Pre-move blues

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
As part of my look at artists I haven't visited for a while, I went to see what The Blanko were up to. This is a group that formed when one of my previous likes from Finland (an artist called Flylow) split with the members heading off into two different bands, the second of which (Cobrastyle) seems to have dropped off the face of the earth some time in 2010. Enjoy Face The Fear which looks like it might be a release off a forthcoming album

Who I've been looking at

Music is being forced to take more of a back seat at the moment. As I mentioned in my previous post there's a house move on the cards which means I've been spending a lot of time recently doing all the stuff necessary to get it on the market and sold rather than looking round for music.

Priority one on the music front has therefore been to try and get an updated status on things I'm waiting for. As all of these are coming from abroad, I obviously need to be keeping a close eye on dates etc. in order to coordinate with an address change. This type of mail can't always be redirected to a new address (depending on a number of things) and could land up getting returned to sender a month or two later as a result.

Cubworld's second single release before the album was supposed to be out in June, but I landed up tweeting him late on 30th as there was no sign of anything on Sellaband.  A few days later I got a reply which said "I decided to take another 5 years to release all the tracks. Wish me luck :)". On the one hand seemingly a joke, on the other not really the kind of joke I want to see given my sense of humour circuits have been pretty much disconnected for a number of months where the last few overdue Sellaband albums are concerned - this is a subject which just isn't funny any more. A second track "Good Morning Love" has since appeared on his Bandcamp page and his website which appears to be one of the more "chilled out" tracks he mentioned, but if it is the second single release before the album, it hasn't shown up for Sellaband believers on their dashboards yet.

Elsewhere on overdue albums, Lori Greco's twitter feed contained a couple of interesting tweets over the past few weeks, suggesting in the first that the album would be finished in July ready for a digital release in August and in a more recent second one that it would be finished "next week" , which at time of discovery equated to the first week in July. Not long after this an email came through from Lori via the Sellaband system saying the album would be available for download by the end of July. Could it really be that I might actually see an album in my hands before the "4 years since funding completion" deadline hits in mid-August? And will the album actually appear on Sellaband before the end of July in the first place based on what I've been seeing with Cubworld? Watch this space.

Finally another update from Vertical Horizon on their overdue album. Apparently they are looking at releasing it in the Autumn but have no firm date set yet. It's looking more likely that this will appear after the move rather than before as a result, but is currently the item I need to keep the closest eye on based on the information I currently have.

Poets of the Fall are currently spending most time on getting together bonus material for the DVD. August release date is therefore still looking good at this point. Couldn't be happier with the way they are keeping people updated on the project either, and it's probably no surprise that they have passed the 250% funding mark and are still going as a result (albeit slowly but steadily) despite many incentives now being sold out.

The last item on my current list of outstanding items is in the more-or-less "on its way" category. This is Matthew Ebel's "Best Of" album which you can get a digital copy of completely for free just by signing up to his mailing list, as he's now sending this out instead of the 5 free songs he was sending previously. This contains tracks taken from all of the albums he has released via his website to date, but in many cases (particularly tracks from earlier albums) they have been remixed and enhanced compared to the recording you'll find on the original CD. As an Entourage membership, I'm obviously expecting something a little more physical in addition to the digital release going to his mailing list, though whether or not he's close to sending this yet or whether it will hang around until the annual goody bag (most likely due in the Autumn) to help save on postage is something I don't know. Based on how the house move is going, I may still need to get some coordination sorted here at a later date.

My most recent music purchase has been the new We Love The Underground album "Mouthful of Graffiti" which I've been a little hesitant about as the preview tracks Brad posted didn't exactly grab me in the same way as those from the first album and I was left wondering whether it would find itself in the traditional "difficult second album" category as a result. The biggest surprise when the album arrived was probably the fact that it included a couple of tracks he had originally released under the Niki Thunders name. Overall, after listening some more, I don't think it's as good an album as the first, mostly because there's nothing that immediately grabs your attention, but I am finding a few of the tracks are starting to grow on me more than I originally thought they would. I've actually cooled slightly from the 4 star rating I felt the project warranted after the first album to more like 3 to 3 and a half as a result.

And I've already got my next album purchase planned. Even if anything comes out beforehand that I'm interested in, it's likely it will get left until after the move and most likely behind this one in the queue if I'm short of cash, given how much I like this particular artist. Elton John's new album "The Diving Board" is the album in question, due for release in September and you can already view a lyric video of one of the tracks from this album on his official website.

Keeping watch on some of the crowdfunding projects I mentioned in the last post has also been interesting. Initially I was rather worried about Gayle Skidmore's effort to raise $8000 given it didn't seem to be moving much despite what I thought were some pretty tempting incentives on offer (e.g. digital download of the new album along with a PDF of the colouring book for just $1, or digital download of her entire back catalog of albums on bandcamp for just $10) , but after she started going overboard with the tweets and retweets it accelerated into a last minute frenzy I haven't seen since the early days on Sellaband with over half of the money raised arriving in the last couple of days of the project. In the end she actually finished with over $10,000 and 460 people on board.

The Civilized Tears video funding by contrast seems to have been a much more painful affair given they have only been looking for 1000 euros and trying to get this for longer than Gayle's project was up. (and in fact are still only around the halfway mark at time of writing) Whilst it's obvious from some of the comments going around that some people are being put off by the fact the funding is in euros and not dollars, I'm still left wondering how much of a problem the "Sellaband Effect" is having. I've stated many times before that I won't even contemplate going near any project being funded on Sellaband while I'm still waiting for albums from the "old era" (which were due years ago), irrespective of who asks so it seems hard to say how many others are being put off by the mere fact Sellaband is involved and how many just aren't that interested in the range of incentives on offer (something I consider quite a poor selection in the first place).

Fox Amoore's project isn't currently up, but he does have the funding video recorded now and the title of the project appears to be "Come Find Me", so I'm expecting to see this appear soon - probably after he gets back from the mini tour of the USA he's currently on.

It will be interesting to see what Aly Cook does. She already dropped her budget from 40,000 to 25,000 euros a while back but there is less than a month to go before this project will fail for the second time to raise its budget in a year, and she still has over a third of the way to go. A change to somewhere around the 18K mark might see her through, but I'm not yet convinced anything higher will unless there really is a last minute rush.

On the discoveries side, Galia Arad is the main artist to grab my attention recently, though she could really do with a proper website than her current blog-style affair which attempts to cram the entire site on one page and hence takes a while to load as well as being a bit of an information overload (whilst in many cases explaining nothing e.g. what the heck is the "how to exploit your grandfather" set of links even about in the first place??).

As you can probably guess, I haven't really been looking for new artists in general this month but instead spent my limited time in a bit of a "Whatever Happened To...?" mode by checking up on some old familiar names. Bulletproof Messenger still seem to be procrastinating on their next album, and in fact seem to have pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth given the fact their website hasn't been updated in ages and there have been very few social media postings since their April Fool's joke that a new album was about to be released. Trail have also been very quiet this year since their post in January that they were listening to the final mix for the first track off their new album - I had been expecting to see some more information about this before. Radius are another one who seem to have done a disappearing act with the last information on their website (from months ago) seeming to suggest a search for a new bass player was underway. I'm particularly struck by the irony of their most recent tweet (which was posted on New Year's Day) "Happy New Year!!!! We'll be back on track in 2013!!!!"

The sites I've been looking at

Sellaband
It's been a while since I took an overall picture on how things are changing at Sellaband. The number of artists on the site appears to still be on a general downward trend, despite there still being at least two where both the "Active since" and "Last seen" dates are over a year old, one of which where both these dates are even both over 2 years old. Suffice it to say, Sellaband obviously still haven't fixed the problem which has been round for over a year now with some projects not being deleted even after they exceed their supposed 1 year of active life mentioned in the T&C.

Maybe that's about to change though? Sellaband have announced some forthcoming changes to their terms and conditions which could well result in artist profiles being deleted if the artist hasn't visited them in the past month. At the same time, it appears that a change on the believer side with believers needing to be active every 2 months or their profile will be deleted is also coming into effect at the same time. Which gets me to thinking... just how many believer profiles are there out there with just a few eurocents in them (basically hardly worth a withdrawal) and how much money would Sellaband therefore stand to gain by claiming all these unused funds? Enough to keep the site limping along for a few more months perhaps?

The number of artists on the site at time of writing has been dropping for a while now on its own. Whilst the current number of these is below 500 at time of writing, both the percentage and number of artists with at least 1% of their budget raised does appear to be increasing (having finally passed the 60 mark for the first time since I started checking), though the number on a "significant" percentage of budget raised does appear to be remaining fairly static - only a handful are over halfway to target and indeed only around 10 artists are currently over 25% of budget raised. The increase in 1% raised is at least partly due to most artists now signing up with much lower budgets than previously - the larger number of artists with 5000 euro or less budgets obviously makes it much easier to get 1% raised compared to the 50K budget of the original site concept. How much longer is the site going to limp along at this rate? Many would say it's already way past the date they were expecting it to fold for the second time.

But one interesting thing I recently discovered on the site is the "Artist Academy" pages obviously designed to help artists set up their Sellaband project, but I can't help but wonder how many artists actually even read them as you don't see any mention of them on the site until you actually hit the artist signup page. At which point it's probably too late as I can see way more people just filling in the signup boxes rather than clicking a link that goes away from the page to another site area entirely. Amongst the more interesting information on these pages is the statement that Sellaband sees the average believer donation as being around 20 euros, a project page needs to be viewed on average 208 times for every believer you get and that 42 is not only the answer to life, the universe and everything, but also the key to how many believers you need to succeed on Sellaband once you know your budget. Well worth a read but way more information is presented in this guide than the majority are going to bother with once they got as far as the signup form - it's pretty much the equivalent of people reading the instruction manual for their new appliance when they've already opened the box and got the appliance out. If Sellaband really want people to be reading these, they ought to make them do so before presenting them with a page of boxes about their project to fill in.

Patreon
The basic idea behind this website is that you agree to give an artist a tip every time they come up with a new piece of content. The minimum amount is $1 which gives you the ability to post on their wall and follow their updates, however if you decide you want to give a higher amount every time the artist produces a new piece of content, you'll get whatever extras that artist provides for each tier that the artist sets. For instance, one artist I looked at had a $3 and a $10 a tier where the $3 got you a download of the song as well and for the $10 you got the song download and a customised thankyou drawing.

In terms of how the payments work, it seems they currently only take payments using a system called Stipe, which appears to be a Paypal-a-like but something which I'd never heard of before, and hence it feels a bit restrictive if you were thinking of becoming a patron compared to other sites which take much more common options for payment. You don't get charged immediately that the artist creates the content, but instead get charged once a month based on all the content that all of the artists you support on the site have released that month. Patreon takes 5% of that to cover their own costs and the Stipe system eats up about another 3% in transaction charges. As a patron, if you're worried about getting a huge bill one month if artists go nuts producing content, you can apparently set a maximum amount that you'll pay out, however it's unclear from the T&C if you can then go back and buy the content you missed out on in a quieter month or whether you're forced to miss out on that entirely.

The site doesn't just support musicians, but also video producers, short film makers, bloggers and indeed anything along these lines that you can think of. But it's unclear just how many content creators are using the site at present as it's really only possible to see the list of featured artists on the home page before you're forced to resort to using the search function. Not great as a potential patron browsing to see who you might be interested in, but once again only really a site for those with people already interested in them rather than something you could use as a discovery tool. And for me that limits its potential and brings us back to the point that as an artist you could get a similar system set up on your own website for your existing fans and hence save yourself the 5% middleman. If this were more of a discovery tool that allowed you to more easily find and connect with new potential fans it would look much more attractive  - as you can't even use the site to talk to an artist until you've already agreed to tip them, I'm left failing to see how useful this could actually be.

And finally...
That's all for this post. Once again there's likely to be a longer than normal gap to the next post due to the house move taking up a lot of time over the next few months.