from left to right: Pancho Tekila (La Pulqueria / Guitar), Roman Rojas (Singer/Songwriter/Producer), Jordi (La Pulqueria / Guitarrist)
While they were promoting their new record “17″ in New York City, I had the chance to sit down and interview Warner Latina’s Grammy nominated Mexican rock band Motel. They were the most Grammy nominated alternative rock band for the Latin Grammys in 2007
I met up with Warner Music Latina’s recoding artist Motel for their first interview with Life In Music V-Cast. They passed through NYC to promote their new album “17″ due to be released on January 29th. Motel were the most nominated alternative act for the Latin Grammy in 2007.
From Left to right: Rubén Puente, Emil Guillermo “Billy” Méndez, RR Media Music Producer Roman Rojas, Rodrigo Dávila, José “Pepe” Damián
I stopped by the offices of Arc Music in NYC to interview the CFO Juan Carlos Barguil for Life In Music Podcast episode 11.
Roman Rojas (Producer RR Media), Juan Carlos Barguil (CFO Arc Music/Musica De La Calle)
Analia Garcia (Producer Avenida Acceso/Singer) and Juan Carlos Barguil (CFO Arc Music/Musica De La Calle)
Check out Juan Carlos’ interview on Life In Music Podcast
Spidart allows music fans to invest in their favorite bands that upload music to the site. When the music starts selling the profits are split between Spidart, the artist, and the fans. Therefore the fans become the executive producers of the music.
That’s right, Radiohead has become their own label and in the process so far they’ve sold 1.2 million albums in one week. Here is the article from Mashable.
Click hee to check out Robert Rose’s interview on Life In Music Podcast
Robert G. Rose is the CEO of AIM Tell-A-Vision Group, a division of Artist and Idea Management, Ltd. and Executive Producer of all AIM TV programming. A media veteran, Rose’s career in the industry spans over 15 years and includes a combination of success in general market and Latino-targeted television.In 1996, after a successful career in English-language television, Rose moved to New York from his native Tennessee and joined Univision Television Group, the nation’s premiere Spanish-language network. While at Univision, Rose played a vital role in convincing many Fortune 500 and “general market” advertisers to effectively reach out to the growing and untapped U.S. Latino market. Also while at Univision, Rose recognized the opportunity for advertisers to reach the “larger half” of the Latino market, U.S.-born Latinos, via English-language television. Rose officially began Artist and Idea Management, Ltd. in February 2000.“Simply put, reaching young U.S.-born Latinos is not a language issue but a cultural relevance issue. What’s relevant programming to Latinos who are born elsewhere and migrate here is just not relevant to their sons and daughters, who were born in the U.S. and now make up the majority of the U.S. Hispanic market. These are two distinct markets and should be treated as such,” says Rose.In 2001, Rose and company brought to life and independently produced the first successful English-language, weekly syndicated television program targeted to Latinos, Urban Latino TV (ULTV). The historic program began as a local cable show in New York then went on to air nationally for two successful seasons. The show won critical acclaim and won back to back Imagen Awards in 2003 and 2004 for “Best National Informational Program,” beating out programming from networks, such as Univision, HBO, Telemundo, Fox Sports and more.In 2003, Rose formed television production banner, Maximas Productions with Renzo Devia, the Senior Producer of Urban Latino TV. In addition to having produced ULTV, the award-winning production team of Rose and Devia currently produce American Latino TV (2005 Imagen Award Winner), a culture and lifestyle program celebrating Latin culture in America; LatiNation (2004 Telly Award Winner), the first English-language program to target young Latin males; Sonidos, a quarterly series of music specials, The American Latino Presents specials and Play More TV (Fall 2006).Rose’s executive produced programs can be viewed weekly on English- language broadcast stations in over 100 markets across the U.S., on targeted cable networks and via DVDs available at major retailers. His programming set the standard for culturally relevant television and pioneered the model of English- language programming for U.S. Latinos by attracting major media outlets and an impressive list of Fortune 500 Advertisers.As CEO, Rose oversees The AIM Tell-A-Vision Group, which is a vertically integrated company responsible for developing, financing and managing all aspects (distribution, production, marketing and advertising sales) of AIM TV programming. Rose serves as an industry spokesperson in presenting a more accurate portrayal on how Latinos are depicted on U.S. television and how marketers and media should better target the underserved American Latino audience.Rose, Devia and their team at AIM Tell-A-Vision and Maximas Productions are continuously developing a slate of new projects geared towards breaking barriers and stereotypes by presenting positive and entertaining images of the melting pot that is modern-day America.Rose has been featured presenter, panelist, and keynote speaker at many industry conferences and has been extensively quoted in the trade & consumer press for his pioneering role in reaching young U.S. Latinos.Rose is an active member of NATPE (National Association of Television Programming Executives), NATAS (National Academy of Television Arts and Science) and IRTS (International Radio and Television Society).
I can’t begin to say enough good things about the band Orishas , I checked them out live at NYC’s Nokia Theatre.
Orishas is a group that blends hip hop and rap rhythms with traditional Cuban music.
This was the kind of concert that you go to and you don’t know any of the songs or lyrics, but the melodies are so good that you find yourself singing along the hooks with the rest of the dedicated fan audience. If anybody outthere reads this post and know that Orishas is coming to your neck of the woods, please do yourself a favor. Find out where tickets are being sold and just go.
Thanks to Analia Garcia (singer / producer) and the whole team at Elias Arts and Avenida Acceso for inviting me to the show, I had a blast.
Roman Rojas (Producer RR Media) and Yotuel Romero (Orishas band member) backstage after the show at Nokia Theatre in NYC.
Orishas bringing down the house!
Still rocking it! Amazing show!
This is a very interesting article from Ars Technica on a study that claims that the P2P’s influence on the demise of the music business is not legitimate as we thought.
A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.
Entitled “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis,” the study matched an extensive sample of music downloads to American music sales data in order to search for causality between illicit downloading and album sales. Analyzing data from the final four months of 2002, the researchers estimated that P2P affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.
I sat down and received an incredible music sermon from music veteran Ann Ruckert. She shared with me what it means to be a musician, and how we are able to change people’s lives and our own through music.
Ann Ruckert has produced, played and / or sung on over 3,000 commercially released recordings. Ann has worked with Michel LeGrand, Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Merry Clayton, Sarah Dash, Quincy Jones. T Rex, and Strawbs. Musical coordinator / contractor for major motion pictures and TV soundtracks including Housesitter with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn; Boys on the Side with Whoopie Goldberg; and Lovesickwith Dudley Moore.
Internationally known as a musician’s musician, Ann studied orchestration and composition at Juilliard and London’s Royal Academy of Music, as well as privately with Parisian teacher Nadia Boulanger, Helen Jordan and David Sorin Collyer. She continued her studies in ethnomusicology at New York University graduate school.
She is continuing her work as an award winning studio musician, projects coordinator, and freelance A&R person.
She is also the Co-founder of theJazz Foundation of America, with pianists Dr. Billy Taylor and Herb Storfer, and Board of Directors.
Ann was also a Governor, Trustee, Vice President of National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for the New York chapter; Chair of Education Committee; 4-year member of TV committee for the Grammy Awards Show, from 1982-2003.
I’ve heard that some colleges are offering courses on understanding Facebook. My Facebook education comes from login in to my Facebook account everyday. In the process I get to see the site morph and grow. Today I logged in to Facebook and noticed a flyer with a very pretty girl. At the bottom of the flyer it has the option of creating your own flyer that will appear on people’s Facebook pages (for a fee) or looking at other flyers. I started looking at other flyers and found this artists named I am Jen, she had a flyer advertising her music. I clicked on the flyer that took me to her own personal site outside Facebook, on her site I watched her independently produced music video and to my pleasant surprise the music was very, very good.
This is a great way for artists to independently get the word out about their work. This is nothing new to us in the web 2.0 world, but it’s always nice finding music one likes without having any of the big labels shoving it down our throats.
Anyways, here is “Blowing My Mind” video by I am Jen, do you dig it? You’ll be the judge, that’s the beauty of this brave new world of media, we choose what we like, a truly democratic system.
Very cool vid.
This is really incredible news.
I’ve been informed by Miguel Angel Moro of Appleweblog that October is Hispanic heritage month at all Apples stores. To celebrate the month Apple is putting together a series of concerts with Latin icons such as Juan Luis Guerra. Click on this link to find out about the upcoming series of Apple instore concerts.
This shows you the interest and commitment that Apple is showingto become a real player in the new business model of the music industry.
I had a chance to talk to the CEO of As Is Entertainment Jamie Propp. Jamie produced SUBPLAY, the very first record of New York City subway musicians. He was also responsible for starting the internet department at Jive records in NYC, there he worked with acts such as Britney Spears, Brackstreet Boys, and N’Sync. Jamie’s latest project is Hatian singer Manze Dayila.
Signs of the end of the old music business. This rapper was able to do it all by himself with a little help from his friends at YouTube and Myspace.You go boy!
Starbucks will be giving away 50 million free digital songs to promote their wireless i-Tunes music service. Want to find out more? Click right here.
Cheaper than i-Tunes, but does that mean better? Judge for yourself, here is an excerpt from the Ars Technica article:
Amazon has launched a public beta of its long-anticipated digital music download store, offering more than 2 million songs as MP3 files. Those who have been paying attention to the digital music business can probably guess what’s included: tracks from EMI and Universal Music Group, music from another 20,000 independent labels, and $0.99 downloads. We’ve been shopping the store all morning to get a sense of how strong the launch really is, and here’s what we found.
Danilo Alvarez is a veteran of the advertising industry. As a creative director he has worked for Agencies such as: Accent Marketing in Miami, Bates World Wide in Miami, Disney, The Bravo Group in NYC among others. Danilo is usually the person in charge of choosing the music that’s going to be used on a TV Commercial, and throughout his career he has worked with some of the top music houses and composers of the commercial music world. On this episode he shares with us some of his experiences producing commercials and the importance of music in the advertising industry.
To listen to this episode 3 click on this link. You can also find the podcasts on i-Tunes by typing my name: Roman Rojas.
Hey guys, I just uploaded Life In Music Podcast episode 2. On this episode I talk with Cuban guitarrist Richard Padron. Richard is one of the young up and coming guitar players in the New York City scene. He is currently playing with Brazilian legend Ze Luis among other great musiciansGo to my Podomatic page to check out the latest episode. You can also check out the episode if you type “Roman Rojas” on i-Tunes.
Is really amazing to see that people are beginning to explore the possibility of giving music away for free and still make money. This is a great article on ArsTechnica about We7, Peter Gabriel’s new company that will be giving away music for free the music because of their ad placement on every song. Here is part of the article from ArsTechnica:
Peter Gabriel is one of the founding investors of a new music download service that offers tracks for free to users who are willing to listen to ads. The service, called We7 for some reason, offers MP3 versions of tracks with advertising attached to the beginning of songs. Four weeks after downloading the track, the user can then download a version without the ad. Artists get paid by the advertisers, music lovers get free tunes, and advertisers get to reach music lovers.
Excellent!
