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.