Power to the ‘middle-class’ musician. Heading towards a musical socialism?

In 2011, the American band Cake released their sixth album, ‘Showroom of Compassion’ on their own label. With only 44,000 copies sold in the first week, it broke the record for the lowest-selling No.1 album. When asked in an interview about his views on this dubious record, the band’s frontman, John McCrea, said: 

I see music as a really great hobby for most people in five or 10 years. I see everybody I know, some of them really important artists, studying how to do other jobs (Bylin, 2015).

While it is true that sales of music records decreased, the music business is still in good shape, it is only the record business that is suffering (Kusek, Leonhard 2005, p. 6). The same opinion is reflected in a thread of comments in response to McCrea’s statement quoted above, such as:

Rather than echoing the sentiments of the big fish over and over and over, how about covering some of us little guys who are making it happen and living the dream? The music industry may be dying but the MUSIC is alive and well.

(Posted by Jason Parker | 03/04/2011 at 04:55 PM)

or

Artist that deliver great music while building a True Fan base can make a decent living in music. Earning a living depends on how many customers you can attract to you and your products. Perfect your music and work on building your fan base each minute of the day.

(Posted by: KSE | 03/08/2011 at 09:19 AM)

Such voices can be heard in different parts of the Internet, suggesting that things are not so bad or so different for the ‘middle-class’ musician and that the decline affected mostly the top.  

The research I have done so far with books and articles and my own experience as a songwriter/producer seems to lead to the same conclusion: small, independent artists have now the power to perform activities which in the past were only possible through record labels, such as recording, distribution and promotion. Independent musicians can put their music in the same online stores alongside superstars. Artists can get direct funding from their fans for albums, tours, music videos and the likes. Niche musicians can easily reach audiences from all over the world. The Internet seems to be a blessing for the small artists, offering tools for many of them to reach audiences and sell music and merchandise. 

This unprecedented freedom levels the music industry in a way that wasn’t possible before and diminishes the power and influence of record labels, which are more aware of the risks and tend to invest less in new talent. 

But this new situation raises questions: as more and more artists will use the tools that technology made available, will the record labels decline to the point of disappearance? How ‘big’ can an artist become without a label? It seems that musicians who have had great success under the independent model (such as Amanda Palmer, or Radiohead) were already famous or had been signed to a label in the past. In a future where labels disappear, what will happen when the last generation of ‘superstars’ vanishes? Will the Internet be able to replace them with online new-found stars? If so, will their careers be ’15-minute-of-fame’ sensations quickly replaced by others? 

Could we be heading towards a form of musical socialism in which stars will disappear and all musicians will be independent, relying on small communities of fans? This is certainly a possibility. It is also possible that record labels might find new ways of maintaining their supremacy, as they have had for decades or that new gatekeepers will rise. One thing is certain: the change is happening and nobody knows where it leads. There is no recipe for success; but there is potential to try out an infinite number of strategies and see which ones work for each particular artist. This a topic of future reflection for me, but it is encouraging to think that, even though the possibilities of getting signed to a big record label are slim, there are still ways to use the internet and build a sustainable fan base. 

References

Bylin, K. (2015). Will Music Be A Hobby in 5-10 Years?. Available at: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/03/will-music-be-a-hobby-in-5-10-years.html (Accessed 30.12.2015).

Kusek, D.and Gerd, L. (2005) The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution. Boston, MA: Berklee Press.

Interview with a fellow independent musician/producer

Today I felt like trying out a different type of 'research' rather than reading journals. I thought it would be interesting to hear from someone who is in a similar situation with me - another musician/producer, so I asked one of my course mates from my undergraduate degree (Creative Music Technology) to send me written answers to a few questions.

Kye Voce plays guitar and synths/launchpad in a band called Stitch and is also in charge of production/mixing the band's music. Currently the band live together in Bournemouth, taking a year off after graduation to just write music together, record it and post videos on youtube.

This is a video of the band that they re-posted on Facebook a couple of days ago and, after watching, I decided to send the questions to Kye:


Here are the questions and answers:

1. You (not sure if just you or all Stitch members) produce your band’s music. Could you please comment on how you feel about being a musician/producer (is it liberating - you can allow yourself to be creative without limits, is it too time-consuming? how much time do you spend on production as opposed to writing/performing music)

I find that whilst it is liberating and exciting, it is equally daunting and stressful due to the fact that it is only myself and the other members of Stitch making all the creative and non-creative decisions. Because of this, I feel as though our judgment and creative decisions can become stagnated within the triangle of us three - we are our own creative team and therefore 99% of decisions come from within the band. This means that there is no set of ‘fresh ears’ to come in and provide an external outlook at the song writing, production or mix. We are therefore reliant upon our own self-judgement from the initial writing to the release of a track, which can make it very difficult to make critical and un-biased decisions. This can lead to doubting and second-guessing some decisions, which can become very time consuming as you can easily start going round in circles. I find often than not, that initial idea is the best and that I eventually end up going back to it.

2. How do you maintain an online presence? Have you got any future plans or strategies to gain more fans? We are quite rubbish at keeping an online presence across the main social media platforms. We primarily use Instagram for regular casual photo and video posts, whilst our ‘serious’ posts, these being the release of originals, covers and announcements, are released on YouTube covers and then shared via Facebook and Blogs. We occasionally tweet, but we really dislike Twitter’s format - it’s so cluttered and demands so much constant attention to keep up with everything. Our future strategies include releasing and getting our music reviewed through pre and post release blogs.

3. If you were to choose between: being independent or being signed with a big label who takes care 
of all aspects for you (legal&copyright, booking&management, distribution, promotion, recording and production, etc.) at the cost of losing creative control over your music, what would you choose?

My preference would be to stay independent, so as to keep the primary creative control, however to increase the size of our team to include knowledgeable external team members. This would be in the form of producers, mix engineers, videographers, marketing, management, legal, distribution etc., as this would allow Stitch to focus more time on practicing and performing. However, this of course all requires money and funding, and to acquire this team would most likely require either a) Stitch becoming financeable profitable through our current course of action (Stitch doing all the work), b) finding external investor (i.e. a label), or c) pot luck in finding a team willing to do all this for very little initial money!

4. What’s your main DAW and three favourite plugins? 4. Logic Pro X is my main DAW and my three favourite plugins in no particular order are: Waves EMI TG12345 Channel Strip Waves H-Reverb Waves S1 Stereo Imager

Further Thoughts on Mastering

I have just downloaded Bob Katz's 'The Art of Mastering' and I intend to read through it. Chapters 9 and 10 which deal with dynamics in mastering sound particularly interesting. I have started reading chapter 9 and I already have some observations that I noted down!

Katz recommends avoiding multi-band compressor, unless one wants to change the mix. A multi-band compressor splits the audio information in several bands, so one band will not be affected if another is compressed. For example, in my track, I can use less compression on the high end in Waves's UltraMaximizer, to avoid the aforementioned sibilance. An interesting fact is that TC Electronics was among the first who introduced multi-band processing with their M2000 Effect Processor and, later, with the Finalizer - which I used to master the first version of 'Glass Sky'.

Katz recommends not using bus compression when mixing! which is something I have been doing in the past; recently at work, I started mixing without any bus compression and only adding it at the end, to emulate the mastering stage and make any changes that become apparent to be problematic at a mastering stage.

I also found out that the 'lack of breath' in my final product is caused by hypercompression. Hypercompression leads to lack of dynamics, loss of transient information, track sounding fatiguingly loud at all times, sounds ‘squashed’; the loud bits sounding ‘wimpy’; instruments that are meant to be in the background becoming loud and upfront.

For 'invisible' compression, Bob Katz recommends a light ratio of 1.01 to 1.1 (compression ratios most common used range between 1.5 and 3.0) and a very low threshold; larger ratios can reveal breathing, pumping or other artefacts (for example, in my track, sibilance). Another way of achieving transparent compression is parallel compression, furthered detailed in chapter 10 - which I haven't read yet, but I intend to do soon and put into practice - most probably after Christmas, as I don't have proper monitoring at home. 

References
Katz, B. (2008) Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science. Oxford: Focal Press

EP-related work: Mastering 'Under The Glass Sky'

My experience with mastering is limited; even though I had done it in the past, I seldom managed to to achieve the loudness of commercially released recordings. In fact, the only time I managed to do it was recently, with 'Lotus Flower' (I wrote about it here).

As I have been posting earlier, I recently started working on a database of Youtube and SoundCloud channels to which I will submit tracks for reposting, for promotional purposes. One of these channels is Mr Suicide Sheep, a channel that publishes a variety of electronic music, with a preference for slower genres. When I wrote 'Under The Glass Sky', I wrote it with the thought in the back of my mind that it would be a suitable track to submit to Mr Suicide Sheep for consideration.

However, comparing to other tracks on the aforementioned channel, I realised that, in terms of loudness, my track was much inferior to everything else published there. Therefore, I spent my weekend trying to remaster it and make it as loud as possible, without clipping.

This first version was mastered with outboard effects, using a Lexicon 300 Digital Effect Processor and the T.C. Electronics Finalizer, on PMC LB1 Passive Studio Monitors at the Royal College of Music, London:
Now, the issue I have is that I am unable to access the original mix, so I am trying to increase the loudness of a track that has already been mastered! This, of course, is a practice which is not recommended, but I particularly like the warmth of the Finalizer and the EQ-ing I did with outboard, and I have no means of going back to the College and re-use the equipment anytime soon.

After the success with 'Lotus Flower', I thought I could use the same processes and plugins to achieve similar results. But, as Glenn Meadows said, I found out that:

“There is no magic silver bullet. There is no one magic anything that will be the ‘best’ in all situations. The ability of the operator to determine what it is that needs to be done and pick the best combination of tools is more important than what tools are used.” (Meadows, quoted in Fenn, 2014)

The most notable change I made with mastering 'Glass Sky' was to introduce two new plugins that I've never used before: IK Multimedia's T-Racks (soft clipper) and DUY Wide (stereo imager). Both plugins were recommended in a Youtube tutorial that I watched and I decided to download the demos and try them for myself.

I am absolutely blown away by both of them. Unfortunately at the moment I don't have the money to purchase them after the demos expire, but they're definitely on the bucket list.

DUY Wide is the best stereo imager I have ever tried - I am comparing it to Waves S1, with the stereo imagers included with Logic or Pro Tools and with the imager function in Izotope Ozone. DUY Wide seems to widen the stereo field without losing the center and creates the illusion of the sound being pushed to the left and right beyond the speakers!

T-Racks is a soft clipper. Clipping is a form of distortion which appears as a result of attempting to raise the level of the audio over 0dB. The sound becomes squashed as the waveform turns into a square waves, leading to distortion. What a soft clipper does is cut momentary peaks out of the waveform, so the overall level can be raised. I found it very useful when mastering 'Glass Sky', because it meant I could push up the level a bit more without clipping.

Another new technique that I used was a light side-chain compression to tighten the low-end, with the settings as shown in the picture:

I tried different plugins with different settings and ended up with 11 different masters! 

Below is my final version of the track, however, I am still not happy with it! I finally managed to reach the loudness of the tracks I was comparing with, but

I am aware of the fact that it sounds over-compressed, with no dynamic and (for me, at least!) it is fatiguing to the ears.
 

I have given up for the moment and try again later. I am considering completely remixing the track and start a fresh master. I will also search the online library for Bob Katz's 'The Art of Mastering', which was recommended by Bruce Aisher in one of our lectures and see if I can find some helpful advice in there.


References

Fenn Audio Mastering, (2014). Mastering Process Technical Essay. [online] Available at: http://www.fennaudio.com/news-reviews/2014/12/29/mastering-process-technical-essay [Accessed 18 Dec. 2015].

A musician/producer/creative entrepreneur: Jack Conte

According to Scott (2012, p. 238), independent DIY musicians who create and perform music, as well as self-manage the construction of a musical career, are typical cultural entrepreneurs. Musicians are encouraged more and more to think of their music as a startup business. At the early stage of their careers, musicians face many of the challenges and constraints of entrepreneurs in other settings, such as situations where they have to find ways to finance, budget, brand and sell. Hracs (2009, p. 458) also observes how the working lives of the contemporary independent musicians are moving away from “artist” or “bohemian” models of creative production to encompass a more professionalised entrepreneurial model.

Styvén (2007) investigated music intangibility in the internet age. She identified problems resulting from music dematerialisation and provided solutions from the marketing literature on how to deal with them. Many of her suggestions can be found in the concept of music as a service, such as the idea of gaining access to music for a monthly fee as one does with water.

In 2013 Jack Conte created a platform based around the same idea; Patreon is a website where content creators are paid by their followers per piece of content or on a monthly basis. It functions as a fundraising website, but instead or raising funds for a project, content creators generate a regular stream of income. Unlike Kickstarter, which is meant for on-off projects, Patreon is a tool for people who generate content regularly. Fans can pay a subscription of as little as $1 and in exchange they have access to the artist’s ‘stream’ and to different rewards, depending on their payment. Recently Patreon reached 250,000 patrons giving out a monthly total paycheque of $2 million to the content creators they support. 

Jack Conte is a content creator and musician himself. Pomplamoose, the musical duo he’s part of, has a popular Youtube channel with over 500,000 subscribers and over 1 billion views. While the music is quite simple, the videos often feature intricate decors, projections and complex editing with visual effects (for example, ’Pedals’ by Conte, the first piece of content posted on Patreon, features real robots). 
Conte is a multi-instrumentalist and he records and produces his music - yet another example of the modern musician being a jack-of-all-trades. And, with Patreon, he is the very example of a musician entrepreneur. 

His ‘About’ section on Patreon sounds like a condensed manifesto of every modern independent musician:

I make music in my home studio and post it on YouTube and SoundCloud for you to enjoy. No labels, no publishing companies, no intermediaries. Every dollar you pledge gives me the freedom and ability to maintain my independence and make the art that I want to make, so I really appreciate the support!

As an ‘Internet musician’, Conte’s problem was not where to find an audience, but how to get paid. Youtube videos can be monetised via ads, but artists earn only if the adverts are clicked (which means stealing focus from the video in the first place); the earnings are very small - tens of millions of views needed to make a living. On Patreon, Conte is earning $5,328 per video. Walk Off the Earth, a five-piece band with another popular Youtube Channel, make $15,832 per music video. Amanda Palmer, who joined in April 2015, is already making $30.000 per song posted, at the time of the writing. 

Conte devotes Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays to writing and recording. He is also the CEO of a business. ‘It’s a difficult balancing act’, he admits. But despite it, Pomplamoose still managed to release 14 videos in 2014 (Dredge, 2015).

Not only that Patreon helped boost Conte’s career as a musician, but it also allowed thousands of artists to receive steady income from patrons who, by supporting the artist, do not buy a certain product, but a service. Patreon is proof that musicians can make a living off music in the online environment and that Internet provides unlimited opportunities and alternatives to try; and if the alternative is not yet out there, as Conte showed, it can be created.

As part of my future strategies of building a career with music, I have created a Patreon account. The account is still empty at moment. I have investigated other Patreon accounts and it becomes apparent that I need to take care of a few things before inviting my followers to join me on Patreon: 1)I need to write a script and draft a presentation video in which to explain how Patreon works and convince people to support me 2) I have to decide on a reward system and write descriptions of the rewards.
I also think that I should wait a little longer before inviting my followers on Patreon and create more content in advance, so I don't run out of content and disappoint my monthly paying followers. On the other hand, I am thinking of running a Kickstarter to fund my album (which I intend to release in the summer and possibly make it my final project if this masters degree) and I'm not sure if followers would be willing to contribute on Kickstarter if they already support me on Patreon. Nevertheless, I believe Patreon is the future of independent musicians, and I will definitely use it in the near future; I might just need to wait a little bit longer and gain more fans in order to make it viable.

References:

Dredge, S (2015) As Amanda Palmer joins Patreon, CEO Jack Conte tells us why. Available at: http://musically.com/2015/03/03/amanda-palmer-joins-patreon/ (Accessed 20.12.2015)

Jack Conte, (2013). Pedals Music Video (featuring REAL robots) - Conte. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ02alEkbLw [Accessed 20.12.2015].

Hracs, B. (2012) 'A Creative Industry In Transition: The Rise Of Digitally Driven Independent Music Production’ in Growth Change 43.3 (2012): pp.442-461. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2257.2012.00593.x/pdf (Accessed 18.12.2015)

Scott, M. (2012) 'Cultural Entrepreneurs, Cultural Entrepreneurship: Music Producers Mobilising And Converting Bourdieu's Alternative Capitals'. Poetics 40.3 pp.237-255. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2012.03.002 (Accessed: 18.12.2015)

Styvén, M. (2007) ‘The Intangibility of Music in the Internet Age’, in Popular Music and Society, 30:1, pp.53-74. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007760500503442 (Accessed at: 18.12.2015)

Recording the UH Big Band

On December the 12th, the University of Hertfordshire Big Band had a concert in the Film, Music and Media Building (room B01) and I decided that this would be a great opportunity for me to practice live concert recording, while simultaneously getting a feel for the new recording setup and the space's acoustic. This was a great opportunity for me to practice my recording skills and learn the SoundCraft in the control room, all preparation for hopefully running recording sessions in there with the nice mini grand piano and maybe filming some of my performance videos with some of the university cameras.

In order to fully prepare myself, I attended one of their rehearsals prior to the concert. I introduced myself to the musical director, made note of how many players there were, where they were sitting, and most importantly, I had a listen to them play from the audience seats. Immediately I realised that there was a significant problem in the balance of the ensemble, and so I planned my microphone placement and choices accordingly. Firstly, the drum kit was far too loud. The drummer, who was mainly playing with sticks, would undoubtedly bleed onto all the other microphones. Secondly, the piano, electric guitar and flute were very quiet. While I was considering using a microphone on the guitar amp as well as a DI, I knew that I would need to push the mic too much in order to bring it forward, and since the guitarist was sitting right next to the drummer, this was not an option. The flute was given a dedicated microphone, so that I could bring it out nicely over the dominating horns and drums, and the piano was miced closely, with the microphones pointing away from the drum kit. For the drum kit itself, only two mics were used: a single overhead (AKG C414) and a kick drum mic (AKG D112). One microphone was given between each pair of saxes, one for the tuba, one between the two trumpets and one between the two trombones. Thus I drew together the final line list, using a total of 15 lines out of 16, including a pair of room mics at the back of the audience.

On the day of the concert, I took out all the microphones, stands and cables I would need, basically clearing out the stores, loaded them on a trolley that I was allowed to borrow from the Art Shop, and took them across the road, not before being stopped by university security who thought there was a heist in progress. I knew that I would only have access to the room half an hour before the show started, which was also when the musicians would be loading in, so I made sure I was there in plenty of time to put microphones on stands in the corridor and finalise the plan between myself and my friend Andy (who was helping me out). Luckily, we got access to the room early, so we could set up the stage and put microphones in the right places. 

This is when some unforeseen difficulties intervened. The stage box was in the control room, and the control room was locked. Richard, who is in charge with stores, would arrive at 7pm to let us in, but in the meantime we weren’t sure where the stage box would be (stage left or stage right), so we didn’t know which microphones needed the longest cables. Soon we found that the cables themselves were all extremely short, mostly under five meters, which meant that we couldn’t possibly plug everything in. We would have to daisy chain some XLRs together, but we didn’t know where to extend them to. I therefore had to run back and find a proctor to let me in to the studios for longer XLRs. The main pair at the back of the room was probably not feasible so we moved it down to stage right, looking at the horns, but with a good physical distance from the drum kit.

There were also some changes to the lineup. There were now two bass players, one upright (electric) and one bass guitarist. Talking to the upright player, he explained that they took it in turns, and both plugged into the PA system installed in the room. Luckily the speaker had a link-thru, so I could take a DI feed from that. There was also an extra saxophonist, the flute player was sitting on the other side of the stage, and there was only one trombone.

Diagram of the players' positions and microphones used. From left to right, back to front: tuba, trombone, two trumpets; flute, six saxes; drum kit; piano.

Fortunately I was able to find someone to let me in to the studio, so the XLR situation was solved. When Richard arrived with the stage box, we had to plug everything in in less than 15 minutes. With the help of Andy and the proctor, we managed to finish in time, but it was extremely stressful. For the most part I kept to the microphone order I decided in the original plan, but in the heat of the moment some cables ended up stuck in a different input. This was not a major problem though, as I could sort everything out later during the mixing stage.

Thankfully, when I entered the control room, there was already a 16 channel Pro Tools session open and record enabled, ready for the start of the concert, which had been set up by Richard. 14/15 channels were working (we lost a sax mic somewhere along the way), but one of the piano mics had intermittent noise. Also, in the chaos of the setup, none of us had notices that because of the missing trombone player, the trumpet players had moved to the left, and were now completely off mic. Between songs, I was able to sneak in and twist the nearest mic to pick up more of the trumpet, but I had to wait until the interval before I could position it properly. Also during the interval I re-plugged the intermittent piano line, which seemed to fix it.

From the moment they started playing, and I heard the first unmixed, mono cacophony of input signals, I knew I had done something right. I could hear all instruments clearly, with already a decent balance between them. The drums were no longer overpowering, and the quiet instruments could now be heard. As I played with levels, I started liking it more and more. Attending that first rehearsal definitely helped, and while the setup period was hectic, it would have been much, much worse had I not organised it the way I had, or if I hadn’t pre-rigged the microphones early. However, things would have run more smoothly if I made sure I knew the line-up, if I’d checked the cable lengths when I took them out, and if I had found out in advance where the stage box sits. 

To conclude, this was a very intense but useful experience, because now I am more familiar with the recording space and facilities in the FMM building and I am looking forward to start making some recordings in there (rather than going back to record at University of Surrey, like I did for 'Cosmic Latte').  I intend to record a brass section for some songs on my album, which will be my final project for my Masters degree, so having some practice in recording brass and networking with brass players who I am hoping to see at future session was extremely useful.

Music progress update

I have started a Google spreadsheet with potential promotional strategies divided in several categories, such as Youtube channels, SoundCloud promoters, online radios and blogs for which I could submit my music for consideration.
At the moment I have spent most of my time searching for Youtube channels which might want to post my music. This article that I came across recently explains very well why Youtube promoters are such a great tool for promoting new music and how the process works.

   Sample page of my spreadsheet

The whole document (in progress) can be accessed at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13rs_x0dh2BA4cj56M7wp2HH0_djURErhfi2YicqXLPU/edit#gid=1724424929

Other news related to my progress with music are that I recorded a new performance video for 'Cosmic Latte':

The piano was recorded with a pair of Neumann KM184s placed under the hood of the piano and spaced out, to pick up the two main “clusters” of strings (the thinner strings for the high notes, located at the widest part of the piano, and the thick, low strings which reach to the end of the tail). These microphones provide a detailed, close, brilliant sound when placed here. I also used a pair of Schoeps CMC5Us with omnidirectional capsules, pointed at the tail end of the piano facing in. This combination really brings out the low end, and also provides a more ambient perspective. On its own, it’s actually quite muddy, but when mixed in a little can add body to the sound. Lastly, a pair of AKG C414s set to cardioid were used as room mics. These were placed in a near-coincident configuration (ORTF) to provide an accurate image of the piano. They were placed around three meters from the piano, and when mixed in gave control over the front-back perspective by introducing the natural reverb of studio 1.

I am aiming to finish mixing the recording and editing the video early January; the finished video will be the monthly video for January, included in the monthly newsletter that I send out to my fans.

Speaking of the newsletter, last weekend, I have also performed a gig at the Omnibus in London, after which I passed around a notebook where people could sign up, in exchange for a free download of my first EP, 'Monsters'; I managed to get 21 new email addresses for my mailing list.

Overall, I feel like I had a productive week and I feel like I am on right track with my musical endeavours.

Credibility measured in ‘likes’, ‘plays’ and ‘views’

If musicians want to attract the interest of intermediaries (managers, A&R's, festivals, radio, etc) they need to create a ‘buzz’ around them, which in turn, presents them as subjects of value. Nowadays, with the rise of social media, the most common way of measuring 'value' is the amount of online followers, Facebook ‘likes’, Youtube views, Soundcloud plays, etc. Online following shows to potential gatekeepers (such as record labels) the commercial viability of the act, but also appeals to audiences as a mark of credibility; in an age where hundreds of digital EPs are released every week, it is hard to filter the good acts. The number of Youtube views, for example, acts as a previous validation and will attract new viewers, who will likely choose to click on the video with a million views, rather than the one with just a thousand. Of course, quality work is not necessarily popular, and popular doesn’t necessarily mean quality, but this has always happened, if we look at the opposition between mainstream and niche music. 

Online popularity works both ways: one can have lots of views because they’re popular, and one can become popular because they have lots of views. A simple Google search reveals a big number of companies selling likes, subscribers, plays and even comments, against a small fee.  ytview.com offers 1000 views for only $2, and 100 comments for $15. The website boasts ‘100% Satisfaction Guaranteed’, next to a caricatured version of PSY dancing ‘Gagnam Style’ (PSY’s video was the first ever to reach a billion views on YouTube). buildmyviews.org offers packages of as many as 100,000 views for $129, while encouraging its customers to ‘Gain YouTube views, gain respect!’ 

YouTube regularly checks if views are genuine, as buying views is against its terms and condition, so there is always the risk of video deletion. As Youtube has been owned by Google since 2006, they offer their own way of promotion, through Google Adwords for video. 

The issue of Soundcloud fake plays is even more acute, since Soundcloud doesn’t seem to take any action against fake plays buyers. These can be easily spotted, through the discrepancy between the high number of plays and the lack of comments, or between plays and lack of Twitter and Facebook following. An interesting article on 5 Magazine, a website featuring news and reviews from the world of house music, exposes the case of a Soundcloud artist who inflated the plays of a track by 20.000 views and as a result got featured on multiple blogs and websites, such as Beatport or Traxsource, generating real traffic and real followers (Matthew, 2013).

By following conversations on Black Hat Forum (a forum dedicated to less orthodox SEO techniques) and seeing how these fake likes/play sellers communicate, how strategies and bots (software that can perform automatically simple human tasks, such as liking or following pages) are developed and tested, how Facebook fan pages are bought and sold, it became clear to me how buying views and followers is a real industry. This raises question marks towards the validity of this symbolic capital: in a world where careers are propelled on the basis of already existing popularity, if filters are flawed, who remains a gatekeeper of taste? It appears that even e-zines, or music blogs tend to feature music that already has gained some online following. On the other hand, these practices remind of a modern type of payola. With google Adwords for video, buying exposure is legal and real, but, accordingly, it’s more costly. To gain the hundreds of millions of views on a music video of superstars like Beyoncé, Rihanna or Taylor Swift, one would need to invest a huge amount. It would seem that, even in the online environment, record labels still have the monopoly on creating and maintaining superstars. Otherwise, how is it possible that new singles from popular artists reach millions of views in few days, when people are not even aware that a new promotional video has been released? Labels pay for promotion to get the ball rolling; grassroots marketing spreads the word, but only after the initial push, which is achieved with lots of money invested in Youtube promotion.

The research I've done on this subject made it apparent that in order to gain more fans or have a better chance of a positive answer when submitting for airplay/festivals/etc, I need more Youtube views! but for more Youtube views I need more fans and more exposure - it's a vicious circle. I have decided  on two strategies to deal with the issue: 1) to try out Google Adwords for video; if it works well, I am considering saving a considerable amount of money (a minimum of £1000) and put it all in the promotion of one video 2) I will do some research into submitting tracks for promotion on dedicated Youtube channels.

References:

Matthew, T. (2013). How to Become a SoundCloud Superstar, One Fake Fan at a Time. Available at: http://5chicago.com/features/how-to-become-a-fake-soundcloud-superstar/ (Accessed 26.11.2015)

http://www.blackhatworld.com

The tension between music and business for independent musicians: a survey

In an attempt to find out how musicians in the UK perceive the tension between the music and the business side, after my previous post I have created a survey with several question I thought would be interesting for both myself and the people filling the survey, mostly musicians.

I have posted the survey on several Facebook groups, such as 'UK Bands, Promoters, Gigs', and, to my surprise, I received plenty of answers in less than 24 hours!

My survey has been filled by 92 musicians! Some of them showed interest in further discussing the issues and even sent me personal messages on Facebook.

Here are the questions and answers:

1. Please choose the option that best represents you.

2. Do you intend to pursue a career in music for a living or is music just a hobby?

3. Are you or have you ever been signed to a record label?

4. Please rank these in order of importance you believe they have in order to achieve success in a music career.

5. Please tick all the platforms that you use or have used in relation to your music:

6. Please tick all that apply to you:

7. Do you feel like these non-creative tasks take up too much time that you could've otherwise used to write/rehearse/improve your music-making? Would you prefer someone else took care of them so that you can dedicate more of your time to music?

\

In addition to this question, respondents could were given a blank space where they could leave comments. The comments ranged from: 

'If music is your primary career, the business side of it is a must. How many bands or artists do you know where their music was mediocre, but had a great image, stage presence, direction, networking skills etc? Being percieved as 'good' is all about your audience's frame of mind. Getting them to think you're good is way more important, in my opinion, than actually being good, to start up your music career.'

and

'I feel much more in control of my own music when doing it'

to

'We're not marketers. We're musicians.

or

'The totally/mainly original troubadours I know definitely have to spend too much time on business.'

8. If you were to choose between: being signed with a major label which would take care of all non-creative aspects for you (finances, legal and copyright, booking&management, distribution, promotion, recording and production, etc.), at the cost of losing creative control over your music and/or image, what would you do?

The survey results show that indeed, musicians under the independent model spend quite a large amount of time doing non-creative tasks related to their music careers; a correlation can be noticed between earning a living solely off music and bigger number of hours spent on the business and production side (see Tables 1 and 2). The multi-skilling is also common in the majority of musicians: 62% record their own music, 80% maintain relationships with their fans via social media, 87% book their own gigs. 55% feel like these non-creative tasks take up too much time, which they would rather spend perfecting their music.

The price that comes with liberation: less time left for music-making

In 2010 Amanda Hocking, a young author, started publishing teenage-aimed novels on Amazon. 20 months later, she had sold over 900,000 copies and became a ‘Kindle millionaire’. All this happened after receiving countless rejections from traditional publishers. 

It’s easy to draw a parallel between the music industry and the world of book publishing. In both fields, a similar dematerialisation of the product correlated with a shrinking physical market can be observed (music retailers and bookshops), as digital formats are gaining ground. Record labels and book publishing houses are the traditional gatekeepers which can now be bypassed using technology and the internet. Both books and music are available to sell as digital copies at very small prices compared to their physical counterparts (£0.79 a single on iTunes, $0.99 the price of Hocking’s first book). Regardless of their cheap prices, self-published e-books and digital music are profitable because of the non-existent cost of reproduction.

However, after becoming a millionaire, Amanda Hocking decided to go down the traditional route and sign a deal with a publishing house. 

'I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full-time corporation' (Morrison, 2012).

It is exactly how independent musicians have to function nowadays: like micro full-time corporations. Even Amanda Palmer, who allegedly loves interacting with fans and managing her career, admits to getting tired sometimes:

'Oh no, I do get exhausted […] Sometimes I think there’s this alternate reality where I don’t care as much about all the business and promotion and I actually spend my brain power on creating things.'

In his journal article on the risk and freedom of independent musicians in Toronto, Hracs (2012) finds that the need to balance creative tasks with the business side puts a great strain on independent musicians, requiring them to spread their energy and time across a range of workspaces. As one musicians that he interviews puts it:

'It is a full-time job but only about 10 percent actually involves music. The rest of it is the marketing and the looking for work' (Hracs 2012, p. 458)

In her study about musicians and the use of social media, Baym finds that the musicians interviewed mentioned nearly 40 different social media platforms through which they interacted with audiences, and observes that such a wide array of platforms is hard to master and maintain ‘even for those who devote their lives to studying social media, let alone those who would rather write and play music’. One musician she interviews voices his discontent:

'Am I going to read some […] small print about Facebook, you know, who can view this and that and try and figure it out in my brain or would I rather practice my guitar and become a better musician? I would rather practice my guitar and become a better musician (Baym, p. 309).'

Even 16 years ago, Todd Rundgren had difficulties juggling the music and the business side:

TallGuy246 asks: Has it been difficult for you to juggle your various jobs in Patronet such as CEO, marketing, sales representative, producer and musician?

Todd_Rundgren_99: What gives you that idea? Lol. Yes it is difficult juggling those jobs. One of the things we are working on this month is getting me some help.

Todd_Rundgren_99: That should free me up to concentrate on music, hopefully. (oocities.org, 2009)

It can be argued that dealing with the business side can distract from the main aim of a musician of making music; pushing this even further, it is worth noticing the danger that the current changes in the music industry could lead to a reversal of values, where musicians with less talent, but better entrepreneurial skills become more successful, and those who spend more time crafting their art and are not tech savvy will be left behind. 

References:

Baym, Nancy K. (2012) 'Fans Or Friends?: Seeing Social Media Audiences As Musicians Do'. Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 7.1 pp.216-315. Available at: http://www.participations.org/Volume%209/Issue%202/17%20Baym.pdf (Accessed: 18.11.2015)

Hracs, B. (2012) 'A Creative Industry In Transition: The Rise Of Digitally Driven Independent Music Production’ in Growth Change 43.3 (2012): pp.442-461. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2257.2012.00593.x/pdf (Accessed 18.11.2015)

Hracs, B. (2011) Risk And Freedom For Independent Musicians In Toronto. University of Toronto, 2011. Available at: http://martinprosperity.org/papers/Hracs%20%282011%29%20Risk%20and%20Freedom.pdf (Accessed: 29.10.2015)

Morrison, E. (2012). Why social media isn't the magic bullet for self-epublished authors. [online] the Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/30/tweet-about-cats-just-write (Accessed 29.11. 2015).

Oocities.org, (2009). Forgotten But Not Gone - ZDNet Chat. Available at: http://www.oocities.org/hodja451/archive/pages/zdchat.html (Accessed: 29.11.2015)

Vagabondagepress.com, (2016).Interview with Amanda Palmer by Fawn Neun. Available at: http://www.vagabondagepress.com/90601/V2I1IN1.html (Accessed 18.11.2015)

My CDs have arrived and the EP is out!

I am very excited that today my CDs for 'Beyond The Glass Sky' have arrived! They look great. 

I created the artwork myself, using one of my pictures and combining it with layers of royalty free stock images found on the internet.

This is what they look like:

I have written a newsletter using mailchimp.com and sent it to my subscribers. This time I remembered to add all the subscribers I have on my ReverbNation list, which counted over 400 email addresses, so now my list of subscribers has grown significantly. It's interesting to see in the future if this makes a difference, because my original subscribers all came from people signing up at gigs or from Bandcamp sales, while ReverbNation is more of a social website for musicians, driven by a 'follow for follow', 'like for like' policy.

The EP is now available on Bandcamp and I can now also fulfil my pre-orders.

Since I'm on the subject of publishing, I would like to describe how I do it and talk a bit about the main platforms I use.

Bandcamp is the main platform I use to sell my music, and the only place people can buy my CDs in hard copy. In addition, I put my music in digital form on iTunes, Spotify and Amazon, but these don't accept submissions from individuals, so the submission would need to go through a service such as TuneCore or CdBaby. Even ReverbNation offers now this feature. Last year, when I released my first EP, 'Monsters', I did some research into companies offering publishing services and decided to go through DistroKid. This online distributor sends music to the main online retailers, for a yearly fee.

This answer on the DistroKid FAQ page for the question: 'How is DistroKid better than TuneCore?' seems relevant in helping you understand my choice:

'Both services upload your music to stores and give you 100% of your royalties.

DistroKid is a lot less expensive, and has a better user interface. 

TuneCore charges $49.99 per year per album. $29.99 for the first year.

DistroKid charges $19.99 per year and lets you upload unlimited songs and albums.' (Distrokid.com)


DistroKid's yearly fee was particularly useful for me, as I wanted to be able to release as many singles as I wanted without worrying about money.

Bandcamp is similar, in the sense that one can publish an unlimited number of albums or singles, but the company keeps 15% of the sales. The great feature of Bandcamp though is that it supports pay-what-you-wish, meaning that an artist can set a minimum price for their album, but the buyers can pay more if they want to.

Here is an excerpt from an article comparing Spotify to Bandcamp, which refers to the pay-what-you-wish function on Bandcamp:

'Jason Shanley, an independent artist who records as Cinchel, says he went through TuneCore, a third-party distributor, to get his music on Spotify. TuneCore, however, requires a yearly subscription, the cheapest of which starts at $9.99 per year, not including other fees for setup. Other than the lag time, he says the payout was too low. "I’m losing too much money with an account there. I think I made $2 from it this year or something.” 

Instead, Shanley opts to put most of his discography on Bandcamp. Even though he prices most of his albums at $1 or free, Shanley points to Bandcamp’s name-your-price model as an opportunity for profit from enthusiastic fans. "Maybe about 25% of buyers paid more than the minimum,” he estimates.

"I think there’s a psychology where if you don’t charge anything for it, people don’t think it’s worth anything," he says "But there’s a point where if you charge too much for it, then they don’t feel like it’s justifying that much of a cost.”

Josh Brechner, also an independent artist, notes that Bandcamp helps artists in giving their albums an optimal price. He says Bandcamp recommends charging around $4 for a five-track album. "But they’ll pay more if they like it,” says Brechner, who records under the moniker Visager. "In a way, that’s sort of like, ‘We believe in you.’

My personal experience confirmed the above, as I repeatedly had buyers pay a much higher price than the minimum. In fact, for 'Beyond The Glass Sky', from selling 2 CDs on Bandcamp (one for £100, one for £30 - with a set minimum price of £7.99) I managed to cover the production costs of the 50 CDs I printed. 

This seems to confirm some of the opinions I read in books and articles (such as Amanda Palmer's 'The Art of Asking', Kusek's 'The Future of Music', Kevin Kelly's '1000 True Fans' (http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans) and gives me hope that it is possible in the digital age, with a lot of work, not necessarily music-related, to make a living relying on a small number of dedicated fans.

EP-related work: Summer Breeze video

In the past few days I've been working on a video for one of the songs on the EP, 'Summer Breeze', as part of my promotion strategies.
I know it's a strange time (beginning of November) to be promoting a song about summer, but I'm trying to sell it as a nostalgic track, the longing for summer feeling one has when it gets cold outside.
I was meant to have a proper promotional video for another song, 'Fall in Love', combining footage of me singing with clips from a short film a friend agreed to let me use, but he changed his mind and now,  even though the video has been edited, I cannot use it.

Here is a short excerpt of what it would have looked like:


It's been a while since I have decided to publish at least a video every month. Looking at all the popular Youtube channels, it seems like a key factor in achieving and maintaining popularity is to constantly create content and put it out there. A Youtube channel such as https://www.youtube.com/user/DanielaSings (Daniela Andrade) updates with a new performance video every month, while Tiffany Alvord, another Youtube singer (https://www.youtube.com/user/TiffanyAlvord) posts 3 to 5 videos a months, which can be a mixture of music videos, vloggs (video-blog) and lyric videos.

I have several videos filmed ready to be edited, but they are all for tracks which will be on my future album. Right now I am promoting the EP, so I have to publish a video for a song on the EP.
'Lotus Flower' already has a video on Youtube, 'Cosmic Latte' has a video scheduled to be filmed at the end of the month at University of Surrey, 'Fall in Love' can't be used, with 'Let Go' I'm not quite happy. This only leaves 'Summer Breeze' as the video for this month.

Video editing took me 2 days, with a break and then another day for colour grading. I edit in Final Cut Pro X on my Macbook and use only the effects available within the software. As a future objective, it would be useful to look through the variety of plugins available for Final Cut and try out some of them, especially for the slow motion effect (Twixtor seems to be very well regarded on the internet, but I haven't tried it yet).

The video was put together from short clips of my summer holiday in Mallorca, this September. Not only I feel like it fits the song very well, but I think it's nice that I'll be able to look back and have some memories connected to it.


Before publishing the video, I had to design an eye-catching thumbnail for the video; I have noticed that videos tend to have more views since I've started using custom thumbnails for them. This feature is only visible though if your channel has the status of Youtube partner, which mine has had for a while. I am also trying out a new format for the title. Usually I do 'artist name hyphen song name'. This time I'll be using double dash and see if it makes any difference.
I have drafted a newsletter on mailchimp.com which I will be sending out tonight.

For the next video I will record myself playing piano and singing my song off the EP called 'Cosmic Latte' at University of Surrey. Since it's the university I graduated from this summer, I am used to the facilities there and I love their beautifully sounding Steinway piano in studio 1.

Musicians building a brand and finding a niche: Steam Powered Giraffe and the steampunk subculture

When the major labels developed the star system (in which the revenue was provided by a small number of artists, affecting choices regarding which artists should be released and promoted to the public) lots of musicians on the roster did not benefit from the amount  of exposure the stars did. The model certainly did not favour niche musicians (Anderton, 2013, p. 5). Nowadays, the Internet enables people with common interests from all over the world to gather in a virtual place, giving a chance to niche musicians to reach their specific audiences. Wall and Dubber (2010) observed, with application to the niche of jazz music, the surprising amount of attention accorded to this genre online, compared to the small amount of time dedicated to it in mainstream media. This comes to support the democratic nature of online activity for both musicians and music consumers.

Steam Powered Giraffe are an American band who combine music with theatricals and mime to create a performance associated with the steampunk culture. There are a number of other self-proclaimed steampunk bands, such as Abney Park, Vernian Process and The Cog is Dead. Although they label themselves ‘steampunk’, their music tends to be mutually divergent and lack the stylistic coherence of other subcultural genres such as goth or punk (Ferguson, 2001, pg. 67). They have in common the aesthetics of steampunk subculture, the fashion, preoccupation with creating personas, and the DIY ethos. 

Even though the music in itself does not have anything particularly ‘steampunk’ in it, it is the branding and association with an online community that allowed Steam Powered Giraffe to gather an audience. If an artist combines talent, imagination and brand with good social and networking skills and manages to find his or her niche, the amount of support they receive might prove surprising. This is also recognised by Kusek (2005, p.28) who argues that success in the an overcrowded music landscape can be reached ‘if and when musicians can define their niche, they differentiate themselves and reach people who are interested in their uniqueness’.

Steam Powered Giraffe Logo (www.steampoweredgiraffe.com)

Steam Powered Giraffe have an elaborate brand, maintained both in performances and online,
involving the creation of personas with a complex fictional backstory (the band members pretend to be automatons created in 1896), elaborate make-up, steampunk clothing and a fitting logo. This brand is extended to a whole fictional universe, reflected in the band’s merchandise, a comic containing fictional adventures of the robots and a card game based on the same characters. These are all created by the band members, who also run the website; the band’s sound engineer is considered part of the band and appears frequently in the band’s webcomic stories and video blogs - yet another example of musicians understanding the importance of being self-sufficient.

The band’s Facebook page shows continuous engagement with their fans - from sharing live streams of rehearsals to the ‘Fan Art Fridays’ - a weekly updated Facebook album containing fan art. They also post pictures and videos of the band offstage, such as videos of them doing their make-up; this does not ruin their personas, but adds authenticity and familiarity, creating the illusion of intimacy referred to above (p.35). The band runs a pay-what-you-wish website subscription, which offers extra material and allows the fans to become ‘Engineer-eteers’ and support the maintenance of the ‘robots’. Music is released through iTunes and TuneCore and physical CDs can be ordered on the website; the website store also contains various merchandise based on the band’s concept and artwork.

Steam Powered Giraffe is a great example of an independent band employing entrepreneurial skills to target, build and maintain an audience. In the age of internet, reaching out to people is easier than ever; the difficult the job for a musician is to find their niche audience and to create a distinguishable identity. 

References:

Anderton, C., Dubber, A, and James, M (2013) Understanding The Music Industries. London: Sage Publications.

Steam Powered Giraffe, (2012). Steam Powered Giraffe - Honeybee. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojYK6CW8gdw (Accessed 1.11.2015).

Wall, T., and Dubber, A. (2010) Experimenting With Fandom, Live Music, And The Internet: Applying Insights From Music Fan Culture To New Media Production". Journal of New Music Research 39.2 (2010): 159-169.

EP-related work: rearranging, re-mixing and re-mastering an old track

As part of my new EP, I am including and older track (published last year on Youtube), which received good feedback from my online followers and was not included on any other release.
The track is called 'Lotus Flower' and its theme is social inequity - it explores the relationship between the less fortunate and the ordinary people, the main idea being the fact that usually we all pretend to care while at the same we are happy that we are not the miserable ones.

This is the track in its original version:

In this version, the track has quite an unusual structure for a song; I believe it is the longest song I have written, going over six minutes. 

What is specific to this song is that instead of the traditional alternation between verse and chorus, there is a constant switch between vocals and violin, the two leads having balanced importance. The timbre of the real violin adds a lot to the overall vibe and to the quality of the mix, providing an interesting contrast to the synths and drum sounds in Logic that form the rest of the backing. 

The intro is extended to about a minute and a half and it starts with a violin solo in 4/4; I wrote this part in the high register of the instrument to make it sound more wailing and emotional.  When the beat comes in, the drums and bass are in 5/4, while the violin and the piano are still in 4/4. There is also an arpeggiated synth/pad with a 6/8 pattern, which is present almost all throughout the song. 

The bass line constructs a melody in 5/4, while following the drumbeat in a way that makes the irregular rhythm feel almost natural.

                                 sample bassline:

The first verse is followed by a beautiful violin solo section, which leads into the second verse. An 8-bar interlude bar that allows a house beat to creep in, with a fade in; the house beat stays until the end of the section. The reversed piano that was introduced before, as a prefiguration of the second section, makes a second appearance and links between the two big sections of the song. The violin takes the piano line from the very intro and plays it, then dubs it up a third; this becomes the main motif around which the whole second half of the song is built. The rhythm changes to 12/8, matching the same piano pattern.  

                                           this piano motif:

is quantized in triplets and becomes this, in 12/8:

Maintaining the dialogue, the vocals imitate the violin, by singing these same notes and then dubbing the melody a major third up. To provide symmetry to the track, the drums add an extra 'beat' of 3/8, turning the rhythm into 15/8, an equivalent for the 5/4 we encountered at the beginning of the song.  There is symmetry in terms of melody as well; first we come back to the melody of the first verse, basically finishing the song with a third 'verse' which is followed by the violin playing the exact same melody that was played in the intro, with the same accompaniment and background. 

         Structure diagram of 'Lotus Flower' - original version:

The main influences for this track come from my past experience of listening Cafe del Mar and 'Absolute Relax' albums, the sort of chilled tracks with a solo violin playing the melody. I was particularly thinking of the Enigma - Secret Garden track and replicating that sort of sound, which I did by adding lots of reverb, also by boosting mids and lows on the EQ, because my raw sound was very screechy and thin. The piano responses to the violin in the second violin section solo were inspired by Moby's Porcelain and they are played in the same free manner, humanized in Logic around the beat. However, my track is not that 'chilled'; the vocals are in a pop-rock style, other influences come from acid house tracks and the shuffle beat is an influence from rock bands (song like Muse's 'Uprising' or Kasabian's 'Fire' come to mind).

                                             EQ on violin:

To make the track fit with the rest of the EP, I decided to re-arrange it; the mix could also be improved and, of course, if I was changing these things, I had to master it again.

I decided that the initial length was too much so I immediately decided to get rid of the long intro. In order to make the track more easy-listening, I got rid of all the unusual time signatures and transformed them all in 4/4 in the first half and 6/8, in the second half of the song. 

Because the mix was too cluttered, I got rid of some of the layers (particularly pads) and turned others down, keeping them in just to add texture. I turned the drums up and spent some time working on the drum sound with compression and EQ. I also worked on the vocal sound and added some pitch correction where needed.

For the mastering, I used a combination of Waves Multi Maximizer and FabFilter ProL (Limiter), which is a new plugin that I'm trying out. I found Pro-L very useful, as it has different templates which can work for different things - for example limiting or adding simulated tape saturation to the audio.

My mastering project for 'Lotus Flower':

I am very satisfied with my work of the last few days (and especially yesterday) because there is a massive difference between the two mixes. I have also managed to make the latest master as loud as some other commercial releases, which I couldn't in the past without making it sound over-compressed.

And this is the final result, which will be on my self-produced, self-published EP: