When all of our partners here at Branch realized that our growing families and increasing responsibilities were necessitating a change in our level of involvement at the label we all feared that the end was coming near.

This week was my last week at Branch Records - unfortunately England beckons me back and it’s time for me to leave the USA!

Between illegal downloading sites, online streaming and artists trying to compete with this; there is a lot of free music out there. In fact if you are not picky about the music you’re listening to, you could be in the position to never have to pay for music. YouTube for when at your computer, Pandora on your phone for when you’re on the move, the radio in your car… this not even including the music you can download for free, rip on to CDs, or upload onto your preferred MP3 player. This increase in the availability of free music has sent the music industry into frenzy.

Ok, so first things first. I don’t like Apple. At all. Yes there products are very pretty looking, and I know people rave about them. But - I don’t like the way Apple products function and their business strategy kind of annoys me. I don’t feel people should have to box themselves as Apple users vs. Windows/Microsoft/Sony etc. users. I think you pay a lot of money for Apple’s image, rather than purely their function. So all of this being said, in comes Ping. For those who are yet to hear about or use Ping; Ping is a social network for music. “Follow your favorite artists and friends to discover the music they’re talking about, listening to, and downloading”. Initially I thought – neat. Sounds great.

As an artist trying to break into the wider music industry and earn a living out of your creativity you may be psyched to get signed to one of the ‘big four’ – Universal Music Group, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment or Warner Music Group. This being said, a glance at the music industry news will give you a brief idea of the trouble some of these majors are in. EMI this week reported loses off $802 million. What the news won’t tell you is the number of artists contractually tied to the major labels, but not earning any money and finding their creativity restricted by major record label’s commercial expectations.

I honestly believe that a large proportion of people who used to habitually illegally download all the music that they desired have stopped. I know I did. I came to the point where downloading was time consuming, unreliable and didn’t satisfy me as a fan of music. So for a few years I really didn’t consume much new music.

We always seem to have the most amazing situations manifest themselves with people here at Branch Records. And now we have an intern all the way from England.

I wonder sometimes why I like making music. Heck, sometimes I wonder if I really like making music at all. There are just things that I really hate about music

It’s odd how the existence of a band can eerily mimic the cycle of a human life. Maybe it’s not really too much to wrap the mind around, considering it takes human beings to create and perform art—so naturally, the larger group entity will take on the shape of its contributors. Bands are born as music stirs in a like-minded group of individuals. As it grows and begins to explore its fledgling ideas, its legs are made stronger over time. Relationships are formed internally as well as externally. Sometimes, various things are left to breathe or grafted in. Sleep will occasionally occur, and though you may not see or hear from it for a while, upon closer observation, one can see tiny breaths being taken steadily beneath the surface.

Well it's summer and you need some good tunes so that you can make memories, roll the windows down, and enjoy the sunshine. We here at Branch Records would like to provide those tunes! So We have two albums this month for sale for only 99cents!!! Check out Songbook 1 from The Carolinas or Hide and Seek for Six from The Cries of for only 99cents each.

Myself and the entire Branch Records crew are at Less Conf 3010 in Atlanta, GA this weekend. We arrived last night and have already met a lot of interesting people.

Join Branch Records artist The Carolinas for a live web event

    When Apple announces a new product, it has captured the attention of the music world since the inception of the iPod. Wednesday held the long awaited announcement of the Apple Tablet. While most people have fumed their disappointment due to its features and limits, I think most people forget that there is no way real way this device can flop. Personally, I could care less about the games and trinket apps, all 140,000 of them. The way I see, it is all about the potential tactile control, interfacing with my desktop, and the ability to create (yes, I said create) live music.

    Consume all the eBooks and hollywood movies you like, but at the end of the day 10 inches of screen space leaves room for a controller, scratch pad, and piano keys. All we ever needed from Apple was a touch screen and an audio output. Steve Jobs gave us that and a whole lot more. So go ahead and knock it all you like. A year from now you will see a lot of indie musicians, club DJs, and speakers running the show with tablet in hand. As for me, it will soon be my DAW mixing controller much like this one. I'm stoked!

    Unfortunately it seems when you experience things to the extreme, they often happen in the negative sense. Over the course of a few months, we had been in casual talks with a band out of San Diego. It's during these casual talks that you learn a lot about the band, their goals, and get a sense about them as people. Once it became clear that there wouldn't be space in our roster for the near future, there was a real potential for a difficult and ugly conversation. Having done this a few times, I've come to expect it. This band took me by surprise. Instead of having the reaction of anger, dire disappointment, or screaming bomb threats, they wrote me this:

 

Hi Josh,

It has been such a pleasure keeping in touch with you during the past few months, and we look forward to taking you up on your offer to have a place to crash.

We all appreciate your transparency, and we look forward to sending you our songs anyway for all of your listening pleasure. We hope all the success possible for Branch Records and all of your great artists. Perhaps the timing will be better for all of us sometime in the future.

Best wishes, and we look forward to keeping tabs on all of your artists in the future. Please let us know if there is any flyering, or the sorts, that we can do for you in San Diego.

- George Thornton - incomplete neighbor

     Now it's been over a month since they sent me this and it still resonates. Why? Because every time I deal with over reactions and bad attitudes from perspective bands, it reminds me of the great dialogue I've had with a band in San Diego called Incomplete Neighbor. Life is too short to waste it on arrogance and drama queens. Find great talented people to work with and you will always be happy in whatever you do. These guys were worth every second.

Panama City - Haiti Urgent Relief Efforts

Most of you are aware of the devastation that took place last night in Haiti. Although this is extremely short notice, a local chapter of pilots called Wings of Compassion and Northstar Church are gathering together emergency supplies for relief efforts that will fly out ASAP. From now until Thursday (January 14th) at 5pm you can drop off any of the listed supplies below at the Northstar Church office.

Medical Supplies Needed

Band Aids, Gauze, Bandages
Water purification tablets
Neosporin, Alcohol swabs, Hydrogen Peroxide
Suture Supplies
Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Tylenol
 
Food Needs

Canned meats
vienna sausages and pork and beans
bread
self-rising flour
snacks such as protein bars or granola
powdered milk
baby formula and baby food

Please copy, paste, tweet, text, call, facebook, or email this to as many people as you can. All supplies are being flown to Tampa, FL, then working in conjunction with local Haitian missionaries and Agape Flights for aid flights starting tomorrow!

 - Josh

        In reading a lot of music predictions for 2010 and in years to come, I found myself pondering that myself. While I have listed a "wish list" for 2010, I am beginning to seperate more and more on my thoughts for the future of music. There was a time in history where music was a service. It was not until Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph that music began to transition to more of a product, than service; a transition that has continued for over a century now. It is this reason that my opinions of changed slowly over time. The future of music is not ad dollars, track sales, or iphone apps. The future is not licensing as more people believe daily and the lawsuits that follow. The future of music, like most things, is found immersed in its distant past. It's going to be a long road, but I think Jonathan, our developer from Threadsafe Labs, said it best, "be on the radar, but off the grid".

        While everyone else immerses themselves in expensive promotion which at its best is selling the product of music and at its worst interruptive marketing for corporate ads, I'm putting my energy elsewhere. I'm banking on a handful of people like you passionate about seeing what artists can really create, not so much the product they can produce. The future I, and Branch Records, are working toward exists to provide a service that inspires and entertains. Keep in mind, Mozart never had CD's, T-shirts, or buttons to sell. He was probably too busy writing and performing to care and the people were too hungry to listen to notice what it cost or didn't cost. I'd like to take modern music back to that place.

         There are many challenges that await us over the next year and we are exactly where I want us to be. We are not in a dyer financial need, our accounts are quite healthy. We are making some very spectacular investments, but they are things we have planned for. With that said, I've decided to do something completely different. Although we are not a non-profit organization, I took about 5 minutes to open a paypal for gifts. I would call them more investment gifts than donantions and anything you invest will go to increase the health of our organization. Seem odd? Perhaps, but I've always thought you invest in things you want to see grow and have a pretty good chance of success, not things in danger of dying. Sorry I don't have a sad story for you, just a vision and a little button that gives you a chance to be a part. Happy New Year!!!

8 tracks discovered or rediscovered on this, rather warm, December Saturday. I hope you enjoy.

Harold T. Wilkins. Or How To Wait For A Very Long Time    Fanfarlo    Reservoir

Born On A Horse    Biffy Clyro    Only Revolutions

Chasing Pirates    Norah Jones    The Fall

Slight Figure Of Speech    The Avett Brothers    I And Love And You

Mary Jo   Brazos    A City Just As Tall

The Boy With An Anchor    Oh No Oh My    Dmitrij Dmitrij

Halfway Home    TV On The Radio    Dear Science

Work Day    It Hugs Back     Inside Your Guitar (video below)

WORK DAY - It Hugs Back from razrez on Vimeo.

    As most of you know by now Apple has purchase music streaming service LALA. Here's the good news, this is one more step closer to the world never purchasing music again, but instead playing any track anytime anywhere...sounds like a service similar, if not exactly like Pandora, Last.fm, or grooveshark. Sure things will integrate more easily with iTunes and Apple products. You hear people say the third or fourth revision on a software is the best, but after that it becomes too cumbersome and bulky to make any real advances. I'm convinced we have reached that point with digital distribution. There are a lot of great music services that are far better than Apple, both for the artist and consumer.
    

    Before you think I'm just another critic, I'd like to list a few things that would have a much larger impact and things I would like to see for the betterment of music:

1. More competition between vinyl replicators - Currently there are a handful of companies left that press vinyl in the world. As a matter of fact I could count them on two hands. The machinery is o-l-d and the process could use a bit more of 21st century technology to bring the cost down. The reason I say vinyl is because it's impossible to digitally replicate that experience.

2. Let me access music on the cloud, legitimately - If I want to access ten songs and play them over and over again in a single playlist, let me. I don't want to build stations. I just want a simple storage of my playlists and maybe 20-30 songs offline at a time (i.e. my playlist for the day). Bottom line is I actually want music off my hard drive.

3. A music tribe - I see so much stuff involving music and money. I think the comments News Corp has made about charging for band pages on Myspace drove me over the edge. It's not that we should not think of it. I would gladly pay for a Myspace clean of spamming, quality players to share music, ad-free, and events that are really focused around building a music community, but alas we all know that ain't ever gonna happen. I hope one day someone will take a serious look at music platform built for band to band communication with a quick snap shot for the fans.

    I'm ready to take a few things off the grid. By that I mean the things industry says you "must do" to be successful. There are a lot of people basically duplicating the same thing over and over and over and over again. Things like this make me wish I was a industrial machine designer or software developer. The door is wide open for so many things in music and right now it feels like most people are working on the wrong thing.

    Post your thoughts, please. I'd love to listen.

     Over the next few weeks, we will be introducing you to a couple new bands joining the Branch family. The first is The Gills out of Pensacola, Florida. We've been talking with these guys for months and constantly sharing our visions back and forth between each other in hopes that our goals would directly line up. Well that has happened with their new release, "Forget What You See". The guys have a pretty eclectic experience ranging from opening for Sheryl Crow, touring full-time, and you can also see them regulars on the Norwegian Ship The Pearl cruising the Caribbean.

     Monday Night December 14th, 2009 tune into www.branchrecords.com as the guys will be streaming live from Branch HQ starting at 7PM CST. Join the Ustream and enjoy the show! As the new site begins to take place, you will also be able to purchase tunes very shortly through your Branch account. You'd think that would be first thing we would do. After all a record label is suppose to sell music, right? There's a bit more to the picture we are just beginning to paint together. If you absolutely can't wait after the stream, just email and ask for a pre-release copy.

   Branch is a musical community. I love, love, love every second I get to be a part of building it. Our studio has been going really well ever since Lee and I folded our personal studio together over a year ago. We've done a lot of great projects, but we are only two part-time people and the studio at Branch Records is a good size operation. It's never really been about client work as much as it has been about fulfilling dreams and visions. In the midst of building a co-working space to spur the creative local community, the natural progression for us was to offer a co-working studio with members just like the gym. While it is hard to incorporate everything for everyone, we can easily support a musical arts collective for people to track there music, record clients, and be creative.

   Perhaps this could be the start of something bigger with more niche co-creative spaces popping up for all different walks of life. I've got high hopes for the progression. It's already helped make an investment in a brand new Protools HD system. If something seems impossible by yourself, it might be time to find someone to share the burden.  

    If you want to know more about co-working spaces check out on of my favorites called "the hub" in Halifax, Nova Scotia or if you are interested in grassroots musical community read the more unpolished balances of "This Book is Broken: A  Broken Social Scene Story"