Interview with Beet the System

Making a Scene Presents - The Music Industry Has Discovered Another Gold Mine. Somebody Should Tell the Musicians.Making a Scene Music Business Weekly WrapupThere is something almost comforting about the music industry's ability to announce a revolution every few weeks. Somewhere in a corporate boardroom, executives are celebrating another record-breaking quarter, technology companies are explaining how artificial intelligence will change music forever, and streaming services are working on exciting new ways to charge people for listening to songs. Meanwhile, an independent musician is loading a guitar amplifier into a twelve-year-old van, wondering whether the promoter remembered to include parking in the contract. The technology changes, the business models evolve, and the press releases become increasingly enthusiastic, but the economic realities facing working musicians remain stubbornly familiar. http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Beet the SystemBeet the System is a Bay Area roots-rock collective built from deep musical friendship, fertile collaboration, and a healthy disregard for genre boundaries. The band grew out of the creative soil left behind by beloved Bay Area group Chemystry Set, carrying forward that project’s adventurous spirit while planting something looser, groovier, and distinctly its own. http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Brings you Gerry Casey's Interview with Dennis Bryon GraffDennis Bryon Graff is an independent California singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and recording artist whose music is built around complete creative control. Based in Green Valley Lake, California, Graff writes, performs, records, mixes, and masters his own material, approaching each song as a fully self-contained creative project.Graff plays a wide range of instruments, including guitar, bass, keyboards, and programmed or keyboard-based drums. He also handles both lead and backing vocals, giving his recordings a distinctly personal character from beginning to end. Rather than separating songwriting from production, he treats the studio as another instrument, shaping every part of the final sound himself.His music moves through soft rock, blues, and rock-oriented songwriting, with an emphasis on melody, atmosphere, and straightforward storytelling. Graff’s catalog reflects an artist who has spent years writing and recording on his own terms, developing songs without the pressure to fit neatly into a commercial genre or production formula. http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents - Your Song Is Registered. But Is It Getting Paid? AI Uncovers a Hidden Problem in Music RoyaltiesAn AI investigation found recordings by Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, and other legendary artists connected to the wrong musical compositions. If some of the biggest catalogs in music have questionable data, what does that mean for independent musicians who have no army of lawyers watching their royalties?The Music Industry Has a Problem Hiding Behind a Green CheckmarkImagine spending months writing, recording, mixing, and releasing a song. You paid the musicians, covered the studio costs, hired someone to create the artwork, and probably spent more money promoting the release than you care to admit. You did everything the music business experts told you to do. You registered the song, obtained the proper identification numbers, entered your songwriting information, and delivered everything to your distributor. Your music is available around the world, and your royalty dashboard shows that the song is generating activity. Life is good, or at least as good as it gets when you're an independent musician trying to pay the electric bill.Now imagine discovering that somewhere inside the giant computer system responsible for tracking your royalties, your recording has been connected to a completely different song. Perhaps that other song has a similar title. Maybe it was written by another artist with a similar name. Perhaps some software made a connection that looked reasonable to a computer but would be ridiculous to anyone who actually listened to the music. Either way, your registration exists, your ownership information looks complete, and the system appears to be working. The only problem is that the recording and the composition may not belong together. http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents - You Built Your Own Artist Website. Does Facebook Think It Can Use What's On It?Meta's proposed business terms have sparked a fight over website scraping, artificial intelligence, and copyright. For independent musicians, the bigger question is whether using social media to promote your music should give a technology company new permissions over the creative work you own.You Own the Music. You Built the Website. Now Read the Fine Print. http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with BEVBEV is a Minneapolis-based indie rock and power-pop project led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Niki Beverly, whose music moves between moody introspection, melodic guitar pop, and the restless energy of ’90s alternative rock. Built around swirling guitars, engaging rhythms, intricate harmonies, and emotionally direct lyrics, BEV creates songs that can sound immediately familiar before suddenly veering somewhere unexpected http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Brings you Gerry Casey's Interview with Ashesh DangolAshesh Dangol, widely known as the “Himalayan Hendrix,” is a Nepali blues-rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and bandleader whose music fuses traditional blues feeling with psychedelic rock, Eastern influences, and the restless energy of a player who has spent decades pushing the genre beyond familiar borders. http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents - The Most Valuable Thing You Take Home From a Show Might Not Be the Money at the DoorWhy a $27 million investment in live-event marketing should change how independent artists think about touring, fan relationships, and building a sustainable music career.The Most Expensive Thing You Can Leave Behind at a GigPicture a familiar Saturday night. You're playing a packed little music venue about two hours from home. The band is tight, the sound is good, and the audience is responding to every song. The bartender is moving drinks like there's a national emergency, someone near the stage is recording the performance on a phone, and the bass player has somehow managed to find another cable that wasn't broken during soundcheck. By the final encore, everyone agrees it has been a great night.After the show, you sell a few shirts, sign a couple of CDs, pack the equipment, and settle up with the venue. Maybe you made a few hundred dollars after expenses. Maybe you made enough to cover gas and buy breakfast on the way home. Either way, the show is over, the money is counted, and everyone heads home with the satisfaction of knowing they put on a good performance.But here's the part that should bother every independent musician trying to build a career. Somewhere in that audience were people who genuinely connected with your music. Some would gladly come see you again. Others might buy a new album, subscribe to exclusive content, bring friends to your next show, or even help introduce you to another venue. Yet by the time you finish unloading the van, most of those people have disappeared into the night without any reliable way for you to reach them again. http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents - Stop Selling Things to Your Fans. Start Building Things With Them.How fan-created merchandise, shared ownership, AI-powered creativity, and a new approach to artist-approved businesses could turn an independent musician's audience into a community of entrepreneurs.What If Your Next Great Merchandise Idea Comes From Your Audience?Somewhere in America, an independent musician is sitting in a room filled with cardboard boxes containing 200 T-shirts that seemed like a brilliant idea six months ago. The artwork looked terrific on the computer screen, the printing company offered a discount for ordering in bulk, and everybody in the band agreed the shirts would sell like crazy. Unfortunately, the audience appears to have missed that particular meeting. Now the shirts are taking up space next to the spare microphone stands, the band still owes money on the printing bill, and the drummer has suggested giving them away at Christmas. http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents - You Own Your Masters. So Why Can Someone Else Make Your Music Disappear?The DistroKid and Universal Music Group dispute exposes a dangerous weakness in the independent music business. Artists fought for the right to own their recordings, but owning the music means surprisingly little when someone else controls access to the audience. It's time to rethink what artist independence really means.The Day Your Music DisappearsImagine waking up on a Tuesday morning, pouring yourself a cup of coffee, and checking your streaming numbers. You have spent the last six months promoting your latest record, playing shows, sending emails, talking to radio stations, and convincing every friend and relative who still answers your calls to give the music a listen. Your songs are finally starting to find an audience. Maybe one has landed on a popular playlist, or perhaps a music blogger has discovered your work and started sending listeners your way. Things are moving in the right direction, which is about as close to a miracle as most independent musicians experience in today's music business.Then you discover that your music is gone. http://www.makingascene.org