CDBaby has long been the entry point for independent artists longing for digital distribution. Creating a CDBaby account would give you the channel for getting your music in iTunes and other online digital download services.

Now CDBaby has launched a new feature that allows for all CDs distributed digitally through them to be available for download directly from them on the artist’s CDBaby page.

This new arrangement does not allow for individual track downloads however. Only full CDs may be purchased for download from CDBaby. The cost is variable depending on the price set by the artist. The download price is the same as the physical CD price.

Even with the lack of individual track downloads, there is much to recommend this new service. A digital CD is downloaded as a zip file containing all tracks in unprotected, high quality (200kbps) MP3 format, a high resolution cover image, and a text file containing the liner notes.

Even better, for the artist who is selling, is that CDBaby only keeps their standard 9% for digital sales. That means an album selling for $9.99 will net the artist $9.09 when sold on CDBaby.com. That same album distributed by CDBaby and sold via iTunes would result in an artist payment of only $6.37.

As an example of what this looks like on the CDBaby website, I’ve chosen On A Farm. It’s the latest CD from the band Acoustic Endeavors, of which our very own John Lawless is the banjo picker.

If you are itching to join the digital download game as an independent artist, CDBaby is making it easier than ever.

WNCW 88.7 FM in NC has posted the results of their online voting for the best releases of 2006. The results take the form of Top 100 Lists starting with a comprehensive list and then broken out into genre specific lists. The Bluegrass list is the better part of the way down the page. It contains only the top 50 releases in the bluegrass genre.

Our very own John Lawless appears on the list at #38. The release is On a Farm from the band of which he’s a part, Acoustic Endeavors.

Congrats John!

Each year, the Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend holds a faculty concert on the Saturday night of their three day instructional event. It is the only part of the weekend which is open to the general public (not registered to attend the 3 day workshop) and is always a highlight, both for the students and the local bluegrass community.

The concert will be held this year on Saturday, November 11 at 7:30 at the Holiday Inn Roanoke, the site for all the Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend activities.

The format is a loose, relaxed jam-like setting, where the many artists are grouped in a variety of configurations - either solo, duo or in groups - with a good mix of vocal and instrumental music. Both the performers and the audience always enjoy the fun, “no pressure” environment as well as the chance to witness or be a part something as potentially spontaneous as this.

The musicians will sometimes not even choose the song they will perform until a few minutes before they go on stage, a sign both of their high level of skill and professionalism, and the sort of fun they have with this show.

Performing on the RBW faculty concert this year are Eddie Adcock, George Shuffler, Roland White, Craig Smith, Don Rigsby, BlueRidge, Jack Lawrence, Bull Harman, Herschel Sizemore, David McLaughlin, Acoustic Endeavors and many others - plus a number of unannounced surprise guests.

Maps and driving directions can be found on the Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend web site.

When we first got to Nashville on Monday afternoon, Brance and I were able to stop by the studios of XM Satellite Radio’s Bluegrass Junction at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and meet with host Kyle Cantrell. We have corresponded many times with Kyle, and enjoyed having a chance to meet face to face, and speak in person for the first time.

If you were tuned in to Bluegrass Junction on Monday afternoon, you may have heard us on XM with Kyle - a number of readers have written to say that they did. He was kind enough to play several tracks from the new Acoustic Endeavors CD, On A Farm, which he has featured a good bit on XM this year. Kyle also talked with Brance and I about The Bluegrass Blog, and prompted us to decribe the site and what we do here us to his listeners.

Thanks to Kyle and XM Nashville Executive Producer, Joyce Rizer, for their hospitality. See you guys next month at IBMA!

John Lawless, one of your authors here at The Bluegrass Blog, will be a guest on streaming Internet radio station WorldWideBluegrass.com today (7/14) at 4:30 p.m. (EDT).

John will join Gracie Muldoon during her Muldoon In The Afternoon program, along with bandmates Warren Amberson and Kelly Green of Acoustic Endeavors. They will surely discuss their new CD, On A Farm, as well as John’s work here on The Bluegrass Blog.

Listen to the interview live via streaming audio at 4:30 today.

As Apple’s iTunes Music Store has grabbed up a larger segment of the worldwide music purchasing pie, many smaller independent labels and artists have been concerned that their releases would be lost amidst the slick promotion for mainstream pop projects on iTunes. Legal music download sales tripled in 2005 to just over one billion dollars (US), with digital downloads accounting for approximately 6% of all music sales. Online distributors’ catalogs were said to contain more than 2 million tracks at the end of last year, with iTunes commanding a majority of download sales in many markets.

From its inception, Apple has insisted that it wanted to broaden rather than restrict iTunes’ offerings, and initially reached out to smaller labels. Contrary to what many believe, however, Apple does not host the audio files themselves, and smaller labels often were unprepared for the technical aspects of converting files for digital distribution and making them available for iTunes on an appropriate server for download. The larger bluegrass labels (like Rounder, Sugar Hill and Rebel) now have much of their catalog on iTunes, with new projects generally released simultaneously on audio CD and iTunes. Rebel has even begun to make out-of-print titles available for iTunes-only release, a trend we hope will become more widespread.

A number of companies have arisen to assist small labels (and artists) get their music into the digital distribution realm, and iTunes is seeing more and more projects that are independently produced show up in their catalog. CD Baby has been very effective in getting independent projects into iTunes, and a number of wholesale distributors are also getting into this business. Copper Creek Records has indicated that their catalog will soon be available for digital download, and are being assisted in this effort by their primary distributor, Select-O-Hits.

Two artists we found recently on iTunes are friends of The Bluegrass Blog whose music should appeal to our readers.

Larry Keel has been a prominent fixture on the alternative acoustic scene for some time, though his more recent efforts have been a bit more mainstream bluegrass. His current band, Natural Bridge, has a grassy edge, and one of Larry’s Tunes, Mountain Song, was featured on the previous release from The Del McCoury Band. He now has three projects available to sample or purchase for download from iTunes.

If you have iTunes installed, you can find his solo project, Journey, the debut CD with his new band, Larry Keel & Natural Bridge, and a duet project with his brother Gary, The Keel Brothers Vol. 1.

Also up on iTunes are two CDs from Acoustic Endeavors, both their debut release, Coming Of Age… again, and the current On A Farm. Both CDs are made up of all-original material, and feature one of this blog’s authors on banjo.

These are projects that were wholly artist-produced, or by artist-owned independent labels, showing that this sort of release can make its way into such a dominant venue if the artists are diligent and persistent.

The June issue of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine is on its way to subscribers and retailers, with Del McCoury (and the band) on the cover. The Del piece is a substantial one, written by Chris Stuart.

Also included this month are features on Blue Moon Rising, Shad Cobb, and The McCormick Brothers. You can get more info on Bluegrass Unlimited, including subscription details, by visiting their web site.

Within the next week or so, you’ll be able to view selected content from the new issue online, including most of the reviews, the National Bluegrass Survey, and at least one or two of the feature articles. The May issue is still up on the site now.

John adds: The new issue also includes a great review of our new Acoustic Endeavors CD, On A Farm. Yee hah!

As Brance mentioned, I’m in St. Louis teaching this weekend, and had to miss a radio interview my Acoustic Endeavors bandmates did with WVTF, the public radio powerhouse in southwest Virginia. WVTF’s popular Back To The Blue Ridge program, hosted by Seth Williamson and Kinney Rorrer, is broadcast on 9 frequencies in central and western VA at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoons, and rebroadcast the following Saturday at 6:00 a.m.

All the other Acoustic Endeavors members will join Seth and Kinney in the studio tomorrow to talk about the new CD, On A Farm, and play some tracks from the recording. You can find more info on Back To The Blue Ridge - or listen to the show online this Sunday (3/12) at 2:00 p.m. (EST) - on the WVTF web site.

The show is broadcast on 89.1 FM from Roanoke, VA and is simulcast on adjacent frequencies outside the reach of the Roanoke tower.

After almost three years of promises, the new release from Acoustic Endeavors is finally available. Like their two previous CDs, On A Farm contains all original material, written by Warren Amberson and Kelly Green, the band’s primary vocalists. Other band members include Dewey Peters on guitar, Billy Hurt on fiddle, plus one of our blog authors, John Lawless on banjo.

The material is a mix of bluegrass, gospel and folk-inflected acoustic music performed in a straighforward, unassuming manner. Audio samples are available on the Acoustic Endeavors web site.

The band asked us to mention that radio promos will go out next week (10/24) and that John will have copies with him at IBMA - find him at the AcuTab booth.

This past weekend, I had the enormous honor and good fortune to perform at the 40th Anniversary Reunion of what has come to be described as the very first multi-day bluegrass festival, which had been promoted by Carlton Haney, and situated on Cantrell’s Horse Farm just north of Fincastle. VA. This reunion festival was only a one day event, and there is hope that it will become an annual one, held just a short distance from the site of the original 1965 festival.

Like the festival that followed in 1966 at Cantrell’s Farm, and subsequent Carlton Haney festivals in Berryville, VA over the next ten years or so, the original Fincastle event was partly a celebration of the music and the artists who played it, and partly a example of the missionary zeal and desire to educate people about the history of bluegrass music - and Bill Monroe’s central role in that story - that Haney took on as his personal crusade. Haney became famous for putting different groups of musicians together on stage, often using them to recreate the lineup of a previous version of The Bluegrass Boys, or to make some other point about the music in addition to entertaining his audiences. (more…)