Finally Checking It Out, Short Runs

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

I posted up a couple reviews on Finally Checking It Out of a couple proto-graphic novels by Lynd Ward & the ultra-early graphic novel It Rhymes with Lust.  I saw Event Horizon while I was working on some things & I felt I needed to pay more attention to actually review it, but I must say I don’t get why people liked it so much.  I think Ghost Ship is a better version of the story.

So those of you following the other post with a bunch of comments on it know there is some talk of doing ultra-short runs of discs that would otherwise be digital only.  I’m curious what people would want as far as packaging & disc art go.  I mean, should it be an object that is fairly clearly home made or something more like print-on-demand CDs?  I have been thinking of doing something where it would have the letterpress style cases but then have different laser print covers pasted on them or something.  Any thoughts?  & then the disc face I was thinking of making stamps if I can find the write kind of ink to just stamp on the discs, anyone know what kind of ink to buy for that?

Posted in comics, daily news, movies & television, music | Tagged , | 13 Comments

13 Responses to Finally Checking It Out, Short Runs

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    September 28, 2011 at 7:36 am

    did you see Sunshine, which is basically the same type of movie?

  2. Nic says:
    September 28, 2011 at 7:36 am

    I like the letterpress style cases. You may consider also Arigato Pak – although I have no idea about which is the less expensive…
    By the way, recently n5MD started a special repress series in Arigato Pak. I’m going to buy the SubtractiveLAD one which I missed and see how it is.

  3. GoddakkAttack says:
    September 28, 2011 at 7:37 am

    or Moon. which isn’t hte same type of movie but i think you may dig it. also i think Bowie’s son either directed or wrote this possibly both.

  4. Brian John Mitchell says:
    September 28, 2011 at 9:02 am

    Sunshine is the same movie in certain ways, but better mainly because it doesn’t try to showcase special effects (which always makes something dated & cheesy, sometimes already when it comes out). Solaris is kind of the same movie but better also. I haven’t seen Moon yet, but I hear good things & if it ever happens to be on in a room where I am sitting I plan to watch it.

    I looked at the aragato pak & I think I might go ahead & work with Shane Sauers (Rollerball/Miss Massive Snowflake/Starbage Hands) & make something similar of my own design specifically to fit Silber’s needs. I think the aragato design isn’t very friendly for radio & that’s something I really want to be.

    • Nic says:
      September 28, 2011 at 11:19 am

      Well, Arigato Pak may appear to be hard to open but this is not always the case. Some letterpress releases that I have in my collection are very complicated to open without damaging the artwork though.
      I remember when Independent Project Records used to release limited edition CDs packaged in those tasty letterpress cases. I bought the Half String stuff, it was not so easy to extract each CD from its case :D

  5. michael says:
    September 28, 2011 at 10:30 am

    I’m not one to be influenced by the “handmade” thing people tend to drop with limited releases. Cd sized objects – no matter how much love has went into them – don’t influence my decision to purchase an album.

    However, I’d be naive to ignore that people really like these things.

Paper Jamz, Paper Dolls

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

My nephew has one of those Paper Jamz guitars & I thought it would be funny if I tried to do a show with it or something some time (they have an output jack on them).  But even when I switched it to freestyle mode, the sound that comes out doesn’t match what I’m fretting.  So while I could use it for a show (& maybe will at some point), I’d have to write songs specifically for it.  I did notice on their website they now have guitars you can upload your own music into as the play along songs & that there is a real time autotune built into the mic thing which is interesting as last time I looked into real time autotune (maybe three or four years ago) the units were fairly expensive.  If I could get an autotune half-rack for $30, that would be a way to make my horn playing a lot better!

So I cut out my paper dolls & took the first test photo, it looks cool.  But I also crunched the numbers & I’ll need to take 1640 photos.

 

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Paper Dolls, mwvm, Dream

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

So when I printed up the miniature paper dolls, the color prints looked all pixelated, so I had to print them in black & white & recolor them.  Didn’t have a chance yet to start shooting the video.  Maybe tomorrow?

I got an email from mwvm & things have changed a bit on the new release & it will be digital only.  Hopefully we’ll have things ready for it in a couple of weeks.

Last Night’s Dream:
I’m at the mall with Peter Aldrich.  He has a stash of a couple hundred seven inches that he doesn’t have space for in his house that he’s giving me that I plan to distort to make weird loops.  While we’re talking he starts a conversation with some girl who walks by & then a dude comes running out of Best Buy (in the blue shirt uniform) that is the girl’s boyfriend & I’m trying to calm him down.  This guy really needs to get a girlfriend he is less afraid of cheating on him.

Posted in daily news, dreams, music | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

10 Responses to Paper Dolls, mwvm, Dream

  1. Nic says:
    September 25, 2011 at 4:02 am

    As for mwvm, any chance to have a limited run of physical copies (maybe CDRs)? : (

    • Brian John Mitchell says:
      September 25, 2011 at 2:21 pm

      I’m not sure. I’m really torn on the ultra limited run stuff & I haven’t figured out if I should be doing that or just going digital (especially since as I’ve said before, I don’t personally listen to music on a computer or MP3 player). My problem is most CDR stuff I see ends up looking a bit cheap & I’d rather not do it at all than have something chintzy. All that said, I’m still thinking about it conceptually. I am always (somewhat secretly) willing to burn a CDR of a digital release for a fan & mail it to them for $5 plus shipping.

  2. Nic says:
    September 26, 2011 at 3:19 am

    I see your point, Brian. I don’t listen to music on a computer or MP3 player, either (only CDS). I was just thinking about a CDR thing with essential artwork like Plumerai “Res Cogitans” – although it wasn’t a limited edition, I suppose.

    • Brian John Mitchell says:
      September 26, 2011 at 1:54 pm

      Well, with Res Cogitans that was something we weren’t even trying to break even on, it was just to get people ready for Without Number. We just made 100 of them with the knowledge that would be plenty. It was also at a point where money seemed a lot easier to come buy. Really what I suppose I should have done was invest $1000 on a CD duplicator with the ability to print on discfaces back in 2000 or so & not ended up with all the stock on hand. Hindsight….

  3. michael says:
    September 26, 2011 at 2:40 pm

    how about this? i will burn a cd-r with artwork FREE of charge to anyone who pays for the album via silber?

  4. Nic says:
    September 27, 2011 at 11:50 am

    @Micheal, I remember when you sent me a CDR copy of your Demos in the past, but now I’m wondering if it would be convenient for you – considering also the shipping costs…

    • michael says:
      September 27, 2011 at 12:51 pm

      hello nic,

      yes, i remember, italy if i recall? i’ll probably ask the recipient to cover postage costs via paypal, a nominal £1.50 or something.

      • Nic says:
        September 27, 2011 at 2:05 pm

        Yes Italy, Michael. I live in the south – specifically in Sicily :)

        Covering postage costs via PayPal is a good idea – just let us (followers) know if you decide to burn some CDR with artwork.

Car, Paper Dolls, Dream

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

So my trickery worked & my car passed inspection.  Pretty excited about that headache being gone for a year.

I finished drawing & coloring the original versions of the paper dolls for the Remora video.  Just have to print up the smaller versions & cut them out & hopefully work on the video tomorrow.

Last Night’s Dream:
I’m in what I think I recognize as an ex-girlfriend’s house that is in this scenario my home & has been converted into an artist colony (three rooms staged for 4 residents each plus my room & my grandma’s room & a guest room).  Alan Sparhawk & Mimi Parker have spent the night & I’m asking them what they want me to make them for breakfast & they go into a detailed story that for all intents & purposes explains how to make an Egg McMuffin.

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Spotify & Music Money Today

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell
Ned Raggett asked me to move this into a blog post so he could refer people to it, so here it is from a Facebook discussion.

Brian John Mitchell

Anyone seen these press releases some indie labels are doing about boycotting Spotify?

· · · Wednesday at 8:49pm

    • Sage L. WeatherfordNot I. Elaboration?

      Wednesday at 8:56pm ·

    • Brian John Mitchell http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/09/another-indie-label-pulls-from-spotify.html

      www.hypebot.com

      A third independent metal label Prosthetic Records has pulled it’s content from …See More
      Wednesday at 8:57pm · ·

    • Sage L. Weatherford‎0.003 euro per listen or 0.029 euro for listening to the whole album. That’s pretty sad… Amazon mp3s is a 70/30 split for the artist (70 amazon, 30 artist) at least

      Wednesday at 9:12pm ·

    • Sage L. Weatherfordsorry, other way around on the split.

      Wednesday at 9:14pm ·

    • Jon DeRosa I’m looking at my BMI royalty statement right now. Over 6,000 plays of Aarktica’s “A Plague of Frost in the Guise of Diamonds” from “Internet” (source) = $0.41.

      This is nothing new. Internet radio/streaming has NEVER paid. Why is everyone upset about Spotify. Rhapsody, Live365 (et al) have been doing this for years.

      Wednesday at 9:14pm ·

    • Sage L. WeatherfordSo much for sitting this one out. :D I understand that it has been happening for years. Its hard to still not be bothered by it when crunching the numbers though.

      Wednesday at 9:18pm ·

    • Jon DeRosa

      ‎Sage, I couldn’t resist, though I know I will be disagreed with.

      That being what I said regarding internet plays, and without being crass, placements of Aarktica songs on MTV and other networks have provided a substantial revenue for the first quarter of 2011, via this current statement.

      I say this in the least-snarky way and most helpful way possible: I think musicians should stop worrying about how their music is being shared and start taking advantage of it. Get over the idea of music “ownership.” It’s finished, guys. Like it or not.

      Sales never accounted for a large portion of us low-selling bands anyway. The insane demand for music in licensing for TV & Film is finally leveling the playing field for ambient/experimental artists, finally allowing us to make money from some of the music we composed years ago. Just something to think about.

      Wednesday at 9:23pm · · 1 person

    • P. D. Wilderyeah, my last solo album is on spotify, and i soon as i saw that, i knew i’d never see a cent from it…

      Wednesday at 10:18pm ·

    • P. D. Wilder ‎Jon DeRosa, we still need to talk about BMI!

      Wednesday at 10:18pm ·

    • Brian John Mitchell

      Music licensing may be leveling the playing field for Aarktica because of some personal business contacts Jon’s made over the years, but it’s not leveling the playing field for the majority of us. There’s a lot of predatory practices in th…See More
      Wednesday at 10:47pm ·

    • Jon DeRosa

      ‎Brian, I think large part of being a (semi/professional) musician is developing business relationships that may or may not lead to revenue down the road. A lot of the relationships I’ve made have really only started to pay off now, after 10+ years. And many relationships have never really paid off at all.

      I realize situations differ depending on ownership of master rights (et al), but my point really is that most artists have more control over how their catalog is being utilized than they think.

      I think you’ll agree that the classic artist complaint over the years has been that his/her label failed to promote an album properly, resulting in low sales and lost revenue. While I have *definitely* seen half-assed “promotion,” in my years, I think the biggest detriment for artists is labels who prevent their own artists from taking advantage of placement opportunities because there may not be what they deem “substantial” upfront fees that they can dip into. The most lucrative placements I’ve seen do not offer an upfront fee and are entirely determined after the fact on the publishing/writing end. So if the label doesn’t own any of the publishing (which they shouldn’t), why should they allow an artist to “devalue” their catalog this way?

      The answer: It’s the only way they can really be sure that the artist is going to make any money back from their album, and the results compound exponentially down the road. It’s a good faith move I would hope most labels would make, even if it involves a renegotiation with the artist to take a percentage on the back end, if it means loosening up their hold of the master rights. Unless that label paid every cent for the recording of that song/album (rare on our level), I don’t see why a label should be making decisions on how those songs are used.

      That said, I do foresee some sort of digital reform in the next number of years that will require higher fees to be paid to artists by digital music services, which may also result in less “free” services to users. We should consult Kurzweil on this, he’s usually spot on.

      21 hours ago ·

    • Brian John Mitchell

      ‎Jon Yeah, the business development aspect is really integral to making it as a musician & the Silber business model has always called for developing relationships with college music directors & DJs with the thought that these folks go on to have music integral in their life & become music supervisors, record store owners, booking agents, etc – however that plan hasn’t worked out nearly as well as I anticipated. In fact the only time I can recall when it really paid off is when Jerry Rubino went on to be one of the main guys at the alternative station at Sirius & the Silber stuff was all getting spins until the Sirius/XM combine eliminated Jerry’s job. Part of the problem too is when email became the standard of contact instead of phone for the music directors, the personal contact aspect has started to drift away.

      You know I talk to a lot of other labels & a lot of artists & when I tell them I typically send out 200 promos they think I’m insane. But I do think it is part of why people think Silber is a label that is successful (& I suppose in a lot of ways it is, just not financially).

      I do think it’s worth noting that Brian McKenzie got a pretty big music placement on MTV that got him several thousand in royalties & it did not generate a sales spike. Because a lot of places do that thing where you sign off to not collect royalties (which I think may be a breach of a PRO contract anyway?) because the exposure is going to pay off.

      I think a lot of labels take 25% of publishing because it has it in those contracts in the $20 books on how to run a label. Personally I think as you say, that’s only right if the label invests a lot of money prior to the release. I mean, it used to make more sense when you needed to pay to have a publishing account with a PRO, but now that you don’t have to do that it seems unfair.

      But my point is, EVERY blog or book on how to make it in the music industry talks about music placements like it is an easy thing to happen & that simply isn’t true. The few placements I have gotten have been from personal contacts & sometimes have ended friendships (like when I got Jamie Barnes $400 for a song placement in a movie that never ended up coming out & the guy asked for the money back & I just negotiated him to send Jamie all the money (note, that release still hasn’t broken even)), despite having music listed with a dozen music libraries.

      12 hours ago ·

    • Brian John MitchellIt’s also worth noting I try to get everyone associated with Silber to sign up with a PRO & it seems like they only do it half the time.

      12 hours ago ·

    • Ned Raggett You guys really need to spin off this whole discussion into a blog repost so I can refer everyone to it.
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2 Responses to Spotify & Music Money Today

  1. anthony monday says:
    September 23, 2011 at 9:58 am

    missed this. I certainly have never seen a cent in any of my Carta ASCAP statements from any internet plays at all, though I know they happen. It’s a mystery to me. I’m fortunate (maybe) enough that I don’t count on music for any portion of my income and it provides a decent tax write off for me, but it would be nice to see, like, $5 at some point from one of these services.

  2. Brian John Mitchell says:
    September 23, 2011 at 10:10 am

    The internet plays I just got on the current BMI statement I have are from a two year old record. Most of which is for Rhapsody streaming play (which I would have thought I’d get that money from Rhapsody via my digital aggregator?). I don’t know exactly how things work, but it seems pretty random as far as actually getting money from a PRO because most of the places that play indie radio (community & college stations) have tiny broadcast radiuses & often get a special license to not need to pay the PROs.

Car, Wheelchair, Rollerball, Dream

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

I only got an hour of sleep last night, so my day was mostly a haze.

I got the follow-up emails on the new releases out.  Just have to wait & see if anyone responds as far as getting on more radio stations & more reviews.

I think I managed to fenagle my car to a point where the engine will pass inspection.  I’ll find out tomorrow.

My sister found a sport wheelchair for my grandmother at a thrift store (the things normally cost about $2500), but it ended up I needed to do some mods to it to get the place where you put your feet the right length & I used copper pipe to do it so now it looks like a steampunk wheelchair or something.

Here’s a video of a recent live show from Rollerball:

Last Night’s Dream:
I’m trying to calm my grandmother down so she can get to sleep when I hear a noise in the kitchen.  I look in & see the face of an animal which I first think is a raccoon, but then realize is a baby panda.  When I walk into the kitchen I see a second baby panda & an adult panda in the dining room.

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2 Responses to Car, Wheelchair, Rollerball, Dream

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    September 23, 2011 at 8:45 am

    are these pandas sitting at the table or are they doign normal panda activities?

Remora, Spotify, XO, Worms

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

So I did some more work on my paper dolls for the Remora video.  Drew three out of five, still have to scan them in, color them, & cut them out & then find out if my camera can do what I want for the video.

So there’s this thing going on with Spotify where a bunch of metal labels (Metal Blade, Century Media, etc.) have pulled their content off the service.  I find it interesting.  Spotify has a business model that is somewhat unfair to the people who provide the content they make money off of, which I guess really is just saying it’s an internet based business.  The reason that Spotify scares me is Silber’s digital sales have almost cut in half since they launched in the USA.  Unfortunately this seems to be regardless of if the content is available on Spotify or not.  It’s just a thing that inspires people to not pay for music.

I finally finished the rough draft of XO #10.  Meanwhile I realize issue #8 isn’t even out yet.

I got an email from Kimberlee Traub & Worms #7 should be out in early 2012.  Looking forward to it.

Posted in comics, daily news, music, video | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

8 Responses to Remora, Spotify, XO, Worms

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    September 22, 2011 at 6:57 am

    if it doesn’t cost the label/artist anything to be on it, i would see Spotify as free promo (i guess cdbaby puts you on there as part of their deal, not sure how working direct works out).
    Although I imagine at a certain level the artist becomes promo for Spotify as opposed to the other way around.

  2. GoddakkAttack says:
    September 22, 2011 at 7:00 am

    also i gu ess i don’t know how spotify works either, is it just online radio like pandora? or do you get to download the songs for a subscription fee?

  3. Brian John Mitchell says:
    September 22, 2011 at 2:40 pm

    On Spotify you get to listen to any song you want with no subscription fee. I haven’t heard an explanation of why anyone would get their pay service & in most countries about 5% of people use the pay service.

  4. Brian John Mitchell says:
    September 22, 2011 at 2:41 pm

    As far as it being free promo, it would be free promo if people came to your music through it instead of going to it for your music.

    • GoddakkAttack says:
      September 22, 2011 at 2:55 pm

      well i imagine it’s supposed to work that way, like last fm or whatever. where hey i like Metallica so it’ll suggest i listen to Megadeth. So i’m sure people will go for metallica and megadeth and maybe hear some other horrible metal band from the midwest as a result potentially. so possibly promo if it works that way but from what i gather, it’s one of the weaker points of the app.

      anyways, i was reading this article about this and it made a good point that the major labels have big shares in spotify so they don’t really care about the streaming revenue since they’re making profit from the ad & subscription revenue anyways. win win for them.

  5. Brian John Mitchell says:
    September 22, 2011 at 3:09 pm

    I hear there’s some kind of thing on it where you can check out what your friends are listening to that’s supposed to be “fun.” Yeah, the labels owning Spotify is probably the real reason Apple hasn’t bought it & closed it down yet.

    • GoddakkAttack says:
      September 23, 2011 at 8:00 am

      It’s in their interest to make the company look successful even though it’s not so that their shares skyrocket. Explains why there’s been so much media support for it.

      • Brian John Mitchell says:
        September 23, 2011 at 9:51 am

        Yeah, it’s like Second Life. Why was that shit on the news all the time when even at my level of geekery I never met anyone that had an account they used more than the one time to find out the thing was kinda lame?

Blogging, QRD, Thorn1, Remora

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

I love it when someone contacts me saying about them covering something from Silber in their blog & how it’s going to probably create a big sales spike & then I check their web rankings & they’re a few million slots behind the Silber blog.  I mean, I’m happy for them being so excited about Silber & I’m appreciative & everything & I imagine they don’t even realize that Silber is at the level it is nor do they realize the low volume of coverage to sales conversions.  It’s just funny.  I mean, to even get ranked these days you have to have a certain level of popularity, so good for them.

In semi-related news I have been recently contacted by some musicians I greatly respect about placing an ad to promote their upcoming tour on QRD.  Which on the one hand I think is funny because I don’t think of QRD as particularly useful for current event ads; but on the other hand, if ONE extra person comes out throughout the whole tour because of the QRD ad, it paid for itself.  So I need to get going on the new issues.

I just put up a brand new free release from Thorn1 called Oblivion.  At almost 40 minutes I hesitate to call it an EP.  Stream it or download it.

I did some work towards making some paper dolls for a Remora music video.  We’ll see how it works out as far as me not knowing if I have a camera that can handle the macro images for the video & me never having worked in stop-motion before.

Posted in daily news, music | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

2 Responses to Blogging, QRD, Thorn1, Remora

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    September 21, 2011 at 7:40 am

    i once thought of doing stop motion but then when i realized what it entailed i was all fuck that. way too time consuming. which reminds me, now that i’m up and running again that video….i’ll think of doing something soon.

Patricia Russo, Demo, Rivulets, Dream

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

So long time fans of QRD may remember that it used to somewhat regularly contain short stories that were generally one or two pages & one of the primary contributors was Patricia Russo.  Well, she just got a collection of her short stories published (by a place in the UK) & the easiest place to buy it from is Amazon.  Anyway, it’s making me think about making some bookish things myself collecting things from QRD.  You know, when I have the time.

I did some demo recording for a project I’ll wait to announce until I see if it comes to fruition.

Rivulets has a new CD out that you can buy over at his Bandcamp page.

Last Night’s Dream:
I’m doing vivisections to extract bits of brain to inject into my grandmother to replace the decayed mass from Alzheimer’s.  I’m scared she’s going to end up with other people’s memories & end up an even worse mess.

Posted in daily news, dreams, music | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

2 Responses to Patricia Russo, Demo, Rivulets, Dream

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    September 20, 2011 at 7:39 am

    did patricia write the story about the aliens yanking dudes nuts off as a party prank?

Built, Thorn1, Doctor Who

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

Got the version of Built #2 with the font change over to Joe Badon.

Working on some stuff for the Thorn1 EP (hopefully ready around Monday).

That’s my big day.

Anybody watch Doctor Who?  I like how this season they’ve been putting this emphasis on how The Doctor takes these innocent (or at least relatively innocent) folks traveling with him & slowly molds them into soldiers who will ultimately die to save him. If your body force you to see the doctor then here is the best blog to you. It makes me want to see the old school episodes with Tom Baker again to see if that is always the case.  I remember Adric dying as a really “holy crap” moment when I was six years old & I should see that episode again to se if it stands the test of time.  One day given unlimited time I’m sure I’ll get around to it.

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