So I got my paperwork in for my grant. They let me slide on not having all of the postage receipts.
Sent in the Aarktica – In Sea Remixes for manufacturing. We’ll be taking pre-orders soon.
Working on some more stuff for the free series this weekend & hopefully they’ll be ready Monday.
So I have a question. I got a cable tester & why if I run it through a pedal does the signal path end up different than if I just run a cable through? Is it because a pedal changes the grounding or something?
So I’ve spent the last five hours working on completing my grant paperwork for the money I got for the Lost Kisses DVD. I ran into a snag & hopefully the art council will cut me some slack. They want copies of all receipts associated with the project. But of course the receipts I have won’t match the numbers on the paperwork because if Moodring & the Lost Kisses DVD went out together then only half of that receipt goes towards the LK DVD. Also I often buy a crap ton of stamps & use them later for mailing, so once again the receipt has nothing to do with the amount spent. So I wrote to see what I’m supposed to do. Hopefully they’ll be cool with me not needing to make copies of a ton of receipts from the post office.
Did some tweeking of some tracks for the Aarktica remix album. We’ll be taking pre-orders pretty soon.
Also did some tweaking on songs for Sarah June’s album. It’ll be really nice for it to be out as it has had a lot of snags over the past six months.
So I have a question that maybe somebody knows the answer to. If Lala sells a track for $0.10 & it’s a cover song, do I owe more money to the original songwriter/publisher than they paid me? Because I think that’s a set rate unrelated to how much something sells for. So if I understand things correctly I think when a single cover song get’s sold on iTunes I have an income of essentially zero, but with Lala it would be negative $0.50? I admit I don’t know as much about points on digital downloads of covers as a label owner should, but I’m just kinda curious about it….
Just watched thirty minutes of this movie that is the kinda thing I really want to see, but deals with part of my insanity about not being able to tell reality from a dream. It was called Attic Expeditions & had the dude from Re-Animator/From Beyond & felt a lot like those movies. Sometimes I watch stuff & it makes me feel like the skin on the back of my head is pulling back to reveal something & I simultaneously love it & am freaked out. It reminds me of high school in a way that I have never quite figured out if it’s good or bad, but that I feel could one day lead to me becoming unstuck in time (Slaughterhouse 5 style) & end up needing to remember my locker combination & where my classes were/are & I realize that I don’t have that knowledge anymore. If I’m ever going to make it as a time traveler I need to improve my memory or figure out a way to take physical objects (like a notebook for example) back with me. But I really don’t think I have the ability to take more than my mind back through time, so I need to sharpen it.
Alright, spent the day working on this years Christmas compilation. Our intern Ben Collins put everything together & it’s called White Silber. Go to www.silbermedia.com/downloads to check it out. A zip file should be available in a day or two, but right now I think you need to download individual files….
Here’s some interesting stats on our free series (you can get them all free here (donations accepted of course)):
Various Artists: Silber Sounds of Christmas
Downloads: 40,435
Various Artists: Silber Sounds of Halloween
Downloads: 36,997
Various Artists: Silber on Silber
Downloads: 35,855
Various Artists: Songs for the End of the World
Downloads: 34,843
Various Artists: Winter Wishes
Downloads: 23,524
Vlor: sacred places in the city
Downloads: 16,231
Remora: Ambient Drones for One Guitar
Downloads: 15,703
Various Artists: Songs For America
Downloads: 15,580
Rollerball: Companion 2 (The Woman at the Well)
Downloads: 11,970
Vlor: lavished/luxate
Downloads: 8,447
Kobi: outwards from a core area in the north
Downloads: 5,990
Rollerball: Companion 3 (The Thief on the Right)
Downloads: 5,435
Remora: Amerse
Downloads: 5,034
Remora: reversion
Downloads: 3,885
mwvm: rotations remixed
Downloads: 2,748
various friends of Silber: Winterizing
Downloads: 2,715
Rollerball: Companion 1 (The Good Samaritan)
Downloads: 2,266
Various Artists: Silber Xmas 2000
Downloads: 1,988
Hotel, Hotel: under sea, over storm
Downloads: 1,550
Remora/Clang Quartet: Cemented in Stone
Downloads: 1,542
Kobi: Dronesyndrome Medley EP: Kobi
Downloads: 921
slicnaton-remora-northern-valentine: clear field
Downloads: 503
northern valentine: stars whisper
Downloads: 366
small life form: alive
Downloads: 197
It’s interesting to me to see the drops in download numbers & that there are Vlor & Remora items downloaded so many times. & why is one of the Rollerball EPs downloaded five times as much as the other two? & why are the Small Life Form & Northern Valentine so low? 800 downloads of stuff from the free collection last week gives me faith in the idea that people are interested in getting Silber music for free. We’ll see what all happens over the next couple of weeks as along with the new Christmas collection there will be some other free stuff as well & hopefully there will be some people clicking the donation links (that didn’t exist until a couple months ago & there hasn’t been a free release since they exist) & then I won’t be able to complain about money anymore.
So I guess one of the big news stories lately is Apple bought Lala. But the bigger news story to me is that Lala legally sells songs for $0.10! Wow, good to know what people think music is worth.
Went through the Christmas comp & I had to mess with four songs for volume adjustments for mastering. It’s hard to do comps sometimes because people have songs that are very much about vast dynamics, but you need to squash away some of that dynamic or they sound dumb next to the other songs. Also when your squeezing things & increasing the volume sometimes you realize that certain things get towards ear or speaker damaging levels. Hoping to have that all set by the end of the week. Christmas is coming fast. I’d hoped to have this out by Thanksgiving, but that’s how things get sometimes.
Started working on the artwork for Sarah June’s album today. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it lately, but I hate Illustrator. Why did Adobe do away with Pagemaker? Because it was simple & easy to use without any special frills that non-professionals would need? People say if I get the newest versions of Illustrator or In Design they are as good as Pagemaker was for doing layouts. Nice to know it takes ten years to get something as good as something from ten years ago.
Sent out follow-up emails for Aarktica & Vlor.
Got a call from the folks I’m using to manufacture the Carta disc that they need to charge California sales tax for any discs shipped into that state. I don’t really understand that when I’m the purchaser & don’t live there. Plus it’s pretty clear that anyone buying 1000 CDs is buying them for re-sale & so they aren’t elligible for taxation. Really I think the feds should think about taking a tax on interstate commerce (I know this should require a change in the Constitution, but so should federal income tax) just to encourage more people to buy locally. If I can save significant money I’ll send my money to Seattle to buy a book, but if I can’t then I’ll buy it from a mom & pop shop & it’s in everyone’s interest to keep the dollars they spend as close to home as possible.
I spent four hours today looking for copies of If Thousands’ Candice Recorder & I can’t find them. I feel pretty certain that the ten copies my paperwork says are in the house, are in the house; but I can’t find them. Another argument I suppose for moving to working on more digital stuff.
Lot of work I’m trying to get done & I’m not sure how I seem to work all day not getting anything done….
Is MySpace having a resurgence? I’ve noticed an increased amount of porn stars (or whatever you want to call them) contacting me lately & it’s my understanding the porn industry always knows what’s up.
Spent a few hours going through nominees for music blog of the year lists looking for new folks to contact for promo.
I just saw an interview with Jared Leto about his band who evidently sell millions of units. I’ve been confused for a while by bands selling that many units & being that established & I’ve never heard of them. It used to seem like for a band to be a million seller their presence was really invasive & I’d know about them. Now I can’t tell if a band sells thousand units or a million units, am I just that out of touch or is there some kinda leveling of the playing field in fame but not in sales over the past 15 years?
So some people have been telling me that for actually building business relationships than LinkedIn seems like the way to go. So I imported my address book & asked a couple hundred folks to friend me. You can friend me there if you’d like.
Spent the day filling out some paperwork to get some of the Remora catalog added to a few music libraries. One day I’ll hit the lottery & make my millions when a Remora song makes you want to buy a Civic Hybrid.
Assembled a bunch more comics today so that I’ll hopefully be ready when the sales come in from the reviews.
Re-tooled some of my Google Adwords stuff. I was giving out way too much money for Lost Kisses compared to the income it was bringing in (about 50 clicks a day, but generating zero sales. Some kind of a problem there…).
I was given a tip today that if you can use pages of those little free New Testament & Psalms books as rolling papers. There’s a way to save some money.
I went to the booking site for a venue I don’t normally play at trying to get a show for a friend on tour & they said they are only interested in bands that can draw 200 people. I don’t think I’ve ever even been there when there’s been 200 people.
So I got my venetian/plague/silberspy masks & I realized I need to start working out if I’m going to do some photo shoots wearing them.
Still trying to get things straight about the download shop. The guy is trying to tell me that I might need to use a different server, which really isn’t cool since I asked him to verify my server would work before paying him to set up the shop. We’ll see how things end up.
Talked to Ben Collins today & the Silber Christmas comp is getting dangerously close to being unleashed. I was talking to him also about that he has essentially completed the internship program & is ready to start his own label. Somehow he seems a little less into the idea than eight months ago when he started. I wish everyone looking into a label would do a significant internship so the world wasn’t littered with incompetent labels.
Got a new potential artist for the Mecha comic. Pretty stoked about the possibility (though this is artist #4 to attempt it).
Also pitched a potential new comic to a couple friends of mine called Cops & Crooks (thanks to Nic Slaton for the title). Going to be doing some 1930s pulp tricks in it. Junk so old it seems new.
I went to a straight-up rock show for the first time in probably ten years yesterday. It was interesting to see that the amount of people into the music was about the same as any one of the weird music shows I normally attend (10-25), there were just more background people in the bar. So I wonder if you had a bar that had regulars, could you just do weird music instead of rock & roll & the clientele would still come? A mystery to be solved I suppose…. Even stranger to me was three people at the show that hadn’t seen me in over a year recognized me by my hat (a toboggon that fades from black to gray) which shouldn’t be such a signature piece of clothing since I bought it at Wal-Mart (though I guess I did buy it 2001).
So I don’t really pay attention to iTunes & when they make my music available, though I admit I was pleased when they announced they would attempt to respect release dates from indies. But today I got an email them that their was some kind of a problem & the Vlor album which I sent them almost three months ago (6 weeks before release date) & it hasn’t been added yet. I don’t think the Aarktica is up yet either (sent at the same time). Craptastic. I really hope my digital download shop works out because that’s not cool.
Speaking of iTunes, I found there were two reviews of Remora’s Reversion & I think the two of them work really well together to give an accurate portrait of what people think of Remora:
Good Music to Get Lost In.
*****
by Depths
This entire cd is worth one continuous listen. It’s not meant to be broken up into individual songs because then you dont have a full chance to get lost and venture to the different worlds this can conjure. Buy and enjoy!
You guys should disband or kill yourselves.
*
by pancakeonmyface
You are the worst band I have heard in History. You should all take a shotgun and kill yourselves or move to the boonies where no one can ever hear you again. I hope you guys burn in Hell. Have a Nice Day.
