The Cell Phone is a Portable Jukebox

I was told I get a little long winded with my newsletters so I’m going to try to keep it short this time. But there so much is happening in the business. Everyone is making money except us, the Artists! They got us all thinking that the internet is the best thing that ever happened for us or this is our pie in the sky. I think it can be…maybe for some, the wannabes, the make believes, but for the professional artist who depend on this for their livelihood it have just destroyed us. I had this discussion some years back with a colleague of my mine. I told him we were being pimped and used. All they want to do is use our music to sell their high end products. They made our music a commodity; yes that’s what it is to them, the tech industry…a commodity.

What other product could they have use to sell their phones? I don’t see why the music industry didn’t see it coming! What I’m getting at; they were pimped many years ago by the jukebox man and he still pimping us. He doesn’t pay for the use of our music, most countries around world pays, and at least in some cases they do buy the records.

So now, here we are in the digital world being used again. To me the cell phone is a portable jukebox. You would think the industry would have learned. No they were so busy trying to keep things status quotes. Now we find ourselves the lowest man on the totem pole & getting the short end of the stick. As long as we stay bent over as musicians… they gonna stick it to us. You got to stand up! I am speaking to the young guys who are starting out and want to make this their livelihood. You damn sho’ can’t make it from streaming. Paying something like 15 cent per thousand to make a thousand dollars you got to have over 250,000 streams. You guys got to fight back and learn how to manage your own! The more you learn, the more you earn! Stop giving the middle man your business get him out of the picture. The internet is supposed to be p2p you having direct contact with the public. There are websites out and more coming out that are friendlier than ones out there now. They will allow you to set up - to do your own promoting, get your own air play, and set up your own store.

Hey don’t settle for “little bit is better than nothing” unless that’s all you want. One of problems with most musicians is that they are lazy. They are used to paying other to do it for them; they never took time to learn the business. Look around at some of your older artists…you can tell the learners from the non- learners. It’s going be up to us to save our music and get it back to an art form instead of a commodity.

I know I said this would be a short one but I wanted drop this on you, streaming will be here for a while and downloading too, because there some people who would rather subscribe but never own and have all the music when they need it for monthly fee and there are others who wants to own their music akin like people who rents a car and ones who buys a car. You are the owner of something. Right now you are getting it for free! When they think they have you hooked they will cut the free service or when their numbers are the right with the volume of subscribers, you will pay or be left with no music. Yes the internet is vicious like I said. We’ve got to fight for our fair share or be f***ed…

FREE MP3

"Street Dance"

From our Let's Do It Again album (1972) on Perception Records…

Click to Download "Street Dance" MP3

Places on the internet you can find Fatback Band music

• FatbackBand.com
• Blog
• MySpace
• BillCurtisMusic.com
• YouTube

For the albums back in the days:
• Ace Records
• Amazon.com

For all the new music “Bill Curtis and Friends w/The Fatback Band”:
• iTunes
• Reverb Nation
• YouTube

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