As it turned out, he had been.

Less than two months later, Mayweather agreed to face Oscar De La Hoya. Mayweather outpointed De La Hoya in May 2007, during a fight that shattered all boxing revenue and pay-per-view records. After beating Ricky Hatton in December, Mayweather even took time to beat the Big Show in Wrestlemania. After the Big Show spectacle news outlets reported that plans were in motion for Mayweather-De La Hoya II to take place Sept. 20, 2008.

Should you cross it off the schedule because of Mayweather’s most recent announcement?

Mayweather, 31, announced his retirement from boxing again this past Friday in a move that appears much more serious than his impromptu declaration two years ago. We hear that the fight with De la Hoya was scheduled for Sept 13 or Sept 20, 2008. While this is only our opinion, we highly doubt Mayweather will miss this payday and seal his immortality as one of the greatest fighters ever.

The controversy about Mayweather’s potential retirement is sure to generate a frenzy at the box office. So get your Oscar De La Hoya vs Floyd Mayweather Jr. tickets soon.

We also know that Floyd has started his own label - Philthy Rich Records - and is currently looking for artists to sign. He definitely has the money needed to open the doors for any artist he chooses to sign. We think the fight might go on, but then again Floyd might just concentrate on taking over the rap game with a stable of his own hand picked artists. Only time will tell, we’ll keep our eyes on it for you.

To Nab or to Rhap or to skip them all together?

I’ve heard about both for a while but haven’t tried either of them. Both offer “listen-on-demand” services for what they claim to be “large digital libraries.” If you have or currently use them we’d love your feedback. If you haven’t, the images above link to free trials - I am going to try both and report back. If you haven’t tried them you’re welcome to try the free trials, please report back using the poll in the first sidebar or comment on this post.

Big Ass Fans.com is not what I expected but I can’t resist giving credit to the Big Ass marketing team. The Big Ass guys are creating a memorable brand for their industrial Destratification Fans, aka big ass commercial ceiling fans. The Big Ass Fan brand is a great example of marketing basics - create memorable buzz around a quality product.

So what’s a big ass fan? A six- to 24-foot diameter ceiling fan that uses immense size -not speed- to move massive amounts of air over large spaces.

I guess Big Ass Fans aren’t just found in Hip Hop, you can find them around the world in locations from Airports-to-Zoos. Check out the unique marketing approach for these Ceiling Fans at the Big Ass Fans website, bigassfans.com.

An iTunes download costs 99 cents. The songwriter will get just 3 cents. So just what is the true value of music?
suppose you write a song, a truly great song. One that stays in people’s minds for years and years, that countless recording artists cover, that bands play in your local bar and you hum while you’re in the shower. A song like Like a Rolling Stone, Satisfaction, Imagine, What’s Going On?, Respect, Good Vibrations, Johnny B. Goode, Hey Jude, Smells Like Teen Spirit, or What’d I Say? How much should the writer of such a song get paid for such an amazing contribution to popular culture? Let’s look at it another way… how much should the record company get paid for their part in allowing that song to take its rightful place in popular culture? Well, let’s look at iTunes where the price of music is strictly regulated…
An iTunes download costs 99 cents in the USA. Currently the songwriter should receive the statutory royalty rate of 9.1 cents per download.9.1 cents is less than 10% of the price of the download. So apparently 90% of the value of the download is in things other than the song!

OK, so the performer needs to get paid too. That’s reasonable, and their share will be negotiated as part of their deal with the record company. That could be around 8.4 cents. The producer might receive around 2.1 cents.

However, that means that people other than the songwriter, artist and producer are getting three quarters of the money!

What the hell are they doing to earn that?

Let’s go back to the poor old songwriter, slaving for a paltry 9.1 cents.

Guess what… the RIAA wants to reduce that to 8%. And not 8% of the 99 cents retail price of the download, but to 8% of the wholesale price of around 70 cents.

So the songwriter will get just 5.7%. Everyone else will share 94.3%!

Remember that the RIAA works for the record companies, not for songwriters, artists or producers.

Oh, and Apple - the company behind iTunes - would like to see the songwriter’s cut shaved down even further, to just 4%. And that’s 4% of wholesale. So the songwriter will get less than 3 cents per download. 96 cents will go to all the rest. We at musictechradar do not use itunes and we advise artists to not use this commercial service to try and sell music, you would be better served giving it away free online and selling cds at shows or your own personal website.

It actually depends on the location of your studio. Soundproofing can give different sounds to your recording if you have to much or not enough. I have been in million dollar studios that have no soundproofing, and they record flawless.There are two aspects to soundproofing. Firstly, it is important that sounds coming in from outside of your studio do not affect your recording. Secondly, it is equally important that sounds emanating from your studio do not annoy your neighbors. Irritated neighbors will reflect every bit of irritation they suffer back towards you, and probably more!But let’s look at incoming noise. What effect does it have on the recording process?Incoming noise has two effects. One is that it can enter your microphones and get onto your recording. The other is that it will interfere with the monitoring process so that you can’t listen clearly to the sounds you are recording and mixing.Some types of music are more problematical than others…The type of music that suffers most from incoming noise isn’t even music - it is speech. Speech has the unfortunate property of having gaps between the words. Any background noise will be clearly audible in the gaps because there is nothing to mask it.(If you work in audio for picture then so-called Foley effects are even more vulnerable. Foley effects include very quiet sounds such as the rustle of clothing. Plainly, absolute silence is required.)But getting back to music - what type of music is most sensitive to noise?The answer is classical music, because it alternates between loud and quiet passages. The quiet parts of the music won’t be loud enough to cover the background noise.Next up is any kind of acoustic music, such as folk music. Quiet instruments once again cannot mask the noise.If you have a heavy rock band however, the guitars and drums will be so much louder than the background noise that you will hardly notice a problem.The maximum resilience against noise is to be found in electronic music, including hip hop. Any sounds that are purely electronically generated or sampled do not require microphones, hence there is no possibility of picking up background noise.With regard to monitoring, the greater the dynamic range of the music you record (that is the difference in level between the quiet and the loud sections) the more you will be affected by background noise. Any style of music that is loud all the time will be pretty much OK, unless you live next door to an airport or train station!So the quality of soundproofing you need depends on the kind of sounds you record. If you record Foley effects for film or TV, then you need an absolutely silent studio. A desert location would be good. If you record speech, then you will have to take very great care over your sound insulation.But with other styles of music, there is some leeway. You don’t always need to have a completely soundproof room, or if you have no outside noise soundproofing is not necessary at all.Which is just as well since complete soundproofing is almost impossible to attain. And of course it is very expensive. 

When you finish your recording and you want to get it mastered you need to be careful of who you get to master your recording. Alot of engineer’s will say they can master your recording, JUST TO GET MORE MONEY OUT OF YOU but alot of them dont have a clue of what mastering is let alone know how to do it. Here is a list of what should get done when a track is mastered, ask the so called mastering engineer what he is going to do to your track when he masters it. If he does not say 90% of what is on this list then he is a fraud. It will be evident when you get his answer if he knows what he is doing or not. In almost every mastering session, the following actions are performed:

1. Optimizing average and peak volume levels for proper relative loudness
2. Signal processing - compression & EQ
3. Arranging tracks in final sequence
4. Timing of the space between tracks
5. Establish a sonic “field” for all tracks
6. Place track markers at head of all tracks
7. Remove unwanted noise like clicks, pops, hiss
8. Clean-up start and ending of each track (including fades)
9. Insert Master Track Log - the PQ codes required for replication