I am excited to announce that I have two copies of Jeff Beck’s latest album, Rock ‘N Roll Party (Honoring Les Paul), to give away to two lucky winners. The rules are as follows:

- Add a comment to this post to let me know that you want to enter; please, only one entry per person. You must include a valid e-mail address so that I can contact the winners.

- Sorry, but entrants must reside within the US or be willing to pay any additional postage fees to ship outside of the US.

- Winners will be randomly selected on Monday, April 25, 2011.

That’s it. Good luck!

UPDATE: Congratulations to Scott and Pappy for winning the CDs! Thanks to all who participated.

In a response to an article titled “Want to Make $50,000 a Year in Music? Start with One Dollar a Day”, David Hahn provides a little history about the last 100 years of the music business:

For about 100 years there was this economic bubble in the musician industry. We called it the “Recording Industry” and it made a ton of money. Some people made money hand-over-fist. (Most of that money, though, went to the people that ran the business and not to the musicians, but that’s another story.)

The problem was that the whole industry was dependent on a closed distribution system built on limited technology. Eventually some smart people created a way to circumvent that distribution route with computers and the whole house of cards collapsed.

100 years. It’s really not that long. Humans have been on Earth for about a half a million years, so the record industry era represented just a tiny percentage of our history. Beethoven made a living as a musician, as did many of the musicians that played in his orchestras and operas. They never sold a record. So what’s the big deal?

I think the 100 years of the record industry created a set of unrealistic expectations and entitlements in the musician business, and we’re still having trouble getting past it. Selling recorded music used to make a lot of money – quickly – and we want it back. When we can’t get it back we try make up substitute business models that might bring in quick money just as easily.

So what kind of content do we see being served to musicians these days? Articles about the collapse of our beloved recording industry. Articles claiming to give advice on how to make quick money again. Articles about mega-stars that are still making quick money.

It’s all nonsense.

Hahn then goes on to provide some actual useful advice – advice based on his own experience – on how to make $50,000 a year in the music business.

Michael DeGusta has posted a chart of music industry revenue in America illustrating how revenue really has been shrinking significantly over the past 10 years. His analysis indicates that the industry is down 64% since it’s peak in 1999. While I have little sympathy for an industry that has been extremely slow to react to the market, I do find it alarming that fewer people are buying music today than they have in the past. Perhaps the rising significance of the single will encourage songwriters to create more great songs, but I hope it doesn’t prevent artists from focusing on albums in the future. I still prefer to purchase and listen to albums; I feel like an album gives you a better chance of hearing a more fully realized piece of artwork from an artist. I don’t know what the future holds, but it’s an interesting time to be a musician and a music fan.

UK artist Ed Chapman created a mosaic of Jimi Hendrix out of picks that was recently sold to raise £23,000 for Cancer research:

“Jimi Hendrix is a guitar maestro and nobody played a Fender guitar like him,” said Chapman, who has earned a reputation of his own for bringing a contemporary twist to an ancient medium. ”I decided to use plectrums to create a portrait of him because I like experimenting with different materials and textures and I think it is a fitting tribute to the musician.”

Five thousand Fender guitar picks were used to create the mosaic, which I think looks pretty cool.

This is just a reminder that there is still just over a week left to enter the contest to win one of five free six-month subscriptions to GuitarMasterClass.net. If you haven’t entered yet, you’ve still got a good chance of winning!

I’m excited to announce that the folks at GuitarMasterClass.net have offered the readers of Guitar Lifestyle a chance to win a free six (6) month subscription to the lessons at GuitarMasterClass. Five (5) people will win, and you can enter up to two times.

If you’re not familiar with GMC, they offer thousands of guitar lessons in just about any style, including rock, blues, country, metal, jazz, classical, and funk. They also offer lessons “in the style” of popular artists. For example they offer lessons in the style of Tom Petty, Slash, Metallica, Megadeth, Gary Moore, Eddie Van Halen, and many more. They even offer a number of song-based lessons. In addition to the lessons, there is an active forum community that you can access as a member of the site and a scale generator that you can use to create scales using whatever key and mode you want.

I’ve used a number of subscription guitar lesson sites, and they all seem to offer similar features. The nice thing about GMC is that they offer an intuitive player that makes it easy to access the lessons within a series, and they seem to offer tabs and backing tracks for most of the lessons that I’ve looked at.

The lessons are offered on a monthly, quarterly, or annual subscription basis. Prices currently run $29 for a single month membership, $69 for a three-month membership, or $228 for an annual subscription. That makes the 6-month free subscription worth $138!

RULES:

1) To enter, simply add a comment to this post letting me know that you want to be entered to win. You must include a valid e-mail address as this will be the method I use to inform the winners.

2) You can enter a 2nd time by linking to this post on Twitter and then putting a link to that tweet as a comment on this post.

3) You must enter by February 28, 2011.

4) The winners will be chosen at random using a random number generator.

5) The winners will be notified by e-mail on March 1, 2011. Winners must respond within 48 hours or another person will be chosen.

That’s it. Five people will win, so you have a pretty good chance to win!

The 4 Amigos Nashville Guitar Show is scheduled for February 19 and February 20, 2011 and will be held at The Factory in Franklin, TN. The 4 Amigos put on popular guitar shows in Austin, Arlington, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area, Chicago, and Nashville.

I went to last year’s show in Nashville and enjoyed looking around at the vintage and unique instruments that are featured in shows like this. Vendors travel from all over to buy, sell, and trade, so there’s usually a great selection of interesting instruments to look at.

Maybe I’ll see you there!

Anthony over at StevieSnacks.com is running a great contest and is giving away his Kenny Wayne Shepherd Strat to one of his viewers. You don’t even have to be a paying customer to win. Click here for all the contest details. Good luck!

The Ottawa Citizen recently featured an article about Alex Golota, who collects guitar picks used by famous guitarists. He has collected over 700 picks, including picks from Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and the Rolling Stones, among many others.

Here he is talking about how he got a pick from Jeff Beck:

“I recently got Jeff Beck,” says Golota, 51, “which is really hard to get because he doesn’t use a guitar pick. But I managed to catch up to his road manager on stage, and he has a bag of guitar picks that Jeff had 30 years ago, and he keeps them for real true fans. It actually says ‘This pick was stolen from Jeff Beck’ on it.”

Read the full article on the Ottawa Citizen website.

(thanks to friend of the site Darren M. for alerting me about this article)

Taylor Guitar’s founder Bob Taylor has written a business book titled Guitar Lessons: A Life’s Journey Touring Passion into Business. The book tells the story of how Taylor Guitars was founded and how they grew the business to what it is today.

Here’s a video of Taylor discussing the book: