Check out my Album of the Year- Dream of You Distributed by TuneCore & live on iTunes!

Check out my Album of the YEAR Dream of You from @TuneCore NOW LIVE on @iTunes!:

Dream of You by DeDe Wedekind 

FYI Musicians: Sell your own music on iTunes, Spotify, eMusic, Amazon Music, Google Play and many more! Keep all your rights and get 100% of the royalties. Tell them DeDe Wedekind sent you, ok?  

Have a great week! DeDe:)
www.DeDeWedekind.com
@DeDeWMusic
Youtube.com/1DWedekind
Facebook.com/DeDeWedekind

What does U2’s Deal With Apple Mean for the Music Industry?

Hi, DeDe here,

Personally, I love U2, and I think this was a very smart move for them. Bono has proven over and over through the years that he's not just a super-talented musician, he's also a true marketing genius. Look how he keeps re-creating his music, yet keeps it true to the U2 sound, and it's stayed more or less, quite popular...for almost 30 years.

However, this just shows how truly bad the situation has gotten for almost all of the artists in the music industry. What everyone's not telling you is that U2 got a huge paycheck (~100Million) behind the scenes from iTunes, Apple, etc. But for us non-famous, unknown, hardworking musicians and songwriters, this may be a signal of the final kiss of death for album and CD sales, which 99.9% of us still rely on for survival and in order to keep creating music....

There's got to be a solution here that protects artists, and pays us a fair amount for our new music-keeping copyright protections in place, while at the same time keeping music affordable and available to consumers. I'm open to your thoughts on this, any suggestions or ideas?... http://www.DeDe-Music.com

What does U2’s Deal With Apple Mean for the Music Industry? The world's biggest band have given their new album away for free on iTunes. But what's in it for them?

-From entertainment.ie, Sept. 2014

U2 sent shockwaves through the music industry last night by announcing at the launch of the new iPhone 6 that their new album 'Songs of Innocence' was to be given away completely free of charge on Apple's iTunes online music store.

To say that this is an unconventional method to release new material would be an understatement and it could potentially be seen as a seismic shift in the way music is delivered to its audience. Since the advent of iTunes and, more lately Spotify, the means by which people experience music has been subverted. Purists suggest that this is to the detriment to the concept of the album as a standalone collection of music, as today's listeners seem more content to download or stream a series of individual tracks as they grow their personally curated collections. It's the musical equivalent of separating the wheat from the chaff.

By partnering with Apple and giving their entire record away for free, U2 have embraced the digital age in a way that many of their contemporaries have appeared so hesitant to do and also encouraged fans to download and listen to the albums as a whole rather than to cherry-pick their way through it by downloading the odd single here or there.

But what exactly is in this for U2? Quite a lot, it turns out. Bono has said on many occasions, and as recently as last week, that he doesn't believe in "free" music so it would be naive to suggest that this is an entirely philanthropic gesture by U2. Various figures are traversing the internet this morning about exactly how much U2 will earn from their "free" album and it's entirely possible that this could generate Bono and co. more than any other album they've released in the last two decades.

The Wall Street Journal quotes a source "familiar with the talks" who said U2 were paid an astonishing $100 million for their participation, with Apple only too happy to realign with the group they previously worked with ten years ago to release a special U2 iPod. This move was also presumably designed to incentivise the purchase of U2's back catalogue in iTunes to a younger audience and to highlight ticket sales for the eventual tour on the back of 'Songs of Innocence' (though it's unlikely they would have needed to much help in that regard).

Jimmy Iovine, record producer and co-founder of Beats, explained Bono's intentions further to Time.

"The charts are broken", he said. "The old music industry has reached a low point and hasn't kept up with the digital world. He wants to see the artists' reach measured by how much they're listened to, by whatever medium or method."

U2 are following the lead of Beyonce, Jay Z and Radiohead who in the past have released music either unannounced, packaged with a tech company or free. In fact, Beyonce sold around 800,000 units of her last album within a week (though fans had to pay for it) when it was made instantly available on iTunes and U2 are expected to far eclipse that figure.

What can we take from this? It's a pretty strong indicator from U2 that they think the traditional means for music distribution is broken and what they have done with 'Songs of Innocence' is set a very appealing, if completely unsustainable, precedent. When the sales figures are released in a week or so we expect there'll be a few happy faces around the Vico Road but where does this leave the bands who are relying on album sales to generate income or recoup losses?

Releasing an album for free (or by having Apple write you a Euro Millions sized cheque) is a luxury only afforded to the 1%, leaving countless other bands trying to keep their balance on the shaky ground that is today's music industry.When the world's biggest band acknowledges that the system in place to sell music to the public is broken, where does that leave the little guy? U2's free album will no doubt be a delight to many but it might just be the clearest indicator yet that the system we have in place is irreparably damaged.

I got this one today....I will attempt to answer it!

....How do I sell my music on the web?

So how does one really go about "selling" their song(s) on the internet?  Okay, so this is a real doozie of a question because it's so broad, but I will attempt to answer. (Gee I sure wish someone had told me all this stuff when I started out doing this full time less than 2 years ago-it would have saved me about a gazillion hours...but I'm NOT bitter!) I'm glad we had my nephew (Brendon, 22, a songwriter too, who'd a thunk that??) here this weekend, since he was asking about all this same stuff.  I know a lot of musicians need this information and don't know where to start or even look...it was good for me to review it all with him, so I'd know what to write here...

First of all, every song you write or want to put on a CD, needs to first be copyrighted (http://www.copyright.gov/register/sound.html).  And the old mail it to yourself trick isn't really working too well any more... You can register like 30 songs online at the .gov site at a time, for only $35!  And it's really important that you make a good if not great, demo. It can be a home recording if you have a good home mic and studio setup, but ideally it should be a professionally cut demo (some of the opportunities out there I discuss below take home recordings, but not that many). And have I ever mentioned that it's really competitive out there? So you DO want your music to sound at least as good if not better than everyone else's, right?  But that's another bloggie...

The advice from some of my friends on Linked In Music is all good advice. They say get a good  online presence.  What works well for me is to have my own website, and yes, it does have to be great, (sorry!) My new one is from Section 101 (yes, that one, the www.DeDe-Music.com one!) and it's very cheap considering...and (aw shucks) it is pretty awesome too (thanks Kathleen!), especially compared to the last one I had which it beats by about 2 million coconuts to negative 1 million coconuts (so what if I happen to love coconuts?).  I switched to Section 101, because my last website cost a whole lotta cha-ching, but looked like a whole lotta caca-doo.  Plus, Section 101 covers your Hosting and you can do all your own updates for like $265 per year. (Google: "Section 101" and ask for Kathleen, and please tell 'em DeDe sent you, okay?) I also have Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (aka MyWaste), and YouTube. Looks like I may need to do a website building blog now too, hmm?  Also: good photos and great videos seem to be where it's at now, especially music videos.

The better you get with Social Media, the better you will do, but if you're like me you need to work on it, (BTW I didn't know what LOL was for the longest time, I thought it was a new division of AOL or something...yikes)! And of course get out there and play music!  Build a fan base with your gigs, your Social Media and website by posting some of your songs (or just clips if you don't want people to rip them off free on the internet! (which, of course has NEVER happened to me; sarcasm completely unintentional).  There is free software on the web to make clips for your websites, and also even for hosting a website, etc. 

It's up to you if you want to try to compile your music into a CD to sell.  If you tour and do a lot of gigs, you probably need to have at least one good CD (8 plus songs), or EP (with 5-7 songs), and you need to get it mixed and mastered, especially if you don't use one producer for all the songs.  If you do make a CD, then iTunes and CD Baby are where it's at to sell them online if you don't want to ship it all yourself...

Once you have great songs (and some decent professional looking photos), I would join some of the what I call "Music Licensing and Opportunities (and yes, some of these "opportunites" are utter & complete BS!) Sites".  When you do, make sure you have good quality MP3's of your song available to upload to these sites: Music XRay, Broadjam.com (singer/songwriter), ReverbNation, Music Clout, & Hitlicense, and others. They all allow you to set up a free or semi-free account and upload your songs and send them to opportunities and synch licensing opportunities, for a fee.  The two best for me are Reverbnation and Broadjam. I have not personally had much success yet with the others, but it sure beats what I call "the mega-waterhose treatment" of mailing your music to all the people out there in the biz.  I did join Taxi, (and I'll save that fiasco for another time), but suffice it to say it was NOT a great investment...

So once you join, you build your page, you post your music and you submit it to the RIGHT opportunities (they give you reference songs, and a description, so please read & listen to them).  If they want a sound/song like Taylor Swift, and you sound like Otis Redding or God forbid, Kermit the Frog, please DON'T waste your time and money submitting! Okay, now repeat after me: "join, build, post, submit", "join, build, post, submit".  Got it? Now wasn't that easy?

Let me know how you are doing with all of this, okay?  If you have any questions, you can comment here or email me on my webpage at: www.DeDe-Music.com/About.  Please check out my weekly  "Musician Stuff" BLOG here:  http://dedewedekind.blogspot.com/, & if you have time after reading all this, please LIKE me at: www.facebook.com/DeDeWedekind. Thanks!!!

All the best to you in music & this thing we call "life"!  DeDe

I'm on iTunes (finally!)

Hi there Friends & Fans, OKAY SO THIS IS PRETTY EXCITING, MY NEW CD "Love & Fairy Tales" IS NOW ON iTunes (sigh). Before you laugh, let's talk about the level of difficulty here...  First I had to make the EP/CD, then get all the (retouched) photos, then get all the photos and songs to fit the format on the ReverbNation store to get them to push it to iTunes. I also had to first publish the hardcopy CD on my Reverbnation Store. For some reason the hardcopies didn't happen this time on CD Baby...oh well. No worries. Then I had to pay Reverb to put it on iTunes. Then I had to keep my fingers crossed that iTunes would publish it quickly-and (yay) they did! This was AFTER my release in June 2013 about a month and a half later, so I was, um, a bit late shall we say?  Anyways, it's there now. It took about 5 DAYS to get it posted to ReverbNation because they were having severe bandwidth issues with me getting my songs uploaded and the photos, etc. for the CD....it was a very taxing time for me. All's well that ends well anyways, so here's the URL: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/blame-it-on-the-summertime/id681711229?i=681711394  Ta-Da! (I really hope you upload it since it's less than $6.00!!) A bargain I might add... Thanks! DeDe :)  PS the Christmas CD is really coming along great, (if I may say so), and I really think you will like the 2 videos coming from my visit to LA: "One Child", my original new Christmas song, and "The Fairy Tale Song" (fun & whimsical-I really love what Jesse is doing to this video so far!!) I'll certainly keep you posted about when they arrive, AND a few contest updates for you as well... :) www.DeDe-Music.com www.facebook.com/DeDeWedekind