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
There really was only one logical choice I could make this month after watching
Fox Amoore's fundraising effort get underway at Indiegogo. With an initial target of 7,500 euros, I was a little sceptical of whether it would be possible to reach that in the 2 months the project has been set for, given what I've seen of other artists to date. In fact the target was reached in a little over 2 hours, prompting him to start looking into the costs for getting a full orchestra involved and Indiegogo to feature the project on their front page. With over a month still to run, the project is well on its way to 18,000 euros already, meaning at least part of an actual orchestra is likely to become involved. If you want to join the fundraising, then you can do so here. If you're a music lover who likes CDs then I'd have to recommend the 40 euro package as you'll get 3 albums in addition to the one he's going to be recording at Abbey Road - at 10 euros an album including the postage that works out a pretty good deal. In the meantime enjoy the video that goes with the project to give you a taste of the music that's in store for the album itself.Who I've been looking at
It feels like forever but I'm finally more or less down to waiting for actual hard copies of overdue items. There's been no sign of the CD from
Lori Greco yet and I'm now waiting for the Cubworld one as well, though Sellaband did finally get the digital version of his album up for people to download. On the one hand I'm slightly disappointed with the release, as it didn't appeal quite as much as I thought it might after hearing some of the tracks - mostly because I think some of the better tracks are those that saw the light of day before the album. On the other, it turned out no worse than I expected with just the (seeming obligatory) one rap track to send me screaming in terror. In addition to the tracks "Shaka Laka" and "Life is Music" that I've mentioned before, the obvious standout is "I Found Love". I could quite see some of the tracks here turning up in the TV series "Hawaii Five-O" if the right people were looking.I also now have the soundtrack from the
Poets of the Fall DVD, so am just waiting for the DVD itself to arrive. The latest update has duplication happening on 7th October with it being shipped from local less than a week later. Because the duplication is happening later than the last update had planned, they have also made the video of the concert itself available for download already - all 2.5Gb of it, though not the extras as that would have about doubled the size. So 2 weeks overdue for the digital download and more like a month for the physical copy (by the time it gets here) is certainly something I can live with, particularly given how communicative they've been. No prizes for guessing my experience here has done nothing but strengthen the 5 star rating and convince me I'd definitely fund again.Even
Vertical Horizon turned up with an update.Their album "Echoes from the Underground" was finally made available for digital download on October 1st with the physical CDs starting to be shipped a week later. I'm enjoying the album as much as I thought I would so it's a real shame it's taken them this long to get organised. It sounds like they'd do another fan funded project in the future, but I'd be interested to see how many people get put off from funding another based on the experience with this. I know I'm one.I never thought I'd be saying this but at this rate there's actually a chance I'll have all my overdue stuff by Christmas (this year)!
Elsewhere, I was wondering how much longer the
Civilized Tears funding would still be up, given they'd been stuck on about half budget for well over a month. Seems something gave with their announcement that the funding would only be open a few more days and they wouldn't be able to make the video they'd planned if it failed, as the project gained the other half of its 1000 euro budget within 24 hours of that and with less than 3 days to spare.I found myself doing a double take at my Twitter feed this month when I found some tweets from someone I didn't remember following. At the moment I have no idea if a marriage or a stage name is responsible but it seems Julia Johnson, who some may remember from Second Person is now going by the name
Julia Gray. The link from her Twitter feed to iTunes for her album shows Julia Gray on that page, although anyone reading the reviews posted before the name change is going to get extremely confused. In the meantime her website is still hosted under her old name and gives no indication of what might be responsible for the name change, or even when it happened.Probably one of the more unusual pieces of music I've run across recently is in Estonian by an artist called
Priit Jääger on Soundcloud. My first thought was whether or not it was Catself as the song "Kassi Lugu" (cat story in English) is certainly unusual enough to fit her repertoire.I think I'm spent up for the year now as far as music is concerned - there's nothing else I've been looking out for since
The Traps released their debut album "Calypso" on 30th September and there's the house move costs to think of, not to mention Christmas in there somewhere. I just have the 30th anniversary Howard Jones concert on the live front left and though I would have liked to get down to London to see Caiyo's new material (amongst others) there was no way the budget was going to stretch that far. Might be time to start working out my favourite tracks of the year, though there's always the chance something I'm not expecting will find me in the last 2 months of this.The sites I've been looking at
Ziibra
There isn't much to see here yet as they haven't officially launched, but the reason I've taken an interest is because
Matthew Ebel has been working with them with the aim of moving his subscription site to their platform rather than trying to run it himself at the same time as trying to make music. On the one hand I understand his reasons for wanting to get more away from maintenance and more into actually making music, but the cynical side of my brain is only seeing a problem for the future here. If you saw the video of Matt speaking at the 140 characters conference in 2012, you'd know that he's no stranger to the idea of sites popping up for musicians, hanging round a while and then either disappearing or completely changing what they offer anything from a few months to a couple of years down the line (and the fact he hates getting so many emails asking him to sign up to the "latest greatest" new music service that has barely been launched when he knows they are pretty much all going to nosedive within a few months), so the fact he's looking to make such a big move of an entire website to a startup that isn't even public yet is a little surprising in itself.Whilst he's been sharing his experiences of running a subscription service with them, so in theory it should work for him, there are a couple of things that stand out. First is the point that in order to keep going long term, the site is going to need to be profitable and for that it will need other artists to take up the service. Yet the question remains as to who these artists will be. Many larger artists are adding subscription services to their own websites (and even some smaller independents) rather than using a third party site. Artists that are too small aren't going to have enough fanbase for a subscription service in the first place. So it seems to me there's going to be a very niche market out there. And there are already other subscription based platforms out there as well so there will be no shortage of competition. I've mentioned Patreon before, but there is also Drip.fm which has aimed itself at small (and often independent) music labels and already has at least one well known name on board in Franz Ferdinand. And that's probably only the tip of the iceberg as this isn't an area I've been actively looking at to date.
The second point is the fact that not every artist is the same. Just because the subscription model that Matt has works for him, it doesn't mean it's going to work for other artists out there. In fact I'd be very surprised if it did unless there was already a similarly committed (and probably in the same demographic) fanbase involved. Whilst I can't help but hope it'll work for him, or at worst he finds some new fans from any publicity they give him, this still feels like a wrong move he'll both regret and find himself having to sort out later. I really hope I'm the one who's wrong here, because this has the potential to get messy if I'm not.
Tastemakerx
The updated website that I mentioned in my last post finally went live and has turned out to be a big disappointment so far. For starters all links between the user profile and an artist profile disappeared, meaning you were faced with the task of starting from scratch as far as linking artists to your profile was concerned. It also seems they were using an old database copy as well, seeing as several artists that had been added to the old version had mysteriously vanished from the new one. I fiddled around with the new site a bit to see how it worked, but I've found that every time I've gone back since I've found it removes artists I added to my profile claiming I'm not following any, yet bizarrely lists me in their charts as following some artists that I probably wouldn't bother with based on the new direction of the site. That's only the start of the list of things I'm not liking.
The "game" aspect is also gone. Instead you get presented with a Facebook style feed which basically just consists of whatever the artists you follow have posted on their social media pages recently. On the one hand you could say it's convenient to have the information together rather than buried within an entire set of social media feeds. On the other it's pretty pointless as all it's doing is regurgitating information I'm already getting from elsewhere, whether that be the artist's own mailing list, website, Twitter feed or indeed other music sites I visit such as last.fm. And with a whole load of artists that they either don't have at all or no longer have since the update which I am already getting information from these other channels for, it means the site now has absolutely no purpose that isn't already being done better elsewhere. I may drop in from time to time to see if they add anything new worth a look (and have fixed any of the problems), but with nothing now to make it stand out from everything else out there, it's certainly no longer a site I'll be visiting regularly.
And finally...
I'm thinking of making just the one more regular post before my review of the year, given where we're likely to be with the house move, but if I get the time I'll drop in one of my specials as well - this time on some of the questions I've been asking myself to try and understand what it is that draws me towards particular artists in the first place by looking at some of those I've been liking for a very long time. If not, that'll be a post for early next year
