Opinion and commentary

  • Cherryholmes court country

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    Family bluegrass band Cherryholmes is making its first attempts to cross over to country radio. According to a Reuters/Billboard report, Cherryholmes is remixing - with added piano and drums - This Is My Son, one of the cuts from their forthcoming

  • Save the music business in 5 easy steps

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    Two music business think tanks have come together after some research to present a five step plan for saving the industry. Music Ally and The Leading Question teamed up to conduct an 800 person, one year, study in the

  • CD sales continue to decline

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    With 2007 now under wraps, CD sales figures are starting to come in, and things don't look good for the labels. Variety.com is reporting that CD sales during the Christmas shopping season were down 21% from 2006. From the week of Thanksgiving

  • A manifesto for artistic self-liberation

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    This post is a contribution from David McCarty, a music journalist, songwriter and musician who writes regularly for Bluegrass Unlimited and Flatpicking Guitar magazines, and performs as a member of The Hot Club of Naptown. Your comments are welcome -

  • NMB: The Long Tail

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    This is the third in a series of articles about The New Music Business. Before I undertook the writing of this series on music business I wrote about the decline of CD sales and mentioned a book called The Long Tail.

  • The New Music Business

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    A lot has been said recently about the business of music here on Bluegrass Today. We have covered the recent changes in copyright legislation surrounding internet broadcasting. We've also recently talked about the decline in sales of physical CDs in

  • Are declining CD sales good news?

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    The numbers are in for the first quarter and they don't look promising, at least not on the surface. Nielsen SoundScan reports that 89 million CDs were sold from January 1 through March 18. That's a drop of nearly 20%

  • Should you guarantee your music?

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    Many products these days come with a money back guarantee of some sort. Jason Feinberg at the Music Business Blog suggests that maybe artists should consider offering a guarantee when a consumer purchases their music. It's an interesting idea that

  • Steve Jobs and Flatt & Scruggs

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    Yesterday I posted about about the controversy that Steve Jobs stirred up with his open letter to the music industry concerning digital downloads and DRM. Today two things caught my attention while doing some reading online. The first is a rumor