A Lazy Summer Update

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've decided to restart a section I briefly toyed with back when this was my hatchet day blog by including a video I've come across over the past month. Some will be from artists I already know and in other cases it will be the video that might have led me to their discovery.

This month's video is from Remi Miles, an artist I originally discovered on Myspace (and who still doesn't seem to have a website). Enjoy this video from a track he's newly posted this month called "Perfection (YOLO)"






Who I've been looking at
I've had another fairly quiet month in terms of actually looking for artists, but it seems my lazy Summer hasn't been as lazy as I was expecting because once again a number of artists have found me in various ways.

For all those who remember Luckyhorse from their Sellaband days, it seems they've either changed their name or are starting up a different sound. I haven't heard any of their new material yet, but thanks to a tweet from Hogdaddee, I now know they're called The Criminal Hand and have a link to their new Facebook page.

And talking of Sellaband, the fastest moving artist we've seen on there in a long time signed up only about a fortnight ago and is already over a third of her 9000 euro budget, proving it's still possible to make serious headway if you bring your fans in the first place. Unter Null is essentially an electronic project, but including a wide range of elements that make it sound gothic, industrial and trance almost by turns. If I'd still been buying parts there, I'd have been tempted to join in with this one based on what I've heard. No prizes for guessing that unlike many other acts that join Sellaband, this is one that is actually advertising their fundraising effort on the front page of their own website as well as talking to people about it on their social media.

Meanwhile Kabul Dreams have slashed their target from 100,000 euros to a mere 5,000 and will probably complete their funding by the time this post publishes as a result of this change, having less than 100 euros to go the last time I looked. I'm not going to provide a link to their website as it's apparently using a javascript exploit and has sent several different anti-virus products nuts as a result every time I've tried to access it. Not a great advert for an artist.

The big question for the next month is what Aly Cook will do. With less than 7,000 of a 40,000 budget raised on Sellaband and about a fortnight to go before her year is up when I last checked it will be interesting to see whether she decides to make a budget change or not.

Elsewhere Poets of the Fall have been announced as a support act for the Red Hot Chili Peppers on August 1st. Whilst I'd be happier to see them announced as a support act outside of their own country, the fact it seems they're now being considered for major artist support in the first place gives me a little more hope they might actually make it to the UK one day. They've also released an extended version of their recent cd "Temple of Thought" containing 3 extra tracks - 2 live versions of tracks on the album and the "missing" track from their debut album. If you're familiar with their work you'll know the album title for each of their releases has either been a title track for a song on the album, or a key line in one of the songs. The exception to this was their first album, hence the "missing" track they've just released on the extended version called "Signs of Life". However this release has caused some concern and exposed the fact they appear to be following some antiquated practices which really ought to be stamped out in a modern music industry. The first problem is the obvious one that this extended release comes less than 6 months after the original. Whilst designed as a "new release" for German speaking territories, it's led some fans to question why there's a different release in the first place and whether they can buy the extra tracks separately as they're not bottomless pits of money. The second one is the rather bizarre situation that this extended release is available to buy from the artist's own webshop, unless you live in one of the German speaking territories where it is being released, in which case you CAN'T buy it from the artist's own webshop.

Huh? Or rather, how stupid can you get.

The lessons to be learned here, irrespective of whether you are artist or music industry. 1) There is only ONE WORLDWIDE release date for your song (or album of songs) and no such thing as different versions for different territories. Any other option is just encouraging people to go pirate it. 2) If a song/album is available for purchase direct from your own website, it should be available irrespective of where the buyer is coming from.

GD Allan has been putting some more tracks up on his Soundcloud page recently. It's prompted me to start following him on there as a result.

Mysti Mayhem has been posting some new material on Reverbnation recently. "How do you know" has a bit of an R'n'B vibe going on, whereas the acoustic "Mary don't you weep" is much more of a blues track. Both songs (along with others) are downloadable from Reverbnation, so why not check them out. She's also got some shows coming up in North Carolina, the area she's now living.

Vertical Horizon are busy proving that life isn't really any greener on the other side of the fence as far as crowdfunding is concerned. There's still no sign of or release date for the CD I paid for on Pledge Music back at the beginning of the year and their last update was at the beginning of June. Considering Ben Folds has signed up, raised funds AND announced a September release all in the time after my money was actually taken for this one, it really does seem to prove that artists are going to have to get it together if they want to take a publicly funded route. Crowdfunding is still in its infancy, but if it's to become mainstream then artists are going to have to start being a lot more reliable rather than leaving people hanging for months or even years after their money has been taken. Bet you wouldn't get to treat a label who'd financed you like this, so why such disregard for fans? There are plenty of other artists out there wanting funds and I'm hoping the crowdfunding industry will move towards supporting those artists with proven reliability and adding more protection for fans against those untried or just plain unreliable rather than standing by and wanting nothing to do with it as the case is at present. It may sound harsh, but enforced penalty clauses are something I'd really like to see adopted for crowdfunding based on my experiences to date, given artists in general seem to be incapable of doing anything in a timely manner unless they've been through the wringer at a label first (and even then I'm seeing exceptions). Seems the lesson that being independent means that YOU are the one accountable for the money you've just taken is something which artists are currently not being taught strongly enough. And that's a situation that really needs to change (and urgently) if you want to stand any chance of convincing people to pay for music, particularly up front.

As a statistic for you. Of the 36 artists whose projects reached funding on Sellaband where I was involved there are only 6 I would definitely consider funding again based on my experience there. A further 19 I might consider funding. That means there are 11 artists I probably wouldn't or definitely wouldn't consider funding again. On Pledge Music I don't have a wide enough sample to compare (just the 2 artists to date, one of which I'd funded before on Sellaband), but with my feelings currently starting to lean in a negative direction on an artist I've funded on Pledge as well, is it really any wonder I think crowdfunding platforms need to be taking a more active role with artists and communicating the results to their funders rather than leaving them to their own devices?

So I now consider that's a "late" album from Pledge Music (given the email when I funded them stated a March 2012 release date) as well as the two (much longer) overdue from Sellaband. Of the two Sellaband ones, Lori Greco will become the second artist I bought parts in to pass 3 years since funding completion during August, so bets are now officially on as to whether she will take longer than Natalia Safran's current record (All the evidence I see suggests she will). It's also worth noting that it will soon be 5 years since Lori first signed up on Sellaband, so I really am beginning to wonder now what on earth she's been doing in all that time, and can only assume she was nowhere near ready to make an album when she signed up. I'm willing to bet that if her funding had been label based she'd have been hit with a penalty clause for non-delivery by now. If further evidence were needed that crowdfunding sites need to start protecting consumers against artists, as far as I'm concerned you can't get a better example than this.

It's not often I pick up an album I'd decided to avoid, but a combination of some Amazon funds and the fact a song from it came round on my Last FM station made me change my mind. I've been a Chris Rea fan for a long time but after the illness he only recovered from after they'd removed rather a lot of internal organs he'd announced he was going to be going back to his roots and start writing blues. I'd given the resulting 12-disc behemoth he'd come up with based round the history and development of blues music a try when it came out and it turned out to be too much of a change in musical direction for me. So when he'd released "another blues album" a couple of years after, I decided to give it a miss at the time. However the album in question "Santo Spirito Blues" is the one I've now picked up because, well, it may be blues influenced but unlike the previous 12-disc it's actually back to sounding like the Chris Rea I know and love. Looks like I may land up looking out for his next album on its release after all.

Miranda Shvangiradze is an artist I've picked up on as a result of Soundcloud radio and in my first listening session on it too. More about what that is under the sites section, but what you'll find here is mainly instrumental electronic music with a classical influence. The recommendation came about as a result of the fact I listen to Fabrizio Paterlini. You'll find lots of music you can download for free from her Soundcloud page but I haven't seen any mention of a website for her.

This month's "whatever happened to" moment happened when I decided to take a look and see what Pete Strobl was up to these days. Hadn't seen anything of him in a while, so the most obvious thing to do was stop by his music blog. Sadly things are looking rather quiet over there as it seems his last post was made in January 2011 but after leaving a comment over there I got an email from him. Apparently he's been writing a book and working with Van Halen as well as wishing he had a lot more hours in the day (amongst other things). Here's hoping we'll see some more articles from him soon.

Meanwhile on Twitter a familiar face appeared in the list of people following me. Fred, or Meo (as more may remember him) of  Meo and the Alternative Preachers is the familiar face in question, but I've not got around to checking out what he's currently up to yet.

The Sites I've been looking at

Sellaband
I spent the first couple of weeks this month fighting Sellaband's support system as it seems their server migration managed to break my Sellaband profile in a rather large way. I've heard of sites sending you an email asking you to verify your signup before, but never a site sending an email asking you to verify that you've asked for support before your support request actually gets sent. As a result, the problems with my profile took about a week longer to fix than they ought to have done, as that's how long it took me to figure out what the situation was. Things did get fixed quite rapidly when the request actually reached Sellaband and I decided to withdraw the money on my profile when things got back to normal due to the uncertainty over what the "new concept" will be and hence to minimise any impact due to changes in what will happen with revenue and/or payouts. On that score, Sellaband have sent a link to a questionnaire round by email. Whether it asks you different questions if you're an artist, I obviously don't know (one of the first questions is whether you're on Sellaband as artist or believer), but it does ask some interesting questions such as whether you want revenue option to be available, whether you think Sellaband should hold live performances and whether you want a CD for your investment. However, it's hard to understand exactly what Sellaband want to get from the answers to these questions - if they've already decided on their new concept/new direction and that it will be launched in the Autumn, this seems to be asking relevant questions too late to be of any worth for that. They've also announced a concert in Berlin to celebrate their 6th anniversary, but I won't be attending as it doesn't seem appropriate, given the only thing I'm currently capable of "celebrating" is the fact I'm still waiting for albums I should have received a couple of years ago (one of the reasons I've refused to buy parts in artists on there since.)

TastemakerX
After only my second month using the site, I seem to have already worked myself into the top 20 players (and have gained a shedload of followers as a result), helped at least in part by investing in some very well known names who were at or near minimum price when they certainly shouldn't have been. But moment of the month on what is still a very young site came just over a week ago when a number of profiles started buying into the same group of about a half dozen artists, leading one player to comment on many of these that someone was cheating by setting up multiple accounts to inflate artist prices. On the one hand, a possibility, on the other you would get the same effect with a group of friends signing up, or even potentially fans of an artist. Whatever the case, I did dive into the buying spree and stand to make a decent profit on a couple of the artists involved if I decide to sell in the near future. So far, the profiles that went on a mass buying spree haven't gone on a mass selling spree to reap their profits, nor does it seem the site creators have taken any action. I'm watching closely to see what (if anything) happens next on this one.

Soundcloud
Someone has created a Soundcloud radio app. Essentially it plays tracks you have favourited on the site, tracks that people you follow have favourited and also tracks that people they follow have favourited. As a result I've already picked up on one interesting artist (as stated earlier) so I might start using this a bit more to see what other discoveries it will lead to. In the meantime, I'm probably the one responsible if I'm following you on Soundcloud and you've seen a sudden jump in your Soundcloud plays as I've had a few hours listening to the app already.

That's all for this month. Stay tuned for next month when I'll let you know if there's been any further news on the three overdue crowdfunded albums I'm waiting for (two from Sellaband and one from Pledge).

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.