Have you seen the new homepage? It’s been totally revamped! The new menu was designed to give you more ways to get to music. Our members have put so many great songs and videos on the site, there needs to be a way to get to it all!

Broadjam news is also front and center on the homepage, keeping you current every time you come to Broadjam.

What do you think about the update? Your feedback will help us make decisions for future updates, so let us know!

Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. members!

We’re looking to hear your music news from this week. Do you have an album release we should know about? What about an event coming up? Hey, if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, let us know how if you’re doing anything to liven the day up. We’d love to hear your best Thanksgiving story!

Today is the debut of the Broadjam Artist Showcase! The Showcase will put the best musicians on Broadjam front and center. Here you’ll find contest winners and other notable Broadjam members.

The Broadjam Artist Showcase will add new artists each month. We want to give members another place to get exposure on Broadjam and give contest winners a big huzzah for their victories!

Take a look! What do you think? Have you found any artists in the Broadjam Artist Showcase that won you over?

Did you find any exciting new artists on Broadjam this week? Let us know about the best artist you’ve found and how they won you over. We think the best way to find new music is word of mouth, so help another artist get exposure and paste their link in your comment.

This week we found Camden Ray, a modern-rock artist from Salt Lake City, Utah. Definitely look him up and while you’re there listen to the song “Tokyo”. The chorus will get you hooked.

If you’d like to submit a comment about what you’re doing, enter it into our announcement blog. Otherwise, leave a comment about the best artist you found this week.

Do you have anything you’d like to promote this week? If you have any upcoming shows, releases, songs or anything else that you would like to get the word out on, post a comment. Thanks in advance for your announcements!

And since this post is about promotion, we’d like to mention the artists that will be featured in tomorrow’s Artist Spotlight. This week’s artists are the winners for our October song contests. Congratulations to these winners!

Rock Contest Winner: The Rideaways
Song of the Month Contest Winner: Patrick Dude
Guitar Solo Contest Winner: Tony Barnes
Folk Song Contest Winner: Vincent Bernay
Halloween Song Contest Winner: Mark Grayson

Greetings everyone. We’ve had some great comments posted on the new blog since it debuted last Wednesday, and we’re excited to keep it going.

Does anyone have any general or specific suggestions for what we should cover in our posts? We really want the blog to reflect the interest of our members, so please tell us what you’d be interested in discussing. Broadjam news? Music news? Would you like to use the blog to announce your own news? This is your place for discussion, so we’ll try to keep the topics flexible. Let us know what you’d like to see!

Thanks,
The Broadjam Team

Every Friday at Broadjam, we have lunch together as a group and simply talk about the week. We have a standing invitation to any of our members, anyone in the music industry or family and friends to join us. We’ve had managers, agents, DJs, brothers, sisters, moms and dads. We’ve even had performances by Broadjam members Mark Croft, Tracy Jane Comer, Jessi Lynn and many more.

Recently, we were joined by one of the great musicians of our time, Ben Sidran. Ben has worked with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Clapton, The Stones, Steve Miller, Van Morrison, Diana Ross, Bobby McFerrin and Mose Allison. He has recorded and produced numerous records, worked as a DJ, VJ, interviewer and author and had just about every other job you can imagine someone in the music industry having. As a musician, he’s clearly been around the block. As a human, he’s been around it a couple of times.

After getting to know him, I decided to reread his autobiography, “Ben Sidran: A Life In the Music.” I don’t generally do book reviews. In fact, this is the first time I’ve even attempted one, but listening to Ben talk to our team was inspiring. Although he’s had ups and downs in the biz, he’s enjoyed being part of it, whether interviewing Miles Davis or writing “The Joker” with Steve Miller. I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect that, when he’s doing these projects outside of playing music, he is expanding his vision and opening up new doors. I can certainly relate to this.

Over the course of the entire book, I was proud of the fact that Ben pays homage to those who came before him. Ben also writes about many of the musicians he’s worked with and has especially has nice words for Mose Allison, Phil Woods and his running buddy Henry. I was touched by his description of performing with his son, Leo, and the passion that radiates off of the pages when writing about his relationship with his wife, Judy.

At a studio in Minneapolis a few months ago, I met Billy and Paul Petersen, both of whom had played with Ben. In fact, Billy spent years on the road with him. When I said I was from Madison, Billy immediately asked if I knew Ben Sidran. I said that I had just met him. Listening to these guys talk about Ben, I could tell that they considered him much more than a great musician. They didn’t talk much about his amazing musicianship, but more about Ben as a human being.

Ben’s had a full career in the music business and he shares his wisdom and that of others in this fascinating book. Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

- “Radio doesn’t exist to deliver programs to the listener, but to deliver listeners to the sponsor.”
- “People have a hard time believing that history, which is written by the survivors, is actually being lived daily, by all of us.”
-”This music is not about the money, ” Eddie Hendricks said, stating the obvious. “You come to this music like you come to God. The music is about the spirit of man.”
-”Playing the blues, in a way, was simply having intercourse with Mother Nature.”

This book brings the reader on a roller coaster ride through the highs and lows of life in the music business – from greed and betrayal, to the sheer joy of making great music. If you read one book about life as a musician, this is it. If you’re interested in reading this fascinating and wonderful book, you can find it on Amazon.com.

Hey Broadjam members. We are happy to introduce you to the newest addition to our website, the Broadjam Blog. We figured that you probably can’t get enough of us

This summer, two musicians passed away. They didn’t know each other; they weren’t rock stars; they weren’t famous songwriters. They were simply two friends of mine who had a passion for music.

Christopher Bock was one of the greats in the Music Instrument business. His name was well known in the MI manufacturing and retail worlds. If you’re sitting in front of a Pro Tools rig, he was responsible for getting it to you.

CB was one of the first employees at Digidesign and became their top sales and marketing executive. I’ve been traveling to various trade shows in the industry for about 20 years and I always looked forward to seeing him. When I’d see CB coming toward me, I would simply smile. He was always so upbeat, full of ideas and willing to work with anyone, no matter who they were. The last time I saw him was in Frankfurt, Germany at Musik Messe last April where we talked business and a little about scuba diving.

Christopher and I lived thousands of miles apart, and outside of trade shows and various business meetings, we didn’t socialize. He enjoyed talking about his kids, his business ventures and the music he recorded.

CB’s passion for Digidesign was intense, and he was as dedicated as an individual could possibly be. He was ethical, smart, charismatic and simply a great guy to hang with. His impact on the growth of Digi and the music retail business can’t be measured in dollars and cents.

My heart goes out to Christopher’s family, his friends and all of the great people at Digi. It is a cliché to say that he will be missed, but he will. Rest In Peace, Christopher Bock.

Earlier this summer I went home to Michigan to visit and learned that a longtime family friend, Danny Gorton, had cancer and wasn’t doing so well. He was the oldest of a flock of kids that lived just a couple of blocks from our flock.

Back in the late sixties, my older brother and Danny had a band called the After Effects. I was about eight or nine at the time and this was my first close up experience with a real band. Danny was the coolest member of the band, and he played mainly keyboards.

I was taking organ lessons and had to learn pieces like Alley Cat, Für Elise, Winchester Cathedral and many other songs I still dread playing to this day. On occasion, the After Effects practiced in our back yard and I’ll never forget the day that Danny taught me how to play the opening keyboard lick to the Doors’ “Light My Fire.” I think I played that at least 500 times a day for the next month.

I went to visit Danny back in May and spent a couple of hours with him. He talked about fighting his disease and was leaving for Maine the next day to see an acupuncture specialist. We reminisced about the After Effects, and he told me that there had been a fundraiser for him and he was amazed at how many people showed up. I wasn’t surprised at all. Later I heard that the entire town had come out to support him.

We traded a song or two on the piano and I was still impressed by his talent. He had just gotten a George Harrison book and was working on some of the tunes. I always looked up to Danny and he continues to inspire me. He played music right up until the end.

He died a few weeks after my visit. Rest in Peace, Danny Gorton.

My friends Christopher and Danny never met, but they were both free spirits, had a passion for music, and left the world a better place. Both were hard working and cared deeply about those around them. My heart and thoughts go out to their families and friends. They will be missed.

The independent music community needs your help, and fan-sharing is a great way to spark growth and appreciation. We’re getting ready for our upcoming MailJam event in an attempt to get more of your music heard and purchased by bringing more fans to Broadjam! The process is simple: on July 26th, hit your email list to encourage as many fans, friends, family members, and fellow musicians as possible to visit Broadjam.com and your Artist Profile. Not only will you receive $.80 for each $.99 download, but the artist who sells the most downloads between July 26th and August 1st will be featured in a Broadjam newsletter and on the Broadjam homepage, and gets to choose between a $200 cash prize or a free one-year Primo MoB membership. It’s a win-win situation!

If you haven’t added any Top Artist, Song or Video picks to your profile page, now is a good time to do so. When your fans come to buy your music, you can recommend your favorite artists to them. We get a lot of feedback from this feature and find that it is very infectious.

Also, if you haven’t reviewed in a while, you may want to do so. If you review, and have your songs in the review mechanism, your songs are eligible for our Top 10 charts as well as our top-rated downloads section. And with MailJam taking place next week, I think it would be a great time to get in the review process.

In support of independent music, we’re going to sweeten the pie for this MailJam event. If you are the top selling artist and you have copied us (info@broadjam.com) on your mailing to your list, we will give you $500 in purchase credits for downloads on Broadjam. This means you’ll get 500 downloads of your choice and we’ll compensate the artists on your behalf.

The idea here is to get as many people buying independent music as we can. We believe that as a whole, the Broadjam community can assist each other and generate some traffic. So get your mailing list together and get ready for MailJam on July 26th!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or on other ways we can work together to help promote independent music, as well as ways you personally promote your music. Please feel free to share them here.

Thanks for being a member.

Roy