Promote your band on a $500 budget. Hometracked interviews Andrew Dubber - author of the new eBook “The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online” and asks the following question:

HomeTracked: A band tells you they have $500 to spend on promotion. How would you recommend they spend that money?

New Music Strategies: $500 is branding money. Who are they? What do they represent? What is their look, their values, their logo, their font (seriously), their story? These things make it easy for everything else to line up.

If you don’t have a story, then you have no reason for local newspapers to talk about you. If they don’t have a logo or chosen font, local promoters will always list their band name in ‘Generica Bold’. You need to stand out.

Perhaps the best thing you could do, if you live anywhere near a university or college with a media programme is to give $100 to the brightest PR students for a local PR campaign — community newspapers and the like; $100 to the best graphic design students for logos, sticker, t-shirt and sleeve design for promo CDs — as well as imaging for website use; $100 to the best television students for a half decent studio performance clip you can upload to YouTube, give away on DVDs, etc; $100 for web hosting, domain name and an enthusiastic web and new media student that knows their stuff about CSS to make the most out of a Wordpress-based site.

The last $100 is for new strings, drum heads, a piano tuner or whatever you need to get your work tools sounding as good as they can. (Full Interview. Thanks GarageSpin)

Have you heard my song on the new Valtrex commercial? The Los Angeles Times looks at the effect tv commercials have on an artists career:

“A band’s brand might suffer if they do the wrong kind of commercials, or if their fans think they’re more focused on advertising than on making music, said Hirshberg, the Deutsch executive. If viewers come away from the ad wondering how much money changed hands, the ad probably didn’t work, he said. Rewriting a song’s lyrics to sell a brand is especially risky.” (via LHB)

The songwriting puzzle. Baltimore Sun interviews Colin Meloy of the Decemberists about what inspires him - from a songwriting perspective:

“I think I work best when dealing with structure,” Meloy says. “It focuses you to think. Writing songs is like a puzzle. Songwriting is more of an intricate puzzle for me. … In the band, we’re kind of music scholars in a sense. We love all types of music. I think the band is an effort to create a music based out of our influences. It’s all anchored by the eccentricity of the lyrics.” (via LHB)

Billboard Magazine reports that one of the initial plagiarism claims against Avril Lavigne has been recanted. It still doesn’t leave her in the clear on several other songs that appear to be ripoffs.

Related: Did Joe Satriani Get Ripped Off by Coldplay?

T-Shirt of the Week: (pic shown above) I Listen To Bands That Don’t Even Exist Yet.