Selling music as non-music

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 have UK comedian Dave Gorman to thank for this month's video from an artist I'd never heard of before I caught his tweeted link. So without further ado, take a listen to Scottish artist Admiral Fallow and a track they released last year called Squealing Pigs.

And if you're in the USA this September/October and you like what you hear, you have the chance to catch them live on their first North American tour.





Who I've been looking at
I got an email from Markus Nylund, a young artist from Finland I first encountered nearly 10 years ago. Well, not quite so young now perhaps if we consider that timescale. Anyway it said he is going to university in the Autumn and is done with music and has uploaded some of his more recent recordings (all as free download) on Soundcloud - I guess as a leaving present if you like. You'll find them under the name Sunlight Heart. I'm left wondering by this announcement - is it possible to "grow up" past what I describe as "the artist's soul", or will he be back at some point? It may be possible to be "done with music" if you have "the artist's soul" but that doesn't mean the music is done with you. And as I saw that spark of "artist's soul" when we met several years ago, I'm not yet convinced he has indeed let go

Ironically a couple of days before that email, I found a business card from Ruth Angell, a young violinist I'd met at one of the gigs I saw Markus play at when he was in England a very long time ago. She'd just started experimenting with adding vocals to her music and was still rather nervous about performing in public (despite the fact the audience in this case happened to be an audience of 3 and then only if you included the barman) . I took her card at the time and didn't really think anything more of it until I ran across it this month and decided to check out whether she was still out there making music. Well wow, what a difference a few years can make. She recorded her first album as part of acoustic duo Peacock Angell last year, is part of the folk group The Rainbow Chasers, put together by Fairport Convention founding member Ashley Hutchings and also performs with a number of other artists.

And perhaps a lesson to learn from this experience if you are an artist. Just because a contact or business card doesn't lead to something within a few weeks or months, it doesn't mean it's a failure. Rather if I hadn't taken her card at the time (or hadn't been offered it), I would probably have completely forgotten about her and not looked again.  Always remember this - you never know if or when something will bear fruit.

Francis Rodino's track "Higher ground"  was used for a video on the British Armed forces news website celebrating the armed services involvement with the 2012 Olympics. You can see the video here.

A couple of artists I've encountered this month have the common theme of approaching music as non-music. The first of these that got my attention Beck is selling an album that isn't recorded. Instead, what you get for your money is the sheet music for all twenty of the songs on the album, and it's up to you and/or your musical friends to come up with the musical interpretation. This article from Forbes and its follow-on explains why this is an innovative idea which may inspire the user-generated content generation.

The second music as non-music idea is by a gentleman called Jeff Boller, who goes by the name The Simple Carnival. Rather than recording an album, he's recording an animated movie in stereoscopic 3D. The songs and associated video clips are being released on the internet as they are mostly finished, but the final product will only be available as digital tracks or as a bluray video disc - there will be no CD. It's currently possible to download the mp3s he's uploaded so far for free in exchange for a tweet or facebook like, but as Jeff is doing all the work on both the recording and the animation (with a few exceptions) by himself, the projected finishing date is currently 2014. If you're interested in the project, keep an eye on him because he may start up a Kickstarter (or similar) project to collect funds when he gets more work done and gets closer to working out a more accurate end date for the project. You'll find a video on his website (approx 25min)  showing how he's creating the animation, and for music aficionados, not only does he play nearly all of the wide range of instruments himself, but he also claims to be mostly ignoring modern recording techniques and restricting himself to techniques used before 1980 where possible, so it's well worth a visit. Just remember to take your red-green glasses with you if you want to get the full 3D experience. (You can also get a pair for free if you order his previous album "Girls Aliens Food")

Look Left caught my attention through being mentioned in the text of a Matthew Ebel concert download (apparently one or more of them are particularly noticeable in the audience vocals of the recording). This young band has recorded an impressive 4 full length albums in the past 2 years. Their website is basically their bandcamp page, so there isn't really much information available about them, but you can download all of the aforementioned albums for $8 each. The music seems mainly Americana/folk rock, but there are a diverse range of musical styles in play often within the same song, and particularly in their earlier albums, so it's well worth a stop off to listen to what they have to offer for that fact alone.

I'm not sure which existing artist originally caused this one to pop on my Last FM station but after hearing a couple of different songs over the past few months, I decided to get around to checking out Brianna Gaither. She has an entire album of songs available to stream for free on her site, but disappointingly the only obvious purchase option is iTunes and her site also contains very little information about her or her music. Although the blog page was updated in the last month, her shows page only contains dates for past shows from the last 3 months.

Katie Thompson has just started up a new funding project for an EP on Indiegogo. You can find the details of what she's offering here.

The sites I've been looking at

Tastemakerx
They say that imitation is the best form of flattery and the continuation of last month's story about this site turned out to be someone imitating me. If you recall, I'd posted about a number of artists increasing in price in a short period, all boosted by pretty much the same group of user ids and it was unclear if this was a group of people joining or if someone had created some fake accounts. And that I'd joined in on the buying spree. Well it so happens I'd left a comment on one of the artist pages saying that I thought the price was on its way up fast before I'd worked out this was happening to a number of artists. Another user had also spotted the increases and started leaving a comment on many of the fast movers that the price was being inflated by false accounts. Then it seems he got into an argument with some of the other users on the site involved with buying parts in the artists in question and was told off by one of them for bullying. At which point I can only guess he decided I was creating fake accounts (as a result of the comment I'd left) and tastemakerx weren't doing anything about it and decided to make it look as if I was exactly the same user as him by modifying his profile to use my knifelady avatar. Given the number of users then starting to question if we were the same person and if indeed we had been creating fake accounts, I contacted tastemakerx to step in. After a couple of emails, they reset his avatar to the default one, but not before I'd had to get into a conversation with some of the users involved to try and convince them we were indeed different people, leaving me more than a little irritated, rather than flattered at his stunt. The user in question does still appear to have some kind of a sense of humour though, as the new profile picture they've uploaded is the default tastemakerx one with an added pair of devil horns. It's not the first time I've had problems on a "young" site that I've used heavily (Sellaband and the unofficial forum anyone?) and somehow I doubt it will be the last. Meantime, I now seem to be officially entrenched within the top 10 tastemakers on the site but am not really expecting to get all the way to number one given I've been mixing it with the serious gameplayers for the past couple of weeks and things don't shuffle round that much at the top as a result.

Sellaband
Most notable this month has been the rather strange looking decision of Unter Null to reduce their budget twice despite only being on the site a month or so. First it was reduced to 8000 euros, and then more recently to 7000 which was reached rather rapidly after this and just left to complete its 2 week grace period. Someone who only wanted a month-long fundraiser, or someone who wanted to get out before the "new website"? Your guess is as good as mine. In the meantime, I've heard a rumour that the "new website" due this autumn is basically going to extend fundraising to projects other than music. Hopefully it won't be too much longer now before fact confirms or denies that. In the meantime it's noticeable that the majority of the "promoted artists" on the Sellaband frontpage are now German, but likewise it's the German signups in general that seem to be bringing some believers in the first place. (10 of the current top 50 sorted by % raised are from Germany, with 6 of those on the first page of the site). It's currently looking like the site will evolve into a niche for fundraising for German projects based on the way things seem to be going, rather than the global music fundraising platform originally intended.

And as promised, here's the update on the albums I'm (still) waiting for. Lori Greco passed her 3 year anniversary since reaching target, yet there's still no news on when (if ever) the album will be seen. In the meantime, it seems she's off to Italy, as that trip is pretty much all her tweets have been about recently. Things are also rather quiet in the Cubworld camp despite his three year anniversary getting ever closer as well. He did tweet that he's set a pretty firm release date, but I haven't seen any mention of when that's likely to be.

Pledge
The other artist I'm waiting for is on Pledge Music. After some comments on their profile asking what was going on because there had been no update for over 2 months Vertical Horizon finally posted a video update just a few days ago (ironically the day after I left a comment - coincidence or the knifelady power back at work?) of one of the new songs and showing the individual layers making up the track. However the question of when the album is coming out still remains unanswered despite that being one of the main questions they were asked in the comments.

As a result of this, I'm now watching Ginger Wildheart's new project very closely on there, as it's the first project of his that I'll have been watching from start to finish. Given he raised his budget in less than two hours (it would have been less than one, if Pledge's servers had been able to cope with the load) and last I looked was about to hit 400% of his total, I'm interested to analyse how this project goes on Pledge and see if it confirms the current ideas I have about crowdfunding music in general.

Last FM
Last FM may be about to lose quite a bunch of subscribers. About a week ago it introduced a 6 skip limit for all users, not just non-subscribers. This means you can't skip more than 6 songs before you need to change the station you're listening to, whereas before it was unlimited. This makes the process of music discovery through the site even more time consuming and a lot of users aren't happy with the change. Particularly as the algorithm they use isn't particularly friendly as it tends to offer you the same track for a given artist and/or keeps playing things you've listened to recently, rather than offering tracks in your library that you haven't listened to in a while (hence the nightmare I've been having this past year trying to "train it" to understand what I listen to). Last FM say they can't change their policy due to their licensing agreements, even though several users have offered to pay MORE to have the facility to skip whatever they want. With music licensing being cited more and more often as the reason why people can't listen to what they want, I'm beginning to think the sooner this idea is banned, the better. Otherwise, we'll definitely reach a stage where nobody will want to pay for music at all (several of those who have stated they are cancelling their subscriptions because of this change have said publicly they will go back to sites which are known not to pay musicians). The current system of music licensing is clearly broken and needs to disappear as soon as possible.

The not-pop Jukebox 
Not a site, but rather a blog with the subheading "Ignored, Maligned and Forgotten Music". Which pretty much says it all. The blog is updated daily with at least one track embedded into each post. So if you want to listen to music you may not have heard before which comes from a wide range of musical styles, this is a very good place to look.

Rekiosk
Seemingly originally started as a way to sell digital books, the site has now expanded into selling other things digitally as well. The basic idea is that for anything sold from your kiosk (store) on the site, the original creator will get 70% of the cash and you will get about 25% (with the remainder obviously going in site fees) which makes it an interesting looking affliate scheme.

On the plus side, you can add and sell 15 items to your kiosk without attracting a fee for your kiosk. On the minus side, you can only add products already on the site to your kiosk in the first place, unless you can prove you are the original content creator. And at the moment there seems to be very little content available on the site to choose from. Additionally, the payments to you are made using dwolla, rather than one of the better known payment methods such as Paypal and you're required to fill in IRS forms when you open your kiosk. What this means for non-USA citizens is unclear, and their FAQ section doesn't cover that either. However, Pledge Music already have a kiosk on the site, so I'll be keeping an eye on it to see whether it starts to become a more attractive prospect in future.

Current verdict is that it seems an interesting idea but too mired in red tape to attract users. Also without offering an obviously better % to content creators (say 85-90%) than well known services such as iTunes or Amazon, there's very little reason for independents to add their content to the site, as it's unlikely to generate sales without users.

That's all for this month. Hopefully next month's post will come out on time, but with some real life issues needing resolution, I'm likely to become busy around the time I'm due to post.

Musical March

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

Epyllion are no longer playing live. They say they are aiming to stay as a recording project, but in the meantime three of the members have created a cover band called "The Art Vandelays" and their keyboard player is about to release a solo album. Here's hoping they don't run into trouble with the unsigned Florida band of the same name!

Brad Cox has been posting a number of acoustic videos for various songs from his various projects on Youtube recently. There's also a new song from his "Niki Thunders and the Temperamentals" project coming soon.

Francis Rodino tweeted recently that he'll be hitting the studio again soon, so I'm wondering if that means new music is in the works. I'll be keeping my eyes out on his website and my inbox for any further info on that - it's been a while since either have been updated with news.

Katy Vachon caught my interest when Talentcast played her on their weekly radio show. She currently has a profile on Sellaband, but like most other artists there it seems she's forgotten to bring her fans and is waiting for people to appear from nowhere to give her money as the only people who have bought into her project are names I recognise. The only currently finished song off the album she is trying to fund for "I got style" does have hit potential, so I'll be interested to see what else she comes up with.

March has been an explosion of music that I've been waiting for being released. I strongly suspect my album of the year for 2012 is already known as a result, but with only a quarter of the year over, there is a small chance someone could still surprise me. The only clue I'll give you at this point is that it belongs to one of the next three artists I'm going to mention in this post - you'll just have to wait until the end of the year to find out which, assuming I get no surprises in the meantime.

Matthew Ebel released the mp3s for the new album "The Lives of Dexter Peterson" to those due them around the same time as the masters went for duplication. A number of other artists I've funded in the past would do well to learn a lot from this, given the number of cases where CDs have been on sale to the general public weeks or even months before those who had pre-paid got access to the downloads (let alone their CDs). The first of the physical CDs have therefore been produced and should be on their way soon, with distribution into the likes of CDBaby/Amazon etc. for the general public expected in April. As for the album itself, it has lived up to expectations and I can't wait to slap an actual CD in something with a decent set of speakers. Even from the 320k mp3s through my headphones, I can hear "A Million Miles Away" calling out for surround sound.

I've now got my Poets of the Fall album "Temple of Thought". I eventually got the price down a lot closer to £20 than the £30 I started at, thanks to a combination of shopping around and the exchange rate being semi-cooperative. At double the going rate of a CD in the UK, it's still a price which pains me though (anything much over 50% extra does) and as you can probably guess, the star rating is the only reason that's made me break my normal price rules in the first place. Initial impression has been that it's not their best album to date but not their worst either. This one appears to be an album of "growers" rather than having any tracks that immediately leap out and demand to be listened to - the only exception is "The Happy Song" which was written for the "Alan Wake's American Nightmare" soundtrack and really does sound like a bonus track, rather than fitting with the feel of the rest of the album as a result. The lyrics are as powerful as ever ("Skin" has to be one of their best to date for its imagery on this score, and as for "The Ballad of Jeremiah Peacekeeper" what can I say but "wow"), and interestingly the signature of this album seems to be based mainly round prose rather than rhyme. Like every POTF album, this one is therefore going to take a while to sort out my real favourites, although I already have a few ideas of which those will be.

Howling Dollhouse have now released previews of the rest of their self-titled 13 song album on their youtube channel, ("All the Pieces" and "Note to Self" had already been released as official videos), so if you want to take a listen to the whole album before deciding whether you want to buy, this is now the ideal place to do it.

Iconcrash also released a new album this month, containing the track they were hoping to get into the Eurovision Song Contest with as Finland's entry (that honour has gone to a lady singing in Swedish). The track in question (We Are The Night) is a lot more commercial than many of the other songs on the album which follow their more usual industrial-sounding electronic music style. Amazingly their special edition album was half the price of the Poets of the Fall album, leading me to a combination of head scratching and further price pain. With such a stupid range of prices for new release albums out there, it doesn't surprise me when there is piracy. Music industry - wake up and SORT IT OUT ALREADY!

Liz Menezes became this month's first Twitter artist of interest, not through following me, but rather through tweeting at me about her music. Have to admit I don't normally wander off to links sent at me seemingly at random, particularly if the profile picture is a pretty female, but I was in the right mood and a quick scout of her twitter account didn't pull up any red flags so I wandered off to take a listen. That's when the fun started, because she had an intro page up (since removed) in front of the website promoting her new album with a large "click here to buy" button. Yet it was impossible to get to her site from this page, and hence impossible to find anything of use to someone discovering an artist for the first time. She did send me a link to the actual homepage when I brought the subject up, so I did find out she would probably be of interest to people who like Lily Vasquez, as she appears to be another latino singer with a mix of Spanish and English songs.

Josh Bunce is the first musician follower on Twitter that I've had appear seemingly from nowhere that's gathered enough of my interest to follow back and see what happens over a more extended period. This young guitar player reminds me at times of Acoustic Jim and at others of Daniel Ward-Murphy and seems to have released just a couple of EPs (albeit long ones at 6-7 songs each) to date. Not the best I've heard, but well worth a listen even so if you're into the similar artists I've mentioned. I'm interested to see what, if anything, he can make of the potential I can hear hiding in there.

The sites I've been looking at
To cut a long story short, I've now got my husband's previous Android phone. I won't say old, because the Dell Streak Five he's using now is discontinued, whereas this LG isn't. Whilst I'd used this phone a few times while it was in his possession, now that it's in mine I've been spending some time at looking at getting it set up to use the things I want to use it for. As you can imagine, a major part of that is music, but so far it's not been living up to expectations.

After the hell of getting the ability to download apps working (It refused point blank to work with my existing Google account, yet was quite happy to work with a newly created one), one of the first things on my list was the Last.fm app. However I'm already thinking about getting rid of it, as it seems the only use it would have is to work as a scrobbler for tracks I had uploaded to the phone. The big problem is the fact you can only stream 50 tracks via the app before you have to pay. Somewhat daft when there's no limit when I access the site via a browser. I wouldn't mind if the only option you could listen to was tracks already in your library rather than the whole Last fm catalog, but to lock it down so completely means there's little point me using it for music streaming on the move. Chalk yet another one up for the idea of ownership - seems the best way to take music with you is still to upload it to your own phone from your own collection yourself rather than rely on a cloud. And you don't need an Android to do that.

No doubt I'll land up exploring the idea of app development a bit further as a reason for using it, but for the moment the laptop appears to be winning for ease of use despite its lower portability over the idea of a smartphone for the things I want to do on a mobile basis. I hadn't expected that, so this is proving an interesting experiment.

Slowbizz
I mentioned Slowbizz a few posts ago as being a service aiming to aid artists with booking tours. Whilst quite liking the idea in principle, the costs involved for hosts didn't make it look attractive for something you'd want to do as a regular event, and I also had a number of concerns about how it could work in practice. Seems there have been a few critical changes since that post, making it worthwhile for me to post some more thoughts as a result.

Firstly, Slowbizz itself has gone non-profit. This essentially means that they no longer take any money and they no longer set the fee that hosts pay to artists. On this score, they've therefore removed themselves so completely from the equation that there's absolutely no reason for existing fans of an artist to use the service at all - as all they're really doing is providing an initial point of contact between host and artist and you sort out all the details between you, you might as well go direct in the first place.

Secondly the changes from the artist side don't make things particularly easy either. Firstly the rules for new artists getting added to the list of those available have changed. Instead of getting a minimum of 100 fans to sign up in order to get added to the roster, you now need to get the approval of at least 75% of the hosts on the system instead. Add to this the fact that you're now essentially doing all the booking arrangements for a tour instead of that falling on Slowbizz and from the artist point of view it's starting to look like you've got a lot of work again.

Thirdly, the new Slowbizz stance of acting as a "social meeting point" between artists and potential hosts is currently unfulfilled. There's no forum or other way to interact on the site itself - the best you can do is fill in a form to state you're interested in booking an artist. Yet to be a useful meeting point there needs to be visible communication. Artists and hosts need to have the social features to allow them to communicate and get to know each other, even before an artist attempts to get added to the Slowbizz roster. There needs to be the possibility of feedback and advice so that both artists and hosts have information on what's going right and wrong with the process and can share that with others who may be hesitating or in order to improve things for the future. None of that exists on the site at the moment. Rather the order of the day currently seems to be mails from Slowbizz that are ultimately just marketing. i.e. the "Please tell everyone else you know about us" sort and that approach isn't going to win any fans of the site or even the idea in general. And a similar problem appears on the new site homepage, where links to the registration forms are prominent, yet you have to go scrolling down the page in order to stand any chance of finding the links to the artists rosters (available and pending) - in fact it's not even obvious the useful stuff is down there, and it's way too easy to think the links will take you back to one of the registration forms you encountered earlier based on the wording.

So overall, my impression hasn't changed that much. I think there may still be some potential there for artists to get additional dates on top of ones they're able to arrange directly with their existing fans, but it looks like the site is still a long way from the chance of making that potential a reality, except for maybe a very few.

Amazon
Given the rise of digital, I decided to spend my latest electronic voucher in their mp3 shop for a change. I've been an Amazon customer for years, buying both books and CDs both in the past and currently and never had any problem. I've shied away from the idea of mp3s, but given the huge discrepancies between CD and digital for some artists, I decided I was long overdue on giving them a try.

My biggest problem with the big players like Amazon and Itunes is the idea of a software download (I'm here to buy MUSIC, not a DRM solution or software I don't need for gods sake), but given the ability to take the downloaded files from the Amazon software and put them wherever you want seemed easy as pie, I thought it was worth a try. Who knows, maybe I'd actually get used to the idea and turn into an mp3 buyer rather than a CD buyer if I could get used to buying them from a name I've trusted for years?

Well the software went on easy enough, I hit the pay button and I got a nice shiny new one telling me to click on it and it would download my tracks. So I clicked and got the response that my card payment had been rejected. This was despite the fact, I'd received the email confirmation from Amazon that my payment had completed successfully! So, I went back into the order details and yes, everything was paid for, but could I find that download button again? Nope. Nowhere to be seen. So I fired off an email to customer support. Within a couple of hours they responded saying they'd reactivated the download button for me (apparently if you miss that one opportunity to download, that's it you won't get another) and this time when I clicked on it, it did actually start to download tracks.

However it didn't download all of them, and yes, you guessed it. There was no way to retry downloading the tracks that the software had failed on. To add insult to injury, whilst it told me "one or more tracks failed to download" it didn't tell me which those were, meaning I had to manually check an order list of about 30 tracks to confirm what was missing. That's when the second email went off to Amazon.

On the plus side, someone from Amazon did actually phone me after that second mail and tried to fix the problem with downloading tracks over the phone. On the minus side he failed. And whilst they were good enough to give me my money back on the tracks that failed despite the fact they have a "no-money-back" policy on digital downloads, the experience has done enough to convince me I won't be buying digital from them again. And confirmed my previous stance about not wanting to buy digital from anywhere that insists you download software in order to be able to download or listen to music. Looks like you'll have to pry the CD out of my cold dead hands after all.

That's all for now. I'm expecting April to be somewhat quieter on the music front, given it seems to have all happened in March, but expect an update on my ongoing Sellaband problems as part of that post as a minimum.

New Year no surprises?

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
Firstly as a quick update from my review of the year post, it's probably going to come as no surprise that the Skitzo Calypso album "Ghosts" has arrived safe and sound. And in fact a few days earlier than I was expecting it. Meantime I'm still waiting for my Natalia Safran album, even though the email exchange with Sellaband about the situation (and other subjects) continued after my review of the year post was written. Indeed it will soon be another month since she last logged into Sellaband and more complaints have started appearing on her wall in that time. And enough said by my last post on what I'm thinking at the moment as a result of these events.

As for the Skitzo Calypso album, interestingly although I like it nothing has leapt out and grabbed me above any other track as a must-listen. The tracks come across as too similar rather than having the variety (and hence interest) that Brad's solo project album ("The Day The Devil Fooled The World") did. Rather I think the better (and more memorable) tracks are the ones up for free download. Even though it's well known I'm not a fan of rap, my pick of the bunch is therefore "Ready or Not" - the song you'd probably be least expecting me to choose of the eight available (5 on the EP + 3 free).

Into the Night are in the process of changing their name etc. to Howling Dollhouse. So the album I posted as expecting this year is going to be released under their new name. They already have a new website and a new video for the first single from the album which you can view from the Howling Dollhouse link I just gave you.

Don't know whether he read my last blog post, but it looks like Matthew Ebel is finally getting himself organised with regard to sending out things overdue from last year, causing me to once again relax and stop doubting my sanity for now. Looks like I'll be able to expect this in the first half of March, given the travel time for post and the fact that the album part of "The Lives of Dexter Peterson" is expected to be mastered and have all its artwork ready by the end of February - once again it makes much more sense to send everything together at this point.

I also now have an album title for the new Poets of the Fall album due this year. The album is called "Temple of Thought" and the first single from it "Cradled in Love" has already been played on radio in Finland. Of course this also meant within a couple of hours it had already been uploaded to Youtube, despite the fact it wasn't even available to buy at the time. Unusually this isn't an up-tempo track (as might be expected from the first release off an album) and might therefore explain why a different single is being released in Germany. Whilst I don't generally link to unofficial uploads, I've got a particular reason for doing so this time. So go listen to the full song here and then give your ears a real treat by listening to the full quality clips posted on the artist's own site. Like many in this day and age, I'm often guilty of listening to mp3s for convenience and portability, but it's nice to be reminded of one of the reasons I still buy CDs in the first place, given what can happen to track quality in some cases. And at the same time there has also been a reminder of the dilemma fans face in the form of this post. Just as artists seemingly face the "chicken and egg" situation of not being able to get their music on the radio or tour until they have enough fans in a country, so there is also the problem from the fan side of how to convince others to listen to an artist (and hopefully eventually convert into fans) when their music isn't being played on the radio and they're not touring there either. Hence one of the reasons people turn to illegal means in the first place, even though a lot of artists seem to be under the impression sharing is actually hurting their sales despite the fact those who like what they hear will often buy it later. People don't buy music they haven't heard unless they are already reasonably big fans of the artist that created it, yet there are still way too many roadblocks out there stopping music getting to potential listeners without them resorting to methods considered illegal, given music should be considered a global market.

So onto the new stuff and as usual we're at the time of year where I go looking around at some of the artists I haven't been near in a while to see what they're up to, rather than actively looking for new music. However that doesn't stop new music from finding me, and it's been interesting to spot that I am starting to get the odd artist follow me on Twitter, seemingly appearing from nowhere. Unfortunately I haven't picked up anything that has grabbed my attention sufficiently to warrant a follow back (at least at this point), and as can probably be expected the follows have therefore tended to be temporary as a result. Most interesting so far has been Bridge Construction, who sounded like they ought to be something I'd have fairly high interest in listening to from the description in their biography, but have turned out to be a pretty disappointing take-it-or-leave-it based on the tracks I've heard so far.

As for those I've been to visit so far, it feels like I'm pretty much suffering the curse of the dead due to unclear, outdated or just plain old hard to find information presented to those dropping by rather than actively following. Three examples of such artist websites follow.

It's been rather a long time since I stopped off at Mandyleigh's page and it's unclear whether the most recent post on her blog is a couple of weeks old or more like a year old as a result. What does seem to be certain is that family has been taking up a lot of her time since I was last there and the music has been forced into taking a back seat as a result. Indeed the fundraising she started on her own site for a second album back in 2010 looks like it didn't really go anywhere either and there's seemingly no new music available since she recorded her Sellaband album. Whatever she's currently up to, I wish her well, but it doesn't look like anything much is (or will be) happening musically any time soon.

I've also wandered past Lily's site, but the obvious information on it appears to be about a year out of date, as the "February 8th single release date" shown on the homepage appears to apply to last year. She does appear to be active on Twitter though, so will be seeing what further info I can get from there as she always used to be a pretty friendly and fast responder before.

Bulletproof Messenger's site pretty much continues to annoy me. I find I get much more useful info a lot easier from anywhere but their own website. I really like these guys and their music hence why I'm signed to their mailing list, but it never ceases to amaze me how poor their website seems at introducing them and their music to anyone hearing them for the first time who will have dropped by to find out more. When you get more from Youtube and even from Twitter than from an artist's own site, it's quite clear they're really not making best use of their potential.

One other place I've been was to visit Grooveduke's site to find out how he was getting on with the cancer battle. Seems he is still holding off on getting the transplant operation done and started looking for a management team at the end of last year to try and get some progress towards getting a new album funded. Looks like the one he attempted (and failed) to get made on Sellaband did indeed get finished. It's called "Heavy Mariner" and whilst I have to admit I never really got into his music, I quite like the rather distinctive album art he had made for this (of which there appears to be more in a similar style elsewhere on his site). There hasn't been any update to his blog in January though, so I can only hope his latest trip to hospital has gone well.

The websites I've been looking at
Netvalar who I first met on Sellaband has resurfaced on the music scene after being pretty much absent for a while now. It looks like he's reopening his music research, but has dropped the Netvalar name and slightly bizarrely has me listed as one of his mentors, despite the fact I only scrambled out the consumer pile and started looking at music and crowdfunding as a result of discovering Sellaband. So it's a little strange to feel someone considers me a mentor when I've spent all the time we've been interacting in learning from scratch myself. A process which is still ongoing, but for which I really ought to publish a "what I've learnt so far" type post soon, listing the conclusions I've reached to date. Five years has caused me to contemplate some interesting stuff, after all.

I've also started a little more training of my station on Last FM. So far I'm up to just over 500 artists covering about 3000 plays, though the first couple of pages are now getting pretty representative of who I'm listening to most at this point in time, whilst being not necessarily so accurate of who I've listened to most if the past were properly taken into account too.

That's pretty much all I've got for you at the moment. Recovering from Christmas/New Year and getting January with all its birthdays (including a major one of my own this year) and wedding anniversaries out the way always tends to take up a lot of time (yet another reason for me not looking for that much in the way of new music at this time of year), so hopefully I'll be finding some more interesting info and sites for you soon.