Saturday 16 March 2013

New year discoveries

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.

Video of the month

I first heard of the artist in this month's video because they were featured on a Morgan Page track that I quite liked. More recently I have joined a consumer panel here in the UK that is gathering opinions on artists that (seemingly) nobody has ever heard of. So as a result of Lissie showing up on that, it prompted me to go check out some more of her stuff as I liked what I heard. This video was actually released back in 2010 but I've obviously only run across it recently.



Who I've been looking at
Every so often there is a moment in music that makes you just go WOW. When you discover something you hadn't known before about an artist you like, or more usually love - that mindblowing "Damn this is cool" moment related to their music that makes you love them all the more. I got one of those at the beginning of January.

I'd always thought of Matthew Ebel's "Goodbye Planet Earth" album as a little unusual in the traditional album sense. For starters it has 17 tracks, one of which is over 10 minutes in length and another which is more spoken word. And whilst you can't see a discernable story unfold from one track to the next, it always seemed like there was more to it than just a number of tracks lumped together to make an album. I put it down to his podcasting background as to why it felt more like a radio show, but the story that actually goes with this album is somewhat more amazing.

The album actually synchs to the 2005 movie of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

If you don't understand what that means, the idea is that you play the album at the same time as you watch the movie (in this case you start the album off at the point that the world blows up in the film) and you'll find a number of interesting things will happen. Lyrics suddenly take on a completely different meaning when you see the visual compared to if you just listen as a stand alone album. Audio cues pair up with visual cues and scene changes. The result is quite an interesting experience which feels like it gives you a whole new form of entertainment if you haven't done this kind of thing before. The idea as a whole isn't new - for instance, did you know that Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album is supposed to synch with the 1939 version of "The Wizard of Oz"? (though it has always been denied by the band that it was written on purpose to do this) but the ability to write an album where the tracks can be enjoyed as individual songs in their own right and yet still both follow the film and take on a completely different slant as a result is something that isn't just clever - as far as I'm concerned it stretches into AWESOME. It's moments like these that remind me why I keep renewing my Entourage subscription despite the wobbles and doubts that appear every so often.

So here's a little taster you'll find on Youtube to get an idea of what I mean - you might find it a little slow at the start, but by a couple of minutes in you should definitely be seeing how audio and video is linking up.




The reason I found out about this in January was that Matthew did this live at a concert convention - the convention had licensed the film to be shown and he played the entire album LIVE as the film was playing. It's at times like this I wish I lived in America, as they didn't have a license to broadcast the film over the internet. As a result I don't know exactly how well the audio and visual worked together on the day, but it's definitely an experience I would have liked to have seen in full. I guess I'll be trying the next best thing of the "home version" next time the film is on.

I said back in August last year that I'd received an email from Markus Nylund saying he was done with music and it had left me wondering about what I call "the artist's soul" as a result. However it would appear I've been proved right on what I thought of both him and "the artist's soul" in general - that music will not let an "artist's soul" go. Since quitting the university course he'd started and moving to Estonia about six months ago, he's now starting up a band under the Sunlight Heart name he'd posted on Soundcloud and they've made their first EP. And if you're curious to understand more about what I mean by "the artist's soul" then this post from Markus is the nearest I can get to describing the essence of what I see yet can't explain or fully understand - if what he says here truly resonates with you, then the likelihood is you have an artist's soul as well.

We're into March now, and no surprises that I've still not seen the albums from Lori Greco, Cubworld or Vertical Horizon. In Cubworld's case, the last information I saw was a tweet from him asking people to check that Sellaband had their addresses as addresses appeared to be missing for a number of believers. That was back in January though and I've seen nothing since, despite the fact it inferred that a release might actually be pretty imminent. In the case of Vertical Horizon, I'm wondering if I've seen an amusing coincidence or whether my review of the year post actually gave someone a well-deserved kick up the rear end. Less than 24hrs after someone from the USA visited my blog by searching for the rather interesting term "vertical horizon steals crowdfunded money", an update finally appeared on their Pledgemusic page. The good news is that they thanked everyone for being patient and said that "We are extremely close to the completion of the album, and that means it will be coming your way very soon". The bad news is that that's as exact as things have got i.e. there has still been no date given and more than a month has passed since that last update. I haven't seen anything new from Lori Greco either - the "album coming soon" message still seems to be the only thing it's possible to find and the 4th anniversary of when she completed her funding on Sellaband continues to creep ever closer.

Crowdfunded music and my relationship with it has just taken a make-or-break turn. Poets of the Fall literally signed up with Pledge Music as I was writing this post in order to try and make their first live DVD. Given the poor experiences I've had with other artists, you could say the pressure is now on. If one of my absolute favourite artists manages to reach their target and let me down sufficiently at this point in time, it's quite likely I'll never crowdfund another project again. Within 24hrs the project has made well over half of its target and is currently due to run for another 3 months with the incentives promised for a September date. Watch this space over the next few months to find out if an artist who has never, ever let me down can restore or completely destroy my faith in crowdfunding.

The most interesting new finds since my last post have once again come via either Soundcloud or Twitter. On the Twitter side, the one that's mostly caught my interest is a band called Spaceship Days as a result of a track called "Hanging from the Satellites" that I found when I visited their Reverbnation page.

I also got followed by an artist who appears to be working a similar angle to Matthew Ebel in as much as he is offering one monthly music track as well as giving out free tracks in exchange for your email address. You'll find Corey Koehler's music site here. Scroll right the way to the bottom of the "Music" page to find out about his "one song a month indefinitely". Sadly I haven't been particularly impressed with what I heard on there, but I may revisit from time to time to see if anything does manage to connect.

Meanwhile on Soundcloud the most interesting new finds have been a Japanese band called Rocky Monster Room (who incidentally have one one of the worst websites I've seen in a while) and a Swedish artist called Benjamin Gustafsson. The information I've been able to find on both of these has been fairly limited so far.

I don't often unfollow people on Twitter once I've followed them, but there are some scenarios where I'm prepared to make an exception. One of these caused me to stop following an artist recently that I did actually have some interest in keeping up to date with. So if you want to know one way to really put someone off, here's what this particular artist was doing - they were retweeting EVERY SINGLE TWEET that mentioned them. So every time someone replied to one of their tweets, they'd retweet the reply, irrespective of whether it had any relevance or was even just a one word reply from their best friend. By the time I'd had every single one of their conversations clogging up my own feed for a couple of weeks, I was starting to get rather annoyed, hence the unfollow.

The sites I've been looking at

The good news about Sellaband is that instead of approximately 1 in 12 artists reaching at least 1% of budget, the odds are getting better as this has now increased to approximately 1 in 10. The bad news is that this is due to the total number of artists on the site dropping rather than artists with more active fanbases signing up. When I compare how things are going here compared with Pledge, I'm starting to wonder just how much longer the site can manage to stick around.

Tastemakerx has undergone a bit of a redesign and now shows the artists you have invested their virtual currency in in pictorial form. They've also added some features which will be useful to some, but not everyone as they require you to have Spotify installed. For each player, the artists they have added can now be played like a radio station. It's also possible to select an artist and listen to their "artist station" . Overall the site is still a little quiet and it seems to be mostly the same group of players playing on a regular basis. they are making a presentation at SWSX again though, so maybe some new blood will come in over the next few weeks.

And finally...
That's all for this edition. It's looking likely that I won't get around to writing the next edition until May due to some real life issues that are going to be taking up my time in the near future.

Thursday 14 March 2013

Questions I think artists shouldn't be asking

In this post I'm going to go through some of the most common questions I get asked as a fan either directly or indirectly by musicians, explain why I think you're asking the wrong thing and what I'd suggest as an alternative.

1. Who do I sound like?
I'm guessing you're asking this one because you think that people will be more likely to listen to your music if they think you sound like a particular (well known) artist they already listen to. Or so you can try and target fans of that artist because they are bound to like you too. Wrong approach. Why? One word - rivalry.

When I was a teenager fans of artist A were always rivals of fans of artist B, whose music happened to sound very similar and both camps were always convinced that "their" artist was the best and the other was more of a pale imitation. This has evolved through such rivalries being discussed on forums, and more recently more visibly on places like Twitter and Facebook. Approaching fans (in particular of an established artist) purely on the basis that you sound like them means YOU are more likely to be the "pale imitiation".

Take a lesson from the fans and go for the same approach you often see on forum threads. Instead of asking "Who do I sound like?" ask "Who else do you listen to (a lot)?". Not only are you changing the question so it becomes about them and not about you, but you may also pick up on some interesting artist names you hadn't even thought about before.

If your audience is young, the likelihood is that they like your music because they like what they hear, rather than the fact they like it because it sounds like something they already heard. As your audience gets older, their musical taste is influenced based on what they have already been exposed to musically - think of it as the equivalent of your musical influences influencing the music you have decided to make and you're more likely to get some meaningful answers if you then probe more fully about those artists and your fan's background.

Let me give you an example of one particular artist I listen to. When I listen to their music, what I hear in a number of their songs is the playing style of Elton John (whose music I like), the lyrical ability to connect with me both in my past and present as well as ability and lack of fear when it comes to experimentation in different musical styles that I get from being a long time fan of Howard Jones, the same intelligent wit and ability to weave political themes I see in the humour of Flanders and Swann combined with the storytelling of Chris de Burgh. If you were able to ask your fans the right questions to get that kind of level of information back about what they see in you, wouldn't it be a whole lot more interesting and give you better clues as to who you "sound like" anyway?

And in reality, the sooner you get to grips with the fact that you "sound like" you and not someone else, the better. Look back at my example above and consider just how similar or different to each other does the music from that list of artists sound in practice? Different people will hear different things in your music based on what else they've listened to - the interesting thing is what common ground comes up, particularly from fans of different backgrounds/ages/countries etc.

2. Tell all your friends...
If I'm that into you, most of my friends are probably sick of hearing about you anyway. My friends aren't going to vote for you or give you money just because I tell them to. (though you may sometimes see an exception to this with teenage fans)  If I think whatever it is you're up to is really that great or cool, I'm going to be telling people automatically. Seriously, all you need to do is tell ME whatever it is you're up to and let me cherrypick what might be of interest to pass on. Chances are my friends aren't going to be as deeply into you as I am - even if they do like at least some of your music, they'll have their own favourites that they're trying to get me to listen to instead. Let's face it, who knows MY friends better - you or me?

3. Sign up to my mailing list (and get something free)
Just... no. I seriously don't care what the experts say you should be doing on this one. As a fan who initially thought this sounded like a good idea, what I've found happens in practice doesn't do me or artists any favours. I've fallen for this sucker rather badly in the past (usually in exchange for free music) only to find one of two results further down the line. Either I get a torrent of mail because of the amount of music I like (oh look I got an email from 30 different artists today, I must be turning into an A&R), or a couple of years pass and suddenly a "regular" (i.e. the first one they sent since I signed up) newsletter from an artist I haven't seen or thought much about in that time suddenly appears. And like a lot of others, I'm probably too lazy to unsubscribe even if I can find that option.  Experience has taught me that I'd rather wait until I have enough interest in an artist to want to sign of my own free will. Even then, there are some artists that never seem to send newsletters or even update their websites with news until their next release comes out.

Stop inflating your numbers. Make it easy for me to find and sign up to your mailing list if and when I want to. And if you do have a mailing list, then actually USE it to send something every 1-2 months. Experience tells me that a mailing list isn't worth either the artist's or my time in the majority of cases. Let's face it, wouldn't YOU rather have people who are genuinely interested enough in you, rather than a list of people who only really signed for the incentive and who might only be taking a passing interest at best otherwise?

4. Here's this month's challenge
Ah yes, the good old "call to action". Seriously, it really depends what exactly you're asking. Some of these work as intended and very occasionally one of them might get me off my lazy butt and do what I'd been planning to do anyway but somehow never quite got around to. e.g. write a review of a purchase. Others are a case of something which works much better as an open-ended request rather than something which can be done "to order/by a certain date" because they need thinking about, or require being in the right place at the right time.e.g. take a picture of something that fits with a song title. And yet others can be things that some of your fans wouldn't really want to do or in some cases know how to do anyway e.g. post a video of you dancing or singing along to a song.

Unless you've got a lot of teenage fans, you might not actually get a lot of response to some (or most) of the things you ask, particularly if there appears to be a time limit. People have got to both remember and find the time in their schedules to do what you're asking if it's something they can't (or have the time to) do there and then. And if it can't be done there and then, a lot of the time they'll never get around to it before your deadline is up.

What would I suggest? Well, that 1-2 monthly newsletter I mentioned earlier is something you can add a nice little section to. Remind people that you always like to see/hear/receive the kinds of things you've been asking them to do. Maybe feature something recent from a fan. Hardcore fans have a habit of doing things anyway without you asking. Often all you need to do is present them with the facts e.g. "We're up for a vote at this website link to win this opportunity" and they'll automatically go and vote. Sometimes a group of fans will even get together on their own to prepare a surprise to present to you. Make it easy for them to know what you want/like and let them know when other fans have done something you like and it's more likely others will start to try and find "cool stuff to do" all on their own in the hopes you'll feature them. Encourage creative spontaneity as a continuous/regular thing, not something that sounds more like a work deadline and you may just find your fans can surprise you with what they'll come up with. But just like creating music, don't expect there to be a regular flow - things are going to appear randomly just like your inspiration when writing songs.

In summary
A lot of the things you're asking are things that hardcore fans are going to do anyway, irrespective of whether you ask or not. And they are only a very small percentage of fans in your fanbase - the rest you'll only get to join in occasionally at best. There really is no substitute or shortcut for the good old one-on-one connection to build relationships and create those hardcore fans so they will do things for you both automatically and willingly. And you'll discover a lot more than you can by asking what in reality are simple questions which have complicated responses.

One of the things I do in real life is "cold calling" door-to-door research. Whilst no selling is involved with this role, it is getting ever harder to get people to even talk to the strange person that arrived on their doorstep because they are being bombarded with an ever increasing number of requests for sales/advice/help and all they see is yet another person who wants something when they open the door. Yet in those cases where the door doesn't get slammed in my face, the participants quite often get a lot more from the experience than they were expecting. Build a rapport and you don't even need to ask (as often) because people will help you just on that basis.

As a fan I see the same thing happening in music - people are being bombarded too much with direct requests and are tuning out as a result. Form connections and let natural discovery happen so the laws of supply and demand can take over, or there is going to come a point when the music industry is going to be not just more broken than it is at present, but rather in an unfixable state where people in general don't feel enough of a connection to anyone to realise they need to support musicians.