The tour starts January 26, 2024 and will end on March 23; tickets go on sale Friday, September 22.

The new promotional tool will make it easier for songwriters to gain new traction from fans and open doors for potential collaborations. The cards can even be made by fans as a way to share their favorite artists and songwriters. Spotify’s Promo Cards enable songwriters to utilize a brand new way to gain exposure and the credit they deserve.

The event’s goal this year is 15,001 attendees, which would make it the most attended outdoor music event in the Tennessee Valley and Chattanooga area. Other area festivals include The Riverbend Festival at 15,000, and Moon River, which hails around 12,000 music lovers.

Jfest is set for May 20 in 2023. More information and tickets can be found at Jfest.com.

Nashville-based Gibson and Kalamazoo’s own Heritage settled a complaint which the latter company filed in March 2020. The action has been dismissed with prejudice, by order of Judge Hala Y. Jarbou.

The plaintiff business was founded in 1985 by former Gibson staffers, after their previous employer relocated the company to Tennessee in 1976. Once Gibson had stopped using its Kalamazoo factory, the former employees purchased the building and a portion of the equipment on site. They then began to make and sell instruments as Heritage.

This course of events set the guitar companies up for a lawsuit in 1990, as Gibson sued for alleged trademark infringement over the design and appearance of specific Heritage guitars. Both parties settled in 1991, and per Heritage’s new lawsuit filed in 2020, they and Gibson for nearly three decades, “went their separate ways, each selling its own well-known guitars into the market, with no problems or issues.”

But after Gibson’s bankruptcy in 2018, the new majority owner KKR-led team, “threatened to sue Heritage … presumably because of a prior unfavorable trademark decision” within the 1991 suit settlement, per the new Heritage suit filed. As the two parties have put the dispute to rest, the specific terms of the agreement have not been made public.

HolyName’s self-titled debut album from Facedown Records has debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Christian/Gospel Albums list. The project also claimed No. 10 on the Top New Artist Albums chart and No. 15 on the Current Hard Music Albums list.

HolyName is led by Tommy Green of Sleeping Giant fame, with the supergroup lineup rounded out by Brook Reeves (Impending Doom), Matthew Weir (Sleeping Giant), Aaron Craner and Joe Holt. Ryan Leitru (For Today) has served as their producer. HolyName’s debut full-length album HolyName showcases their signature, self-described sound: “violent worship.”

“We feel shocked and truly humbled and grateful by the people who have supported this release and made it a success,” Tommy Green says, as he reflects on the project’s wildly successful debut. “The pain and the journey and the faith journey of this record is the substance of struggle and devotion that many people can identity with in these days. There is a time for lament, a time to stop and listen to the pain of the world and the pain of the soul. That is faith as well.”

Amazon previously offered a limited library of hits as a ‘free’ add-on for those who subscribe to Amazon Music Prime. Users could upgrade to their ‘Music Unlimited’ tier at a discounted fee to access the company’s entire music catalog. Now, Prime subscribers have access to Amazon’s full catalog of online music, but with a catch.

According to subscribers, music can now only be played in ‘shuffle’ mode. Choosing individual songs to play is now not an option. That’s true even for music that was paid for, according to members posting on various online sites. Claims from Amazon are that its some type of bug causing the change. The system will now only play on shuffle with ‘similar artists’ added into the playlist. Reports also state that you are limited to only six skips per hour, among other limitations.

With the most tracks ever inside of the BigBigHit National Hip-Hop Chart at the same time, Lecrae sets another record with his newest project. Church Clothes 4 also offers up a handful of singles on the genre’s Breaking Hits list.

You are about to learn the five critical elements that have fueled the success of all great musicians’ careers. Until you possess these key elements for yourself, it will be nearly impossible for you to reach your musical dreams and build a successful career in the music business.

Read below to discover these five key elements and take action on the information you learn:

Music Career Success Key #1 – Don’t Set Realistic Goals

All of the most well-known and successful musicians did not achieve their goals by thinking realistically about what seemed possible. On the contrary, they focused their mind like a laser ONLY on what they truly wanted. When you make your goals in line with the things you want most, you will be much more motivated to actually achieve them. More on this in a moment…

Think about this – out of the following choices, which choice would inspire you to put all your time and energy into growing a music career?:

Making a recording of a demo with a band and possibly playing a few shows around town.

Writing chart topping songs for a killer band, then promoting your music by going on a massive world tour – playing to stadiums full of fans, earning tons of money from music sales alone and never working a regular job ever again.
Even if your goals in the music business are entirely unrelated to releasing music, the point still applies: don’t let yourself accept anything less than what you truly want in your music career, just for the sake of being realistic. Life is too precious to live it by not doing the things you really desire. When you set goals for yourself that do not inspire you, it is nearly guaranteed that you will NEVER achieve the things you truly desire in music.

All the biggest rock stars are people just like you. They began small – whether it was broke without any idea how they’d make it in music, lacking in musical talent or not having a band to play with… Just imagine where they would be now, if they would have told themselves that their music career dreams were unrealistic or didn’t seem possible. Well, of course they didn’t… they followed their dreams and went on to achieve them!

You must do what they did. Start building your music career by focusing on what you WANT, not what seems possible.

Music Career Success Key #2 – Manifest Your Musical Dreams Into Reality Before They Actually Are Reality

Musicians who never achieve anything significant in this industry, build paths to their goals by starting from where they are in the present moment.

On the other hand, musicians who achieve great success do something completely different. They plan their music career by beginning from the end point of achieving their goals, and work backwards to the present day. They imagine themselves having already accomplished their major goals, then build their lives around this vision. This is a much more effective way of accurately determining the actions required for putting together your music career.

Music Career Success Key #3 – Start Living Or Start Dying

The two keys I mentioned above are critical for building a successful music career. With this in mind, you need more than just goals and a plan of action to realize your musical dreams. You have to take action each and every day to bring yourself closer to your goals. You might think this is common knowledge, but you would be shocked at how many musicians give up on their musical dreams simply due to lack of effort (in terms of taking physical action).

Visualize this scenario (I use this as inspiration for the professional musicians whom I mentor): You’ve just found out about a disease you contracted that requires major surgery. If you don’t get this surgery, you are guaranteed to die in no more than half a year. To make matters worse, the surgery is extremely expensive and cannot be covered by your insurance company (also you can’t borrow money to pay for it). So you have a decision to make: You can allow yourself to die, OR you can take whatever action is necessary to get the money needed for the surgery.

Certainly this example is extreme, but it is a perfect illustration of the kind of mindset you need to have in order to build a successful music career. Making big moves (by taking action) in your music career is completely different than sitting around waiting for things to happen for you (allowing yourself to ‘die’).

With this in mind, hard work/consistent action does not necessarily equal music career success, when you don’t know exactly what you should be doing to reach your goals.

Music Career Success Key #4 – Have MASSIVE Reasons For Achieving Your Musical Goals

No matter what you do, something will always go wrong in your music career plans. Whenever you are faced with unexpected events in your music career, this is the time when your commitment will be put to the test. For instance, here are some challenging situations you could face:

Working at a day job you hate while regretting the fact that you never developed a music career backup plan to help you make a living doing what you love.
Playing at crappy bars all the time with your band because you don’t know how to move to bigger venues.
Trying to record an album, but doing so at an extremely slow and frustrating pace because you never practiced developing your recording skills.
Working with unmotivated band members who are bringing you (and the entire band) down.
Not understanding how to attract more music fans to listen to the music you worked so hard to create.
Here is what you need to do in order to maintain your commitment and dedication to achieving your music career goals:

Take out the piece of paper you have that contains the list of your written goals (that you put together in key #1 above). Then beside each one write down the big REASONS you have for pursuing them. For every musical goal you have, answer this question: “Why do I want to achieve this?” Spend a lot of time thinking about this for each goal before you write down your response, and look over your goals/reasons two times every day.

When you do this, you’ll develop the ability to maintain motivation and stay focused on the major reasons you have for reaching your goals. This will help you move forward in the difficult times when your dedication is put to the test.

Music Career Success Key #5 – Don’t Try To Build Your Music Career Blindfolded

Once you are in possession of all 4 keys mentioned above, it’s still possible that your music career will go nowhere. This occurs when you lack certainty about what to do to achieve success, are (unknowingly) sabotaging yourself or lack effective strategies to help you reach your musical goals. The last key required for building your successful career in the music industry is to train with a mentor who has experience helping musicians take their careers to the highest level.

A truly effective mentor will not simply tell you what you need to be doing in order to succeed in the music business. He will help you utilize all of the strengths you built while developing the first four keys and will keep you heading down the right path toward success, while preventing you from making the same mistakes that unsuccessful musicians make. Without this kind of training, you are essentially trying to build your music career with a blindfold on – completely oblivious to the best ways to succeed using your current skills and knowledge.

Now that you’ve learned the five keys that build the foundation of a successful music career, these are the steps you should take right now:

1. Focus on getting all the missing keys you do not currently possess.

2. Being working with an experienced music career mentor to quickly achieve your greatest musical goals.
Tom Hess is a music career mentor, touring musician and guitarist. He teaches online guitar lessons to musicians all over the world and mentors musicians on how to build a successful music career. Visit his website for music instruction to get many free musician resources to help you start a career in music and learn about the music industry.