We’ll be down in Austin for South by Southwest this Thurs, March 17th through Sunday the 21st. We’ll be co-hosting a party with Faux Pas Productions on Saturday @5p at Lovejoys. Our very own Caitlin Krisko and The Broadcast will be performing, in addition to a few artists off Faux Pas’s roster.

If you’d like to schedule a meetup, hit us up at info@wanduta.com

Otherwise, keep up with us at twitter.com/wanduta

We are right in the thick of Midem, perhaps the largest music industry summit/conference/trade fair/schomooze fest in the world. Attendance for the event is down 13% from last year, with some companies choosing to send only a few or no delegates at all (Universal Music Group was noted as having no presence whatsoever). No doubt a sign of the times;  international travel and accommodations for a networking opportunity, albeit a very rich one, may be hard to justify at the moment.

But from the looks of it, the climate at Midem does not to be one characterized by downturn- the sheer volume of game-changing launches, partnerships, and ideas coming out of Cannes this week is overwhelming. (BTW, I’m keeping up with everything Midem on their homepage here, through Music Ally, and my industry news stalwart hypebot).

The streaming music subscription service Spotify continues to attract  attention as it closes in on a U.S. launch- understandably so, as its’ captured significant market share in Europe (as of July 2009, they had 2 million registered users in Great Britain and an additional 2 million in Europe)- In Sweden, Spotify appears to be paying out more in licensing fees to Universal Music Group than UMG’s Itunes sales royalties. Check out Bruce Houghton’s write-up of the viability of a U.S. Spotify launch, and some very interesting figures (ratio of paying/non-paying subscribers necessary for sustainability) regarding the company’s targets here. While we aren’t exactly on the precipice of U.S. Spotify launch, its’ viability in Europe is making the case for the paid subscription music pricing model vs. the Itunes pay-per-track system.

Another curious new technology that is abuzz in Cannes is MusicDNA, which is being hailed as the successor to the Mp3 as a digital file format for music- the MusicDNA file format offers a host of other content to music fans, such as videos, tour dates, lyrics, social media engagement, and more- and allegedly, the file format allows for all these features to be updated automatically in real time. For more info on MusicDNA, check this out.

These are two of the more buzzworthy topics at Midem, but are among many influential ideas/announcements/unveilings that have (and are sure to continue to) come out of the conference this week.  So why my thinly-veiled juxtaposition of these two companies?

Because as future-oriented music technology services, they appear to be occupying VERY different head spaces. Spotify is the media darling of paid-subscription streaming music services, but has several conceptual brethren- LaLa, Pandora, Grooveshark, Deezer- all subscription services that placed users libraries in the cloud, offered free streaming, and hoped to convert non-paying casual users to paying subscribed users.

The point is that Spotify is at the vanguard of a perceived industry movement towards streaming music from the cloud, rather than maintaining a library of digital music on one’s hard drive. And this makes an enormous amount of sense- once all consumer electronic devices have internet connections, what’s the functional difference between having the MP3 (or the MP3-DNA, for that matter) and having streaming access anytime, anywhere?

So are the minds behind MP3-DNA woefully ignorant of the movement towards the cloud? Probably not. But it appears that in order to make their new digital music file format effective, they need to be interacting with file-based libraries, not cloud-based. They have the ability to convert current users’ music libraries from mp3 to their rich media format (Mp3-DNA), but they better move quick- soon, it appears, everyone will be in the cloud.

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Martin Rivas, an NYC-based singer-songwriter. He is currently touring in support of his latest album “Sea of Clouds”, which is available now. We talked songwriting, influences, and of course, The Spinners:

1.  You play a lot and you have a fantastic voice.  What tips can you offer vocalists on the art of voice maintenance?

Thanks so much! Playing as often as I get to play, I definitely feel as though there are days that I don’t have as much voice as I’d like… so I pretty much go with what I’m given. Which on many days for me is nearly nothing! (laughs) Sometimes, a bit of rasp can be an advantage in a quiet environment. I love investigating and making use of the bits of squeal and snarl that I can get with varying degrees of raspy-voice-ness as opposed to being at 100%. It varies from day to day, and it’s like plugging your guitar into a different amp just to see what might come of it.

Luckily for me, I’m in the fortunate position of not having to speak much during the day, and rest is the greatest thing for me in terms of preserving my voice. Speak softly during the day, drink as much Yogi Throat Comfort Tea, or anything with some cardamom in it, and if you can, run the bathtub with really hot water, let the bathroom fill with steam, and just go and sit in there and read for 10 minutes at a clip. Those are the sort of things that work best for my voice.

2. When did you write the songs for Sea of Clouds?

The songs were written over a period of a few years. Of the tracks on the album, I think that “A New Word” was the first song that came around, and “I Need a Riff” and “Sorry to See You Go” were among the last. The discipline of taking the sonic and melodic ideas that are always floating around and fashioning them into something resembling a song is the part that seems to escape most easily from me, and it’s the hardest habit to get back into. A lot of these songs were floating around as half-completed sketches for the better part of a year before the discipline came back to complete them, which I don’t mind at all; I think it allows me to really understand the song and make it become what it wants to become. I only have a tiny handful of songs that have shown up at my doorstep completely finished, or that took 20 minutes to write; of those sort of songs, “Hide in Me” is one.

Writing songs is like therapy for me, except it doesn’t cost anything, and the sessions can last as long as I need them to. Taking a year-plus to write a song is comforting to me.

3. Who is the first person you share new songs with?

I’d have to say that my wife is the first to hear everything simply because she’s hearing every step of the process. She’ll always say, “that sounds ok” when I play her a finished demo, even if I’m totally stoked about it. She sure knows how to keep me in check. (laughs) I imagine it must be frustrating to hear the same melody six or seven hundred zillion times before it appears as part of a completed song, unless you’re the one writing it.

4. True or false.  You went through a phase when you listened to The Spinners a lot.

That’s not a phase! I STILL listen to Philippe Wynne and the Spinners all the time. I’ve pretty much spent my entire adult life working backwards with music, finding older and older songs, singers, and melodies that make me melt, and 1940s, 50s and 60s rhythm and blues is the music that I have found most appeals to me. The Spinners are one of my absolute favorites, but I’m even more fond of Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield, Sam & Dave, Jerry Butler, Smokey Robinson, Otis Redding, Louis Jordan, and lesser known folks like Walter Jackson, Billy Butler, Bill Doggett, Bobby Bland, Wynonie Harris, Jimmy Ruffin, … man, I’ll go on for 20 minutes if you let me.

5. Is there a story behind “a name scratched on a desk?”  Can you share it?

There really isn’t much of a story; I was visualizing the feelings of getting on with your life after a period of mourning. You know, after the shock, making arrangements, the wake, the funeral, and then coming back home and expecting, or being expected, to just get on with it. Those are the visuals that came to mind… someone being a memory now, a name scratched on a desk. It’s nothing new to folks who have been through it, and that’s why I wanted to say at the end, “this isn’t some sort of revelation, and it was never meant to be.”

6.  Who taught you how to play music?  Write music?

I remember singing along to 45s, and making the effort to be sure that I was singing in key, and even finding harmonies and counter-melodies, when I was 5 or 6. I think that was always around. My sister’s boyfriend kept a guitar at our house around the time I was 11, so I’d reach for that and goof around and search for things. Then my sister started taking piano lessons, so of course I’d hop on the bench and explore. It was my Uncle Joe who finally said, “enough goofing around, let’s show you some chords,” and he taught me the chorus to “Ride Captain Ride” by Blues Image, I guess because it only had a few, easy chords. I’m thankful that he took me a bit left-of-center from the get-go, rather than showing me “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” or “Kumbaya.” From there, I just started listening to my Police, Clash, and Beatles records and trying to play along.

7. What advice can you give Wanduta members who are just getting started with their music careers?

Play as often as you possibly can, to the point where there is no difference between being on stage or being at, say, a Dunkin’ Donuts. Put yourself in the position to be as comfortable as possible up there, and people will get who you are.

Listen to lots and lots and lots of music; listen to sounds; listen to conversations; listen to engines and squeaks and squeals; listen to short-wave; listen to everything. Find the comfort and melody within sounds.

Be to people the way you’d wish them to be to you, and if they’re not, be that way anyway.

You can catch Martin’s next show on Wednesday, December 16^th 9p at The Bitter End NYC. He will be sharing the bill with Greg Mayo Band. Both Bands will combine with special guests to perform The Beatles “Abbey Road” full album. Martin will have 2010 residences at NYC clubs The Red Lion, Prohibition, and Slane, along with regular appearances at Rockwood Music Hall.

A sample of Martin’s songs from his new album,  “Sea of Clouds”:

Take one of our health insurance options. $55 a month. $660 dollars a year.

Here’s just one of the many configurations of savings you can get with the Wanduta Perkscard that will SUBSIDIZE A YEAR OF HEALTH INSURANCE. For argument’s sake, we’ll do this example in quite possibly the most expensive city in the country: New York City.

1. AMC Movie Ticket Discounts. Normally $12.50, Wanduta gets them down to $8. Suppose you buy two movie tickets every month.

Savings: $9/month, $118/year saved

2. Dominos Pizza: Wanduta gets you a 30% discount at all NYC locations. Suppose you place 2 orders each month at $20 each.

Savings: $6/month, $72/year saved

3. Need some storage space? Wanduta Perkscard has a relationship with American Self-Storage, and can get you a full month of storage space free AND can get the initiation fee waived.

Approx monthly cost of a 5X10 space: $119. Initiation fee: $20. Total of $139 saved

4. Ramada Hotels. Wanduta has an exclusive discount for 10% off the best available rate for all Ramada hotels. In total, suppose you spend 5 nights a a year at a hotel, spending a total of $1000. Knock ten percent out of that, and Wanduta has saved you $100

5. A few weeks back, we already showed how you can save $130 on a rental car using Wanduta.

So we are at $559 saved so far, right? And the yearly health insurance charge was $660. Fear not. Hmm. I know what will put us over:

5. Wanduta has 30% discounts with food vendors ALL OVER NEW YORK CITY. Seriously. Sign up, and you’ll see that the network is too vast to even list here. But say you spend $100 a month just within out network of discounted merchants. That’s $1200/year. Knock thirty percent off, that’s $360 saved

Total Savings:
$118 on Movies
$72 on Pizza
$139 Storage
$100 on Hotel
$130 on Rental Car
$360 on Food

= $919 saved yearly. That’s a bigger number than the $660 yearly health insurance fee. Your coming out on top of this one.

If you play music, you know what it feels like to be in the pocket. To feel the pulse somewhere deep and internal, from which everything flows and feels natural.

On the eve of the holiday, we’d like to share a groove that characterizes Wanduta pretty damn well at the moment. We hope you can lock into this with us.

So you are out there touring- We know, you sometimes don’t get, ahem, much dough from gig to gig.. You GOTTA save anywhere and EVERYWHERE you can? WANDUTA PERKS to the rescue! Here is a case study of three locations around the country that, JUST FOR BEING A WANDUTA MEMBER, you would save money. Actual dollars that you keep in YOUR pockets to continue to your independent musician’s dream- being on the road, touring, making money and living on the road less traveled- except for truckers and madmen. Well, now that I think it, you may be a bit mad too?! Anyway- PROOF that you will SAVE just by being a member of WANDUTA. ?

—————JOIN NOW!—————-

Need to clean your clothes in NY? Save 20% By showing your Wanduta Perks Card!

Just Finish a BIG SHOW at the Honky Tonk in Dallas? Tire went flat? Save 10% Just for having your Card.. Yeehaw!

Show up to the gig with the same Ed Hardy Shirt as another band on the ticket? Show your Wanduta card here and get 10% off your entire order. Radical, Dude.

Today we are taking on the dreaded car rental. Maybe you need an extra set of wheels for a certain leg of a tour. Maybe you need a place to steal away and sob quietly after playing to an empty room in Sioux Falls, SD. You may even just relish the comfort and economy of a Ford Pudding on your next vacation or getaway.

Regardless, you’re going to be floored by how we can help you out.

Here’s the standard rate for a car rental from Avis:

Now check out the DISCOUNTED WANDUTA RATE:

That’s like….$130 saved.

Notice the make, model, and rental duration are both exactly the same.

Again, EVERY Wanduta member gets a Perkscard sent to them immediatly, and for free of charge, upon signing up. This is a no f’n brainer.

We worked painstakingly to ensure the best possible experience for our end-user and raison d’etre, the independent musician.

Stay tuned for a full overview of updates and improvements. We are very excited. You should be too.

This clip has been around for a while, but it is worth coming back to again and again. What a great reminder of the pure joy of a good song being played well. Can you feel it? Have you been healed?