How To Use Invoice Mode to Collect Client Payment on Google Checkout.

As a musician or an artist, you will often need to collect money from clients for the works you are going to provide (never perform a work without a payment or good promise of it!)

One of the easiest ways to collect money from your client is to use Google Checkout. Since it uses credit card and all major cards are accepted and it is far more reliable to get paid than to use checks. Also the system is sophisticated enough that it will check things like "return credit" history of individuals before the charge can go through. This will, in general, try to avoid you a hassle of dealing with people who do not have a real intention to pay.

You may have seen Google Checkout buttons on searches and some catalog merchants. But there is one more mode in Google Checkout that you can use to invoice people directly.

But first, if you have not yet set up a Google Checkout account, it is fairly straight forward to do, just go to https://checkout.google.com/ and set up your account. Now you are a Google Checkout Merchant. The word Merchant is important to remember because you will be dealing with Google Checkout as a merchant and not a consumer.

How To Invoice Your Client Directly via Google Checkout

• First go to Google Checkout Merchant Page: http://checkout.google.com/sell/ And be sure to Bookmark this in your browser since you are going back there a lot. But if you forget, don't dismay. Just search Google for "Google Checkout Merchant" It is important that you remember to use the Merchant mode otherwise you will be in a consumer mode trying to buy things from other merchants.
• Log in using your Google Account
• Once signed in you see the Tools menu/tab on top part of the page. Click it.
• Find "Email Invoices" link and click it.
• Just follow the instructions on the page.

When the payment clears you will be notified via Email.

Apple Logic Pro: MIDI Track Gone "Grayed Out"

I was working on a project last night and I muted all MIDI tracks to listen to the audio recorded track.

Then I unplugged a MIDI interface and restarted the Logic.

I was surprised to see all of my MIDI tracks went to "Grayed Out"

It turns out what Logic did was to muted all of the MIDI regions when it found were unassigned MIDI track. Reassigning the MIDI channel does not do anything.

Instead you need to go to the Region menu and un-mute all of the regions.

Better Way of Music File Sharing

By Manabu Tokunaga

StokeMaster's Music Blog

http://stokemusic.blogspot.com/

We continue to hear about RIAA bringing lawsuits to students and other people who cannot obviously afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars in awards. Also the industry is trying to work with the government to mandate the installation software that will monitor peoples music usage on computers. I personally do not agree doing that is a solution to the problem.

Most musicians doing music to generate their income may be sympathetic to that, but on the other hands we tend to see only one side of the story that we want to hear. If you are a professional musician, you may tend to side RIAA, but if you are a music fan, you may think RIAA is an evil greedy organization.

So I did a bit more search on the network and found Electronic Fronteer (EF) web site on this topic: http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-collective-licensing-music-file-sharing

You may find this interesting because what they propose is to either use or start organizations like ASCAP and BMI who collect and distribute broadcast, in this case file sharing, payments to respective musicians.

According to the article, by collecting $5 to $10 from music fans per month and allowing them to do file sharing to their hearts content, the potential revenue it generates is significantly more for artists. Which I think is a great model especially for indepenent and individual musicians since more freedom for music fans to distribute music means a built-in promotion mechanism.

If you explore this site, it has many other useful information on music file sharing. As a professional musician, you should study this a bit as to where the industry and the digital public is heading to. Also I should remind you to join ASCAP or BMI if you have an album. Basically if you currently have your work released from commercial venues like Amazon, CD Baby etc., then you are very likely to be accepted.

What do you think about this?

http://stokemusic.blogspot.com/ (c) 2010 Manabu Tokunaga