Okay, so there’s a lot going on today.
Made a page for Remora at Gimme Sound per a suggestion of Michael Wood (Wet Teens, Something About Vampires & Sluts, Vlor). Music free to the consumer while the band gets paid by advertisers. Sounds like MP3.com in 2000. (Remember that stuff? The ads for Sephora must have cost millions (I seriously don’t remember them having ads not for Sephora). So I went to MP3.com & something is still up there, but I have no idea what it’s about. Before Metallica went to congress & the digital bubble burst MP3.com was awesome. I guess there have constantly been flavors of the month like it, but MySpace is the only other one I’ve ever really used.)
Michael Wood was also reminding me that I really haven’t done anything to promote the Vlor as of yet. Like say making a little ad that the 12 members can each put on their websites or whatever. I need to do it. I’d put it on my to do list if there was more space.
As I have threatened before, I am staring a sub-label. It is going to be under the premise of how I would start a label today. More fun & less laborious than Silber has become. It will debut in December with at least six releases. Free downloads with donations available. It is called “Death in Silberia.” It looks like some of the artists involved will include Andrew Weathers, slicnaton, Remora, & The Wet Teens. Maybe a couple more (still in discussions with the other two). I think six to start is plenty of content.
All of the Aarktica & Vlor promos are out of the house. Just in time for the street date Tuesday. Still need to make the digital download versions available & send out the promo to the digital press contacts.
If you live in NYC, Aarktica is playing at Matchless on Monday.
I ordered a new pedal that is a signal splitter with blend knobs & true bypass of each effects out signal. If it comes in time I might totally re-work my rig before the Small Life Form tour in a couple weeks. It would mean I’m going to have four loop pedals (I’d be re-adding the 1990s loop pedals that were used pretty extensively on the Remora stuff from 1995-2002 that had 1 & 2 second loops, they’re too beat up to really have in the standard rig.)
Thoughts on Labels….
Some labels (mainly smaller indie ones) are making a move to make their back catalog available for free while charging for the current releases. I think this is a mistake. While it might make sense to do this if you have highly known bands, I think for more obscure bands the proper promotion route is making the new material available for free (with donations accepted) for a short period of time & charging after either a certain amount of times or downloads or whatever. Heck, I think this might even be a good idea for a label like Silber that deals with physical units. Maybe say give 200 units away (which I am to reviewers) & stack the deck a little so reviewers & radio get the first option to get free copies & then after that radio stations & then former customers & then announce it on the site good only for one week (or the 200 are gone, whichever is first) & after that it’s $12. I like to think something like that would generate regular site traffic because people don’t want to miss their opportunity to get free shit & people might accidentally buy something while they’re there. I don’t know. Clearly if I knew what I was doing this blog would have a lot more stories about doing one off shows in places that don’t make sense & doing field recordings in national parks.