Last month, Old Crow Medicine Show performed a series of five “guerilla” shows around Nashville, in order to promote their new album, Carry Me Back Home, which will be released July 17th. Watch below as Old Crow perform “Sewanee Mountain Catfight” for an unsuspecting crowd of tourists in front of the Ryman Auditorium.

Tune in at 4 p.m. Eastern for YouTube Presents: Regina Spektor, which we’ll live stream at American Songwriter.com. Spektor will perform a live, five-song set from the Google offices in New York City for her new album, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, available now. Look for our in-depth article on Regina Spektor in [...]

On Wednesday, Metallica posted a news article and photos on their website under the title “Secret Recording Project?” Under this mysterious header, the band revealed that they’ve been working in their San Francisco studio over the last few months on a new record of ten songs with OG rock and roller Lou Reed. The partnership [...]

Photo Credit: Robb D. Cohen, courtesy of collingsguitars.com Austin, Texas-based guitar shop Collings Guitars has a decidedly artist focus. They’ve made guitars for such acoustic luminaries as Rodney Crowell, Jerry Jeff Walker, and, of course, Lyle Lovett. Zac Brown also has a healthy collection, and they make one of the best mandos in the biz. [...]

The Irish musician, engineer, and producer Garret “Jacknife” Lee is probably most known for his work with worldwide rock stars U2 and R.E.M. But he also recently did the radio mix for The Black Keys single, “Tighten Up,” and mixed the great Walkmen track, “Juveniles.” In an interview with the iconic gear manufacturer, Universal Audio, [...]

Berlin-based music startup SoundCloud recently made a few innovations that reveal how it’s becoming the next great music platform on the web. Several new tools show not just how SoundCloud is a great music discovery and streaming platform, but also how they’re making steps toward monetizing music for users on the site. First up, SoundRain is [...]

Since San Francisco startup RootMusic launched their “BandPage” application for Facebook about a year ago, they’ve grown to be the number one entertainment app on Facebook, with 17 million users a month. Last August, RootMusic’s CEO J. Sider told us that he decided to start his company after witnessing all the inefficiencies musicians were faced [...]

On the heels of a recent agreement with Sony Music, the London-headquartered music startup Spotify has now inked a licensing deal with EMI, according to a report on CNET. Word of Spotify’s sleek and uber-functional music service first started perking up ears on this side of the pond a few years ago, but the U.S. [...]

American Songwriter and AmericanSongspace.com have opened the submission process for the 2011 Chris Austin Songwriting Contest. The contest, which runs from now until February 18, 2011, accepts entries from a number of third parties. To enter through AmericanSongspace.com, visit the contest sign-up here. In 2010, American Songspace’s first year partnering with the 19-year-old contest, three [...]

Last week, the Austin, Texas-based creative content company, Arts+Labor, revealed that they’re working on a documentary about the revered music industry mecca, South By Southwest, which will celebrate its 25th year in existence this March. The film is sure to cover the story of South By Southwest’s origins: how three members of Austin’s alt-weekly rag, [...]

Today Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) announced a new program called BMI Live that will allow songwriters to register live performances for consideration for royalty payment. BMI has created a new portal on their website at www.bmi.com/live for BMI-registered songwriters to track and record their performances at live music venues. The program is specifically aimed at [...]

Yesterday at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show – that’s CES to gear heads – RealNetworks, the company that helped introduce music streaming back in 1995, unveiled a cloud-based music service. After months of consumers and tech insiders waiting for Apple or Google to release a cloud solution for music – and one notable false [...]