Visiting the familiar and new

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

In one of those "Whatever happened to...?" moments, I found myself wandering past Dommin's website for the first time in a while. The first album had been publicised on TV over here and I'd liked what I'd heard, but that was a number of years ago and I'd never seen or heard about a followup. From what I read on this visit, it looks like this is yet another case of an artist being bitten by the traditional music industry. Read for yourself as the story goes with the video ("Not Afraid") I've chosen for this month. One thing is for sure, I expect I'll be dropping in from time to time in the near future to see if anything does get released once the label hassles have been sorted. Whilst Kickstarter has been mentioned, I can't help but get the gut feeling that this is something that might do much better with the involvement of Pledgemusic instead, despite the fact I'm not sure if Kristofer has even heard of the site.

Who I've been looking at

It's not often I win something, so it was quite a nice surprise to get an Amazon gift voucher from the music discovery panel I was invited to a couple of months back as a thankyou for responding to their artist surveys. While I was trying to decide what to spend it on, I landed up looking through the latest recommendations the site had for me and ran across a rather interesting artist as a result of my interest in Nemesea. Issa is from Norway and the samples I listened to immediately caught my interest, as they seemed to fall in a range of music I quite like with some tracks reminding me more of  Roxette and others stretching closer to a lot of the Scandinavian rock and metal I listen to. It's therefore something of a shame that her website is a) an extremely poor one page item and b) was so extremely difficult to track down in the first place. There's potential here, but her online presence is pretty much non-existent which is the worst possible thing to be in this day and age, and the videos also seem to be pretty cringeworthy affairs more suited to the 1980s, particularly on the choreography front. In other words, nice music, shame about the rest if you're a potential fan.

For other new discoveries this month, Soundcloud provided one in the form of the electronic act Future User. The track posted caught my interest, however everything I've seen so far looks like a failed attempt to go viral with it, given their site has no information on the artist and no clues are given in their social profiles (which mostly look to have been started just this year) either. The inference is that "future user" may be more well known under another name and the idea was to get people trying to guess who it is/was, but despite the rather spammy Twitter account attempting to direct people to listen to the track it seems this idea has fallen pretty flat (if indeed that was its original intention).

I also picked up on a 15 year old artist on Reverbnation called Brandon Vitale who has some pretty catchy tracks and writes his own music. His biography on there states he is looking for major label and publishing support. The biggest problem for me is that there appears to be no website or plan of attack here. There's no doubting potential but with no visible track record and just a series of recordings it seems rather hard to understand why any label would take a chance on a youngster who seemingly has no performance experience behind them and who is obviously struggling to get people to listen to the music in the first place as he hasn't really formed any connections with people either.

Brad Cox has announced that the new We Love the Underground album is going to be titled "Mouthful of Graffiti", and whilst there's still no firm release date announced it is supposed to be released this Summer. I can't help but feel the irony here - at the rate things are going, this is looking like I'll have seen one album and one EP from Skitzo Calypso and two We Love the Underground albums all from an artist who failed to raise funding on Sellaband before I even see one album from the successfully funded project of Lori Greco who I bought parts in on Sellaband over a year before I'd even heard of Brad and his band projects.

The Pledgemusic project of Poets of the Fall passed the 200% funded mark this month and many of the items available are once again running low on numbers left. It will be interesting to see if the DVD (due August) does arrive before the album from Vertical Horizon, as things are still quieter on their side than I'd like despite the fact the Vertical Horizon album is supposed to have gone off for mixing and mastering already.

Poets of the Fall also directed me to a new artist in the form of Ima, as they had produced her new song. For non-Finnish speakers, whilst you can click on the play icon on the main page of the site, I'd actually recommend clicking on the "Nyt" link at the top of the page instead as this "latest (news)" page currently gives you the soundcloud player, and if you like what you hear, you can download the track in question. Once again, I find myself somewhat underwhelmed by the artist's own site though, as there's actually very little useful information on there once you get past the language barrier.

Things are undergoing a bit of an upheaval in the Matthew Ebel camp at the moment. For starters he's attempting to finish the book portion of the "Lives of Dexter Peterson" project, seeing as the album was out a year ago, meaning it will be something like 3 years from his original announcement of trying to get a 3 part project done in a year that we'll be seeing the end of what has turned into a 2 part project along the way. With only the first couple of chapters illustrated, the graphic novel portion got cancelled a few months ago due to personal problems for the illustrator making it unclear when, if ever, it would get finished. In addition he's behind on writing the custom songs that are due to those who have paid Entourage subscriptions and has stated he's actually thinking about removing the Entourage level as a result because he doesn't want to keep falling behind on the custom song commitment (and I know he has no real idea of what else he could offer in its place and doesn't like accepting money for nothing either). It may therefore be that I won't even be needing to consider whether to stay at Entourage level when my renewal comes due, but rather the question may be what subscription I take instead if this change goes ahead.

Personally, I'm not convinced the removal of this subscription level would be a good idea if there are people willing to pay that amount of money - there's a big difference between 5 people paying $500 a year and those 5 people most likely dropping back to $149 a year when it comes to income - it essentially means you need more than 10 extra fans to appear from nowhere to make up the difference which is not the easiest of things to achieve in a still faltering economy when it's already hard enough for existing fans to keep on supporting you in the first place.

And if that little lot wasn't enough to be working on, he's decided he needs to get more of an "angle" to his shows to try and convince people to book him rather than being just another guy playing a piano. This means he isn't running his weekly show streams at the moment, but instead has been building a set for his basement studio and is working on costumes and storylines as well with the idea of relaunching as a sci-fi themed weekly show similar to the High Orbit podcasts he used to do. However this change is also going to have an impact on his subscription model as he wants to put the resulting videos up on Youtube so potential bookers for live shows can see what they would be getting, which means they are then publicly available rather than exclusive subscriber content. In other words the question then becomes what subscribers will get for their monthly subscription money instead (particularly at the entry level). At the rate things are going, I'm therefore left wondering whether or not his entire subscription model is going to need a reworking as a result of all the changes in progress which seem to impact on it.

I find myself rather in two minds about Aly Cook's latest endeavour. She's still attempting to raise funds on Sellaband for her second album and still has over halfway to go for her current target, yet at the same time has started up an IndieGoGo project for her band the Sou'Westers to raise funds for a video for their first single. On the plus side, an IndieGoGo campaign does at least ensure she will get whatever money it manages to raise and I can see the idea was to treat it as an album presale campaign, but on the minus side there's the thought that having this second project running at the same time as the first isn't really such a good idea as people have limited money and can't put it in two places at once.

The sites I've been looking at
 Interestingly I haven't been looking at any sites in particular recently as it seems more like I've been on a random wander between a lot of my usual haunts to see if any new artists pop up during my listening time on them.

The only thing I did pay some attention to was the finish of the "Bandcontest" on Sellaband. Interestingly not only did one artist actually meet the target (despite this looking very unlikely to happen for most of the month the contest was running), it seems they exceeded it by a rather round looking 20%. With three hours to go, this same artist was on 80% of funds raised and as little as 24 hours before the end of the contest they had still been stuck on somewhat less than 20% of funds raised. Interestingly, the second artist in the competition also made a rather round looking 80% of their total budget by the end of the contest, despite having been in single digits of funds raised with 24hrs to go. The third of the 3 artists barely moved in the last 24hrs, finishing the contest on 5% of budget. I'll leave it to the conspiracy theorists (and you) to decide whether we actually saw an old style last minute rush to buy as with the Sellaband of times past or whether some convenient number fixing took place to avoid the embarrassment the contest was looking likely to turn into if you'd been following its progress from the start.

And finally...
I've been crunching some numbers recently from data freely available on the internet as a result of the debate on whether artists are actually being paid enough for streaming music and the RIAA's recent announcement that 100 streams should count as one sale. I'm in the process of writing up the rather interesting looking results of that into what should form my next blog post (hopefully within the next week). Suffice it to say that at best the results should give you something to think about and at worst may actually scare you. Irrespective of whether you're a listener or a musician, this is one post I think you definitely won't want to miss.

Updates and Changes

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

The most interesting artist discovery I've had this month came about as a result of one of the sites I've been looking at. Enjoy "Bullet for a broken heart" by Dillon Hodges, and if I'm reading correctly, he should have a new album out on May 14th.

Who I've been looking at

Finally another update from Vertical Horizon at the end of March saying the album was off for mastering and they are now working on trying to get distribution for its release. The latest information given on that release date is "hopefully before the Summer". In other words, still pretty much no idea when it will be seen.

Wonders will apparently never cease when it comes to Sellaband albums. I was recently tweeted by a Sellaband believer who said that his Nearfield CD had finally turned up over 4 years after funding completed. Here's hoping one of my regular readers who was also still waiting when I last knew gets theirs as well. Meantime, I'm still waiting on my two albums from Cubworld and Lori Greco which are more than 3 years since funding completion.

I wish every Sellaband artist were as good as Aly Cook when it somes to letting believers know when revenue should have been credited to their accounts. Though having said that, she is the only artist I seem to have been receiving anything from for a while now, despite a number of artists agreeing to 5 years of revenue after release. As I've said before, she is one of the artists I would consider funding again, and this is just one of the reasons why. But there's also no way that's going to happen at the moment, as I'm most certainly not going to break my original statement that I won't even consider funding anyone on Sellaband until the issues with my overdue albums are satisfactorily resolved.

Francis Rodino is dropping his name for performances and instead will be performing in future under the name Caiyo. He's pulled together an album based on tracks from his most recent EP and the "Circles and Squares" album he made at Sellaband and is releasing this as his debut album under the Caiyo name. You can currently buy the download from Bandcamp, although there's a May 2013 date associated with it which seems to suggest that a physical copy might be seen around then.

Back towards the end of March there were indications from Civilzed Tears that they might be back again for another funding round at Sellaband soon, but I haven't seen anything about this since.

The 10th Anniversary DVD from Poets of the Fall reached 100% of its funding target in just 2 days at Pledge music (even before the concert was actually recorded) and pledges are still arriving. So much so that both the signed DVD and signed DVD with dedication completely sold out shortly after the 100% was reached and the second batch added as a result also look to be in danger of selling out - possibly even in the next couple of weeks. Whilst the overall speed of funding even took me slightly by surprise, it must be said that this is crowdfunding as it should be, providing you have a fanbase. There's no video asking for money here and no real introduction to the band or their music unless you care to read the profile page. One forum member posted the following meme in the thread talking about the funding which pretty much says it all.

Or to state it simply - if you have already made a strong enough connection with enough people, this is the response you'll get from them. You don't need fancy gimmicks to hit a sensible budget in rather a short time frame. If people aren't throwing money at you, yet are connecting with you otherwise, maybe it's time to find out why.

As far as the rest of it goes, it's then up to you (the artist) to deliver. This is really the part of the process I'm now most interested in based on my experiences with artists on more than one crowdfunding site, and I'm hoping some of my lost faith in crowdfunding can be restored by an artist I've been trusting for nearly 10 years now.

In the update posted after they reached the 100% Poets of the Fall have stated the "time till release" is planned as a maximum timeframe. However they've also stated that the further over the budget they go, the more special additions to it they may manage, even to the extent of being able to afford to produce a bluray as well if they get enough. So on that score, if they still make the timeframe then awesome, but I'm not going to worry if it slips a bit to fit some of those extra features in, providing we're talking something reasonable rather than measured in years.

As a fan, I'm still waiting for the website on crowdfunding that nobody seems to have produced yet. With all the crowdfunding websites out there and the number of projects/sites now around, isn't it about time we got to rate artists on their so-called "successful" crowdfunding endeavours? As far as the crowdfunding sites are concerned it seems a project is successful if it merely raises the budget in the timeframe, whereas successful to a fan is when they actually receive their goods and I'm therefore not convinced by the news articles I read about the percentage of successful projects on various sites when this is clearly only looking at it from the site rather than fan perspective. Imagine how useful it would be when considering whether to fund a project if you could see how the artist had performed on past crowdfunding projects in terms of keeping people updated and how long it actually took to deliver compared to the original expectation/promise. (Think of it a bit like being able to read a review on Amazon to see what others thought of it when you have different things to choose from). Fans have limited money, yet actions (or lack of) of some artists on crowdfunding websites are enough to make piracy even more attractive. Crowdfunding is no baby any more, it's growing up. So why not give us the tools and hence incentive to put our limited cash in the direction of artists we like who actually deserve it? Who is going to be first to take up this challenge?

Every so often I get a "How-in-the-hell-did-I-miss-that" moment where an artist is concerned. In this particular case, I think I know what happened as their first album came out in 2007 around the time I was heavily into Sellaband, and it's taken this long for me to pick up on this particular project. Blaqk Audio is actually a side project of a couple of the members of AFI, one of those artists where I've never really got into the whole of their back catalogue but drop into their site from time to time to see what's happening. I have a feeling I may be taking more interest in this side project than the main band, even though they have only released 2 albums in the past 6 years. If you're into electronic music (particularly 80's), the best way I can describe the sound is a fusion of Depeche Mode and a trance version of The Sisters of Mercy.

The sites I've been looking at

Sellaband
Could we be seeing a last-ditch attempt to restart interest in the site? One thing is for sure, the competition pages for the 3 bands have rather a pledgemusic-like feel to them what with the video placement and incentive lists as well as only percentage of funds raised being displayed rather than actual numbers and the promise that money will not be taken up-front. There has also been a "special funding project page" for one particular artist appear which appears to follow a similar form (the page itself is in German with no translation available so I'm a bit limited in just how much I understand). It certainly looks like they may be testing this format out as a potential thing to swap to for the site in general based on these pages.

So at first glance, I'm seeing a too-little-too-late Pledge clone, but on looking deeper, there are a number of things about this new format that worry me over and above this when it comes to considering whether it's trustworthy even for anyone who is not familiar with past history.

First up for scrutiny is the payment system. This states that funds will be reserved on your Paypal account and only taken if the project reaches target which is rather contrary to the way the Paypal system operates (at least in the UK, where I could find nothing about using it to reserve funds to be taken at a later date anywhere in the site or FAQ). Even Pledge take the money up front if Paypal is used and refund if the project doesn't reach target. The fact is that by only taking Paypal and not credit or debit card payments, there's both less choice and less consumer protection for potential believers. The whole payment side looks rather dodgy as a result particularly when you consider section 3.4 in the T&C which states:

"The financing for a music project can be stopped at any time prior to reaching the project funding target by the artist or by SellaBand. In this case, all reserved funds will be canceled in connection with the deleted project on Paypal and returned to the believers’ accounts, as long as the project still lies below 100% of the selected funding goal"

So is the money actually being taken from your Paypal account and then refunded if the project doesn't reach its target or does it stay on your own account in some "reserved" status and is only taken from it at the point the project reaches 100%? As we've come to expect of Sellaband, the T&C actually seems to contradict both itself and the other information displayed on the site. Not a good situation to give you confidence.

Selecting of incentives is also rather inflexible. Unlike the Pledge system which takes more of a "shopping cart" approach where you can add more than one incentive at the same time and make one single payment, it appears only possible to select one incentive on this Sellaband contest before you're immediately directed to a payment page. There also doesn't seem to be a limit with Pledge as to how many times you can go back and make further payments for other incentives before the project is shipped, whereas the maximum number of incentives you can ever purchase for a Sellaband contest page is 4.

Pledge is very good at displaying estimates of how much something will cost in your local currency - whilst I've found it to be off by up to a few percent, it does provide a broad benchmark if you really have no idea how much something costs in another currency. This is another place where the contest pages fail as it seems you can only find that out once you log into Paypal to fill in the payment process. The other main fail that could put off some potential users is the fact that the contest pages display in German by default and it wasn't particularly easy to spot the fact an English version is available and how to switch to it. Definitely a handicap for one of the bands in the race where I'd be expecting the majority of their supporters to have English as a first language.

There's also the rather unfortunate situation of calling this a contest, when in fact no prizes will be awarded to believers if none of the 3 artists in the competition manages to reach 100% of their budget. You won't find that information in the FAQ section of the site though (or indeed anywhere else on the site that I could spot), but rather it's hiding right at the end of section 6.4 in the T&C. I'll be busy waiting to see if anyone gets misled as a result of not reading the small print given that the band currently in the lead is only on 13% of budget with less than 2 weeks remaining. It should be noted that it doesn't seem to state whether the winning artist will still receive a prize, even if they don't make 100% of budget. Given Sellaband's history with contests (as a way of raising money) gone bad, this whole thing looks like an accident waiting to happen. Complicating a simple funding idea by plastering a competition of this nature on top definitely isn't the way to go.

All-in-all, colour me unimpressed with this inferior Pledge clone.

Magnet
I forget exactly what linked me out to this online magazine originally, but the real interest here is on their free mp3s page as it seems to feature an mp3 to download for free virtually every day. Even better you can actually listen to the songs from within the site itself to find out if you're interested enough to want to download them in the first place.

And finally
That's all for this edition. Watch this space to see how my wait for overdue albums is going and how the progress on the DVD is shaping up compared to my past experiences.

New year discoveries

If you already know about my rating system then skip on down to the next header, otherwise here's the lowdown.

The rating system
The rating system I use for this blog is somewhat unique. It's not a reflection of how much I like the music itself as much as it is of how far I am along the process of conversion from consumer to fan. So, over time you may well see some of these ratings go up if I mention an artist again. And indeed go down, as musical changes of direction or failure to keep my interest are just some of the reasons that may affect a rating.


Congratulations, you've made a temporary blip of interest on my radar. Now how are you going to keep it?


I've seen enough of you to recognise and remember you, but I'm undecided so I'm not really following you (yet). I may make a spur of the moment decision to check in on what you're up to once in a while, but even that's no guarantee. May also apply to artists I am aware of, but whose music I've decided I don't have enough interest in to want to pursue further based on what I've heard.


I'm liking what I hear in general, but I still wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I will be wandering past your site occasionally, and there is something like a 50% chance I'll be buying your next offering once I find out about it, providing I have the money available.


Now I am a fan, so the chances are I'll be past your site once every month or two at least. There's a 90%+ chance your next offering is already sold, and occasionally I might even be going for something more than the basic package (if you have one)


Reserved for very few, this is about as close to internet stalker as you can get. I am actively watching because I do not want to miss your next release date, tour in my area etc. etc. You may not always be aware of the fact I'm looking over your shoulder to see what you're up to, but trust me, I'm there on a weekly if not more like a daily basis. Depending on how you tend to release your information, I may well be signed to your mailing list as well.

Video of the month

I first heard of the artist in this month's video because they were featured on a Morgan Page track that I quite liked. More recently I have joined a consumer panel here in the UK that is gathering opinions on artists that (seemingly) nobody has ever heard of. So as a result of Lissie showing up on that, it prompted me to go check out some more of her stuff as I liked what I heard. This video was actually released back in 2010 but I've obviously only run across it recently.



Who I've been looking at
Every so often there is a moment in music that makes you just go WOW. When you discover something you hadn't known before about an artist you like, or more usually love - that mindblowing "Damn this is cool" moment related to their music that makes you love them all the more. I got one of those at the beginning of January.

I'd always thought of Matthew Ebel's "Goodbye Planet Earth" album as a little unusual in the traditional album sense. For starters it has 17 tracks, one of which is over 10 minutes in length and another which is more spoken word. And whilst you can't see a discernable story unfold from one track to the next, it always seemed like there was more to it than just a number of tracks lumped together to make an album. I put it down to his podcasting background as to why it felt more like a radio show, but the story that actually goes with this album is somewhat more amazing.

The album actually synchs to the 2005 movie of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

If you don't understand what that means, the idea is that you play the album at the same time as you watch the movie (in this case you start the album off at the point that the world blows up in the film) and you'll find a number of interesting things will happen. Lyrics suddenly take on a completely different meaning when you see the visual compared to if you just listen as a stand alone album. Audio cues pair up with visual cues and scene changes. The result is quite an interesting experience which feels like it gives you a whole new form of entertainment if you haven't done this kind of thing before. The idea as a whole isn't new - for instance, did you know that Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album is supposed to synch with the 1939 version of "The Wizard of Oz"? (though it has always been denied by the band that it was written on purpose to do this) but the ability to write an album where the tracks can be enjoyed as individual songs in their own right and yet still both follow the film and take on a completely different slant as a result is something that isn't just clever - as far as I'm concerned it stretches into AWESOME. It's moments like these that remind me why I keep renewing my Entourage subscription despite the wobbles and doubts that appear every so often.

So here's a little taster you'll find on Youtube to get an idea of what I mean - you might find it a little slow at the start, but by a couple of minutes in you should definitely be seeing how audio and video is linking up.

The reason I found out about this in January was that Matthew did this live at a concert convention - the convention had licensed the film to be shown and he played the entire album LIVE as the film was playing. It's at times like this I wish I lived in America, as they didn't have a license to broadcast the film over the internet. As a result I don't know exactly how well the audio and visual worked together on the day, but it's definitely an experience I would have liked to have seen in full. I guess I'll be trying the next best thing of the "home version" next time the film is on.

I said back in August last year that I'd received an email from Markus Nylund saying he was done with music and it had left me wondering about what I call "the artist's soul" as a result. However it would appear I've been proved right on what I thought of both him and "the artist's soul" in general - that music will not let an "artist's soul" go. Since quitting the university course he'd started and moving to Estonia about six months ago, he's now starting up a band under the Sunlight Heart name he'd posted on Soundcloud and they've made their first EP. And if you're curious to understand more about what I mean by "the artist's soul" then this post from Markus is the nearest I can get to describing the essence of what I see yet can't explain or fully understand - if what he says here truly resonates with you, then the likelihood is you have an artist's soul as well.

We're into March now, and no surprises that I've still not seen the albums from Lori Greco, Cubworld or Vertical Horizon. In Cubworld's case, the last information I saw was a tweet from him asking people to check that Sellaband had their addresses as addresses appeared to be missing for a number of believers. That was back in January though and I've seen nothing since, despite the fact it inferred that a release might actually be pretty imminent. In the case of Vertical Horizon, I'm wondering if I've seen an amusing coincidence or whether my review of the year post actually gave someone a well-deserved kick up the rear end. Less than 24hrs after someone from the USA visited my blog by searching for the rather interesting term "vertical horizon steals crowdfunded money", an update finally appeared on their Pledgemusic page. The good news is that they thanked everyone for being patient and said that "We are extremely close to the completion of the album, and that means it will be coming your way very soon". The bad news is that that's as exact as things have got i.e. there has still been no date given and more than a month has passed since that last update. I haven't seen anything new from Lori Greco either - the "album coming soon" message still seems to be the only thing it's possible to find and the 4th anniversary of when she completed her funding on Sellaband continues to creep ever closer.

Crowdfunded music and my relationship with it has just taken a make-or-break turn. Poets of the Fall literally signed up with Pledge Music as I was writing this post in order to try and make their first live DVD. Given the poor experiences I've had with other artists, you could say the pressure is now on. If one of my absolute favourite artists manages to reach their target and let me down sufficiently at this point in time, it's quite likely I'll never crowdfund another project again. Within 24hrs the project has made well over half of its target and is currently due to run for another 3 months with the incentives promised for a September date. Watch this space over the next few months to find out if an artist who has never, ever let me down can restore or completely destroy my faith in crowdfunding.

The most interesting new finds since my last post have once again come via either Soundcloud or Twitter. On the Twitter side, the one that's mostly caught my interest is a band called Spaceship Days as a result of a track called "Hanging from the Satellites" that I found when I visited their Reverbnation page.

I also got followed by an artist who appears to be working a similar angle to Matthew Ebel in as much as he is offering one monthly music track as well as giving out free tracks in exchange for your email address. You'll find Corey Koehler's music site here. Scroll right the way to the bottom of the "Music" page to find out about his "one song a month indefinitely". Sadly I haven't been particularly impressed with what I heard on there, but I may revisit from time to time to see if anything does manage to connect.

Meanwhile on Soundcloud the most interesting new finds have been a Japanese band called Rocky Monster Room (who incidentally have one one of the worst websites I've seen in a while) and a Swedish artist called Benjamin Gustafsson. The information I've been able to find on both of these has been fairly limited so far.

I don't often unfollow people on Twitter once I've followed them, but there are some scenarios where I'm prepared to make an exception. One of these caused me to stop following an artist recently that I did actually have some interest in keeping up to date with. So if you want to know one way to really put someone off, here's what this particular artist was doing - they were retweeting EVERY SINGLE TWEET that mentioned them. So every time someone replied to one of their tweets, they'd retweet the reply, irrespective of whether it had any relevance or was even just a one word reply from their best friend. By the time I'd had every single one of their conversations clogging up my own feed for a couple of weeks, I was starting to get rather annoyed, hence the unfollow.

The sites I've been looking at

The good news about Sellaband is that instead of approximately 1 in 12 artists reaching at least 1% of budget, the odds are getting better as this has now increased to approximately 1 in 10. The bad news is that this is due to the total number of artists on the site dropping rather than artists with more active fanbases signing up. When I compare how things are going here compared with Pledge, I'm starting to wonder just how much longer the site can manage to stick around.

Tastemakerx has undergone a bit of a redesign and now shows the artists you have invested their virtual currency in in pictorial form. They've also added some features which will be useful to some, but not everyone as they require you to have Spotify installed. For each player, the artists they have added can now be played like a radio station. It's also possible to select an artist and listen to their "artist station" . Overall the site is still a little quiet and it seems to be mostly the same group of players playing on a regular basis. they are making a presentation at SWSX again though, so maybe some new blood will come in over the next few weeks.

And finally...
That's all for this edition. It's looking likely that I won't get around to writing the next edition until May due to some real life issues that are going to be taking up my time in the near future.

Questions I think artists shouldn't be asking

In this post I'm going to go through some of the most common questions I get asked as a fan either directly or indirectly by musicians, explain why I think you're asking the wrong thing and what I'd suggest as an alternative.

1. Who do I sound like?
I'm guessing you're asking this one because you think that people will be more likely to listen to your music if they think you sound like a particular (well known) artist they already listen to. Or so you can try and target fans of that artist because they are bound to like you too. Wrong approach. Why? One word - rivalry.

When I was a teenager fans of artist A were always rivals of fans of artist B, whose music happened to sound very similar and both camps were always convinced that "their" artist was the best and the other was more of a pale imitation. This has evolved through such rivalries being discussed on forums, and more recently more visibly on places like Twitter and Facebook. Approaching fans (in particular of an established artist) purely on the basis that you sound like them means YOU are more likely to be the "pale imitiation".

Take a lesson from the fans and go for the same approach you often see on forum threads. Instead of asking "Who do I sound like?" ask "Who else do you listen to (a lot)?". Not only are you changing the question so it becomes about them and not about you, but you may also pick up on some interesting artist names you hadn't even thought about before.

If your audience is young, the likelihood is that they like your music because they like what they hear, rather than the fact they like it because it sounds like something they already heard. As your audience gets older, their musical taste is influenced based on what they have already been exposed to musically - think of it as the equivalent of your musical influences influencing the music you have decided to make and you're more likely to get some meaningful answers if you then probe more fully about those artists and your fan's background.

Let me give you an example of one particular artist I listen to. When I listen to their music, what I hear in a number of their songs is the playing style of Elton John (whose music I like), the lyrical ability to connect with me both in my past and present as well as ability and lack of fear when it comes to experimentation in different musical styles that I get from being a long time fan of Howard Jones, the same intelligent wit and ability to weave political themes I see in the humour of Flanders and Swann combined with the storytelling of Chris de Burgh. If you were able to ask your fans the right questions to get that kind of level of information back about what they see in you, wouldn't it be a whole lot more interesting and give you better clues as to who you "sound like" anyway?

And in reality, the sooner you get to grips with the fact that you "sound like" you and not someone else, the better. Look back at my example above and consider just how similar or different to each other does the music from that list of artists sound in practice? Different people will hear different things in your music based on what else they've listened to - the interesting thing is what common ground comes up, particularly from fans of different backgrounds/ages/countries etc.

2. Tell all your friends...
If I'm that into you, most of my friends are probably sick of hearing about you anyway. My friends aren't going to vote for you or give you money just because I tell them to. (though you may sometimes see an exception to this with teenage fans)  If I think whatever it is you're up to is really that great or cool, I'm going to be telling people automatically. Seriously, all you need to do is tell ME whatever it is you're up to and let me cherrypick what might be of interest to pass on. Chances are my friends aren't going to be as deeply into you as I am - even if they do like at least some of your music, they'll have their own favourites that they're trying to get me to listen to instead. Let's face it, who knows MY friends better - you or me?

3. Sign up to my mailing list (and get something free)
Just... no. I seriously don't care what the experts say you should be doing on this one. As a fan who initially thought this sounded like a good idea, what I've found happens in practice doesn't do me or artists any favours. I've fallen for this sucker rather badly in the past (usually in exchange for free music) only to find one of two results further down the line. Either I get a torrent of mail because of the amount of music I like (oh look I got an email from 30 different artists today, I must be turning into an A&R), or a couple of years pass and suddenly a "regular" (i.e. the first one they sent since I signed up) newsletter from an artist I haven't seen or thought much about in that time suddenly appears. And like a lot of others, I'm probably too lazy to unsubscribe even if I can find that option.  Experience has taught me that I'd rather wait until I have enough interest in an artist to want to sign of my own free will. Even then, there are some artists that never seem to send newsletters or even update their websites with news until their next release comes out.

Stop inflating your numbers. Make it easy for me to find and sign up to your mailing list if and when I want to. And if you do have a mailing list, then actually USE it to send something every 1-2 months. Experience tells me that a mailing list isn't worth either the artist's or my time in the majority of cases. Let's face it, wouldn't YOU rather have people who are genuinely interested enough in you, rather than a list of people who only really signed for the incentive and who might only be taking a passing interest at best otherwise?

4. Here's this month's challenge
Ah yes, the good old "call to action". Seriously, it really depends what exactly you're asking. Some of these work as intended and very occasionally one of them might get me off my lazy butt and do what I'd been planning to do anyway but somehow never quite got around to. e.g. write a review of a purchase. Others are a case of something which works much better as an open-ended request rather than something which can be done "to order/by a certain date" because they need thinking about, or require being in the right place at the right time.e.g. take a picture of something that fits with a song title. And yet others can be things that some of your fans wouldn't really want to do or in some cases know how to do anyway e.g. post a video of you dancing or singing along to a song.

Unless you've got a lot of teenage fans, you might not actually get a lot of response to some (or most) of the things you ask, particularly if there appears to be a time limit. People have got to both remember and find the time in their schedules to do what you're asking if it's something they can't (or have the time to) do there and then. And if it can't be done there and then, a lot of the time they'll never get around to it before your deadline is up.

What would I suggest? Well, that 1-2 monthly newsletter I mentioned earlier is something you can add a nice little section to. Remind people that you always like to see/hear/receive the kinds of things you've been asking them to do. Maybe feature something recent from a fan. Hardcore fans have a habit of doing things anyway without you asking. Often all you need to do is present them with the facts e.g. "We're up for a vote at this website link to win this opportunity" and they'll automatically go and vote. Sometimes a group of fans will even get together on their own to prepare a surprise to present to you. Make it easy for them to know what you want/like and let them know when other fans have done something you like and it's more likely others will start to try and find "cool stuff to do" all on their own in the hopes you'll feature them. Encourage creative spontaneity as a continuous/regular thing, not something that sounds more like a work deadline and you may just find your fans can surprise you with what they'll come up with. But just like creating music, don't expect there to be a regular flow - things are going to appear randomly just like your inspiration when writing songs.

In summary
A lot of the things you're asking are things that hardcore fans are going to do anyway, irrespective of whether you ask or not. And they are only a very small percentage of fans in your fanbase - the rest you'll only get to join in occasionally at best. There really is no substitute or shortcut for the good old one-on-one connection to build relationships and create those hardcore fans so they will do things for you both automatically and willingly. And you'll discover a lot more than you can by asking what in reality are simple questions which have complicated responses.

One of the things I do in real life is "cold calling" door-to-door research. Whilst no selling is involved with this role, it is getting ever harder to get people to even talk to the strange person that arrived on their doorstep because they are being bombarded with an ever increasing number of requests for sales/advice/help and all they see is yet another person who wants something when they open the door. Yet in those cases where the door doesn't get slammed in my face, the participants quite often get a lot more from the experience than they were expecting. Build a rapport and you don't even need to ask (as often) because people will help you just on that basis.

As a fan I see the same thing happening in music - people are being bombarded too much with direct requests and are tuning out as a result. Form connections and let natural discovery happen so the laws of supply and demand can take over, or there is going to come a point when the music industry is going to be not just more broken than it is at present, but rather in an unfixable state where people in general don't feel enough of a connection to anyone to realise they need to support musicians.