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The third episode of the Matt Keil Podcast. In this episode:
- Five Extra Revenue Streams for Bands and Musicians
- Review of Rockmate app for iPad

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.

In the 21st century, record companies are losing their relevance. Why? It’s simple. The Internet.

Record companies failed to respond quickly enough to the benefits and challenges that the World Wide Web brought. For example its early failures to deal with Music piracy and the lack of availability of music online in the late 1990s. Today, we’re spoilt for choice and can easily shop around at various retailers for online music such as iTunes, Amazon, Napster, 7digital etc as well as the various streaming services such as Spotify and Last.fm.

I’m rubbish with lyrics. In my band, I don’t think I’ve ever written a single lyric – I don’t view music as some sort of poetic outlet and I’ve rarely written a piece of music that expresses some innermost feeling. I don’t say this as a dig at other musicians, rather I don’t share the same gift they have. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t spot a bad lyric every now and then.

Last month I got myself a HTC Android phone. As much as I’m a fan of Uncle Steve’s Apple products £40+ per month for an iPhone is just too much for me. Still, it’s not like getting an Android is a bad thing, there’s tons of apps to rival Apple’s growing collection and I was pretty much sold on the seamless integration with Google accounts (mail, calendar etc). I was browsing the Android market recently and I decided to check out what music apps existed for us musicians for those times when we’ve forgotten our tuners.