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.

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.

Review of the year 2012

Welcome to my review of the year post. Probably shorter than some you've had in recent years, mainly because my spending has once again been limited for financial reasons and I haven't spent as much time chasing around after music as a result. I do however have an update on the albums I've been waiting for (some of which have already been mentioned in more blog posts than I care to think about) and I've also pulled together some conclusions I've reached on fanfunding as a result of my experiences, which I think you'll find will make for very interesting reading. But before we get to that, it's time to look at this year's charts which produced an unexpected result I wouldn't have predicted if you'd asked me as I was writing my review of the year last year.

Album of the Year

1. Matthew Ebel - The Lives of Dexter Peterson
2. Poets of the Fall - Temple of Thought
3. Howling Dollhouse - Howling Dollhouse
4. Nightwish - Imaginaerum
5. Fox Amoore - Legends of Valanor

Wow. If I had placed a bet at the beginning of the year as to what I thought would land up as my favourite album of the year based on the albums I already knew would be released, I would have been completely and utterly wrong. I was fully expecting Poets of the Fall to take the honours, based on past experience but as you can see it appears it wasn't meant to be. At the end of the day a very tight title was decided on the basis of instant likes vs. growers. Unlike previous albums, nothing particularly grabbed me on first listen from the POTF album and although I did find many of the tracks have grown on me, I didn't feel it was enough to beat Matthew's album which hit me with 2 straight away and landed up with a similar percentage of likes after the "growers" came through.

Another album I was expecting when I wrote my review of the year post last year was from "Into the Night" who actually changed their name to "Howling Dollhouse" before its release and released the album with the same title. It's a pretty solid album although I didn't find anything really outstanding within it. The two most notably different tracks on the album are "Part 2" (basically just vocals and piano) and "World on Fire" which, whilst not really my thing, does a pretty good job of blending rap and rock.

Although the album I've selected from Nightwish was originally released in late 2011, I waited for the tour edition which also has orchestral versions of the tracks. Having splashed out on an album with the tracks as instrumentals from them in the past (as well as containing the versions with full vocals) I actually found these made good background music when I didn't want to be distracted from work, and the orchestral versions of the tracks on this particular album seem even better than those albums I've had previously for this.

Fox Amoore seems to get better and better and this particular soundtrack effort made for a very worthy 5th place, shaking off competition from other artists such as Sonata Arctica that I've been buying for years.

One artist did lose out on selling music to me this year. I had been looking forward to buying the album "The Unforgiving" from Within Temptation which I'd also been forced to put off buying the previous year, but with both the album itself and the mp3 downloads available being riddled with DRM, I made the decision not to purchase.

As for albums I'm contemplating for the coming year, the main one currently on my radar is a new one from We Love The Underground as most of the artists I listen to frequently only released an album in the past 12 months. I have no release date or title for this one as yet and unlike the debut album, I'm actually finding myself contemplating whether or not to buy as (unlike last time) not a single track released so far has managed to take my interest past the take-it-or-leave-it category. The other album I'm aware of and currently contemplating is "Dark Dog Days" by Dr Scardo which is currently at mixing stage and due to be released in April. It will be interesting to see if Simon Scardanelli manages to get any of the other projects outside of this band effort finished as his last newsletter has stated he's interested in finishing the solo album he started writing in 2010 and may also be releasing an instrumental guitar album and an EP of waltzes and foxtrots as well. So it sounds like I'll have plenty to look out for here to see what catches enough of my interest in the coming year.

Song of the Year

It  should be noted that (as usual) as far as I'm aware, every single artist in this particular chart is an independent. You'll find most of the tracks here available to stream on Soundcloud and I've carefully collected the ones available there into a playlist which you'll find here.

1. Poets of the Fall - Signs Of Life
2. Matthew Ebel - Who I Am
3. Katy Vachon - I Got Style
4. Francis Rodino - Higher Ground
5. Iced Blade - Chiru Hana
6. Skitzo Calypso - Ready or Not
7. Howling Dollhouse - This Is Who You Are
8. Iconcrash - We Are The Night
9. Karena Kelly - Midnight Walk
10. Saintsaviour - Woman Scorned
11. Remi Miles - Perfection (YOLO)
12. Fox Amoore - Lord and Lady
13. Dr Scardo - Leave Us Alone
14. Matchbox Twenty - She's So Mean
15. Miranda Shvangiradze - How The Idea Of Rainy Thoughts Was Made
16. Fabrizio Paterlini - If Melancholy Were Music
17. Brianna Gaither - Let It Go
18. The Traps - Moving Pictures
19. Stickboy - Pirouette
20. Admiral Fallow - Squealing Pigs

As usual I'm limiting my favourite song chart to one song per artist with tracks I've heard for the first time in the past year (even though the track itself could be older), although at the end of the day I could probably have found more than one for a couple of the artists in question. Particularly difficult was the choice for Poets of the Fall, where the missing title track from their first album was released as a bonus track on the German edition and managed to snatch the honours away from the haunting "Skin" (a track about a love where one half of the relationship can't let go) and the Spaghetti Western styled "The Ballad of Jeremiah Peacekeeper" by a very narrow margin. In the end, "Signs of Life" even edged out my favourite from Matthew Ebel to gain the top spot in the chart, although "Who I Am" did win the honour of becoming the ringtone on my new mobile phone. I can't see me changing that one for a while, as I find its opening ideal for alerting without annoying an entire room.

Although I'm not spending money on Sellaband, I am still listening to the odd artist who signs up on there now and again and a couple of these artists made my charts as a result. Whilst she never made her budget and the profile has since been deleted as a result, Katy Vachon managed to grab enough of my interest that I may well go check out what she's up to in the near future with the rather sassy song and video for "I Got Style". Iced Blade from Japan were another easy choice due to both my love of the Scandinavian music scene and a couple of rather ancient cassettes of manga music owned by my husband, as this artist sounds like they'd fit right at home in either.

Soundcloud has overtaken Last FM this year in terms of its ability to provide me with new artists to listen to. The ease of being able to listen to all the tracks an artist has posted, not just the one that originally caught your interest is something I'm a big fan of, and with Songza (who were offering a similar service last time I could access them) still cut off for the UK, it's looking likely that this will become my main source of listening over the next year if it remains in its current form. Miranda Shvangiradze and Saintsaviour both made the list as a result of being played by the soundcloud radio app.

Of the 20 artists in the list, 9 of them are artists I've heard for the first time in the last 12 months, and of these it's looking like The Traps are probably going to be the artist I'm most likely to follow up on over the next 12 months. Not just because they appear to be fairly local, but also because both of the tracks I've heard to date have managed to catch a decent amount of my attention whereas other artists have fared less well when it has come to listening to tracks other than the original attention grabber.

Near misses for the top 20 go to the Wily Bo Walker  track "Jawbreaker", cis minor with "The  Story of Rose and Klaus" and The Hundred in the Hands track "Commotion" - all artists brought to my attention by the Soundcloud radio app and also included on the playlist I linked earlier.

Video Playlist of the Year

And a new section this time around to showcase the best songs/videos that I've come across for the first time this year. As with the songs section, the tracks in question may be older than a year but this is the first time I've come across the video in question. The most notable thing here is the fact that as far as I'm aware, I'm only showcasing artists here that are independent and it therefore shows the variety and quality that independents are capable of putting out these days. Particular standouts come in the form of the "trailer" video for Fox Amoore's "Legends of Valanor" album and "Weird Green" which Left Step Band animated themselves.




Last minute news
As usual there have been a few things that caught my attention but didn't manage to make it into a blog post during the year. Firstly there's the news that Francis Rodino is leaving London with his band and moving to Nashville. In the newsletter describing his move it sounds like he's disappointed with the UK music scene in general, but whilst I wish him the best, I'm not convinced he's going to find the grass any greener on the other side of the Atlantic.

Howard Jones released a set of 4 tracks on Soundcloud for free download over Christmas, including his take on the well known Elton John track "Your Song". You'll find them available for streaming or download here.

The other big piece of news is probably the changes to Last FM happening on 15th January. Whilst they don't affect me as I only use the web app anyway, I do find them a rather disappointing move in the wrong direction which feels like one of the last nails being driven into the coffin of that particular site. Firstly, they're cutting off streaming access entirely for most countries in the world, citing music licensing arrangements as the reason. For the remaining few countries, only the US, UK and Germany (traditionally the big 3 for music sales/listening) remain mostly unchanged with others such as Ireland and Brazil having their free streaming removed and listening only available if you pay money and subscribe. It honestly wouldn't surprise me to hear the site is being closed and/or they are being bought/merging with Spotify or another service over the next couple of years. Restricting or removing services seems like a sure-fire site killer to me and even more so when consumers have a range of methods (including sites like youtube and soundcloud) where it's also possible to stream music for free.

Moment of the year
Considering I started this blog as a way of relaying my own experiences (initially with Sellaband artists and later with music in general) as a fan rather than having any kind of expertise or knowledge on the subject, so I was quite chuffed when one of the bloggers who regularly writes posts on social media and music for well known sites such as Hypebot decided my 1000 true friends post of a couple of years ago was both worth tweeting to his followers and linking to from his own blog. So this is my tip of the hat back in his direction. You can follow Chris Rockett as @MusicMarketingX on twitter or visit his blog on promoting your music here.

Disappointment of the year
No prizes for guessing that the title of biggest disappointment of the year is taken by three artists - Lori Greco, Cubworld and Vertical Horizon. I'm still waiting for albums from all three of these artists. In the case of the first two, they both completed their funding on Sellaband more than three years ago yet no album has been seen. In the case of Vertical Horizon, I used Pledge back in April when their project was funded but was showing "Release date TBC". Since then the updates to the project have dried up and, as with Sellaband and overdue projects there, it looks like the complaints are starting as this status doesn't appear to have changed 9 months down the line. It looks like I'll be contacting Pledge about this one in the New Year, as I'm obviously far from impressed with my foray into what life is like on the other side of the crowdfunding fence. And it probably goes without saying that Vertical Horizon have shot themselves in the foot when it comes to seeing any money from me for a similar project in future. With more than 6 years of experience on the "money-spending" side of the crowdfunding fence, I've been forced to draw some conclusions which will sound rather harsh (and indeed some artists in particular may even find upsetting) but which I think represent the true situation with crowdfunding as it stands today. You'll find them in the next section.

Crowdfunding: The conclusions so far

Whilst collecting money from fans is still a relatively new industry, there are a number of conclusions I've already come to about the current state of fan funding in music based on my experiences of spending several thousand pounds on more than 40 different projects covering over 30 artists in the past 6 years.

1. 1000 true fans? Try 100.
Let's face it. If you are an independent musician who has never had a record deal or even a song in your own country's top 100 charts, how many people will actually have heard you? With the demise of the community on Sellaband, I'm not currently aware of any funding site which has people who are actively looking to form a fan connection with you and your music. So if you want to crowdfund then you need to look to the size of your own crowd. Established names with that previous label (or even current label deal) are the only ones I've seen hitting the thousands (or often even the several hundreds) mark. The average artist I've seen on Sellaband since the site changed has been needing at least 100 people to fund them in order to make their target (even the minimum of 3000 euros). Unless you can make a list of 100 people that you know for sure will spend money on you (even if it's just buy a download of the album), you do not have a crowd and you cannot/should not be even thinking of crowdfunding. Facebook likes don't count. Number of Twitter or Facebook friends or number of people on your mailing list don't count either - not all of these will support you. If you want a good chance at a successful crowdfunding campaign the first step you need is to both acknowledge and make that actual list of 100 names.

Yes, more guaranteed names is obviously better. Yes, more names = more money, but how much? It will vary from fanbase to fanbase, but as a ballpark figure, I'd rate 100 names as worth 3000-5000 if your base incentive level is 10 of whatever currency you're raising in (e.g. $10 minimum incentive would get you $3000-5000 when 100 people have agreed to give you money). If your expectations are bigger than that, you better know (or hope) you've got some rich backers and/or you'd better be prepared to be disappointed if you can't make a long enough list of names to scale up that initial 100 name list.

If you can't make that list of 100 names, you should definitely be considering your music as still being a hobby. You don't yet have a fanbase so stop calling it a career until you can pass at least this basic check.

2. Your budget needs to represent the 1% of the 10%
Chances are that only around 10% of those that follow you on Twitter or Facebook (not including existing friends and family) are taking any active interest in you. And of that 10% only 1% are likely to look at supporting you in advance unless you have a good and immediately obvious track record of communication and delivery on a similar project in the past. If going on pure fans alone rather than the friends and family connections, that means you're going to need somewhere in the order of 100,000 followers to find your 100 names. Hence why friends and family are so important to reduce the followers you need and help you create that initial track record.

3. You need a track record that is easy to find
Both established and unestablished names are screwing up badly on this one. Both Public Enemy and Jonathan Davis fans were up in arms on Sellaband and my experiences with a number of unknowns over there have been no better. Over 50% of artists I have supported via crowdfunding have not delivered on time. Even worse, over 40% of artists I have supported have been more than a year late compared to their original statement of timescale. More than 10% of artists I have supported have been over two years late. And as previously mentioned I even have a few artists who have already broken the three year barrier.

With seemingly little or no protection offered by crowdfunding websites and these horrifying statistics in mind, it has led me to the conclusion that even I am no longer willing to take a chance on a crowdfunding artist unless I can easily find how they've performed in the past -  in terms of being able to raise money, how their delivery time has compared to their original statement and what their communication has been like.

If you cannot convince a music lover like me who is open to both new technology and experiences that you are worth supporting, then how in the hell do you expect to ever be able to convince the average person in the street?

Be honest. Would you support a product or service that failed this badly on communication and delivery? So would you support an artist given these statistics?

Musicians, Labels, Managers
Get
Your
Act
Together

Can I be any more clear?

4. There are too many musicians
I still don't understand how the music industry operates because to me it attempts to break every rule of the laws of supply and demand. There are only so many hours in the day. There are only so many of those hours in which people are able to listen to music. It should not be possible for so many to be out there making music and claiming they are musicians rather than just doing it as a hobby.

The biggest shift that the music industry needs to undergo in the current era is to ditch the deadweight. And unfortunately a lot of the power in that resides in the hands of fans. There are too many musicians out there and all the internet is doing is spreading the existing money pot much more thinly compared to the old days when the average person was aware of a much lower number of artists due to only knowing about what was placed in front of them. The danger is that although more musicians are getting money, it's more a case everyone will land up getting pocket money rather than anyone getting career money. Is it really any wonder that free music is seen as the norm given the laws of supply and demand in this case?

We are also too forgiving of the artists we love. Just like best friends we let them off. Again. And again. And again. Eventually we might get fed up of being given the runaround, but in general emotion drags us back even when we feel let down. Just like in business, we need to put money into the hands of the reliable and force the unreliable out of music. The big question is whether us emotional humans can break the cycle and realise that somewhere out there is a much more reliable artist who is just as good and making exactly the same music as the unreliable one we may feel connected to at the moment.

Fans showing the big money spenders (investors, labels etc.) who the reliable are is something I see as the way forward to put money back into the music equation. Without a reduction in the number of artists, music will remain undervalued (or free). And we'll lose a lot of the artists we shouldn't unless we learn to step away from our emotions and put some logic back in.

My experiences show that artists need to become a lot more reliable than they are at present if funding direct is to become a truly viable mainstream alternative to a label deal for any artist, but I'm not convinced we'll see the shift the music industry needs until/unless fans noticeably start acting less on emotion and hence force the issue.

And finally...
As January is usually both a short and quiet month for me on the finding music front, it's unlikely you'll see a standard post before February. But to keep you going in the meantime I'll be writing a special post for all you musicians out there in a couple of weeks which contains some questions that you ask fans (and sometimes even potential fans) which I happen to think are wrong. And I'll be letting you in on what I think you should be asking instead to get the information I think you were really looking for.

The past couple of months

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
Well, not one but TWO this month, seeing as work has meant I've been slacking on writing a blog post. First up is Francis Rodino with his video for "Higher ground", which features a lady who ought to be very cold.



The second is a video from one of the artists who have managed to find me, rather than vice versa. Interestingly, I'm not that big a fan of rap, but this is one of the few that manages to slide past because it's only a part . So enjoy Left Step Band and "Weird Green" - a video which incidentally has been made by the band using some free animation software called Muvizu.



Who I've been looking at

Stickboy
I don't often rate artists with more than one star if it's the first time I've heard anything from them, but it's quite obvious from what I've heard of Stickboy so far that there's a potential four star plus on offer and likely quickly too. Given the number of tracks he has up on soundcloud and the fact I haven't found a single one I dislike in the couple of hours I've spent listening so far, I'm already hovering on the border of three stars, never mind the two I just gave. I'd describe the music as guitar based folk, but it's particularly outstanding for its production qualities (for a home-based artist) and the lyrics which are a great reminder of why I think we still have the best songwriters in the UK. So if you only listen to one new artist this month, make it this one, I promise you won't regret it.

Derek Webb
Matthew Ebel is always mentioning this artist, so when he decided to do a very rare public live internet show, I thought I'd check him out. Wasn't overly impressed myself - nothing he played made any real impact on me, though it was a pleasant enough listen and the guy can sing for sure.

Daniel Ward-Murphy
Daniel has decided to try to get a second album recorded, but instead of using a third party fundraising site, he's decided to try and collect the money himself using a Fundrazr widget. There's no official timelimit set, but Dan has said if it doesn't look like it will reach target he'll refund the money raised (minus Paypal fees). So far so good - I've got absolutely no problem with this idea in this case based on my past experience with him as he's never given me any reason to doubt that he'll do what he says.

But I find myself torn.

Why? The answer is twofold.

Firstly there's the knowledge of what I've experienced over the past six years.

The second reason is perhaps best explained if you've read his open letter about the project. The ultimatum is contains may be unintentional, but the knowledge it's there in the first place still grates. My head really can't get past the "give me the money to make this album or I'll stop making music" idea.

So on the one hand I have one of the "good guys" that I'd love to see make a second album, but given the budget set and the fact that only a digital album seems to be on offer, I'd be expecting it might well take at least a couple of years to raise that kind of money based not only on the last time, but also what I've seen of other artists and their fanbases since. Which means that on the other I'm left wondering about the commitment level and patience based on the contents of his open letter and his response to my question of how long the fundraising  would be open for. Is he really up for the timescale I'm thinking? (assuming no miracle huge level funders in the current economic climate). The timing and subject matter of a recent blog post I read, couldn't have been more appropriate or relevant on this subject.

So my current plan is to wait. My finances are planned out for the next few months already, meaning it would almost certainly be late spring before I could consider spending money on this anyway. I'm concerned at the size of the target he's set based on what I know, but I'll also be keeping an eye on how things develop.

Cheryl has released her first full album "Mermaid", under the name Jade Diary since splitting off from her band and deciding to go solo. Whilst I've not heard enough to convince me into a purchase, I'd highly recommend getting the physical album if you're interested, as it's got some of the most beautiful artwork I've seen in a while, particularly on the CD itself.

I don't know much about saintsaviour, except that I found them as a result of Soundcloud radio and was immediately attracted to the track I'd heard "Woman Scorned". And I haven't yet had time to try and chase up any further information,

I've joined the mailing list for The Traps, though they're fairly quiet on the mailing front. But I did receive a notification of their second video through this which says the song is available for free download on 19th November. Now I really ought to find the time to get out and see if they are any good live, seeing as they appear to be a fairly local band.

Yes, someone out there did it. They created a mashup of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" and PSY's "Gangnam Style". And it's rather catchy in a one-hit-wonder kind of way. You can check it out here - if you think you can cope.

Lily Brooke is another find from Soundcloud. There haven't been any updates to the profile for a year, but if indeed she was 14 at the time of the uploads then that would make her only 15 now, yet she already has quite a voice. If you don't believe me, then check out her Youtube channel, which does have some more recent material. I'll be interested to see how her songwriting develops and whether she decides to pursue a career in music.

The sites I've been looking at

ONErpm
From an artist point of view, this site appears to be an alternative to CD Baby, claiming to be able to distribute your album to a wider range of sites (iTunes, Amazon etc.) for a lower setup cost. The FAQ shows the prices in dollars, but I'm seeing the same data in GBP i.e. where it says 10 dollars it shows me 10 pounds, which does lead me to question that information as the exchange rate definitely isn't anywhere near 1:1. As a result, I'm going to quote from here on using numbers rather than currency. The artist can set an album price at 8.99, 6.99 or 4.99 with individual tracks being set as 0.89, 0.69 or 0.49 accordingly. The artist will then receive 85% of the revenues for tracks sold from the ONErpm site itself or via their Facebook widget. For all other sites that ONErpm distribute the music to, they give the artist 85% of the money they receive from those sites. There is a one-time setup cost of 10.00 per track or 34.99 per album for distribution to more than 30 global music services, or you can specify individually at 1.99 per service. Pricings for distribution to premium services, mobile services and DJ services are also available on the site. The site can also supply UPC codes for albums and ISRC codes for tracks if you don't have them already.

In addition to the three pricing tiers previously mentioned the site supports "name your price" downloads and  "free track in exchange for email" options. Money is paid to an artist via Paypal.

From the fan point of view, purchases from the ONErpm site mean you get BOTH the original wav file and the mp3 with unlimited streaming and streaming before purchase available on the site itself. On the minus side, not every album on the site is available for purchase in every country, and so far I'm finding it's the names I tend to recognise as being more well-known (rather than completely obscure) where this seems most likely to apply. I'm also not convinced on the information given about the Facebook widget, which seems to suggest that someone has to "Like" before they are allowed to play the track from the Facebook widget - this seems rather back-to-front i.e. how do you know if you like something until you've actually heard it?

All in all, a site which seems potentially worth a look whether you be artist or music lover, but with a lot of the pricing information seemingly in conflict between the FAQ and what is actually displayed and the reputation of CD Baby, I'm not entirely convinced by the idea that this is a better option.

Sellaband
There's still no sign of the "new website" at time of writing. Likewise no surprise there's no sign of albums from the 2 artists from here I'm still waiting on. In fact, Lori Greco seems to be expecting yet another 4-6 months before she releases, meaning the bets are on as to whether she can even manage to release an album before 4 years after fundraising has passed, seeing as the 3 year mark passed a few months ago. There are hints that Cubworld might actually be getting close to release as he recently tweeted that 8 of 10 tracks were mixed. Who knows - maybe I'll get a birthday present.

In the meantime, I got to watch some bending of the rules in October, when an artist had their budget reduced by 300 euros on the last day before their profile was due to be deleted, only for them to fail to meet this deadline too. Seems someone then tweaked the numbers behind the scenes, as we went through several hours with the artist showing a signup date in the main listing of 24hrs after that found on their own profile, not only in terms of the signup timestamp but also comments and blog postings left too. The extra 24hrs given by the tweaked times meant the artist did reach the reduced budget (which was then left to run the normal 2 week grace for a budget change) and the dates were tweaked back to make it look as if nothing had happened. Which left me wondering if they'd have done the same for a non-featured artist or not.

Also, a couple of artists who had failed to meet their budgets the first time, failed in their second attempt. It seems one has resigned for a third try, but currently only has a fraction of the money they had when their profile got deleted for the second time. The numbers on the site are also heading back further apart again i.e. instead of less artists signing up but getting a higher percentage of budget, the number of artists is increasing slowly again but the number on at least 1% of budget is struggling to stay at the 50 mark. But one piece of good news was John C Fraser returning to the site under his new name of Please Be Frank and raising a budget in just a couple of weeks, proving it's perfectly possible to raise your budget on Sellaband if you bring your fanbase with you.

And finally...
My review of the year post will be along next. Hopefully in the next couple of days. As well as my top songs and albums of the year, this time you'll be able to discover who managed to upset a result I was originally expecting and some of the conclusions I've drawn as a result of the fan funding I've been doing since I last funded on Sellaband.

Why I'm spending less on music

It looks like we'll be moving and the house is currently being tidied as a result. I realised during this process that a lot of the CDs I've bought aren't actually in shelves where you might expect them to be, but instead are lurking around the computer. And that got me to thinking. I do have music only in digital form, most usually when a physical copy isn't available, but how exactly does my physical music collection so far shape up? And what might it tell me about my buying habits and how they would evolve in a digital only world?

The results are interesting and may add another piece to the jigsaw of why music sales are on the decline.

This doesn't cover digital-only artists in my collection, nor does it cover artists whose CDs are elsewhere, but from the number of CDs I've packed, I believe it to be a significant enough sample of the music I own. Singles are not included (in fact I own very few of those in physical form) but the figures are obtained from adding together the number of albums and EPs I own for each artist.

The rating system
The first thing I had to do was come up with a rating system for the music I own. Whilst this is based loosely around the rating system I use for my main blog posts, I've also weighted it towards the likelihood of a purchase of more music from that artist, based on the purchases previously made.


Bit of a disaster really. Seems the only tracks I liked were whatever I'd heard before I got the album. Doesn't rule out buying singles in future, but it will probably take a lot to convince me into an album.


Not bad, not great. Maybe the odd track I like, maybe the odd track I dislike, but in the main it's nice background take-it-or-leave-it music. Probably not going to go out of my way for a new purchase here, but when I've got spare money there's a chance I might buy something (but it will have to grab my attention first).


Liking about half, with most (if not all) of the rest as take-it-or-leave-it. Likely to buy more but might not. Depends on the mood I'm in, the money available and what I hear in advance of the release.


A few tracks here and there I'm not so fond of, but I'm in love with the majority. Unless there's a change of musical direction, I'll be looking to buy more.


Struggling to find anything that fits the take-it-or-leave-it category, never mind tracks I dislike. This is pure love - give me more!

The breakdown
Having decided on a rating system, I then proceeded to assign each artist to a rating. I also counted the number of CDs I own for each of the artists in question and applied some ranges. Here's what I found

One star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                19
2-4                              2
5-9                              0
10+                             0

Two star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                29
2-4                              8
5-9                              0
10+                             0

Three star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                5
2-4                           14
5-9                             6
10+                            1

Four star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                2
2-4                             4
5-9                             1
10+                            1

Five star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                0
2-4                             0
5-9                             2
10+                            1

In addition to the above I found 4 compilation albums, but I'm obviously not including these in the main count as they cover multiple artists.

The conclusions
First of all, wow. I've found CDs from nearly 100 different artists lurking in the vicinity of my computer rather than with the rest. I'd make a guess there's nearly the same again in the CD rack. I've only been collecting music in CD format for about 15 years, though I obviously have some that were originally released earlier than this due to getting back catalog items. As a rough estimate, that means I've been buying an average of 2 CDs a month over the past 15 years, which puts me firmly in music lover territory.

As might be expected, in general I only own one CD for any artist I've rated as one star, whereas the more stars, the more CDs I'm likely to own for an artist. It's also not unreasonable to expect that some of the 3 star artists may gain a star (or two?) over time, particularly if I don't own more than one or two of their albums at present. (also possible for other artists, though less likely if they have less than 3 stars at present)

But for the rather shocking conclusion of why it looks like even a music lover like me will be spending much less on music in future, you need to understand the change that the swap to digital is having on me.

My digital future
When I start to look at some of the dates on the CDs, it's clear that my buying habits have already started to change. For starters, I'm actually quite shocked at the percentage of artists I rated at 1-2 stars out of the total artist CDs owned, but sorted by date I'm seeing a noticeable decrease in my purchases of these over time. Some of that is due to the financial crisis of the past few years, but not all. The internet is clearly having the effect of making me more picky about the albums I actually buy, because I'm now using the likes of streaming services and Youtube when I haven't already rated an artist as 4 stars or more to listen to what's on offer first.

Based on the above information, if the CD were to vanish tomorrow, I predict the following would happen in my case.

1. I'll only be buying full albums for about 10% of the artists where I'd have considered buying an album in the past. (4-5 star artists)
2. About 25% of the artists where I would have considered an album purchase in the past, will likely land up selling about half the tracks on that album to me instead. (3 stars)
3. Approximately 40% of the artists where I would have considered an album purchase in the past will likely land up selling only one or two tracks from that album to me. (2 stars)
4. The remaining 25% will likely only sell the occasional track that I've heard and hence know I like. (1 star)
5. I'll almost certainly start buying the occasional track I hear and like from other artists where I haven't considered a CD before.

This is bad news for artists. Here in the UK most artist albums can be bought for £6.99-8.99, but single tracks are usually 99p each. Assuming 10 tracks per album, it looks like my money won't stretch as far if I move to a track based rather than album based purchase system, doesn't it? But it turns out that's not the real problem.

Leaning towards the generous end of the spectrum, my album spend would be around £200 a year (24 albums at £8-9 each). Given the 10:25:40:25 split my new spend for a year on digital only would be as follows

£20-25 on full albums (2-3 artists)
£30 for half album sales (6 artists at 99p a track for 5 tracks)
£20-30 for a few tracks (~10 artists at 99p a track for 2-3 tracks)
£6 for occasional tracks ( 6 artists at 99p a track for 1 track)
Total: £76-91

Yes, you're seeing right. By switching to digital I'm automatically spending half or less of what I do currently. Even without taking aspects such as piracy or shared files from friends into account as ways of obtaining music instead.

But as stated above, digital opens up the possibilities for artists to sell tracks to me where they wouldn't have stood a chance of selling an album before. But to make up the difference, that means I need to be buying tracks from something like another 100 artists a year. (assuming I buy 1 track at 99p per artist). That means I need to hear another 2 new tracks every week that I like enough to want to buy (think of it as the track needing to hit the equivalent of a 4 or 5 star rating on my scale before I'll consider buying). And at the moment I can say for a fact that doesn't happen.

So it looks like I'm heading towards spending maybe 75% of what I do currently if I completely switch away from buying music on a physical album basis. And then only if I can find an average of one extra track a week

But instead of looking for more new tracks to buy, I could spend the difference on something like a £10 a month streaming service instead. But if I were to have an "all I could eat" stream that played exactly what I asked it to, what would be the point in buying anything? Going with this model, I'd still only be spending about 60% of that £200.

And another problem? I'm splitting my money 5 times as many ways as before, if I'm now supporting 124 artists a year rather than just 24. If I were spending the full £200, that means an artist getting more like £1.60 compared to the £8-9 before (minus overheads in both cases).  On average an artist would need 5 times as many people to buy their music for the same income under these rules. And if I'm only spending half what I used to, the reality is 10 times the number of people as before. Artists may now have a better chance at getting a share of a pot of money under digital, but equally there are only so many ways the pot can be divided before everyone essentially gets nothing. Basic result: the number of successful artists drops (as do the complete failures) but we increase the number of starving ones more or less tenfold.

Final thoughts
I'd be extremely interested to see the results of anyone else doing a similar experiment as I may not be typical of a music lover. I'd also be interested in the thoughts of the average consumer (Do you buy one CD a month or less, for starters?) as the idea of £10 a month streaming may actually mean these people paying more than before and picking up some of my slack. One thing is for sure, I need to be discovering a lot more music that I really, really like every single week, or I am clearly going to be spending a lot less on music than I have done previously. Clearly a very bad statement for a music lover to be making.

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.