Note: This is an essay I wrote during my University studies and is by no means a definitive guide to this excellent piece. Musical excerpts are for educational purposes only.

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt has become one of the most important and influential 20th century composers around. His musical journey throughout his life has been profound, leading him from the fashionable composing techniques in his early years to becoming a leading composer in a style commonly named ‘Holy Minimalism’ or ‘Sacred Minimalism’ similar to composers such as Tavener and Górecki. His early compositions were mostly in a Neo-Classical style influenced by composers such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev, but he soon moved on to using serialism techniques and employing the Twelve-tone system in his work. This however proved unpopular with the Soviet establishment at the time as well as leaving Pärt musically unfulfilled.

As you may have heard from the last Episode of the Matt Keil Podcast, my band Le Monnier found ourselves in a dispute with Sony Music over rights to a song we uploaded to YouTube.

We think Sony may have been making money out of our music by falsely claiming one of our songs as their own. Are they doing this to other bands? We hope not. After Sony finally removed their claim to one of our videos, I posted this blog video on the band’s YouTube channel.

I recently blogged comparing digital distribution companies CD Baby and Zimbalam. CD Baby came out on top for me, mainly because they don’t charge annual fee and also because they can help distribute physical copies of your music.

I recently received an e-mail from CD Baby informing me that the price of submitting an album is increasing from $39 to $49. It’s a relatively small increase but I do have some reservations about it.

Yesterday, Spotify announced that would be adding ‘Spotify Apps’ a free service allowing you to install add-ons to your Spotify software. This is going to be a pretty big deal for bands and musicians when it launches as it allows listeners to easily extended their listening experience to things like reading song lyrics, check for gig dates and connect to the artist through social networking websites. Although it’s not launched yet, bands and musicians ought to get ready by signing up to the likely partners that Spotify Apps will be incorporating.

Over the last few days, I’ve been blogging advice to bands and musicians wanting to get their music up for sale online from why self-release is great to ensuring your product is good enough. Today I will be looking at who to submit your music to in order to get in up for sale on the major retailers such as iTunes and Amazon. There are plenty of companies out there that do this such as TuneCore and ReverbNation, but today I want to compare arguably the two biggest players in this field, CD Baby and Zimbalam.