It’s certainly not your late night public access channel, but that’s a good thing!

Recently I found a need to broadcast my webcam shenanigans to multiple friends.  While YouTube offers a great venue for “previously recorded” materials that I can edit and post, I decided I wanted to perform live music (DJing, producing sessions, etc) and let people watch me while I do what I love.  Since YouTube is going to be the last kid on the block to stream live video, I figured I would dig around to see what’s out there right now.

I’m going to cut straight to the chase: UStreamTV is by far one of the best websites out there to give anyone with a webcam the ability to broadcast to an audience.  Within minutes I went through the painless registration, profile creation, channel creation, and had my webcam and soundcard pumping beats to my friends.  They could watch every mundane activity I performed while mastering audio, or have fun watching/listening as I was mixing records or making new tracks.

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I was at my day job today and in the midst of busting some ass to keep on top of some important tasks I was noticing my Twitter had caught fire:  An incredibly awesome series of tweets, re-tweets, and replies were flying as #SXSWAAE was taking place ( AAE = Artist as Entrepreneur music panel). There was some incredibly thoughtful statements and bits that I had to make a post about it.

Here is a recap of some I managed to save (I’m fairly new to Twitter and totally forgot to leverage the ‘favorite’ feature):

@cyberpr: #SXSWaae Question: If I was just starting out and had $500 budget to get somewhere what should I do?

@cc_chapman: “if you can do it financially, touring is the best and most crucial thing an artist can do. ” #sxswaae panel #sxsw

@cyberpr: #SXSWaae Fastest way to become a victim is to say ‘I’m too creative for this ‘business stuff” Vultures will love you

@cc_chapman: Artists need to be making iTunes iMixes. 3 of your own and other similar artists - Jeff Price #sxswaae #sxsw

@RayBeckerman: Exactly. I’m just afraid I’m becoming too much marketer and not enough musician. I need to offload. #SXSWaae

@matthewebel: #SXSWaae All these musicians who get fleeced have 1 thing in common; they thought they were too creative to attend to business

@cc_chapman: Record everything you do (all material from live shows is re-purposable) - - Matt Rosoff #SXSW #SXSWaae (via @cyberpr)

@cc_chapman: Every bit of advice in this panel applies to everyone I know trying to make it in other industries as well. #sxswaae #sxsw

@RayBeckerman: A good CEO (artist) should know how his business works, but be smart enough not to do ALL of it himself. #SXSWaae

@cyberpr: The greatest tool an artist has is their personality - Raphael Domalik (I AGREE) #SXSW #SXSWaae

@cyberpr: You can succeed in spite of yourself - Jeff Price, Tunecore #SXSW #SXSWaae

@matthewebel: mine your fans. In an economic downturn people are going to have time and passion. #sxswaae

Sita Sings the Blues is an animation by Nina Paley which will easily charm you. While you may think Ramayana isn’t one you want to watch an animated version of for about 80 minutes (afterall it IS quite sad, right?) Paley’s efforts have created an animated story telling full of visual and aural pleasure that won’t leave you unsatisfied at the end.

Sita singing the blues

The mixed animation styles, all of which are gorgeously fun, are accompanied by a well written script and a musical twist sure to entertain. The highlight of this film are the scenes centered around Sita’s point of view.  They are set to the 1920’s jazz of Annette Hanshaw! Each scene makes for an interesting interpretation of both Annette Hanshaw’s music and the events of Sita’s life.

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