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
As a music lover, one of my biggest sources of music outside of internet sites themselves is actually other (usually indie) musicians. And whilst I often find myself wading through a whole heap of stuff I just don't get on with, occasionally I run across an artist where most of what they point out turns out to fit extremely well with my music tastes. This month's video therefore comes as a result of one such recommendation. Enjoy "Hot Damn" by
Ivy Levan whose debut EP has recently been released.Who I've been looking at
In my travels this month looking for artists, the vast majority seem to have come with attached crowdfunding stories.
First on the list has got to be updates on the items I'm currently waiting on. The biggest update seems to be from
Cubworld who made the first track from his album available for download - Sellaband believers in his second project should check their dashboards for the free download (if they didn't get the email) as the track is already released. Much like "Rocked Out" from his first album, "Life is Music" has turned out to be pretty much a grower on me and with what I've previously heard of "Shaka Laka" on his website, I'm now interested to see whether the rest of the album can manage to grab me where the first pretty much failed. The second single from the album is supposed to be released this month with the full album release due in July. Fingers crossed this is one overdue project I can finally cross off the list soon.Elsewhere on the overdue list, there's been no update from
Vertical Horizon for nearly 3 months now. Whilst I know there is no such thing as a fixed length of time for mastering an album, this still seems rather a long time for this stage of the process - I was expecting to hear it was back by now and that maybe physical production and/or artwork was basically all that was left holding things up. Meanwhile, whilst the dates on the articles on Lori Greco's website homepage have changed, the articles themselves are still the same ones I read back in March. So no new news on this seemingly non-existent album which has been "coming soon" for nearly 4 years now. But news on her Twitter page about how excited she is to have submitted 6 new songs to a songwriting competition. Go figure what's going on here, because I obviously got lost a while back.In better news the
Poets of the Fall DVD is looking on target for its projected August release (though it's still too early to tell whether it will make it on time or not) and is slowly creeping towards 250% funded on Pledge Music even though somewhat more than half of the incentive levels have sold out completely and at least one more is getting low on numbers.In terms of other projects which I'm not funding (yet) but am keeping an eye on the following interesting list of things has popped up.
The fund for
Daniel Ward Murphy's second album on Fundrazr hasn't moved in months but I recently spotted something on his Facebook page which says he is considering private funding and asking if anyone knows anyone out there who might be interested. So much for his open letter claiming crowdfunding as the last roll of the dice but rather chalk another one up for what I see as the "artist's soul" and its inability to let go of music. I'll be keeping a watch out to see if this story has any more twists and turns and he does manage to get another album out or not.Civilized Tears finally set up their video funding project on Sellaband, although you won't find this under the main listings but rather it is one of the new style pledge-a-like pages. But in typical Sellaband facepalm-inducing fashion the project page itself is open to being misinterpreted as it initially states the project is to fund a video for their song "Stars", when in actual fact (as you'll find further through the description) a poll is running on their Facebook page to decide whether the video should be for "Stars" or "Antidote". And despite pointing this howler out to Tim on Twitter, (yes I bet you've guessed what I'm about to say) the project page still has this conflicting information on it. Add to that the fact the links on the project page lead to a Facebook login prompt rather than allowing you to see the Facebook content (even though this is visible if you navigate to it on Facebook itself irrespective of whether you have an account or not) and it's not the kind of page to fill you with confidence if you were looking at it wondering whether or not to fund an artist.One to watch for some time in July is going to be
Fox Amoore attempting to take his first foray into crowdfunding in order to try and raise enough money to record an album at Abbey Road studios. Given the already good quality of his home releases, I'll be interested to see just how much this can add to his cinematic style if he can make it work - the result ought to be an amazing sounding release. I've been watching him get to grips with the preparations for this by asking his fans what they'd like to see as incentive levels and for general feedback on the project and the last I saw he was making preparations to film the funding video. I've seen a couple of different funding platforms mentioned but I'm not yet sure which one he's settled on. Watch this space to see where it actually appears.Gayle Skidmore is on Kickstarter with a very short funding project for marketing a new album. As with her Sellaband one, this once again comes with a colouring book for some of the incentive levels. But you'll have to be fast as there's only a couple of weeks to fund it.Moving away from the crowdfunding side of things, I seem to be undergoing a bit of a music explosion at the moment based on the absolute flood of artists that have caught my attention for the first time in the past few weeks. Most notable of these seems to be
Fiction 20 Down (also known as f20d) who should really be something I run away screaming from given (as I've stated many times before) I don't like rap. But whether it's their more melodic style fused with reggae and rock or whether it's something else entirely, somehow they not only manage to get away with it, but in actual fact have a couple of songs I actually quite like. Whilst there are others which do fit the expected "can't stand", I expect I might find the further odd track I like popping up from time to time so will probably keep an occasional eye on them. You can currently download their latest EP for free in exchange for an email address via their website.If you like drinking as well as music then
Ali Spagnola could be well up your street. She is currently touring her 2012 album which is based on a drinking game. The "Power Hour" experience basically consists of 60 one minute songs with the idea that you take a shot of beer every time the song changes. Obviously it depends on the size of your shot glass, but if you were in the UK that's roughly 3 pints of beer in an hour. As well as being able to experience this as a live concert, she also sells her album on a USB stick built into a shot glass for those who prefer to get drunk with their mates at home. There's also quite a story involving the 3 year legal battle over this album and concert which you can read on her own website. If you like art as well as music, then she's also making and sending paintings all over the world for free (though with a current backlog she encourages you to donate to move further up the queue given she's made over 1900 already) so there's plenty of things of (unusual) interest to find on her website.Reverbnation provided a find in the form of
Stirling from Australia. This seems to be (mostly) a family affair given the surname of most of the band members. The rather haunting track "Mind Control" is the one that initially got my attention, although there's something about the piano in "Writing's on the Wall" which has a definite ability to get stuck in your head. Alexandria Maillot is another artist that I got pointed towards as a result of following another artist on Twitter. You can download her EP from Bandcamp on a "pay what you want" basis. For me the stand out track is "Just Another Girl" but the whole of the 7 track EP is well worth a listen.Most interesting of artists that followed me on Twitter recently has got to be
Space March whose retro electronic sound should definitely be up your street if you were fans of 80s acts such as Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys or Erasure etc. One of the more unusual tracks is a version of the classical music track by Grieg "In the Hall of the Mountain King" with added lyrics. But it must be said that whilst I like the music, this is another artist where the videos are making me cringe. If you were thinking of heading off to check them out, don't say I didn't warn you.Somehow between all the crowdfunding artists and new artists, I did manage to fall over a couple of old faces that didn't fit into either of these categories. Firstly
Cavali Jay is moving to Dubai with the aim of trying to get his music to take off in the Middle East and use that region as a launch pad for getting heard in the rest of the world. If it succeeds this will be a rather unusual direction for music to come from seeing as the vast majority still seems to come via the UK, USA, Germany, Australia or Japan and he's actually moving from the UK.GD Allan looks like he's putting together a new CD which appears to be called "Beats and Pieces" if I've been following the breadcrumb trail round the internet correctly. It seems he is remixing some of the tracks he posted while he was on Sellaband as part of this as well as including some music from more recent times. He seems to be mostly using Soundcloud for posting tracks at the moment and recently managed to grab me with a song called "River Runs Dry" which is the first song of his in ages to properly do so - in fact since "Bitter Pill".The sites I've been looking at
Soundcloud
If you hadn't noticed it yet, you should have seen I've now got a soundcloud playlist over on the right of this blog which contains music I've recently discovered (irrespective of whether it's recently released or something I only just picked up on) and am enjoying a lot. I'm aiming to keep the playtime around a half hour in length, so expect the featured songs on here to start changing as I find more music that catches my interest.
Underground Music FM
If you liked thesixtyone before their redesign of a number of years ago, I'd describe this site as the best replacement I've seen so far. Whilst it lacks community features for listeners, it follows a similar principle of artists being able to upload as little or as much of their music at once in the hopes of getting it trending on the site. This is the site I originally found Fiction 20 Down on, but like thesixtyone it can require a lot of work to find the diamonds you like in amongst the rough that you don't. Particularly due to the lack of real community features. And whilst there is a blog featuring artists on the site it is set up in such a way that it feels like a whole separate site rather than part of the site you're listening to music on. I'm not sure how much I'll land up using it to find music as a result because it seems to eat up too much time just to find even one artist you like.
Adsy.me
Remember the site called Slowbizz which was aimed at getting a network of music lovers to set up house concerts? Well I went to have a look and see how things were going there as there hadn't been any updates in ages, only to find the site redirected to something called adsy.me. After a bit of research I discovered that the Slowbizz site owner had undergone a "pivot". Or to put it in English, it looks like he has completely ditched the Slowbizz idea because it wasn't working and come up with a completely unrelated idea instead. But because he doesn't want to lose web traffic, he's redirected all the Slowbizz links to his new site, despite the fact the new project has nothing to do with the old.
In actual fact the new project appears to be a way of letting people create simple mobile applications without needing to know any of the code that a programmer would normally need. Not something I'd normally cover in a music blog, but in this particular case it could turn out to be something of use for musicians to create their own apps for fans without needing a deep understanding of technology. It's worthwhile checking out the video in which he creates an app for The Boxer Rebellion to get an idea of just how easy this is. On the downside the system is currently only available to those.users with Apple products (e.g. an iPhone), although an Android version is in development which should give it a much wider mobile phone userbase. The other interesting point is that it seems the apps apparently are stored on the adsy.me site rather than being something made available in the app store your phone would normally link to. As a result it might be worth considering the site terms and conditions a lot more seriously than the humorous way they are presented before deciding whether this is something that would really be of interest. Personally I'm going to wait until the Android version comes out before taking a better look at how the whole thing works in practice.
And finally...
I'm hoping things are going to quieten down on the music front over the next couple of months as it looks like we'll be moving house at some point soon. There's no firm date set yet though, so hopefully I'll get at least one more post out before I need to worry about taking a break from this blog.
