Experiments

If you already know about my rating system then skip on down to the next header, otherwise here's the lowdown.

The rating system
The rating system I use for this blog is somewhat unique. It's not a reflection of how much I like the music itself as much as it is of how far I am along the process of conversion from consumer to fan. So, over time you may well see some of these ratings go up if I mention an artist again. And indeed go down, as musical changes of direction or failure to keep my interest are just some of the reasons that may affect a rating.


Congratulations, you've made a temporary blip of interest on my radar. Now how are you going to keep it?


I've seen enough of you to recognise and remember you, but I'm undecided so I'm not really following you (yet). I may make a spur of the moment decision to check in on what you're up to once in a while, but even that's no guarantee. May also apply to artists I am aware of, but whose music I've decided I don't have enough interest in to want to pursue further based on what I've heard.


I'm liking what I hear in general, but I still wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I will be wandering past your site occasionally, and there is something like a 50% chance I'll be buying your next offering once I find out about it, providing I have the money available.


Now I am a fan, so the chances are I'll be past your site once every month or two at least. There's a 90%+ chance your next offering is already sold, and occasionally I might even be going for something more than the basic package (if you have one)


Reserved for very few, this is about as close to internet stalker as you can get. I am actively watching because I do not want to miss your next release date, tour in my area etc. etc. You may not always be aware of the fact I'm looking over your shoulder to see what you're up to, but trust me, I'm there on a weekly if not more like a daily basis. Depending on how you tend to release your information, I may well be signed to your mailing list as well.

Who I've been looking at
Ellie Williams returned to Sellaband for some additional promotion funds for her second album. I would have funded her again, but I decided on 2 basic requirements back when the bankruptcy happened that the new management would need to fulfil before I'd even consider spending money on the site again. And as I'm still unsatisfied on both counts more than 2 years down the line, I'm sticking to my principles. Her return  reanimated a number of believers who had left the site to come back and buy parts in her, though it's unclear how much of the money they've spent is "new" money, and how much was "old" money that had been trapped in the site. If you didn't realise she was back, then you've missed the boat, as she successfully raised her target in a little over a fortnight. A welcome change from the slow or non-moving artists the site has at the moment.

Ironically on the same day as Ellie's return, I'd just decided to spend some money on Pledge Music. Vertical Horizon are an artist I became aware of a couple of years ago, and over a period of time I've been realising that I like most of what I've been hearing from them. They had already reached the 100% target on Pledge, but because the album/incentives weren't yet ready it was still possible to buy into their project. It seems they're currently still recording in-between touring, although the automated "thankyou for buying" message states the incentives were due to be delivered by March 10th 2012. Their page on Pledge now has TBC for a release date though, so we'll see how long it takes the CD to get here. It will also be interesting to compare the fan patience level here to that I've previously seen with other artists, particularly as their project updates seem to have slowed to a crawl and I've already seen one complaint about that. Looks like I could even be facing an experiment to determine just how green the grass is on the Pledge side of the fence, and how it handles complaints about overdue artists as a result.

But one thing that buying into a Pledge project reminded me was how much clearer it is spending money on there compared to Sellaband. The "what you see is what you pay" is something I consider preferable to Sellaband's strange deposit system that charges "hidden" fees on top of the displayed part price that you only get to see just before you hit the confirmation button. $12 for the album and a further $3 towards postage as I'm outside the US comes to a grand total of $15 and that's what my credit card was charged, rather than the price being inflated with "admin fees".

Brad Cox has released the new Niki Thunders and the Temperamentals track (called "Take me") for sale on CD Baby. In the blurb on the download page for the track it states a new album is planned for 2013 so I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for that.

Aly Cook is currently driving me nuts. I don't know whether it's a management change meaning someone else is looking after her twitter feed or whether there's an automated program involved, but something has obviously changed recently because she's now putting out the same message a large number of times in a row (just with a different @ tacked on the end) and essentially filling up my twitter feed with spam (often a couple of times a day or more) as a result. It's actually getting to the point where I'm thinking of stopping following her on there because all the pointless repeating within a few seconds is starting to annoy me. I'll be looking to see if things settle down over the next month or not on this front.

A rather large box arrived from Matthew Ebel. This contained the overdue framed album from 2010 and the overdue goody bags from 2011 as well as the new album, so he's finally caught up to where I was expecting him to be. I'm feeling much happier than I was when I wrote my 2011 review of the year post as a result. Episodes of the comic that go with the album are now being posted on his website every day or two, along with comments from Genesis Whitmore (the artist who is drawing it) about that particular strip. Check it out here.

In amongst the items in the box were a number of cards (business card sized), each containing a website link and QR Code for a different artist to download one track for free. An interesting touch to introduce you to a number of other indie musicians, and interestingly they weren't all based in the USA either. Whilst I've downloaded and listened to the tracks, none of them particularly got my interest, although I might wander off to their sites at some point and see what else I can find.

Additionally his "chartbombing" experiment has provided some very interesting data (at least from Amazon) on what it is possible for an indie artist with zero promotional budget to achieve. I've spent nearly a week watching the numbers, despite the fact the experiment itself lasted just one day. Essentially Matthew asked all his fans to hold off on buying the album, and instead asked them to purchase one particular track from it (or the whole album if they wanted) on one specific day via either iTunes or Amazon. iTunes doesn't offer realtime data, but the net result was that the album briefly cracked the 100 bestselling albums in their Rock chart. On Amazon where the charts are updated hourly it was possible to more easily track the progress with both the album and song hitting the top of the respective Adult Alternative charts, cracking the top 40 in the Alternative Rock chart and the album itself even briefly broke into the top 200 overall by sales rank on Amazon. You'll find more of my analysis of the experiment further down this post in the "sites" section.

John C Fraser sent a message to all his believers on Sellaband saying he was no longer going to be performing under that name, but instead was splitting from the the band, management, promoters etc. and going back to writing and performing as a solo artist as "Please be Frank", a title which uses his real name. As a result no further CDs would be sold and as the 2 projects he had on Sellaband have apparently not broken even, this means that believers will never see any revenue either.

The sites I've been looking at

Amazon.com
As stated earlier, I've spent about a week tracking the "chartbombing" results of Matthew Ebel's new album "The Lives of Dexter Peterson". The track he chose for this "I wish I were" isn't the one I would have chosen to try and get attention as it has more niche fanbase appeal than some of the others on the album, but it's been an interesting experiment to follow anyway.

Before the experiment started, the Amazon sales rank of the album was in the 45,000s. As I've already said, it hit top 200 in the 24hrs set aside when fans were asked to buy the album. As you can probably guess, it has slipped back since, but not as fast as you might think. Two days after the experiment, the album was still at no 1 for the Adult Alternative category and in the "new releases" section for individual tracks in Adult Alternative, not only was "I wish I were" at number one, there were 5 other songs from the album in the top 100, 3 of which were in the top twenty. And the album was still in the 600s for overall ranking. Both the track and the album have since slipped further (back down past artists like The Fray and Coldplay), but last I looked both were still in the top 100 Adult Alternative charts with the album down in the mid 5000s for overall sales rank (five days after the chartbombing). Because of Amazon's regional restrictions, these results have been achieved purely from digital only sales for the US fanbase, which makes me wonder how much further would have been possible if other countries could have affected that US chart too.

The obvious conclusion is that it's a lot easier than you might think to make a temporary dent in Amazon's rankings, but just because you can make a dent it doesn't mean you're going to make any lasting impression. In a competitive chart such as Alternative Rock, it seems you'll disappear out faster than it took you to get there, unless your sales volume keeps up, but in a category I can't see that many people actively looking in, there is a chance you might hang round long enough to be spotted. But from the realities of a consumer, I have to admit I've NEVER browsed the Amazon charts looking for music to buy. When I visit Amazon, I already know what I want to buy, and all I'm usually doing is checking out their price compared to other options I have available before buying from there or somewhere else. I'd be interested to hear if Matthew Ebel did pick up any new fans purely from a presence on the charts due to his experiment, but I think there's a pretty high chance the answer to that is going to be no.

And that also brings me to what I really don't like. Whilst interested in this "chartbombing" idea from the experimental point of view, the realities of what tends to be involved is something I'd much rather avoid. People are getting really turned off by advertising these days, yet it seems musicians are relying on the emotional approach (a set of "virtual puppy-dog eyes" if you like) to convince people to advertise for them. I kind of share the sentiment of the person who left a review during the experiment which basically said "This doesn't deserve to be on the charts and the only reason it's there is because the artist organised a chartbombing" - not from the point of view of the music, but from the "advertising/publicity stunt" point of view. The whole "hey check this out", "buy this now", "tell everyone today" is something that's going on far, far too much (and not just in music) , and the whole "popularity contest" that results cheapens things as far as I'm concerned. I supported the attempt this time, as you can tell from my previous post (for experimental reasons), but I'm still of the opinion there's enough spam out there without me adding to it, and it's unlikely you'll see me support this kind of thing very often as a result.

And so I have to wonder just how useful this experiment has really been. With only a temporary dent and seemingly little or no chance of fans resulting from that, is a "chartbombing" really worth the return? Particularly if the "spamminess" associated with carrying it out actually runs a risk of you losing some of your existing support.

Snacktracks.co.uk
If you're in the UK, United Biscuits are currently running a promotion on their snacks to allow you to download tracks for free from the Universal Music catalog. Think Hula Hoops, Skips, Mini Cheddars etc. (i.e. pretty much anything popular that doesn't have a Walkers logo). Seems simple enough. Each packet contains a code and a timestamp which you need to enter into the site along with an email address and you can download one of the tracks on offer. There's also a limit of 30 tracks per email address stated and no DRM involved. Bound to be something you want to download, right?

However as we've found out, things aren't anywhere near as straightforward as this. My husband had the bright idea to buy 2 boxes from our local wholesaler - one hula hoops and one mini cheddars. The promotion runs till the end of the year and the crisp bags had a few months to run before they were out of code, plus we have a monthly board games meeting anyway. We were bound to get through the 48 bags in each box, and our guests would get some codes to take away too. This situation led to the first problem.

The codes on each pack are NOT unique. The box of hula hoops contained exactly the same code on every packet, and there were only 2 different codes in the box of mini cheddars. And as you can imagine, when my husband attempted to download tracks it pulled a big fat red flag in the system. Net result of this one is that we are going to need to send a photo of every empty crisp packet we've still got and then mail them back to the promoter and we SHOULD get a working list of codes to use.

However, I had a little more luck and managed to download one track. That's when I found the second problem. So let's stop and think logically. With the length of the promotion and/or the fact you might land up having a packet of crisps in your lunchbox every day, it would be reasonable to assume you'll land up with more than one packet. Under these circumstances it might make an awful lot of sense to save up your packets and enter all the codes and download all the tracks at once, rather than have to keep visiting the site. Guess what. Even though there's a limit of 30 tracks per email address, there's also a limit of one download PER DAY. And they don't tell you that until you attempt to download a second track!

I'm still trying to decide whether this free music promotion is going to be worth the hassle it's turning out to be. So if you run across the snacktracks.co.uk free music download promotion, then it might be worth keeping our experience in mind. One thing is for sure, it's proving that downloading music for free illegally is an awful lot easier than a free legal version. Definitely a case of a promotion gone bad.

Slowbizz
Slowbizz held their first "concert as an app" recently. I've talked about them hosting house concerts in the past, but the email I got from them on this subject actually sounded interesting, as you might find from the following excerpt

Harnessing a unique timeline concept, the software will enables various audio and video layers to be played simultaneously vastly enriching the concert experience. And in an unprecedented technological advancement, the upgraded App will feature 360 degree video layers, allowing the viewer to experience the concert from the perspective of the musician creating the feeling of being right there on stage with the musicians.

The concert in question was an artist called Fink playing with the Royal Concert Orchestra in the Netherlands for their "Queen's Night" celebration. I was tempted to see what this was like, but it was when I clicked on the link to download the app that I got put off the idea. First the app in question was for iPad only (and I don't have one) and second they were charging nearly $4 for it. On the one hand, not a great sum of money, on the other it seemed a lot for a one-off experience/experiment on an artist I wasn't familiar with, even if I had had the hardware to use the app. It still sounds interesting, just it would either need an artist I was actually interested in at that price or would need to be somewhat cheaper (or free) for me to consider an experiment on something similar if it ever comes round on Android.

That's all for this time. Stay tuned for the next post when I'll be giving you an update on the things I'm still waiting for on Sellaband amongst other things.