The Taste Test

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

A combination of being the summer and the fact I looked at rather a lot last month has meant I've had a fairly quiet month this time around as far as looking for artists is concerned.

I did buy Civilized Tears old album "Autobiography of a Nobody" when Tim Bennett mentioned on Twitter that he was making some available for sale again. What arrived when I finally found my way into the bright pink metallic Jiffy bag was a completely personalised CD copy with handwritten note as well. The CD itself contains 11 different tracks, some demos, some live and a couple of which you'll find were re-recorded on "Miseducated", the album he raised funds for at Sellaband. If you're interested in getting your own copy, contact him.

I gained my first follower on Last FM in the form of Ellhelios who doesn't appear to have his own website but instead is present on various other sites including Reverbnation. The music he writes seems to be a combination of gothic, electronic and new wave elements giving a musical style he therefore describes as "dark wave". I much prefer the pure instrumental tracks of what I've heard so far.
.
Now I don't know whether you're familiar with a song that's been around the charts recently called "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepson, but this next artist link came about as a result of a few bizarre looking tweets from a friend and the conversation which followed. Be warned this is not for those easily offended or upset, as not only is this a parody of the aforementioned song but given what happened in Miami about a month ago could be viewed in somewhat bad taste. MC Chris has released the zombie-themed "Tasty Face" in aid of an American cancer charity. You can check out and buy a copy here, or visit Youtube for the "Dawn of the Dead" themed video that goes with the song.

Ginger Wildheart released the album he had funded through Pledge Music this month. Pledgers got a triple album (called 555%) but the high street release (called 100%) which contains a selection of the tracks from the triple album chosen by those who funded it was released this week. In the mid-week UK charts it is listed at number 9, above some much more well known and record label funded artists. Its official first chart position will happen on Sunday, and whilst there's no guarantee of how long it will stay in the charts, this is still looking like it will be fairly impressive for a fan-funded artist with no major label money behind them.

The sites I've been looking at

Sellaband
So just when I felt like I was starting to tick boxes saying the site was improving, what happened this month meant it was more like the calm before the storm. Sellaband moved its servers and pages on the site were only randomly accessible for more than a fortnight as a result. Needless to say, the disruption means it has shed something like another 50 artists in terms of the number of current fundraisers, although it does appear to have returned to a stable state in the second half of the month.

Towards the end of the disruption period, Sellaband sent out a newsletter with an apology for the disruption, but explaining that now the server move has been done, we can expect a new website and a change to the business model in the Autumn. Given past site history has made things worse for (potential) believers every time such changes have taken place, it's fair to say this news fills me with trepidation and leaves me wondering what on earth is going to get screwed up this time. Not to mention the fact it annoys me somewhat that believers are still being left hanging on albums funded well over 2 years ago.

Tastemakerx
Billed as a social media game for music discovery, you can either play this on the website, or download it as an iPhone app. There's currently no version for Android or other phone types. I've spent some time this month on the web version which is completely free to play. Essentially you get given 25,000 of the in-game currency (called notes) and then use it to buy shares in artists. The game then consists of trading i.e. buying and selling shares in artists in order to increase your rating, with factors involving your total portfolio worth and your portfolio value relative to other players taken into account as well. So just like the stock exchange the general idea is to buy low and sell high to give you more virtual currency to play with. Buying shares in an artist is free, but 5% of a sale is taken as commission. The site is still fairly new out of beta and so currently seems to have around 4000 players. There are obviously a number of ways to play - do you buy shares in artists you actually like, do you buy shares in a popular (but probably expensive) artist aiming to hold them until (or if) the site becomes popular and their thousands/millions of fans turn up, do you buy shares in artists that are currently making steady gains, do you buy shares in artists that look underpriced relative to their popularity, or do you buy shares in really cheap artists in the hopes of making a significant profit? All I'll say of my own strategy is that it involves elements of the short, medium, long and jurassic, but you might struggle more than you think to work out the right category for all concerned. It does seem to be having some success though, as I've been slowly crawling upwards in the player charts and may even crack the top 100 in the next week or so at the rate things are going.

Having played steadily for a couple of weeks, it's allowed me to see the good, the bad and the ugly that's been present. Whilst the "game" itself can be addictive, I hadn't been on the site long when someone worked out how to use a flaw in the trading system to rapidly increase both their available notes and their rating without needing others to trade. I sent an email to Tastemakerx the first time I spotted it in play and the player in question got suspended for a whole couple of hours, but not before others had also worked out how they had been doing it and started to do the same themselves - some in an obvious way and some in a less obvious way. Suffice it to say it took a couple of days of this before someone decided to step in and this time a number of accounts have disappeared and for a much longer period than the previous one (although whether this is a permanent deletion or merely another round of suspensions is currently unclear). In addition, the most recent set of changes also means it needs a larger number of players to affect short term trading than before. Not necessarily a bad thing at the moment due to the low number of players and the fact it mostly counters the flaw, but without a regular influx of new players, there is a danger that trading could stagnate altogether longer term.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for the first artist fanbase to show up en masse to get some exposure for an artist, as even an unknown with as little as 20 odd fans showing up to buy shares the same day would almost certainly cause a riot of trading which would leave the artist in the charts on the site for a few days or weeks, based on how easily I've seen one or two players alone were able to influence them. (if you're on 50-100+ fans spread over a few days, then even better)

At the moment, I'm currently feeling that the site is more about "the game" than it is about actual music discovery. This is further compounded by the information on the site itself. Oddly for most artists a wikipedia link and a myspace link is provided, yet no twitter or facebook link, even though those icons are available. And the big thing missing from the links part is the obvious one of a link to the artist's own website. The site also appears too tightly linked to Apple for my liking. As well as the obvious fact that the app is for iPhone only, there is no music to listen to on individual artist pages, but just a big "download from iTunes" button. This leads me to suspect that music might appear on artist pages, but only if you have iTunes installed. And if that isn't the case and installing iTunes has no effect, then the "music discovery" part is basically missing. It's also been interesting to try searching for different artists I've encountered in the past 6 or so years, as the site claims it will add any artist who can prove they have released music. The majority of their existing artist base and info seems to have been taken from Last FM and their other partners, but I already know of artists who have profiles on Last FM that don't appear on Tastemakerx - some of whom have released multiple albums. Of the artists I've searched for, who is included and who isn't (and what your share price is, if you are included) is therefore quite revealing in aspects of how your promotion/exposure on sites in general (and in the USA in particular) is working.

There's also a distinct lack of "social" about the game as it currently stands. Sure it's possible to "follow" someone, but all that really does is give you a link to get to their profile page quickly. Whilst each player profile shows icons for Facebook and Twitter, there's nothing on your settings page to allow you to add these if you wish and there's no forum or discussion area for players to chat and get to know each other either. That said, there are obviously features in development as I've seen a few rounds of obvious changes appear with the daily chart update, and I'm guessing the site was created more with mobile phone than Internet users in mind in the first place.

And coming back to Internet users, that also leads me to mention that if you're still on XP, then your best bet is probably to use Firefox to access the site as it doesn't work properly with IE8 (the latest version of Internet Explorer that XP users are able to download). Hopefully not so much of a problem when Windows 8 comes out, as remaining XP users will mostly upgrade to 7 or 8 then, but definitely an issue to be aware of in the short term.

Overall, I'm enjoying the site, but I have yet to be convinced it can (or will) be used for music discovery. Something to bear in mind perhaps, but a site well worth a look for some free entertainment otherwise. If you want to find out what I'm up to, you'll find my profile here

That's all for this time around. I'm expecting another quiet month in July, so I might even get around to finishing one of the extra posts I've been contemplating for a while now.

May roundup

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
Tim Bennett of Civilized Tears announced on one of his UStream shows that he has been talking to Sellaband about starting up a new funding project to produce another album using a significantly lower budget than the last one he raised on there. He was talking about it starting on June 1st, but has yet to make any official announcement on Twitter or elsewhere as to whether that will be going ahead. I seriously wish he'd tried elsewhere, as going back to Sellaband means I definitely won't be buying into it for reasons you'll hopefully understand by the time I've finished this post. If he does indeed go back to Sellaband I'll be interested to see what kind of support he gets, and whether the old guard will resurface in the same way they did for Ellie Williams.

Brad Cox has been posting a number of acoustic videos on the Skitzo Calypso Youtube channel over the past few months from his various projects as well as some covers. Well worth keeping an eye on to see what he posts next.

I've been listening to more of  Fox Amoore's work recently since I discovered that here seems to be the best place to find a back catalog of things to listen to. His new album "Legends of Valanor" only came out this month, yet the last info I saw says the physical copies are already pretty much sold out! There's some incredible cinematic stuff here, and I'm already starting to think about upping my rating again based on my travels through his earlier work. I'm starting to find quite a few things I really like.

Matthew Ebel is in the process of making more full length previews of his tracks available to listen to on his website. So far this includes the whole of his new album (The Lives of Dexter Peterson) as well as the whole of a couple of earlier releases (Goodbye Planet Earth and Beer and Coffee). Head on over to the music section of his site, choose an album and click on the play button next to the track you want to listen to.  It also looks like he'll be increasing his offer of five free songs just for signing up to his mailing list soon as he's been running a series of polls in order to create a "best of" album to give away instead.  I'm also pleased he's decided to restart the weekly streaming concerts despite their much shorter half hour form. You can catch them on Wednesdays (assuming he's not travelling to perform) at 7pm Eastern US time (that's midnight in the UK or 1am on Thursday for most of the rest of Europe) via this link. The concerts themselves are also being released free to his subscribers (either in audio or video form depending on subscription level) for those who can't make it to view the live stream. Probably the most fascinating and interesting thing for me this month though has been watching the subscriber-only rehearsal streams and listening to him build up new arrangements for songs (particularly those from his new album which haven't been played live before).

You can also grab yourself a free track from another of my favourite artists this month without any need to supply any contact or email info. One of the tracks that Poets of the Fall did for the game "Alan Wake's American Nightmare" under their in-game name of "Old Gods of Asgard" is currently downloadable from a German gaming website. The link I'm giving you is to an English translation of the page (the original is obviously in German), where you'll find a link to the song "Balance Slays the Demon", which kind of reminds me of a lot of 80s stadium rock. I happen to think it's a stronger track than some of the ones on their recent album so well worth a listen, particularly if you've never heard any of their music before.

I've found myself disappearing off to Soundcloud ever more frequently recently as a result of links artists have been leaving. In particular this month, Remi Miles has posted new recordings of some of his tracks, Francis Rodino has posted an excellent brand new track, and I also discovered Daniel Ward-Murphy's "rough tracks" profile containing (as well as some covers) some very raw recordings of songs I hadn't heard before, a couple of which sound quite interesting and are likely to lead to me visiting his direction a little more frequently than I have been, at least in the short term.

On Twitter, I've run across a few interesting artists this month, in particular two of whom found me and a third that I fell over by accident while looking at something else. The first of these was a member of  The Fortunes who read my "1000 true friends" post, seemingly as a result of a comment I left on another blog.  Whilst their peak of popularity was a little before my time (being more like Beatles and Hollies era), I do remember some of their songs on the radio when I was a youngster as being quite listenable. Seems they are still touring and currently on the seaside/holiday resort circuit.

The second artist that found me that caught my interest is Matt Saunders who (slightly confusingly) seems to also go under the names Matt Clearing and A Clearing based on the info I've dragged up from the web so far. I haven't been overly impressed with the tracks I've heard, but the blog entries on the front page of his site giving a "behind-the-scenes insight" into trying to record as a one man operation were definitely interesting. Though perhaps not as interesting as the rather bizarre recent tweet he made that I'm still trying to wrap my head around - "I won't sell lossy music, produce physical media, or set up a lossless store. Can't be bothered, and don't want music to be my job." That really confuses me. Why go to all the effort of recording something and go through the whole process of making it sound as good as you feel you can make it without using any autotune etc. and then state you don't want music as a job? Just when I thought I was getting to understand musicians, this situation leaves me scratching my head and wondering what I'm missing here.

I tripped over John Anealio as a result of following a link from one of the people I follow on Twitter. All the music I've found so far can be downloaded for free from the links on his site. His instruments of choice seem to be guitar or bouzouki and he seems to write purely sci-fi/fantasy/geek themed music, rather than the much wider range someone like Matthew Ebel covers. I haven't had any of the tracks I've listened to so far grab my attention, but I'll probably keep an eye on him for a while in case something does, as he seems to be putting out new material fairly frequently.

Now I have a confession to make. I should have mentioned Sarah's Blue Dress and their monthly "monster mask" competition in last month's post which is when I first spotted it, but by the time I'd finished typing up the majority of the post I'd completely forgotten. Anyway, if you fancy winning a copy of their album, the link I've just given you should take you to the details of how to do so. There are still two more draws for two more album copies to go, so you should still have plenty of time.

It's been one of those months when I've come away disappointed when looking for artists. The main case in question is Marc Supsic who I originally encountered on Sellaband. I've been past his site a couple of times since he left and I decided to take another look this month to see if anything had changed since my last visit. Sadly it hasn't and as the site seemingly hasn't changed since 2009, I'm left wondering whether he's still writing music or not.

Whatever happened to Wetwerks? I remember the controversy when they were in the competition to play at Sellabration and looked like they were going to win until they announced they had parted from their vocalist. Whilst they subsequently put a couple of tracks up using a new vocalist, I remember I wasn't as impressed with him based on the couple of tracks they had recorded. I noticed a while back that their website had disappeared and had wondered whether it was being redone, but another check this month shows it still hasn't resurfaced. Nor have I found any obvious trace of a new band name in its place, or the members I remember being involved with new projects. To say they've disappeared into thin air would seem to be the understatement of the year.

I also went on the trail of Tiffany Gow whose website is over a year out of date on the news front but with no joy as her Facebook profile also appears to be completely inaccessible unless you're a Facebook user. Her Myspace profile was logged into in May though, which suggests she may still be out there somewhere.

The sites I've been looking at

Sellaband
Time for the update I promised you in my previous post and I find myself wondering about coincidental timing as a number of issues have miraculously updated themselves since my last regular post, and mostly within the past couple of weeks. Firstly I'm still waiting on two albums, both of which completed funding a long time ago. We're now only about a couple of months away before Lori Greco will become the second artist I bought parts in to pass three years since funding completion without releasing an album. The last news on her site is from March which says the album will be coming "this year" and even her Twitter feed has been mostly quiet since that. But incredibly within the last couple of weeks, a sample of each of the (still unfinished) tracks from the album got uploaded to her Sellaband page and a message was sent via Sellaband to all her believers apologising for the continued delay but giving no information on when the album is likely to be seen, only that it will be "some months". At this point, I wouldn't like to bet whether she takes longer than Natalia Safran to produce an album or not, but one thing is for sure, the fact that BOTH these ladies have been supported by the same group of believers isn't just giving that group a bad name, as far as I'm concerned it's giving the OTHER artists they have been (and still are) promoting a bad name as well, purely by their association with the group. It's making me a lot less likely to consider supporting any of them in future, irrespective of how they've behaved as individual artists.

Cubworld is the other artist I'm still waiting on, though it seems possible this one may be on its way soon as he tweeted at the beginning of May that he was under pressure from Sellaband to get finished and was hoping to "wrap things up" in the next month. In the meantime, this video is a great preview of one of the album tracks, though it's unclear from the information given as to whether it will be on the album in the same form or not. His three years since completing funding will be up in December.

However, overdue albums aren't the only problem I've had with the site. I had the same sum of money stuck on my "waiting to be transferred" balance for more than a year, although money added on top of it every quarter was getting credited properly a couple of weeks later, and I'd even mailed Sellaband a couple of times about this with no joy. Whether the support ticket I left on their support system in April finally did the trick (though I never received an answer, just the automated reply mail you get back when you raise a ticket), or (once again) whether it was me mentioning the fact I'd be updating the situation with Sellaband in this post that sped things along, I have no idea, but the "waiting" money has finally been transferred.

Several months after their album was released, Sellaband have finally got around to making the Radio Orange tracks available for download by believers, along with a number of other artists where albums had been released (in some cases more than a year ago) but no downloads were showing on the site. However, although Katie Thompson has had her tracks available for download from Sellaband for a while, the "Investments" tab still shows her in the "projects that reached their target" section rather than the "projects that released an album" section. So although some things are getting sorted, the process still seems to be painfully slow with some obvious problems still to be fixed.

Tim Bennett said he'd chosen to go back to Sellaband rather than another funding platform because he reckoned the new management had got their game in order. I can only hope for his sake that they have on the artist side, because everything I'm seeing says it's going to be at least Christmas 2012 before I stand any chance of being convinced that applies to the believer side as well. So I still have no plans to buy parts on the site for the forseeable future, however tempting the artist that signs up - I don't have trust in the site and at the rate things are still moving, it's obviously going to be a long time before I might.

The site itself continues to "slim down", with the number of artists slowly reducing over time. There are now around 650 artists currently fundraising on the site, despite the fact the Sellaband newsletters still mention "thousands of artists" in their text. But the number of artists who manage to reach at least 1% of their budget before being deleted is slowly increasing and finally passed 50 concurrent signups a month or so ago. It will be interesting to see at what point these two figures stop converging as it seems currently only about 1 in 13 signups is capable of raising at least 30 - 100 euros (the typical 1% figure depending on their budget) and not all of those who reach 1% currently go on to reach target.

Soundcloud
I've noticed more and more artists seem to be linking content from here recently and as a result I've decided to come out of the shadows and start becoming more active on the site. You'll find my profile here, although there's not much to see at the moment as I've only linked to a few artists and not left any comments at present.

MusicHype
Currently still in private beta, but reported as due to become public in June, this site promises to be able to identify and track top fans of an artist to make it easier to reward those fans and also identify exactly where in the world fan activity is occurring e.g. to make it easier to know where you ought to be booking a tour. According to the limited information currently available it seems that artists will be able to try the site for free, but will need to pay a (currently undisclosed) sum of money to use the site longer term. I'll be interested to see how exactly they plan to make this work, as initial thoughts are that they will either need the fans to sign up to the site as well, or they must be using automated search technology to identify the artist name being mentioned in twitter feeds, blogs, streaming services "favourite artist" listings, facebook pages etc. and scraping the user identity involved from that. In the first case I'd have to question the worth of a site that requires your fans to sign up too before they can be tracked - after all, that's what your own website and email list should already be for. In the second case, the only real argument I can see for an artist to be using the service is the fact they don't have the time to do the tracking themselves. If artists haven't yet worked out how to search for their own name in a search engine or Twitter or how to find the list of "people talking about this" on Facebook, then perhaps there is a market, but as yet I remain unconvinced that this site will offer anything it's not already possible for an artist to easily achieve for free via their own social profiles and site/mailing lists. No doubt I'll be writing some more about this when the site has more information publicly available, but for now it looks like it will turn into just another attempt to part artists from their money.


Slowbizz
Slowbizz has decided to reinvent itself. I received an email at the beginning of the month on the subject. In a nutshell, what I expected appears to have happened, with people looking at the artists roster but not actually booking concerts. So it seems the person who started the site has decided to change the concept. The site with the revised concept isn't yet live, but is expected to be towards the end of Summer. That is, if it ever goes live at all, given it's currently been converted into a Pinterest board. To quote from the email

We will offer a special role to some of you as the great curators of the Slowbizz ecosystem. There will be 1000 curators all over the world. Their task will be to act as the "gatekeepers" of the BIG exposure that we will offer, free of charge, once a week, to one artist/band. Just one per week, featured on our website and other social properties. One artist that will have the privilege to be discovered by the eyes & ears of thousands of people on a global scale, without any competition. A real privilege. The curators will also be in charge of finding local ambassadors who will enhance the Slowbizz exposure within their proximity network.

What I deeply want is to offer to completely unknown artists the chance to get the exposure they wouldn't be able to afford despite their talent. I want us to become together a "break maker". A kind of label but without any strings attached.

And I want all of this to happen in a simple way, through a network of music lovers, bypassing the usual media.

And so I now am really confused. First off, the email mentions a figure of 7812 people signed to the mailing list. Yet with 65 artists accepted on the roster and most (if not all) of those providing at least 100 of those EACH, not to mention a number of others who will have signed up some of the 100 fans needed by the original concept to be accepted onto the roster (before the change to 50 votes required), it seems to me that the vast majority of that figure will be fans who have limited interest outside of the week that "their" artist is promoted, rather than the site having attracted the "network of music lovers" it needs. I'm also wondering about the size of this promotion, given that thousands of people is basically nothing on a global scale, the site is now supposed to be a non-profit (so where are the promotion funds going to come from) and it's not exactly any more well known than the artists it's supposed to be helping. To attract music lovers a site needs a variety of quality artists in a variety of genres, so to only ever be looking at one artist doesn't strike me as a site people will visit to look for music. i.e. how on earth does promoting one artist a week create a network of music lovers?  I'll be interested to see if the site's founder can change my mind when the new concept goes live, but the whole idea progression looks to me something like an original idea with potential that is taking a series of ever larger wrong turns (and looks ill thought out as a result of the huge shifts). But I guess one more "Look at me" site is hardly going to upset the status quo if/when it arrives.

In the meantime, the shift to a Pinterest board also makes very little sense given that it's pretty much impossible to discover anything on that site that you're not already following (or aware of) unless the board owner constantly makes pins so that they maintain a presence on the (ever-changing) recently pinned stuff. I'll be genuinely surprised if the board starts attracting hordes of followers, interest and comments as a result. Give it a few more months and I'm guessing the concept will change again.

And Finally..
If you haven't seen the post I made just before this one offering you a free QR code for you or your band to help with promotion then you might want to click on this link in order to read about that offer.

Want a free QR Code to promote your band?

This post was originally meant to be part of one of my regular posts, but due to the size of the one that's imminent and the amount of info I'm about to share, I decided this was worthy of a post on its own.

Essentially I want to try an experiment. So I have an offer for all you musicians/bands out there. I've been playing around with QR code generation recently and I'm wondering if any of you would like one done for free for you to use on your promotional materials.

But let's backtrack a second and answer a few questions.

What the heck is a QR Code and why would I want one?
A QR Code is essentially a 2D barcode which can link to a webpage, some text or an image (amongst other things). If you have a mobile phone which has Internet access, a camera and can download apps, you can basically take a picture of this code and it will take you to whatever is encoded within that barcode (On Android I use an app called Codee Reader, but you'll also find many other QR code reader apps to download, even if you have an iPhone or Windows phone). Here's the wikipedia link if you want to read a more detailed description of QR Codes.

As for why you'd want one as a musician? Well for starters, you know those phones all your (especially younger) fans are carrying around and probably recording your concert on as well as taking pictures while they're there? How about using the fact those phones are there to help you get useful information and interest from (and about) the people using them in order to help convert them into fans? How about rewarding fans who turned up?

So here's a few ideas of what you could do, but I'm sure you can think of more once I've given you the idea. And if you have a phone with a QR Code reader installed, then the example codes I've provided should give you an even better idea of how things work in practice and could apply to you and your existing sites/profiles as they all link to real, live web content.

1. You currently have either a sheet of paper or a computer sitting on your merch table so that people can sign up to your mailing list. And maybe you've got a queue of people who want to use it (some of whom maybe don't bother because they get fed up with the wait). Wouldn't it be much easier if  people could just point their phones at a poster and were automatically directed to the mailing list signup form on your website so that they could fill it in at their leisure on their own phones? No queue and/or you don't have to cope with their appalling handwriting! Even better, because they're signing up in the same way as if they had browsed to your website on a computer, they'll get any auto-responder/greeting messages your site sends. Whilst you shouldn't throw away the pen and paper just yet, a QR Code could still make life a bit easier.

2. Get someone handing out flyers with a QR Code on during your gig. The QR code links to a free track or some other exclusive content they can download  - obviously make sure your flyer contains that statement!

a) Direct download example






b) Same thing but via webpage






3. Provide a link to a page which contains a short summary of information about you and a player with some of your music for people to listen to, in order to serve as an introduction to people who are hearing you for the first time and want to find out more. They can do so there and then without having to remember (or find) the information when they get home.






Obviously, for many cases, if what you're linking to has been set up in a mobile-friendly site/page, then it will make it even easier for the user.

Sounds interesting. What do I need to provide and what do I get?
Well for starters you'll need to email me the following info, so that I have an address to mail the finished code back to. You'll need to give me:

a) The link to what the person scanning the code will see. Ideally this should be accessible. i.e. the last thing anyone will want to see when they scan your code will be a login prompt, whether that be for your website or an external site like facebook. And yes, that means it doesn't have to be your own website, but could be your profile on  soundcloud, facebook, youtube (pretty much you name it really) for wherever you want to send people.

b) An idea of your size requirements depending on where you're thinking of using it.
i) small e.g. suitable for business card/postcard/CD liner
ii) medium e.g. suitable for A4/A5/flyers
iii) large e.g. suitable for larger posters

c) If you have a preferred graphics format for the code image to make it easier to add into your other graphics e.g. BMP, JPG, PNG etc. (I should be able to provide most formats you or your graphic artist can think of)

You may need to provide some additional data if one of the options I mention elsewhere in this post interests you, but in the majority of cases the above is all that's needed.

Obviously, what you'll get back by email will be an image of the QR Code at a size that should be appropriate to use (and will work as-is without having to worry too much about scaling) where you're aiming to use it.

How soon will I get my QR code?
In theory the same day and usually within an hour or so of me picking the message up, providing I can test the code against the link so I can be happy it works before I send it to you. In practice, it's going to depend on how many requests I get and what else I'm doing (allowing for timezone as I'm in the UK), but they're not that difficult to create. I'm working on the assumption here that most of you would rather spend time creating music than learning how to do this yourself using one of the free tools or programs available, and you either have no access to someone who can create these, or someone wants to charge you for the privilege.

And you'll create that for free and send it to me? Seriously, you must want something?
Well actually I do. I'm thinking of starting a "QR Code of the month" section on my blog in which I'll feature one of the codes I've created for an artist, along with any other relevant info/background story as part of the post. Obviously whether I can will depend on whether there's any demand out there in the first place, both for the codes and for the chance of that little bit of extra free promotion. If you land up surprising me and overwhelming my inbox with requests on a month by month basis, I do have a backup plan which will allow me to feature more than the planned one per post, but I'll cross that bridge if it happens. If you are planning to use the code for something which is time sensitive (e.g. a free download to coincide with a launch party for a new album) then just let me know the earliest date you'd be happy for me to display your code when you email me the rest of the information. If that still isn't enough for you and you still want to give me something for my time, then I'm the kind of person who appreciates the unexpected in that case, so do what you do best and get creative in solving that problem.

Can I only have one code?
At the moment, the plan would be a maximum of one free code per artist per month. If demand is such that not many artists are interested, but they'd be happy with more frequent codes than this, then I'll probably relax the restriction. Likewise if my inbox goes seriously nuts, I may have to reduce the frequency with which I can offer codes to artists, as I'm only human and do need to do other important things like eat and sleep occasionally! At the end of the day, it's really up to you people out there to show me whether there's any demand for this offer and what exactly that level of demand is.

Does the QR Code have to be black and white?
Actually no. Providing the two colours involved have enough contrast between them, a QR code reader can still pick them up. My husband used a red and white QR code on the posters for his recent sponsored haircut. You can also potentially have one colour on top of an image - take a look at Bill Cosby's Twitter page icon for an example of that (white is the overlay colour and scanning the icon leads to the ability to download his free app) - but it will obviously depend on the image as to whether there's enough contrast for the overlaying colour to work. So if you're interested in something other than the standard black and white code, let me know. I don't have enough experience yet to be able to say straight off whether a particular combination will work or not, but if you don't mind helping me find out where the limits are, I can almost certainly sort you out with something either pretty close or spot on to your original idea.

I've got another question
If there's anything else you want to know first (the good old "Can I do this?" type requests come to mind for starters) then either email me or leave a comment on this post (depending on how useful you think the answer to your question would be to others) and I'll get back to you.

Let the filling of my inbox commence, and I'll see you back in my next regular update..

Experiments

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
Ellie Williams returned to Sellaband for some additional promotion funds for her second album. I would have funded her again, but I decided on 2 basic requirements back when the bankruptcy happened that the new management would need to fulfil before I'd even consider spending money on the site again. And as I'm still unsatisfied on both counts more than 2 years down the line, I'm sticking to my principles. Her return  reanimated a number of believers who had left the site to come back and buy parts in her, though it's unclear how much of the money they've spent is "new" money, and how much was "old" money that had been trapped in the site. If you didn't realise she was back, then you've missed the boat, as she successfully raised her target in a little over a fortnight. A welcome change from the slow or non-moving artists the site has at the moment.

Ironically on the same day as Ellie's return, I'd just decided to spend some money on Pledge Music. Vertical Horizon are an artist I became aware of a couple of years ago, and over a period of time I've been realising that I like most of what I've been hearing from them. They had already reached the 100% target on Pledge, but because the album/incentives weren't yet ready it was still possible to buy into their project. It seems they're currently still recording in-between touring, although the automated "thankyou for buying" message states the incentives were due to be delivered by March 10th 2012. Their page on Pledge now has TBC for a release date though, so we'll see how long it takes the CD to get here. It will also be interesting to compare the fan patience level here to that I've previously seen with other artists, particularly as their project updates seem to have slowed to a crawl and I've already seen one complaint about that. Looks like I could even be facing an experiment to determine just how green the grass is on the Pledge side of the fence, and how it handles complaints about overdue artists as a result.

But one thing that buying into a Pledge project reminded me was how much clearer it is spending money on there compared to Sellaband. The "what you see is what you pay" is something I consider preferable to Sellaband's strange deposit system that charges "hidden" fees on top of the displayed part price that you only get to see just before you hit the confirmation button. $12 for the album and a further $3 towards postage as I'm outside the US comes to a grand total of $15 and that's what my credit card was charged, rather than the price being inflated with "admin fees".

Brad Cox has released the new Niki Thunders and the Temperamentals track (called "Take me") for sale on CD Baby. In the blurb on the download page for the track it states a new album is planned for 2013 so I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for that.

Aly Cook is currently driving me nuts. I don't know whether it's a management change meaning someone else is looking after her twitter feed or whether there's an automated program involved, but something has obviously changed recently because she's now putting out the same message a large number of times in a row (just with a different @ tacked on the end) and essentially filling up my twitter feed with spam (often a couple of times a day or more) as a result. It's actually getting to the point where I'm thinking of stopping following her on there because all the pointless repeating within a few seconds is starting to annoy me. I'll be looking to see if things settle down over the next month or not on this front.

A rather large box arrived from Matthew Ebel. This contained the overdue framed album from 2010 and the overdue goody bags from 2011 as well as the new album, so he's finally caught up to where I was expecting him to be. I'm feeling much happier than I was when I wrote my 2011 review of the year post as a result. Episodes of the comic that go with the album are now being posted on his website every day or two, along with comments from Genesis Whitmore (the artist who is drawing it) about that particular strip. Check it out here.

In amongst the items in the box were a number of cards (business card sized), each containing a website link and QR Code for a different artist to download one track for free. An interesting touch to introduce you to a number of other indie musicians, and interestingly they weren't all based in the USA either. Whilst I've downloaded and listened to the tracks, none of them particularly got my interest, although I might wander off to their sites at some point and see what else I can find.

Additionally his "chartbombing" experiment has provided some very interesting data (at least from Amazon) on what it is possible for an indie artist with zero promotional budget to achieve. I've spent nearly a week watching the numbers, despite the fact the experiment itself lasted just one day. Essentially Matthew asked all his fans to hold off on buying the album, and instead asked them to purchase one particular track from it (or the whole album if they wanted) on one specific day via either iTunes or Amazon. iTunes doesn't offer realtime data, but the net result was that the album briefly cracked the 100 bestselling albums in their Rock chart. On Amazon where the charts are updated hourly it was possible to more easily track the progress with both the album and song hitting the top of the respective Adult Alternative charts, cracking the top 40 in the Alternative Rock chart and the album itself even briefly broke into the top 200 overall by sales rank on Amazon. You'll find more of my analysis of the experiment further down this post in the "sites" section.

John C Fraser sent a message to all his believers on Sellaband saying he was no longer going to be performing under that name, but instead was splitting from the the band, management, promoters etc. and going back to writing and performing as a solo artist as "Please be Frank", a title which uses his real name. As a result no further CDs would be sold and as the 2 projects he had on Sellaband have apparently not broken even, this means that believers will never see any revenue either.

The sites I've been looking at

Amazon.com
As stated earlier, I've spent about a week tracking the "chartbombing" results of Matthew Ebel's new album "The Lives of Dexter Peterson". The track he chose for this "I wish I were" isn't the one I would have chosen to try and get attention as it has more niche fanbase appeal than some of the others on the album, but it's been an interesting experiment to follow anyway.

Before the experiment started, the Amazon sales rank of the album was in the 45,000s. As I've already said, it hit top 200 in the 24hrs set aside when fans were asked to buy the album. As you can probably guess, it has slipped back since, but not as fast as you might think. Two days after the experiment, the album was still at no 1 for the Adult Alternative category and in the "new releases" section for individual tracks in Adult Alternative, not only was "I wish I were" at number one, there were 5 other songs from the album in the top 100, 3 of which were in the top twenty. And the album was still in the 600s for overall ranking. Both the track and the album have since slipped further (back down past artists like The Fray and Coldplay), but last I looked both were still in the top 100 Adult Alternative charts with the album down in the mid 5000s for overall sales rank (five days after the chartbombing). Because of Amazon's regional restrictions, these results have been achieved purely from digital only sales for the US fanbase, which makes me wonder how much further would have been possible if other countries could have affected that US chart too.

The obvious conclusion is that it's a lot easier than you might think to make a temporary dent in Amazon's rankings, but just because you can make a dent it doesn't mean you're going to make any lasting impression. In a competitive chart such as Alternative Rock, it seems you'll disappear out faster than it took you to get there, unless your sales volume keeps up, but in a category I can't see that many people actively looking in, there is a chance you might hang round long enough to be spotted. But from the realities of a consumer, I have to admit I've NEVER browsed the Amazon charts looking for music to buy. When I visit Amazon, I already know what I want to buy, and all I'm usually doing is checking out their price compared to other options I have available before buying from there or somewhere else. I'd be interested to hear if Matthew Ebel did pick up any new fans purely from a presence on the charts due to his experiment, but I think there's a pretty high chance the answer to that is going to be no.

And that also brings me to what I really don't like. Whilst interested in this "chartbombing" idea from the experimental point of view, the realities of what tends to be involved is something I'd much rather avoid. People are getting really turned off by advertising these days, yet it seems musicians are relying on the emotional approach (a set of "virtual puppy-dog eyes" if you like) to convince people to advertise for them. I kind of share the sentiment of the person who left a review during the experiment which basically said "This doesn't deserve to be on the charts and the only reason it's there is because the artist organised a chartbombing" - not from the point of view of the music, but from the "advertising/publicity stunt" point of view. The whole "hey check this out", "buy this now", "tell everyone today" is something that's going on far, far too much (and not just in music) , and the whole "popularity contest" that results cheapens things as far as I'm concerned. I supported the attempt this time, as you can tell from my previous post (for experimental reasons), but I'm still of the opinion there's enough spam out there without me adding to it, and it's unlikely you'll see me support this kind of thing very often as a result.

And so I have to wonder just how useful this experiment has really been. With only a temporary dent and seemingly little or no chance of fans resulting from that, is a "chartbombing" really worth the return? Particularly if the "spamminess" associated with carrying it out actually runs a risk of you losing some of your existing support.

Snacktracks.co.uk
If you're in the UK, United Biscuits are currently running a promotion on their snacks to allow you to download tracks for free from the Universal Music catalog. Think Hula Hoops, Skips, Mini Cheddars etc. (i.e. pretty much anything popular that doesn't have a Walkers logo). Seems simple enough. Each packet contains a code and a timestamp which you need to enter into the site along with an email address and you can download one of the tracks on offer. There's also a limit of 30 tracks per email address stated and no DRM involved. Bound to be something you want to download, right?

However as we've found out, things aren't anywhere near as straightforward as this. My husband had the bright idea to buy 2 boxes from our local wholesaler - one hula hoops and one mini cheddars. The promotion runs till the end of the year and the crisp bags had a few months to run before they were out of code, plus we have a monthly board games meeting anyway. We were bound to get through the 48 bags in each box, and our guests would get some codes to take away too. This situation led to the first problem.

The codes on each pack are NOT unique. The box of hula hoops contained exactly the same code on every packet, and there were only 2 different codes in the box of mini cheddars. And as you can imagine, when my husband attempted to download tracks it pulled a big fat red flag in the system. Net result of this one is that we are going to need to send a photo of every empty crisp packet we've still got and then mail them back to the promoter and we SHOULD get a working list of codes to use.

However, I had a little more luck and managed to download one track. That's when I found the second problem. So let's stop and think logically. With the length of the promotion and/or the fact you might land up having a packet of crisps in your lunchbox every day, it would be reasonable to assume you'll land up with more than one packet. Under these circumstances it might make an awful lot of sense to save up your packets and enter all the codes and download all the tracks at once, rather than have to keep visiting the site. Guess what. Even though there's a limit of 30 tracks per email address, there's also a limit of one download PER DAY. And they don't tell you that until you attempt to download a second track!

I'm still trying to decide whether this free music promotion is going to be worth the hassle it's turning out to be. So if you run across the snacktracks.co.uk free music download promotion, then it might be worth keeping our experience in mind. One thing is for sure, it's proving that downloading music for free illegally is an awful lot easier than a free legal version. Definitely a case of a promotion gone bad.

Slowbizz
Slowbizz held their first "concert as an app" recently. I've talked about them hosting house concerts in the past, but the email I got from them on this subject actually sounded interesting, as you might find from the following excerpt

Harnessing a unique timeline concept, the software will enables various audio and video layers to be played simultaneously vastly enriching the concert experience. And in an unprecedented technological advancement, the upgraded App will feature 360 degree video layers, allowing the viewer to experience the concert from the perspective of the musician creating the feeling of being right there on stage with the musicians.

The concert in question was an artist called Fink playing with the Royal Concert Orchestra in the Netherlands for their "Queen's Night" celebration. I was tempted to see what this was like, but it was when I clicked on the link to download the app that I got put off the idea. First the app in question was for iPad only (and I don't have one) and second they were charging nearly $4 for it. On the one hand, not a great sum of money, on the other it seemed a lot for a one-off experience/experiment on an artist I wasn't familiar with, even if I had had the hardware to use the app. It still sounds interesting, just it would either need an artist I was actually interested in at that price or would need to be somewhat cheaper (or free) for me to consider an experiment on something similar if it ever comes round on Android.

That's all for this time. Stay tuned for the next post when I'll be giving you an update on the things I'm still waiting for on Sellaband amongst other things.