So I’m working on getting the Promute release up on the website. They are going to be following a new pricing model I plan to start using for what has traditionally been our “free release” series. It’s going to be free to stream forever. Free to download for two months & then after that it will be a dollar for the album. It’s just kind of disconcerting to know that the donation amount for the free download stuff is around $1 per 10,000 downloads & that feels like I’m ripping off the artists. I think it’s a good compromise as far as getting the people to hear the stuff & letting them know it is of some value. So I’ll probably be sending out emails about them next week with the Silber newsletter coming out (if you read the blog, maybe you should subscribe to the newsletter? there’s a form to the right). Which seems to be quarterly instead of monthly lately. & I need to get up some download versions of the related releases before I contact the press folks about it. We’ll see what happens.
I got asked about appearing at a comic convention at Malta. They can’t cover the travel expenses, but I’m thinking about trying to do a Kickstarter to pay to go. But the problem is figuring out a way to raise money without spending money. I looked around at some stuff other people do & it seems like there’s a lot with people sponsoring travel projects with photo journals. & it also seems like there’s a lot with people trying to sponsor expenses to get to comic conventions with sketch cards & the like. So maybe I can do something with those two ideas. I wouldn’t launch the project until the current Kickstarters are done (August 3) & the convention is in December, so it could be able to happen with three months of lead time as far as buying airfare & all that. I guess I need to figure out what expenses will really be & all that. I can tell you that I’d much rather invest the time & money to do a convention someplace crazy like Malta over doing Chicago or New York, even if those are more likely to break even….
Here’s a rough character sketch I did for the monster for Pow Wow #2. I need to still get the finished drafts done & sent to Ed to draw. But that may happen tonight. I kinda like the sketch. Maybe I’ll do a shirt about it.
I’m adding another layer to my long drone piece. It might be the end & I might finally mix it this coming week. Then I’ll sit on it for who knows how long before releasing it.
So as some of you may know, I’m a fan of La Jetee. Here’s a video Peter Aldrich sent me about the audio tracks on the film.
Last Night’s Dream:
I’m old & dying. I’ve waited my whole life for this….
I’ve been thinking of ceasing with free downloads altogether, maybe just one song per album. I mean i’m going to make the album anyways out of my drive to make it but my drive to make it has nothing to do with people actually hearing it or being able to own it for free.
While I like to give things away to people that want to hear and old fans….it really does the music a disservice i think for everybody to just offer it for free and it really doesn’t seem to be doing anything in regards to that age old argument of if more people hear it the word spreads and there’ll be more people at your shows and more people buying your album if they got to hear it first. (of course you could argue that if i released better music that would be the case but fuck you if you think that anyways :)) Seems like a load of crap in regards to reality. The people I find that really want to hear it will buy it even for little money. The rest just want it for free and not even if they’re inconvenienced by having to sign a mailing list and for those people i think if they have to stream it, that’s ok by me and if that’s too inconvenient for them…i don’t care if they hear it because obviously they don’t actually like it.
The free way doesn’t seem to benefit me in any way except for back in the day when i’d leave free cd’s laying about a cd shop on occassions. Download cards never seem to invite people to download the music, probably because there are too many steps between that card and the music
I mean eventually it’s going to wind up on some dl site from the east anyways so may as well let them do the work and let me try to convince you to send a dime my way.
Having it on Spotify or Last.fm and at least making the 1cent every 10000 listens is better for me and for them (listeners) as they probably already use the free service and I may be able to buy a cup of coffee in 4 years. Most people I know under the age of 30, if they wanna check out this band they heard about typically go to youtube to find it anyways and not to the band sites.
Things are so screwed up right now for anyone expecting to break even on an album. I don’t know what to think about it, much less do about it.