicSuccess.Com

Growing up in Darlington Pennsylvania, David Louthan started out developing his musical skills by picking up a guitar at age 13, and this self produced singer songwriter has never looked back.

It seems it took a while for the music production bug to bite fully, but in 2006 David set about stepping up his musical goals, and focused himself on seriously producing and recording the catalogue of songs he had started building up through his formative years.

David cites a diverse range of influences on his MySpace page, from the retro sounds of Tom petty, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and The Doors, to the slightly later sound of bands like The Red Hot Chili Peppers. When you listen to David's music the influences are evident, and he handles straight ahead acoustic guitar based tracks such as the Bob Dylanesque 'Just a Kid’ as skillfully as more psychedelic influenced tracks such as 'Misguided Fear'

The term singer songwriter is often used to define a genre of its own, but most artists who classify themselves as such generally want to impart the fact that the songs are telling the story.

Running through David's playlist of songs on his MySpace page, he tells a story of humble determination in pursuit of your dreams, with tracks such as 'Family' reminding the listener of the age old adage that if they follow their heart, they wont go far wrong in life.

Something I'm sure we can all relate to is the tale of growing up too quickly and succumbing to the pressures of adult life. Sometimes we'd all like a day off and spend the day in the proverbial candy shop, reliving those carefree days of our childhood. David's message in the song 'Just A Kid' reminds us that there's a higher power helping us out in life, which should give us permission that quitting our worries, and taking time out to get in touch with our childlike side wouldn't do us any harm now and again.

A similar theme runs through the laid back piano and acoustic guitar melodies of ‘There’s A Place’ which arouses a very 60’s influenced feeling, encouraging us to find that part of our psyche that gives us the freedom and serenity to create and visualize our dreams. Going by the creativity contained in his catalogue of songs, I’d say that in his music David Louthan has definitely found ‘his place’.

Currently in the studio working on new songs, (hopefully for his debut album), David has put some great effort into creating an online musical presence through his social networks.

Connect with David Louthan through his impressively designed MySpace page, where you can keep up to date with all his latest news and future releases.

R&B Pop Artist J-Swagg Review

J-Swagg
R&B Pop, Los Angeles, USA

Artist Homepage: Reverbnation MySpace Jswagg Japan
Artist Downloads: Napster Amazon
Label: Platinum Trini Entertainment / Universal Music
Sounds Like: Fabolous, Akon, TI, Jay-Z, Pharrel

Review by: Oliver Springate - MyMusicSuccess.Com

J Swagg is the latest artist to be signed onto the Platinum T Entertainment roster, and is showing a lot of potential to blow big time in the near future, and already has a fan base supporting him from America, Europe and Asia. He was born in the Philippines, has some Spanish Ancestry, and moved to California when he was 12, where he has grown up from there onwards.

This slightly odd mix of cultural influences is said to have rubbed off on J Swagg’s music, bringing together a sound which is similar to many of today’s mainstream hip hop artists, but remains unique. With the sheer number of artists around today, it would be impossible to have a totally unique style, and J Swagg has managed to make sure that the one’s he sounds similar to are the ones who are dropping the big tunes.

He lists his main influences as TI, Jay-Z and Pharrel, and that’s not a bad group to have influencing you when you’re trying to succeed in hip hop, and with his own style thrown into the mix, you’ve got an artist with real potential.

J Swagg is showing the flickers of success that all those who have gone before him had in their early days. In fact, what J Swagg is putting out is probably way ahead of what his predecessors were doing at the same stage in their careers.

With music making a return to the focus on revenues from live shows, J Swagg is also positioning himself perfectly on this front. On stage he really comes alive, interacting with his fans and putting on a great show.

His songs so far include the singles Your Body and The Life, both of which are chilled songs with a slight electro feel, and give a sound similar to artists like Fabolous and Akon. They’re definitely worth a listen, and his upcoming highly anticipated album ‘The Warm Up’ is set to be a big one when it comes out. J Swagg is definitely going to be one of the artists who we’re hearing a lot about over the next year.

Independent Artists - The New Music Business - Its Your Business

As the new world of independent music progresses, artists are quickly realising operating on their own without the support of a record company means that they are having to learn, implement, or hire in a whole range of new specialist skills to get their music off the starting block.

Releasing a track, whether it’s on your own website or through a digital distributor is very easy now, but can also be fraught with pitfalls if you haven’t approached it from a business perspective.

My first advice to any artist who wants to succeed on their own is treat your music as your own start up business from the word go, and operate everything as your own music production company. If you want to sustain a long term independent career in music, this is the single most important piece of advice you will ever read.

When record labels sign a track, they will generally deal with things like registering your track with royalty collection agencies, clearing samples you may have used in your track, tracking down publishers to make sure any cover versions are attributed to the right songwriter, prepare marketing for the track, getting press and publicity, and promoting it to radio and DJs to name just a few things.

Artist now have the power to bypass the record label and release tracks themselves, however the one thing that is absolutely critical to your success as an indie is also having the knowledge of the business areas of the music industry in some depth so you can avoid legal pitfalls.

The repercussions of putting out a track with an un-cleared sample, or not registering the publisher of a cover song, even for promotional purposes, and yes, even on your MySpace page, could wipe out your track for good. Rights owners and record labels will and do go after independent labels and regularly ask sites like iTunes, MySpace and YouTube to take down copyright infringements, and not only are you fighting a battle, you may also be sued for the infringement you have already carried out, and no they won’t take ignorance as a defence. As it’s your business the risk sits wholly with you, no one else.

Personally I don’t think that it’s a productive tactic for the rights owners, they could certainly do better by offering partnerships with talented independent artists that use their material, instead of going straight for litigation but that’s a whole other article in itself…

To support your music, educate yourself on the areas of the music business you feel you are weakest in, whether it’s legal, financial, or marketing, and make sure you get good advice and partnerships for your new ‘record business’.

If there is something that no matter how many books and articles you read on the subject you still find baffling or downright boring, then outsource it. Yes it will cost you money to pay someone to do it for you, but the investment will pay off in the long term, and you’ll get better results by contracting someone in who is passionate about their specialist skills. In the world of virtual working, you can also choose your supplier carefully to get the most cost effective partner.

By taking on board that by releasing your music independently you are in fact starting a business, you’ll set yourself a firm footing for it’s success, and by taking the decision to fully commit to treating your music as a professional product, you’ll find that making it a success will be a much more painless and easier process.

Onyero Spices Up The Dance Floor With His New Blend Of RnB and Dance

Onyero

Dance / Hip Hop / RnB, London, England, Europe

Artist Homepage: http://www.onyero-online.com
Onyero In Japan: http://onyero.musicsugoi.jp
Social Networks: Facebook Myspace Reverbnation

Artist Downloads: iTunes eMusic Shockhound Amazon
Review by: Oliver Springate: MyMusicSuccess.Com

An artist who claims to specialize in dance, RnB and hip hop must have a lot of practicing to do, but none quite so much as Onyero, who combines those genres with his influences from the Far East, Asia, Africa and South America. This talented artist quite literally blends music from all corners of the globe.

The way his songs sound, and his unusual voice, make Onyero sounds similar to French rapper Mc Solaar, but once you listen to his songs you’ll see that there is as much to separate them as there is connecting them. Onyero’s sound really is unique, and that’s become a bit of a cliché in music, but in this case it’s true.

His first single has just been released, and true to form, Onyero has produced a track that is hip hop, sounds RnB, and has a Latin style beat. Sounds a strange combination, but the song is becoming a real hit. It’s had great critical reviews, and is becoming really popular across Europe. And it’s no wonder it’s doing well. Despite Onyero being an upcoming and relatively unknown artist, he worked on the single with former Sony producer Paul Sapiera.

The single goes by the name ‘Your Porno Star’. Not the best thing to buy for your grandmother this Christmas, but the stand-out title has almost certainly been partly responsible for helping this song get heard. It’s been released in three versions, the original mix, the dance mix, and the funky house mix. It’s fair to say that the remixes aren’t quite up to the standard of the original mix, but that’s no bad thing, as Your Porno Star is a really catchy song.

It’s one of those tunes you think is alright first time you hear it, and it grows on you, sounding better each time. I expect that for Onyero, it’s a taste of things to come.

On the stage, his audiences say that he really comes alive, bringing his music to the crowd with an energetic display of his unique style. With more and more revenue in music coming from live shows, this skill will be invaluable for this upcoming performer.

If you like RnB, hip hop or dance music, Onyero is definitely one to watch. If you haven’t heard Your Porno Star before, brace yourself for the explicit lyrics, and get yourself a copy.

Make It Easy For Fans To Hear Your Music!

After reviewing quite a lot of artist's websites recently, I was amazed at the number of bands making it difficult for themselves to deliver their music easily from their website. This one simple but essential detail could be losing artists thousands of new fans every day.

Some of the artist's websites linked straight to an MP3 which took ages to download, others had complicated javascript code that must be difficult to update every time they want to post a new track, some weren't compatible with most popular browsers, some were in Realplayer format (which I couldn't play) and some just didn't work at all. Operating like this also means that you have to upload a new track to every place on the web where you have music, your MySpace, Facebook, the list is endless.

If people cannot hear your music easily, they'll quickly lose interest in your site and go elsewhere. If this sounds familiar, you owe it to yourself to sign up for a free Reverbnation account without delay. I can't believe more people aren't using the features of this great service on their site.

Reverbnation has been around for a couple of years now and offers many free promotion tools, including a free stylish music player widget which is easily customisable to your web site's colour scheme. There are a choice of styles that not only play your music, but also feature your upcoming show schedule. online releases and much more.





You only have to post the widget code once on your website and social networking pages (for some sites like Facebook, Reverbnation even give you a one click process to publish your widget without having to paste the code). Your fans can share your player on their site too with the one click 'share' button, making it very easy to spread your music to many people very quickly.

Reverbnation's widgets are fed from a single control panel (which I like to refer to as my 'cockpit') and every time you add a new track or video to your cockpit, every single widget you have out on the web gets updated automatically. It's a fabulous way of keeping your content fresh on a lot of sites without spending forever updating each individual page out on the web.

Here are some tutorial videos from Reverbnation, showing you some of the widgets they have available. Particularly recommended is the retail widget that gives you the ability to set up a one stop retail outlet in just a few clicks. Sign up, post your widgets and spend more time making sweet music...

Don't forget to also keep up to date with the best independent music promotion techniques over at our website http://www.mymusicsuccess.com. Whilst you're there download our free eBook 'The Secrets Of Independent Music Success' for more free tips and tricks on result driven artist self promotion.

Simon Adams
Co-Founder
MyMusicsuccess.com
http://www.mymusicsuccess.com