Favourite Video of the year
As I usually start my posts with video of the month, it's only fair that I start you off with video of the year. Some may call this one a bit of a cheat as it actually uses a Walt Disney short as its basis rather than being something created from scratch, but something about it reminds me of the Tom Petty video for "Running Down A Dream". Enjoy "Matter of Time" by Dommin, which you'll also find in my favourite track listing for the year.
Favourite Songs of the year
You'll find most of these in the attached soundcloud track listing at the bottom of this section of post along with a few that didn't quite make the cut. With over 70 minutes of music in the playlist, it should give you more than enough to listen to while you finish the rest of this post. As usual, I have allowed no more than one track per artist and whilst the vast majority were actually released in the last 12 months, there is the odd track that was released earlier but which I've only come across in the last year.
1. All of Me - John Legend
2. Song For Someone - Vertical Horizon
3. Should've Said No - Katie Thompson
4. Hot Damn - Ivy Levan
5. Everything I Love - Katey Laurel
6. Carnival of Kings - Matthew Ebel
7. 'Til Infinity - IYES
8. A Night In Hell and a Sunday Morning - Skitzo Calypso
9. The Shore - Fox Amoore
10. Time to Live - Remi Miles
11. Bullet for a Broken Heart - Dillon Hodges
12. Matter of Time - Dommin
13. River Runs Dry - GD Allan
14. Heads Will Roll - Mary at Midnight
15. Broken Record - Little Boots
16. I Like Flowers - Reluctant Dragon
17 My Sky - Jaani Peuhu
18. Down Like Hip-Hop - Fiction 20 Down
19. Medikation Nation - Future User
20. The Call of Mektoub (Secrets of The Book) - Dirk Maassen with Sleepingenius
I was all poised to give the title to Vertical Horizon this year when I ran across the video from John Legend that I posted in my last blog post. Whether it's a consequence of getting older or what has happened to me over the past year, I don't really know, but in general it seems I've been heading more towards a mellower choice both in terms of songs, and more particularly favourite albums this year. In terms of some of the more unusual and unexpected choices, the two main standouts that made the list would have to be "I like flowers" by Reluctant Dragon and more particularly "Down Like Hip-Hop" by Fiction 20 Down which those who know me would have expected would be one of those tracks I'd run a mile from.
Favourite Albums of the year
1. Echoes from the Underground - Vertical Horizon
2. Calypso - The Traps
3. The Diving Board - Elton John
4. Nocturnes - Little Boots
5. Colours in the Dark - Tarja Turunen
Despite being overdue, the Vertical Horizon album definitely proved it's possible to get a place in my heart if the music still manages to hit the spot. A long time favourite of mine, Elton John also just failed to hit second spot from a fairly recent discovery in the form of The Traps. I'm not sure how the newcomers will stack up longer term though as I felt they had already released their strongest tracks from the album before I got hold of a copy.
In terms of what I'm looking forward to next year, there are only two albums I'm currently aware of at the moment. The first will be the new Poets of the Fall album, which won't be along until later in the year as they only just finished touring and so still have to decide which tracks they'll be finishing off and recording for the new album from all the scraps of ideas they've come up with since the last one. As they operate on a one year touring, one year recording basis there's even a chance it will be more like Christmas or early next year before it actually gets released.
The second album I'm waiting for will be "Come Find Me" by Fox Amoore. This got pushed back for release into next year as, after he blasted through his original IndieGoGo target and got nearly 4 times the initial funding request, the recording dates moved to the end of January due to the extra enquiries and arrangements required to get a real orchestra and guest vocalists involved. He has the English Chamber Orchestra on board for the album and I've been watching him stream live as he sets up the actual orchestral arrangements for songs ready for when they record in January.
Heroes and Villains
Given the movement with Sellaband this year, I was really hoping I'd be able to say in this post that I finally have what I paid for, more than 4 years down the line both from when I last bought a part on Sellaband and from when the last artist I bought parts in actually hit their target. Unfortunately that's not quite the case. I'm finally down to waiting for just the one CD. Whilst Cubworld released his album in the summer and it was made available for download on Sellaband back in August, the physical copies have still not been shipped. The last contact I had with Cubworld on the issue said that he'd run out of money and couldn't afford to send the CDs out until he'd saved some up. He's now officially become the second artist I bought parts in to have passed the 4 year mark since funding completion but where the CD hasn't arrived.yet. Ironically, I'm willing to bet it would have been possible to get a physical copy from somewhere by now if I hadn't funded on Sellaband, but instead bought the finished product when it was released in August. I believe I said in a previous blog post that I thought he'd been left to fend for himself as an artist too soon (as a result of the changes to Sellaband putting the artist in control rather than them controlling the budget etc.) and this situation looks to be confirmation of that fact.
Revenue from Sellaband has also basically dried up this year. Some of that is down to the fact that a lot of the artists I bought parts in are now out of the 5 year agreement, but there's been no revenue seen either for any of the late artists whose releases have been turning up slowly in the interim. In total, I've had just 2 sets of revenue credited to my account this year, the first in April and the second in the middle of December. This second one was a mere one eurocent, and both payouts combined wouldn't even be enough to buy half a chocolate bar. I suspect this is probably close to (if not THE) last revenue I'll see from the site.
With Sellaband now down to around one artist signed up for every day of the year, only around 10% of those with at least 1% in budget raised and when adding up the visible money on the site and coming up with a figure of less than 25,000 euros, I'll be pretty surprised if the site makes it to 2015 in its current form. It's definitely now not far from the point where the little remaining money could land up being moved to just the top few artists to clean up and close the site with very little adverse effect or reaction.
It hasn't all been bad news though. The rest of the items I'd been waiting for from Sellaband finally arrived, including the Lori Greco album which was the other one that took more than 4 years. I also finally got the Vertical Horizon album I'd been waiting for for well over a year from Pledge Music. But the whole experience with crowdfunding to date has left me somewhat more reluctant to spend compared to my early Sellaband days.
It was therefore somewhat of a relief to find that my faith in Poets of the Fall was rewarded. Whilst their live DVD was released a month later than originally planned, they still managed the shortest turnaround time of any artist I've crowdfunded to date, from the time the project went live for funding to receipt of the goods. And whilst I think there's a little too much chopping and changing of camera on the finished product (it feels like the director thinks the camera needs to be in at least 2 places gathering action at the same time), I'd say this still feels like the best music purchase I've made in the last 12 months. Definitely the heroes of 2013 where it feels like so many others have been villains.
Late Stories
As you can imagine there have been a few stories and discoveries that have happened since my last blog post.
Firstly 3-Dimensional People for which very little information is available at present except that it appears to be a side-project involving at least one member of Dommin. I'll be keeping an eye out for them and what music gets released under this project name over the next year.
It feels like a lot of musicians I follow have been the target of thieves this year. There have been some good outcomes for a few though. NRG Rising got a laptop back, although their bass guitar is still missing, and Dillon Hodges tracked his stolen guitar down to an ebay listing and has subsequently got it back. Unfortunately these haven't been the only victims and based on this seemingly sudden spike in thefts compared to previous years, I'd suggest that the main New Years resolution for all musicians ought to be to keep a very good eye on their stuff over the coming year in case it too goes missing.
Bambi Monroe of Civilized Tears announced she is expecting a baby. Hopefully they will get the video recording that was crowdfunded done before the birth needs to take centre stage.
Matthew Ebel's move of his subscription service to Ziibra still hasn't taken place. As he is apparently the artist with the largest fanbase to sign up with them so far, those smaller artists already there have found a number of bugs in the system that everyone would rather were fixed before he makes the move. This means that whilst he has been planning to get rid of the Entourage subscription and reduce it to the same level as the Robot Army subscription when the move happens, he's in for a shock next time he checks his mail, as he should have a mail from Paypal telling him I've renewed at Entourage level. I've done this on the principle that the move hasn't happened yet, so I therefore don't consider the change to subscription tiers to have come into effect yet (also not my problem if his system lets me renew anyway). I'll be interested to see how/whether he reacts to this, particularly as it marks my 5th year of Entourage subscription. I know he's busy tearing his hair out over his main website at the moment due to the hosting provider making a mess of things and breaking his site, so hopefully this will come as a pleasant surprise.
In terms of site discoveries, I've been taking a look at Pitchmystuff. On the surface it appears to be yet another site for musicians to upload their music to. What its true purpose is seems to be pretty much unknown though all the indications I've seen present the site as a way to try and get musicians to part with their own cash. How you listen to the music that has been uploaded is far from obvious, and I found the search options for finding music in the first place to be rather poor, rendering it too much hassle for the average listener to figure out compared to other sites out there. Instead the site tries to tempt you to log in and has a habit of annoying you with popups trying to get you to buy advertising on the site, copyright your music or persuade you to use their music uploading service to push your music onto Itunes, Spotify etc. which seems somewhat more expensive than other similar services I've encountered. And whilst their Twitter feed seems to suggest it's possible to connect with other fans and artists on there, I haven't seen anything resembling any community features in my trawl of the site other than a section of user images on the main page.
Whatever happened to...?
As is traditional at this time of year, I always mention one or more people or artists I've been thinking about and wondering what happened to them. This year's "I wonder what happened to..." came about as a result of the fact I've actually been listening to Talentcast a lot more than I used to in the days when they were only promoting Sellaband artists. I met Missy briefly at Sellebration in 2007, but after the changes and subsequent mess made by Sellaband to their site, she pretty much disappeared from Talentcast after getting disillusioned with the situation. So wherever you are now and whatever you're doing Missy, I wish you well.
In the meantime, if you are an artist, you may be interested in the fact that Talentcast has expanded from when I first knew them and now broadcasts their program on four different radio stations instead of just one. They are also always on the lookout for independent artists to upload music for them to play on their radio program, so if getting your music played on radio is of interest, you should check out their site as they don't charge you.
And finally... To the Future
I promised you a developing story in my last regular blog post of the year and here it is. Except that you could say it's still developing. You almost certainly won't have been aware, but I've actually had a pretty bad year health wise and as yet, I don't know how much further the story is going to unfold in 2014 or what its effects on me are going to be in the longer term.
It all started with me needing to go to the doctor back in March because I had a period that wasn't just heavy, but in fact just wouldn't stop. It is early for me to be hitting the menopause, but not overly early and it was thought I could be going into the pre-menopausal stage a few years earlier than expected. I got given some tablets and was told to come back either if they didn't work or the problem repeated. I took them and after a break (somewhat reasonable given the volume of blood I'd lost) everything seemed to be back on track. But in the summer, the problem came back only worse. I got given another course of tablets which thankfully also worked and sent to the hospital for 2 different sets of blood tests and a scan. The blood tests came back fine (or at least as fine as they could be under the circumstances) but the scan proved a different matter. Whilst I can't feel a thing, I apparently have a cyst on one of my ovaries, irregular in shape with the dimensions they have given me being 8cm x 4cm x 3cm. They don't think it's cancer, but apparently it's impossible to say for sure unless they actually remove it (and the associated plumbing). As a result it's currently "under observation", which basically means I'm having to undergo regular scans to see how it changes. If it doesn't go away on its own, the tablets stop working, or I start to develop any other symptoms I may have to have an operation, but in the meantime I'm left trying to cope on tablets and supplements for the 2 weeks of hell out of every 4-6 weeks I'm experiencing while they decide whether an operation is the only option. I'm hoping that the next scan due at the end of January will prove to be either make or break on what they decide to do as it's affecting my work, my ability to do things in general and the preparations for our imminent house move due to the side effects which result from high blood loss as things stand at present.
My next planned post is the one I promised you about what draws me to becoming a fan, which I'm hoping to get done before we have an actual moving date set (current expectation is late January - early February for that), as it's unlikely I'm going to be looking for much in the way of music until after the house move now. Until then, I wish you all the best for 2014.
