Hello friends,

Sorry for the lack of posts. My school year started a month ago, and things have been very busy. Here are a few things that I would like to tell you.

1) If you have missed me (which I know so many of you have), and would like to listen to a great two hours of music, I am now going to have my own radio show on Sunday’s from 2-4 pm EST on WVAU.org (Click HERE to stream) . That’s right, my very own radio show. Well I do have a partner, Jenna, but I’m sure you will all just adore her. Plan for very awkward air breaks, it will be great!

2) As for the blog.. I have some good news and some bad news. First with the good news. We are working on updating the design of the site, and will hopefully have that implemented soon. It looks nice, and I think you guys will like it—-spice things up a little bit. Also, several more contributers are going to join Indie Muse, which is going to make this quite the place to be. I can tell you that these guys were not just randomly chosen off the street (well maybe one of them was), and I am only allowing them to post for the the site because I know they will carry on the Indie Muse spirit—-awesomeness. They have amazing tastes in music, and are all musicians themselves, which I’ll talk more about later. The plan is to update a whole lot more. If you’ve been on the site before, you probably know by now that we aren’t professional writers or “music critics,” and we don’t try to be—-we just like to share the music we love, and give you some info about the bands so you can find new music and spread the good word. To make the site more useful, it needs to be updated more and now that we have more people, it will be. You can count on that.

Now for the bad news. Wait. There is no bad news! I figured that if you were anticipating bad news, and than suprisingly found out there was none, it would make for more good news.

See you soon,

David

I’m not even going to apologize this time. I always think I’m going to do better, but something always comes up, and I don’t post. Like this time I can say I was in Seattle for two weeks, which is true, and that I’ll get more posts up this week, but at this point I’d be foolish to think something else won’t come up this week. If I were breaking up with you, these first sentences would work perfectly when explaining why I can’t keep the site up anymore, but fortunately that’s not happening. In fact, this is a renewal of our vows. Ladies and Gentlemen, if you are weird and stand while you are on your computer, please take a moment to sit down, as this news is surely going to blow you off your feet. Indiemuse.com is going to get a makeover. In several ways. Starting today, I am happy to announce that my good friend, Dave Nyman, who you may know from the blog Just-pretend.blogspot.com, is joining Indiemuse.com. If we are lucky, several more writers will join our team, as well. Dave is extremely knowledgeable about today’s best music, and is a quite talented musician himself. We are both very lucky to have him.

So this is how this is going to work—I’m still going to be posting, and will still try my very best to share with you the music I’m loving, but in addition, you will now be graced with Dave’s musical taste. And if our other friends decide they would like to join us, we are possibly looking at a new post everyday.

One thing that will not change is our mission. All we are trying to do is find other fans who appreciate the same music as we do, and help spread the good word. I want to thank all of you for your support, even through my hiatus. Be expecting a post from Dave soon, and remember, I will not be offended at all if you get us confused, as he is bound to make great discoveries that I would love to take credit for.

Oh yes, and by any chance are you, or someone you know, a graphic designer who would be kind enough to help us out with the banner for the site? We are thinking we might change things up a little bit in terms of the display, and I am horrible with Photoshop. Just awful. We are looking to have a cool Indie Muse graphic logo, maybe something revolving around music. If you could help us, we would be forever grateful, and will link to your site and give major props.

Song of the Day

Elliott Smith – New Moon:

Elliott Smith – New Monkey

OK Go is at it again. If you haven’t seen this music video yet, watch it. It will blow your mind.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAQZ_uui1SY[/youtube]

Ok Go- Oh No:

Ok Go- Do What You Want 

Did I call it, or did I call it. In my last Wilco post I stated, “Wilco has creative ways of releasing their material, and working with the fans, so we can probably expect some sort of album streaming, possibly even before the release.” Well, tonight is your lucky night. Wilco just announced a semi-secret (oops) listening party tonight at 10 pm Central time, for their upcoming release, Sky Blue Sky. The album’s set release date is May 15. Sudden change of plans for tonight.

You can access the stream at Wilcoworld.net. See you there! By the way, the above picture is the album cover for Sky Blue Sky.

Every single day, I hear about a new ridiculous issue with one of the most loathed companies in the world, the RIAA. The new conflict to arise just happened yesterday after the Copyright Royalty Board, the group overseeing statutory licensing for US-based internet radio stations, announced the new royalty rates for streaming radio performance rights. To break the situation down simply, the RIAA is demanding an unfair amount of money from webcasters. With the new implemented prices, a station with 1,000 listeners will be paying over $150,000 a year to stream 24/7. This price will keep going up dramatically over the next couple of years (will be around $249,000 in 2009.)

The rates go based off the amount of songs played, and the number of listeners who hear each of those songs played. Again, the price range above is only if a station has around 1,000 listeners. The more listeners, the higher the rates. (If the station has 2,000 listeners the rates will be doubled,etc.) The RIAA, is out of control, and needs to be stopped. Please, take the time to write to your representative to try to get this issue resolved. In my opinion it is absurd to charge webcasters money to play songs in the first place–they are exposing the artists and increasing CD sales. It is silly to believe that if a listener likes an artist, they are not going to go out to get their album, because they’ll be too busy listening to the radio. The RIAA is a manipulative company, that would benefit so much more, if they stopped being so stubborn and worked with the consumer. Fortunately for the consumers, the RIAA will bring it’s own downfall, once their greed has gone too far. It already has gone to far, but soon, someone with enough power will fight the RIAA for their injustices, and dishonoring the great gift of music.

For more information, please visit
www.save-internet-radio.com