The knifelady

New Year no surprises?

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:40:00 +0000

If you already know about my rating system then skip on down to the next header, otherwise here's the lowdown.

The rating system
The rating system I use for this blog is somewhat unique. It's not a reflection of how much I like the music itself as much as it is of how far I am along the process of conversion from consumer to fan. So, over time you may well see some of these ratings go up if I mention an artist again. And indeed go down, as musical changes of direction or failure to keep my interest are just some of the reasons that may affect a rating.

Congratulations, you've made a temporary blip of interest on my radar. Now how are you going to keep it?

I've seen enough of you to recognise and remember you, but I'm undecided so I'm not really following you (yet). I may make a spur of the moment decision to check in on what you're up to once in a while, but even that's no guarantee. May also apply to artists I am aware of, but whose music I've decided I don't have enough interest in to want to pursue further based on what I've heard.

I'm liking what I hear in general, but I still wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I will be wandering past your site occasionally, and there is something like a 50% chance I'll be buying your next offering once I find out about it, providing I have the money available.

Now I am a fan, so the chances are I'll be past your site once every month or two at least. There's a 90%+ chance your next offering is already sold, and occasionally I might even be going for something more than the basic package (if you have one)

Reserved for very few, this is about as close to internet stalker as you can get. I am actively watching because I do not want to miss your next release date, tour in my area etc. etc. You may not always be aware of the fact I'm looking over your shoulder to see what you're up to, but trust me, I'm there on a weekly if not more like a daily basis. Depending on how you tend to release your information, I may well be signed to your mailing list as well.

Who I've been looking at
Firstly as a quick update from my review of the year post, it's probably going to come as no surprise that the Skitzo Calypso album "Ghosts" has arrived safe and sound. And in fact a few days earlier than I was expecting it. Meantime I'm still waiting for my Natalia Safran album, even though the email exchange with Sellaband about the situation (and other subjects) continued after my review of the year post was written. Indeed it will soon be another month since she last logged into Sellaband and more complaints have started appearing on her wall in that time. And enough said by my last post on what I'm thinking at the moment as a result of these events.

As for the Skitzo Calypso album, interestingly although I like it nothing has leapt out and grabbed me above any other track as a must-listen. The tracks come across as too similar rather than having the variety (and hence interest) that Brad's solo project album ("The Day The Devil Fooled The World") did. Rather I think the better (and more memorable) tracks are the ones up for free download. Even though it's well known I'm not a fan of rap, my pick of the bunch is therefore "Ready or Not" - the song you'd probably be least expecting me to choose of the eight available (5 on the EP + 3 free).

Into the Night are in the process of changing their name etc. to Howling Dollhouse. So the album I posted as expecting this year is going to be released under their new name. They already have a new website and a new video for the first single from the album which you can view from the Howling Dollhouse link I just gave you.

Don't know whether he read my last blog post, but it looks like Matthew Ebel is finally getting himself organised with regard to sending out things overdue from last year, causing me to once again relax and stop doubting my sanity for now. Looks like I'll be able to expect this in the first half of March, given the travel time for post and the fact that the album part of "The Lives of Dexter Peterson" is expected to be mastered and have all its artwork ready by the end of February - once again it makes much more sense to send everything together at this point.

I also now have an album title for the new Poets of the Fall album due this year. The album is called "Temple of Thought" and the first single from it "Cradled in Love" has already been played on radio in Finland. Of course this also meant within a couple of hours it had already been uploaded to Youtube, despite the fact it wasn't even available to buy at the time. Unusually this isn't an up-tempo track (as might be expected from the first release off an album) and might therefore explain why a different single is being released in Germany. Whilst I don't generally link to unofficial uploads, I've got a particular reason for doing so this time. So go listen to the full song here and then give your ears a real treat by listening to the full quality clips posted on the artist's own site. Like many in this day and age, I'm often guilty of listening to mp3s for convenience and portability, but it's nice to be reminded of one of the reasons I still buy CDs in the first place, given what can happen to track quality in some cases. And at the same time there has also been a reminder of the dilemma fans face in the form of this post. Just as artists seemingly face the "chicken and egg" situation of not being able to get their music on the radio or tour until they have enough fans in a country, so there is also the problem from the fan side of how to convince others to listen to an artist (and hopefully eventually convert into fans) when their music isn't being played on the radio and they're not touring there either. Hence one of the reasons people turn to illegal means in the first place, even though a lot of artists seem to be under the impression sharing is actually hurting their sales despite the fact those who like what they hear will often buy it later. People don't buy music they haven't heard unless they are already reasonably big fans of the artist that created it, yet there are still way too many roadblocks out there stopping music getting to potential listeners without them resorting to methods considered illegal, given music should be considered a global market.

So onto the new stuff and as usual we're at the time of year where I go looking around at some of the artists I haven't been near in a while to see what they're up to, rather than actively looking for new music. However that doesn't stop new music from finding me, and it's been interesting to spot that I am starting to get the odd artist follow me on Twitter, seemingly appearing from nowhere. Unfortunately I haven't picked up anything that has grabbed my attention sufficiently to warrant a follow back (at least at this point), and as can probably be expected the follows have therefore tended to be temporary as a result. Most interesting so far has been Bridge Construction, who sounded like they ought to be something I'd have fairly high interest in listening to from the description in their biography, but have turned out to be a pretty disappointing take-it-or-leave-it based on the tracks I've heard so far.

As for those I've been to visit so far, it feels like I'm pretty much suffering the curse of the dead due to unclear, outdated or just plain old hard to find information presented to those dropping by rather than actively following. Three examples of such artist websites follow.

It's been rather a long time since I stopped off at Mandyleigh's page and it's unclear whether the most recent post on her blog is a couple of weeks old or more like a year old as a result. What does seem to be certain is that family has been taking up a lot of her time since I was last there and the music has been forced into taking a back seat as a result. Indeed the fundraising she started on her own site for a second album back in 2010 looks like it didn't really go anywhere either and there's seemingly no new music available since she recorded her Sellaband album. Whatever she's currently up to, I wish her well, but it doesn't look like anything much is (or will be) happening musically any time soon.

I've also wandered past Lily's site, but the obvious information on it appears to be about a year out of date, as the "February 8th single release date" shown on the homepage appears to apply to last year. She does appear to be active on Twitter though, so will be seeing what further info I can get from there as she always used to be a pretty friendly and fast responder before.

Bulletproof Messenger's site pretty much continues to annoy me. I find I get much more useful info a lot easier from anywhere but their own website. I really like these guys and their music hence why I'm signed to their mailing list, but it never ceases to amaze me how poor their website seems at introducing them and their music to anyone hearing them for the first time who will have dropped by to find out more. When you get more from Youtube and even from Twitter than from an artist's own site, it's quite clear they're really not making best use of their potential.

One other place I've been was to visit Grooveduke's site to find out how he was getting on with the cancer battle. Seems he is still holding off on getting the transplant operation done and started looking for a management team at the end of last year to try and get some progress towards getting a new album funded. Looks like the one he attempted (and failed) to get made on Sellaband did indeed get finished. It's called "Heavy Mariner" and whilst I have to admit I never really got into his music, I quite like the rather distinctive album art he had made for this (of which there appears to be more in a similar style elsewhere on his site). There hasn't been any update to his blog in January though, so I can only hope his latest trip to hospital has gone well.

The websites I've been looking at
Netvalar who I first met on Sellaband has resurfaced on the music scene after being pretty much absent for a while now. It looks like he's reopening his music research, but has dropped the Netvalar name and slightly bizarrely has me listed as one of his mentors, despite the fact I only scrambled out the consumer pile and started looking at music and crowdfunding as a result of discovering Sellaband. So it's a little strange to feel someone considers me a mentor when I've spent all the time we've been interacting in learning from scratch myself. A process which is still ongoing, but for which I really ought to publish a "what I've learnt so far" type post soon, listing the conclusions I've reached to date. Five years has caused me to contemplate some interesting stuff, after all.

I've also started a little more training of my station on Last FM. So far I'm up to just over 500 artists covering about 3000 plays, though the first couple of pages are now getting pretty representative of who I'm listening to most at this point in time, whilst being not necessarily so accurate of who I've listened to most if the past were properly taken into account too.

That's pretty much all I've got for you at the moment. Recovering from Christmas/New Year and getting January with all its birthdays (including a major one of my own this year) and wedding anniversaries out the way always tends to take up a lot of time (yet another reason for me not looking for that much in the way of new music at this time of year), so hopefully I'll be finding some more interesting info and sites for you soon.

Review of the Year 2011

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:17:00 +0000

Welcome to my annual review of the year post when you can discover my artists and songs of the year as well as a whole load of other interesting things. Slightly later than planned because a lot has been happening, even as I've been trying to write this. So have I now received all the Sellaband albums I found myself still waiting for last year? Has Matthew Ebel managed to do the one thing I said last year would convince me to go Entourage for life? And what other stories do I have to tell from this year? Read on and find out.

Sellaband album update
Those who remember my post from last year will remember I reported on a number of albums I was still waiting for, despite them being over the 1 year deadline. Incredibly, a year after that update I'm still waiting on some, meaning it's now at least 2 years since they reached their target and the albums still haven't been seen. So here's an updated status report on the ones I'm still missing.

Natalia Safran
Target Reached: November 12th 2008
Status: Supposed to have been sending albums out before Christmas more than three years after reaching her target, but I still haven't received anything. Sellaband were suggesting before Christmas that people ought to be leaving messages on her wall about the situation and were laughed off by other believers as it being a waste of time. Whilst it's something I agreed with even then, I'm also someone who often gives people more chances than the majority would say they really deserve, so I did leave a message in order to prove or disprove once and for all what was being said. And just as I'm re-reading this post prior to publishing, it seems she's finally logged into her Sellaband page, several WEEKS after the message was left and left something on my wall claiming to have never received my address and that I am obviously not very well informed because she has been making regular updates on Facebook. Yet with only one blog post in 2011 (the previous one was in 2009), and her website information way behind reality (as I've mentioned in past posts), ironically any reason for not being "well informed" can only fall on her shoulders because she has made absolutely no effort to keep people informed in the place where she received her funding i.e. on Sellaband. I'm not going to chase after her with my address AGAIN. Sellaband have it (as they have had since I signed up to the site and there's been no problem on this score with any artist to date - albums for 33 different artists both sent and received so far) and it's part of the T&C I agreed to to allow them to share it with artists anyway. So I've left a message on her Twitter account asking why Sellaband won't give her my address and we'll see just how long it takes to get the answer to that question (I'm not convinced she's even bothered asking Sellaband for believer addresses in the first place at this point). If she was really as interested as her wall post on Sellaband sounds, she ought to have been looking out for some kind of response from me, or have got one of her "wonderful team of people" doing so and responded to that within a few hours. No prizes for guessing silence prevails, so I've officially lost patience and am now pretty much expecting that this album will never turn up.
Impression: Seems someone needs to climb out of cloud-cuckoo land and realise that Facebook is not the only way you communicate and that people will not follow you to the ends of the earth until you've built up some trust in the first place. Definitely an artist who does not deserve funding until she's learnt some lessons on making and retaining fans once you've caught some initial interest, so you can be sure I'll be letting you know if I catch her trying to fan fund elsewhere in future.

Lori Greco
Target Reached: August 17th 2009
Status: Contacted believers towards the end of the year to let them know her album would now be delayed into 2012. But there is conflicting information coming out of Sellaband itself as I received a Sellaband mail asking me to check my address details were correct as they were nearly ready to ship the CDs. 24 hours later a second mail arrived from Sellaband saying to completely ignore the first message as it had been sent out by mistake by their system. A third mail has since arrived, supposedly from Lori herself via the Sellaband system, which seems to suggest a release could still be as much as 4-6 months away.
Impression: Whilst there has been some communication (in fact of the remaining artists I'm waiting for she has been the most communicative), I almost certainly wouldn't join in any future fan funding for this artist due to the incredibly long time since she reached her target before anything is likely to appear. Considering she signed up to Sellaband in 2007, the entire process will have taken nearly 5 years before the album is seen and that's way too long to be asking for money in advance. Unless she can demonstrate more timeliness in future projects, I'd have to consider her unsuitable for fan-funding, despite the potential shown on the communication front.

Cubworld
Target Reached: December 16th 2009
Status: Unknown. Last update on Sellaband was back in June to say he'd finally hit the studio and giving a full track listing for the album. There was a second studio update from him done as a Youtube video in September that wasn't mentioned on his Sellaband page which stated he was about halfway through the recording process, but you really had to be following him to be aware of it without searching it up.
Impression: I'm starting to get to the point where I'm beginning to regret my decision of 2 years ago to buy more heavily into his project. Whilst other events this year (more about that later) have helped to extend my patience on this one, the big change on Sellaband from the $50K and managed releases to artists setting their own budgets and being left to their own devices appears to have come too soon for this fledgling artist.

Narrowly missing out on being included in the above as I received their album in the last week of December is Radio Orange. However as their album was supposedly only awaiting artwork over a year ago and only Natalia Safran has taken longer to produce an album so far, you can probably guess I'm far from impressed here as well.

I haven't kept track of which albums from before the bankruptcy (other than the ones I'm personally waiting for) are still missing, but suffice it to say the fact that it will soon be 2 years since the new management took over and there are still albums outstanding from before that in the first place is something which reflects extremely badly on them and their ability to deal with problems. It's hard to see how Sellaband can ever regain trust now, given the length of time that has passed. And now that it has chased most of the remaining interest in the place away by closing the forum it's also hard to see how it can play catchup on other sites now it has succeeded in knocking itself back to square one. Particularly as its own slogan tells me it hasn't learnt this important lesson about fan funding in the first place.

There is also one other thing which worries me somewhat and that is the fact that two of these three overdue artists were seemingly being mentored by one particular group of believers who appeared to have some links in the music industry. And it makes me wonder as a result how much problem is at the artist end and how much is down to those who were stating they were providing advice and support to the group of artists they'd chosen to promote as part of this collaborative effort. How much "old-school thinking" has Sellaband really had lurking in the guise of "forward-thinking" believers? Maybe even more than I thought?

Favourite songs/albums of the year
This year's song list is based on songs or artists I've heard for the first time this year. Obviously if the artist was known to me already then only songs from the last 12 months count. However where I only encountered an artist for the first time in the last 12 months, the song I've chosen may be older. As usual, I'm placing a one song per artist limit on the chart and the condition that you must be able to listen to the tracks I've chosen online for free. Sadly Songza is still restricted to the USA only, so there's no playlist for you to listen to while you read my blog as there was last year. The album chart requires me to have bought or received a copy of the album in question within the last 12 months for it to be included.

Favourite Songs
1. I Wish I Were - Matthew Ebel
2. We Love The Underground - We Love The Underground
3. Who - Tim Bennett (now known as Civilized Tears once again)
4. The Stars - Fox Amoore
5. Beat Into You - Bob Gentry
6. Autumn stories Week 9 - Fabrizio Paterlini
7. You don't remember my name - Lauri
8. Ruby Jean - Aly Cook
9. Kiiminkijoki -Embraze
10. Małe rzeczy - Sylwia Grzeszczak
11. It's Over - Nemesea
12. Wishful thinking - The Ditty Bops
13. Take It Like It Is - Misha Williams
14. In My Heart - Mono Inc
15. Like The First Time - The Giant Leap
16. Stand and Fight - Acoustic Jim
17. Remember - Gayle Skidmore
18. Holly - The Lights
19. Honestly - Kris Searle
20. Call me up - Guru Groove Foundation

Favourite Albums
1. The Day The Devil Fooled The World - We Love The Underground
2. Miseducated - Tim Bennett
3. The Quiet Revolution - Nemesea
4. Brand New Day - Aly Cook
5. Come to Dust - Second Person

If it wasn't for my one song per artist limit, I could quite easily have managed to fit at least three different tracks from Matthew Ebel in the song chart as a whole, based on the previews of songs I've heard from his new album project. But only one of these three has been officially released for anyone (rather than just his subscribers) so the choice of which to include decided itself, despite the fact "All Over Again" currently looks like it could shape up to be my favourite on the album when it comes out.

Coming in a very close second is the final track on the album that also narrowly scoops my favourite album of the year award. The album in question is "The Day The Devil Fooled The World" by "We Love The Underground" with the track being the same name as the artist.

And in actual fact sorting out my top three favourite tracks into order has once again been very difficult this year. Additionally, my third favourite track "Who" comes from the album narrowly squeezed into second place for my favourite album of the year. Since releasing "Miseducated", Tim Bennett has reverted back to his former name of Civilized Tears and has started broadcasting on UStream. Dates for 2012 shows should be announced very shortly via his twitter feed, so keep your eyes open for those.

Further down the list, my foray into Last FM has proved my best form of discovery this year by providing a number of tracks from artists I hadn't heard before. These occupy spots 4,5,9,10,12,13,14 and 15.

In other highlights you'll find a track from the self-produced debut solo album from Lauri Ylönen (better known as the lead singer of Finnish group The Rasmus) at number 6. Unlike the band material, his solo album blends electronic with euro-pop and dance, even descending into a more Kraftwerk-like feel at times - a musical change of direction which appears to have polarised many existing fans.

The observant should remember Acoustic Jim and his song "Life Two Point Oh" as being something I liked very much during his failed trip on Sellaband. This year he's created his first full length album with his band "The Wires" and the track I've chosen is from that album. Incidentally, you can hear the complete album at the link I've sent you to, as well as download most of his older work for free.

There is also a certain irony to the selection that rounds out my top 20, as I first heard it when it was released back in June on Soundcloud. The debut album of Guru Groove Foundation (on which this track appears) was supposedly being funded on Sellaband, yet seems to have mysteriously released itself before the funding project required to produce the album was completed. Still, I guess reducing your Sellaband target 6 months after actually releasing the album does at least stop money from being tied up in the site, even though the whole situation feels more like witnessing a bad joke rather than a serious project on a well-managed site.

Special mention this year goes to "The Alphabet Song" by Second Person, which I obviously had heard before having spent so long on Sellaband and was therefore ineligible for this chart, despite the album only being released this year.

2012 albums
There are of course already some albums I'm looking forward to this coming year. Here's some information on the ones I already know about.

"Ghosts" - Skitzo Calypso - Released Jan 2nd
Technically this one is already out but the pre-ordered copies weren't being shipped until the week of release, so I haven't yet received my copy as I know it will take 2-4 weeks to arrive based on my experiences ordering music from the USA. Brad has released some samples on their bandcamp page and it's also currently possible to order the EP itself for less than $10 including postage from their website here. You'll also find 3 tracks which aren't on the CD to download for free at the link I just gave you.

Album title and release date TBC - Into The Night
Into the Night spent most of the summer recording their second album but things have gone rather quiet since late autumn so I've not heard any details on the album itself since then. The suggestion from the tour section of their website is that there will be a preview show in March, so I'm hoping they'll release some more concrete information about the album in the next couple of weeks.

Album title and release date TBC - Poets Of The Fall
Given their very predictable and organised release and touring schedule, their 5th studio album should be out at some point in the next 12 months, as last year was primarily their writing/touring phase and their previous 4 albums have been released around 2 years apart. Many fans are facing their 7th year of disappointment though as it seems even the might of gaming industry money and gold/platinum album releases in their own country isn't enough to get any tour dates further afield than the likes of Russia yet. A sobering thought for other independent artists out there and just one of the reasons why I think we could see a very interesting and modern twist on the ancient idea of patronage develop if those artists who want to stay independent are to find a way to tour without traditional industry money.

Entourage or not?
I've just reached completion on my second year as a member of Matthew Ebel's highest subscription level (The Entourage). Those who remember my post last year with my decision to renew will remember I made a promise that I would be prepared to declare myself as one of his Entourage members for life (financials continuing to allow me to do so) if he could successfully manage one thing during the year. So now it's time to reveal what has happened on this score since last year's post.

But before I reveal the outcome, I first need to explain a few things.

A large part of the top two tiers of Matthew's subscription service is the fact you get access to his entire back catalog. These tiers are therefore most obvious as a one-off for those new to his music who might want (and are able to afford) to pick up all his older stuff in one go. Once you've got that music, there's very little obvious reason why anyone would go for one of these subscriptions. In fact, Matthew himself was originally expecting that nobody would renew an Entourage subscription, but rather that fans would rotate through it. To be renewing at this level at all is therefore akin to making the following patronage statement.

I am more than a fan of your music. Probably a better description is that I am a fan of you. Others may be scratching their heads wondering why I'm paying over the odds and/or for what looks like nothing, but I don't care. Because I think you're worth it. Because I trust you. Because I believe you're doing your best to do a good job. And this is my way of making those statements to others who are hesitating on the idea of testing the waters because they have no experience of you and hence no idea of how trustworthy you are, in the hopes they'll give you the chance to prove yourself to them. After all, why would I renew if I wasn't happy?

The next main thing of interest came about as a result of Matthew's announcement back in August 2010. If you remember back to last year's review of the year post, I was excited by the prospect that he might be able to complete his current project "The Lives of Dexter Peterson" in a year. Having been one of the first believers on Sellaband, I've seen a lot of artists go through the site through signing up, raising funds and actually recording and releasing their albums, so the amount of work and the timescales involved for Matthew's much larger project where no funding collection time was involved were going to make for some very interesting comparisons. So the "one thing" I had in mind when I wrote my review last year was to see if Matthew could manage to complete his project before I was due to renew (to be complete within the year he originally planned would have meant it was finished a few months before this post even) whilst maintaining or improving on the level of service I'd seen from him in the first year. In some respects an extremely difficult thing to be looking for, but equally something I felt could only fully deserve that public "Entourage for life" declaration in response if achieved, because of the very fact it would blow a lot of what I thought I'd learned during my time as a Sellaband believer right out of the water in terms of what it was and wasn't possible to expect from an independent artist. But obviously I didn't want to introduce any pressure or outside influence at the time, hence why I'm only revealing this (for the first time to anyone) now the deadline I set is up.

And so the answer to the big question. Am I prepared to declare myself as one of Matthew Ebel's Entourage members for life?

No. Or at least... Not yet...

To understand my reasoning, it's also necessary to look at something else that has happened in the last 12 months. And that's what happened with the Sellaband project of Jonathan Davis of Korn fame. That project was originally started in December 2010 to fund the production of a DVD and Bluray of a concert that had taken place in 2008. The inference in the project description was that the finished product would be available very shortly after funding completion. The funding section of the project took about 4 months and the fans who had been spending money were obviously keen to get their hands on the finished product. First they were given a date in May and nothing arrived. Then they were given a date in June and again nothing arrived. People started to get angry and call Sellaband a scam despite the fact the project had only finished funding a couple of months previously (remember the T&C actually state a delivery time of up to 12 months for a Sellaband project) - something which can be at least partly explained by the fact Sellaband had actually taken the money for the project as it was spent, rather than on the day the funding target was reached. However the point at which the angry mob really started was in August when a DVD of the concert was discovered for sale on Amazon and yet no fan had received what they had paid for. And to add insult to injury the price on Amazon was much cheaper than what they had paid on Sellaband. Even the main Korn fansite started calling for legal action. Less than 6 months after funding on the project closed and it was completely impossible to miss the large number of people who had completely lost all patience with the situation. It appears that some people did receive the DVD in the end, but that this was exactly the same as the DVD that had been available for sale much cheaper on Amazon. As for those who had paid for the Bluray... well reading through the comments on the Sellaband page, it seems that didn't appear at all and people only got the DVD package instead. The comments on Jonathan Davis' Sellaband wall about the issue appear to have pretty much stopped some time in November which suggests people have already given in and moved on. It's therefore possible to rate the patience level in this case as about 6 months at worst and maybe a year at best (if you count the fundraising time as well). And the majority of those that donated were hardcore fans.

And so to Matthew Ebel, where you'll hopefully spot the parallels to the previous story in what I'm about to share. It's fair to say that there have been a number of positives this past year. The subscriber updates have been coming through fine, Matthew has been as responsive as ever to email etc. and if you had caught one of his gaming streams, there's a good chance you'd have caught a preview of a couple of the new album songs even before anything was released to his subscribers. Also, if it isn't already obvious from what I said in my "songs of the year" section, then I can also tell you that I already know I am going to like this new album. A lot. In fact, scrap the word "like" and insert the word "love" instead. This actually stands a real chance of becoming my favourite album of the year for 2012, even though it'll be up against some incredibly stiff competition for that one in the form of the new Poets of the Fall album for starters. Despite the fact the album has taken more than the year he originally planned, it looks like it's almost ready to go for mastering and (if you recall) I already suspected a year ago that the project would take more than a year to complete. If that had been the full story of the year, then I would have been severely tempted to make the "Entourage for life" declaration despite the delay in the album. Unfortunately there have also been some things which make me positively recoil in horror and seriously question whether I should be on a "patronage level" of support as a result, when I think of what I've seen with Jonathan Davis.

Matthew Ebel is the luckiest artist I have ever encountered. I have never come across an artist with such tolerant and patient fans before. Ever. Speaking as one of the earliest believers on Sellaband, yet one of few who seemingly still takes any interest in the site, I'd be inclined to think I am a very patient person. Yet I feel like I'm learning a new definition of the word patient here. Things that turn the average person into an unhappy customer seem to have exactly the opposite effects when Matthew gets it wrong. It's...interesting... There are times when I doubt both my customer service experience and even my own sanity as a result.

One of the perks of being a top level subscriber is that you get a framed and signed copy of any album released in the year you are subscribed, along with a playable copy. Matthew's "Songs From The Vault: Vol 3" was released at the end of 2010, so it should be pretty obvious that I was due a copy of that. However at the time, there was a problem sourcing the frames which Matthew explained and apologised for. Not a big problem - these things happen. However when several months had passed and there was no update, I tacked a "btw what's happening" type comment on the end of a response to another question he'd asked. It's quite obvious from what came back that he had completely forgotten that the framed copies hadn't been sent because he had been way too absorbed in the new album. But with the annual goody bags still to be sent and the album due to be finished in a few months as well, it seems he took the same logical step I would have done and decided to send it all together. Even though he didn't actually state that's what he was planning, the logic of the situation was such that again, it wasn't a problem. For me, the patience test really begins at the point it became obvious that the new album wasn't going to be ready in September but was more likely in early 2012. That's the point at which getting the goody bags organised and sent along with the already somewhat overdue framed copies for the previous album (and then worry about the new album later) would have made more sense. But as things stand at the moment, it seems we're still in a position where nothing has been sent. The last goody bag arrived in August 2010, meaning we're currently heading more towards 18 months, rather than something that's supposed to be an annual event. And the framed+playable copies of SFTV3 haven't arrived either a year down the line from the album's release. Add to that, the fact I asked if the annual meeting was going to be recorded (as previous years have been) and was told it would be, yet I've seen no copy online and no subscriber message arrived to say that one had been posted for those who had missed it, and in some aspects the customer service level has taken one heck of a tumble this second year compared to my first. I think you might agree I'd have some justification in breaking out the torches and pitchforks and (in fact) maybe even NOT resubscribing based on this story, particularly when you compare with the Jonathan Davis story and the reactions of (even long time) fans seen there.

Yet the torches remain unlit and the pitchforks left to rust, at least for now. I've not only bought a subscription, I've actually renewed my Entourage level. You see, not only is there no sign of anyone jumping up and down about any of the delays, I'm aware of more than one person who still wants to BECOME an Entourage member, yet there is no free slot for them to do so. In any case, if we compare with what I've already encountered on Sellaband, Matthew is far from overdue on the album, even though he's missed his own deadline - at the moment I'd have to say he's looking like spot on time (or maybe even early) for one of the conclusions I've reached on the length of time I believe artists need to produce an album. And remember his full project is to complete somewhat more than an album in the first place, so the other result of all this analysis is what has led me to that extended patience with Cubworld that I mentioned earlier.

I've also just watched more than $2500 for mastering of the album appear from donations to Matthew's site in only a week, something I know for a fact he genuinely didn't want to ask for in the first place (and in fact a fundraising attempt he didn't really publicise, but left to word of mouth to spread). And unlike some other artists I could name who have teams of people working for/with them, yet have done no better (or in some cases worse) on the service front this year, I know that Matthew is still doing pretty much everything himself. Credit where credit is due - that's far from easy.

So the complete opposite to what would be expected if people were unhappy is happening and it's kind of amazing to watch. And that applies for me as well - my inbuilt warning system hasn't got off yet despite the fact logic would say it ought to have done - I've only found myself feeling a little uncomfortable purely because it hasn't gone off in this case, yet still happily goes nuts and is proved reliable elsewhere. I'm still getting to grips with this situation.

So despite the fact this is the second year running he's managed to rattle me enough for me to question my Entourage decision, at the moment the original reasons I went Entourage are still intact. Even though he's doing a very good job of bending my patience in some areas, I could also quote you some very good reasons why Matthew Ebel still has my trust. On balance, good enough to renew and see how things develop over the next year, but the trust level still isn't quite there for me to say with confidence today that I'll want to continue to go the extra mile of patronage and renew as Entourage next year. I really wasn't expecting this to be the case - the past 12 months ought to have been merely a case of sealing a deal that looked pretty much done after my first year. So the next 12 months are likely to be crucial in proving or disproving the impressions I've formed so far, and hence what I do when my renewal comes round again. I may have been following a gut instinct when I dived straight in at the deep end on this two years ago rather than having trust built up by prior experience, but I still find myself questioning whether that instinct was correct far too often, despite the fact experience has proved to me time and again that my instinctive first reaction is nearly always the one I ought to have followed (whether I actually did land up doing so or not)

I still have every confidence he will get himself organised eventually. And that key word "eventually" is really the big stumbling block. If Matthew Ebel is to increase and retain new members to his fanbase, sooner or later he's going to have to properly get to grips with the shark-infested consumer waters out there, where the Korn story gives a very good demonstration of just how fast people lose patience once you step away from your supportive friends and out into the "real world". And in an industry as saturated as the music business, once you lose the interest of a potential fan, the chances of you seeing them again are slim to none. Consumers are never as forgiving as fans and you don't convert from the former to the latter overnight - trust has to be earned first.

So I may have renewed at Entourage level, but there is currently no way I can bring myself to add the magic words of the promise it will be "for life" and still maintain a clear conscience at this point in time. Even though it's something I would love to be able to do, the fact remains that making such a statement essentially means that not only am I convinced he will not let me down, I'm also convinced he can cope with the consumer market. i.e. that he's not going to be in the habit of making the kind of mistakes that will make YOU feel let down, if you were to follow in my footsteps of direct support rather than involving a middleman or the traditional music industry. And the most important point - to be able to make that statement publicly with the confidence to believe I'm speaking the truth. I don't currently have that confidence and the jury is still out on whether I ever will.

Other stories

1. The direct approach
As usual, there are a few stories I haven't told you this year. For instance, I was approached earlier in the year by one of the artists I'd successfully funded on Sellaband who was looking to raise money for their next project. I don't know if they approached any of their other Sellaband believers, but they were actually looking for a loan to be paid back in 12 months with 10% interest. If I were still the wage slave I was when I first joined Sellaband, I'd almost certainly have looked at this in more detail, particularly as they are one of the ones where I have no regrets. But I've had to curb my spending on music in 2011 and it's looking likely 2012 is going to be a lot worse on that front unless things change significantly, so I had to turn the idea down straight off. Perhaps the interesting thing I discovered in the exchange though was that it appears that despite the fact this artist is considered one of the more successful ones on Sellaband, they still landed up suffering from the same curse of things being promised that never happened despite their association with the site being earlier than the point at which that issue got first brought into the limelight. And that revelation in turn has made me revisit my thoughts on what happened over a promise made to me in front of another believer back at Sellabration 2007. It's made me wonder whether my first thought on that one was right after all. Maybe a story for another day here.

2. An unusual project
You know how you sometimes get a very simple idea and before you know it it leads onto a bigger one - well I had one of those this autumn when Matthew Ebel announced he was starting a gaming group up for his VIPs, but never quite got around to writing up about it in this blog. Probably one of the things that frustrates me the most is that feeling of never being able to help an artist out because you don't have the connections they need, or because you're too far away to be of any practical use. There are reasons why I don't like the "tell all your friends" argument, but feel there ought to be something more useful out there that fans and artists alike are both missing (I'm still clueless on what that is btw). Even though I believe in discovery rather than marketing as a result, there are times when I do give the latter a try. So when the idea to convert the banner advertising the fact Matthew Ebel will give you 5 free songs into a spray reared its head, I decided to give it a go.

For those unfamiliar with sprays, in very basic terms there are a number of online multiplayer games released by a company called Valve Software which allow you to take a graphics file from your computer and spray it on a wall in the game (like a poster) so that other players in the game can see it. In many ways a form of digital graffiti/advertising. In reality it's not quite that simple as these games use Valve's own file format rather than a well known one, so images don't always work out (even if the game is new enough to allow you to import more well-known formats). But I used to create sprays for older versions of these games when I was playing at LAN parties something like 10-15 years ago, so I was confident I could make this particular one work. Then it would be just a case of playing on servers and leaving the image somewhere well-travelled in the hopes it might generate some interest. Nothing ventured, nothing gained despite the fact it was rather a direct approach and direct advertising is often pretty poor at generating interest.

Although I was already fairly sure he'd be OK with the idea, I did do the polite thing and ask permission to go ahead with the idea I had planned. So when the response was yes, but that he'd like some screenshots or video, that's probably the point at which the idea expanded and took on a life of its own.

See, if you remember, the first (and only) time I've ever created a video was the thankyou video for when Vegas Dragons hit 50K and I found myself having agreed to help Brian out by creating something based round the hours of footage he'd shot in London when he had a 3 day deadline to get it to Sellaband. Faced with the request from Matthew for video, I found myself in a "what the heck" mode and decided to make a bit more of an effort than merely a capture of 30 seconds or so of game footage. Again, whilst unlikely to generate much interest on its own, leaving another breadcrumb to be found on Youtube would also add to the potential for discovery, and as already stated I prefer discovery to marketing.

The soundtrack decided itself - after all what had I started with but an "Attention Getting Device"? As for the rest... well the second video I've ever created (and the first where I've collected the material to edit) pretty much speaks for itself, along with Matthew's comment on it. The only thing to add would perhaps be the fact there were some technical challenges to the recording side - in TF2 the inbuilt recording software does not capture sprays and Counterstrike was even more of a challenge due to my TF2 solution not working for that in the first place. In comparison converting the images in the first place was easy.

As to any responses? Things went pretty much as I expected. I saw a number of people who quite obviously stopped for a few seconds to take a look when I was using the "5 free songs" spray, but nobody has actually asked me anything about it to date. There were of course a few people who covered up the sprays I left with their own (another reaction I was expecting) and I actually killed a couple of people who were too busy doing that to notice someone was behind them. It hasn't stopped me on the sprays idea though as (unlike previous images which I merely converted) I already have a couple of prototypes I've created for his new album. Which he won't have seen unless someone else has sent him a screenshot of anything I've left in game as he hasn't played any games with his subscribers yet. It's still too early to tell whether the slightly different tactic I have with these is having the same or a different effect as the "5 free songs" one, but I'll be having fun investigating that in more detail over the next couple of months.

3. Regrets
The final story I have for you is the obvious one of the regrets I've had this year. The first and most obvious one is the fact I didn't manage to get down to London for Julia Johnson's release party. Even doing my usual "down and back the same day" approach rather than staying overnight means quite an expensive trip, and given the choice of one trip or spreading the money over a number of artists, well it's obvious which won in that case, despite the fact it would have been great to get down there and catch up with some people I haven't seen for a couple of years now.

The other regret I have is related to Brad Cox. The past 12 months in particular have brought a lot of actions (or lack of actions) from others which have contributed heavily towards the development of this feeling.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Bulletproof Messenger had just completed their $50K funding on Sellaband when an artist called Skitzo Calypso turned up. The production quality on the demos uploaded was well above the average on the site at the time and a combination of the genre of their music plus the timing of their arrival was absolutely perfect. Despite having a much smaller fanbase than BPM, they got rather a lot of interest and fast because of that combination - as far as the Sellaband users were concerned it looked like "the next BPM" had just turned up and there was a rush to buy parts as a result. But someone in the band or their management went into a panic and they announced they were withdrawing from the site when they'd already raised more than 20K of the 50K budget in just a few months.

But I've seen artists go into what can be best described as the "wow" factor - when people they've never met and who haven't heard of them before start sending money in their direction it's something they find unbelievable. And it looks like that happened with their singer (and main songwriter) Brad Cox. He'd obviously been doing a lot of the communication on the page and having got almost close enough to taste the $50K, he didn't want to give up on the idea that perhaps a tiny, unknown artist COULD raise that kind of money - tbh I don't think anyone in that situation would.

As one of the more interested believers, I got a message from him in my inbox - if he were to come back as a solo project, would I be interested? Did I think others would still be interested? Seemed clear enough to me - if people on Sellaband were genuinely there to look at the music industry a new way, and the music didn't come as a complete shock to what they'd experienced from that artist already, why wouldn't they be interested? Wasn't the whole point that people on Sellaband were prepared to buy based on the music? I was certainly prepared to give him the chance, even though the obvious question was whether he was going to stick around where his band had bailed. Based on what he said in his mails I went with my gut, despite the fact I only had his word and no prior knowledge of him. I believed him and bought back in when he started up the profile. (and quite heavily too over a period of a few months)

But the moment had passed. To this day, I still have no idea how much came down to timing (and hence how many of those still hanging around due to BPM had originally bought into Skitzo Calypso) and how much came down to trust issues as to whether he would stick around to raise the $50K or get cold feet and bail, but the fundraising didn't go so fast the second time around. Even though the profile later got converted back into his band one (after whatever had caused the original panic had obviously been sorted out), Sellaband themselves had by that time started to screw up in a way that was obviously chasing people off. Neither Brad nor his band completed any fundraising on Sellaband and eventually left again at a time it was clear a lot of believers didn't trust the site any more themselves.

What has happened since then? Well for starters the album that would probably have been made with the Sellaband 50K if Skitzo Calypso hadn't jumped ship the first time ("Burning Down An Empire") got made. Brad has released the solo project album ("The Day the Devil Fooled The World") that is listed as my favourite album of the year earlier in this post. And the new Skitzo Calypso album ("Ghosts") should be on its way very shortly (if it isn't already) as also mentioned earlier. Want to bet whether it gets here before the one from Natalia Safran?

Secondly, as usual, others have also helped to shape and solidify my opinions via what they have been doing (or not doing). When I stop to consider, I know there's at least one artist I bought parts in on Sellaband even before I'd ever heard of Skitzo Calypso in the first place who STILL hasn't released an album, yet I've got much more than that already in my posession which has been created over the same period from Brad at a quality as good as or better than the tracks he put up on Sellaband. And in a year when even Matthew Ebel has (at times) left me almost tearing my hair out, a realisation has dawned - to date, Brad Cox hasn't let me down at all. Not even once. Over something like a 4 year period since I first came into contact with him. Albums and tracks have been released exactly when stated and I couldn't ask for a better service in terms of what I've received through the mail (and when).

Had Skitzo Calypso stayed on Sellaband when they originally signed up it's likely they'd have got caught up in the original Sellaband bankruptcy after raising their 50K. Whilst that's a fate I wouldn't have wished on anyone, I'm still sad it didn't happen because it's clear from experience that unlike some of the far superior communicators (who did get funded, but have been poor/failed in the promises they were talking up), I'm convinced I'm looking at an artist who actually deserved to get supported instead. With the arrival of "Ghosts" in my mailbox, that feeling will be cemented. Whilst his communication ability is often pretty much on a par with the latest "Viagra spammer", Brad Cox will have gained my trust and proved he can do what really counts i.e. deliver - I would not hesitate to fund any project of his in future if I could afford to do so. And my regret is therefore twofold - firstly that I've left him to prove that to me the hard way rather than taking a more active approach from the time things on Sellaband were going sour, and secondly that I know I'm not in a position at the moment to be able to make up for that decision. No prizes for guessing who just moved themselves to the front of the queue for if and when I can afford to take on another artist with direct support funding.

And a lesson perhaps to be learned from this story. Getting funded should have two sides. Good communication is only half of the story - the other half is that you need to be able to deliver too. And yet that very fact leads us back to a "chicken and egg" situation, because if nobody is willing to take a chance on you by taking your word in the first place, how are new artists to prove they do in fact have what it takes to deliver? The reasons why the traditional music industry is looking to artists to prove they already have what it takes before they'll consider offering a contract these days become a lot more clear, when I consider my own experiences to date.

And Finally...
The realities of the financial crisis just keep hitting harder and harder with no sign of an ending. As a result I didn't put out as many posts as I was hoping to last year, mostly because I haven't been as active in looking for new artists due to the much lower amount of money I've had available to spend on music. And it looks like the problem is only going to get worse this year. Although I will be making posts this year, they'll probably be pretty much on an as-and-when basis as it's looking likely I won't be actively looking for new music this year due to lack of funds but will concentrate instead on following up on some of the artists I already know about - anyone new will likely only be those I happen to fall over on the way.

Changes

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 02:37:00 +0000

If you already know about my rating system then skip on down to the next header, otherwise here's the lowdown.

The rating system
The rating system I use for this blog is somewhat unique. It's not a reflection of how much I like the music itself as much as it is of how far I am along the process of conversion from consumer to fan. So, over time you may well see some of these ratings go up if I mention an artist again. And indeed go down, as musical changes of direction or failure to keep my interest are just some of the reasons that may affect a rating.

Congratulations, you've made a temporary blip of interest on my radar. Now how are you going to keep it?

I've seen enough of you to recognise and remember you, but I'm undecided so I'm not really following you (yet). I may make a spur of the moment decision to check in on what you're up to once in a while, but even that's no guarantee. May also apply to artists I am aware of, but whose music I've decided I don't have enough interest in to want to pursue further based on what I've heard.

I'm liking what I hear in general, but I still wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I will be wandering past your site occasionally, and there is something like a 50% chance I'll be buying your next offering once I find out about it, providing I have the money available.

Now I am a fan, so the chances are I'll be past your site once every month or two at least. There's a 90%+ chance your next offering is already sold, and occasionally I might even be going for something more than the basic package (if you have one)

Reserved for very few, this is about as close to internet stalker as you can get. I am actively watching because I do not want to miss your next release date, tour in my area etc. etc. You may not always be aware of the fact I'm looking over your shoulder to see what you're up to, but trust me, I'm there on a weekly if not more like a daily basis. Depending on how you tend to release your information, I may well be signed to your mailing list as well.

What I've been looking at
A lot of what I've been looking at recently appears to have had "change" as a theme running through it (hence the title of this post)

For starters, a couple of artists I'm aware of appear to have been undergoing an identity crisis.

T-ka changed her name to June Caravel back in May, but as an artist I don't particularly follow, I only spotted this at the beginning of December. Seems she decided to fund an EP via her own website rather than coming back to Sellaband and it's now available for pre-order. In addition, if you do pre-order, not only will you get to hear it prior to the official release, you can get into the release party for it for free. Assuming you can make it to London on January 10th that is.

The other identity crisis comes in the form of Tim Bennett, who has decided to revert back to the Civilized Tears name he was using when he originally signed up to Sellaband. He's recently started streaming performances on UStream in-between filming for the "Black Rain" video with the help of Bambi Monroe, who gets the main job of keeping the chatroom organised as well as relaying questions and trying to keep Tim's rockstar cat Hermione from stealing all the screen time. Whilst he's been mostly playing tracks from his "Miseducated" album, he's also thrown a couple of new ones into the mix, so irrespective of whether you like cats or good music it's worthwhile keeping an eye on his twitter feed for the announcement of his next concert if you want to catch some entertainment.

Onto a musical front with change as a theme, Fabrizio Paterlini has been continuing his "Autumn Stories" project. He's been releasing a track for free download every week since the beginning of October and he's finally coming to the end. He'll be selling an album with all the tracks he's released as part of the project plus some others in the New Year. Having been following the project since the start, it's been noticeable listening to the change from "warm" sounds at the start to a much colder feel in the later ones that mirrors the change from Autumn into Winter. Week #11 is a particular standout in this respect and paints a picture for me of opening the curtains in the morning to find the first frost of the year has hit, followed by stepping out into the crisp clear morning to find there's still some warmth to the sun. Stop on by his Soundcloud page to get the free downloads and find out what you've been missing.

The websites I've been looking at

Sellaband
Following on from my last post, I have still been keeping an eye on the place, but through curiosity as to whether anything different to what I was expecting would happen once the forum was shut down. And part of me doesn't really know whether to be happy or sad at the fact it appears that what I was expecting has indeed happened. The discussion that started on the forum (of which most but not all got copied into the support pages) died the expected death on the support pages with pretty much all the contributors choosing to take no further part. The Sellaband representative appears to have started up further threads since with the aim of getting people talking, only to have been met with the same level of tumbleweed. I've decided to continue to watch what (if anything) happens on those support pages until next year before scaling back fully as a result, but tbh I'm not expecting any change from the current situation. Obviously the lesson that if you want communication, the last thing you should be doing is shutting the place where you're getting it didn't sink in. And now that the horse has bolted it'll be too late to shut the gate in the slim event the change gets reversed. i.e. once people are gone, they won't be coming back later to communicate.

Interestingly the current top 2 artists on the site were both due to be deleted in January through having been on the site a year. Neither had even raised even half their budget, until recently when Guru Groove Foundation halved the amount they were looking to raise a few days ago, meaning they had about 3% of budget to go and hence that reduced target has now been reached (pending the 14day cooling off period after a budget change). I'll be interested to see what happens with the other artist, who was only looking to raise the minimum 3000 euro budget anyway.

Slowbizz
The aim of this new site is to bring artists to play in the comfort of your own living room. Or indeed shed, barn or whatever else you have available. Artists wanting to sign up to the network need to convince a minimum of 100 different existing fans to vouch for them to be considered for inclusion. Potential hosts apparently also go through some kind of vetting process before inclusion on the site. Slowbizz then aims to help the artist set up a tour between a number of these hosts (a figure of a minimum of 20 is quoted).

On the host side of the equation, each host is expected to pay the artist a fixed fee for the performance, arrange (and presumably pay for if necessary) accommodation and a meal for the artist and provide either transport to their next venue (if close enough) or a sum of money in lieu of that. They're also expected to be able to come up with a minimum of 10 attendees for the performance, but they are not expected to charge them for attending. i.e. it's expected the host will fill their venue with their own family/friends.

On the artist side of the equation, the artist pays Slowbizz a fixed fee for arranging the tour and an additional fee per venue visited. They're free to sell any merchandise or receive donations at the performance itself as extra income over the fee they'll receive from the host.

Sounds like a great way to listen to artists if you're a music lover, doesn't it? And if you're an artist it sounds like a very interesting way to get yourself some new fans, doesn't it? But whilst I see potential there, I also see a number of traps for the unwary. One of which could even make artists lose some of their existing fans. So let's take a closer look.

There seem to actually be quite a lot of costs for potential hosts. The fee you pay the artist is $205, which is quite a chunk of money on its own but certainly far from unreasonable if you compare it to some of the prices top-name artists charge just for one concert ticket. But as you're paying for the artist accommodation and will need to not only feed the artist, but your roomful of guests as well, you've essentially got a party to cater for and that's certainly not going to come free. Add to that the potential for a 100 mile round trip to deliver the artist to their next venue (or money instead) and I'm willing to bet the price for just one concert will actually cost a host more in the region of $500 once you take everything into account. Again, not necessarily unreasonable, but it does make it more of a special occasion thing rather than something you'd want to do on a regular basis unless you're rich. And that makes me wonder. When it comes down to it, how many people would invite any old random artist to play at that kind of cost level? Wouldn't it be more likely they were already fans of the artist?

And let's say the invite is for a special occasion (e.g. someone's birthday). If there isn't a big fan of the artist there, then there's a danger the artist becomes "background music" or constantly asked to play cover versions rather than their own songs, rather than the intimate experience they might have been expecting. There is room for some serious disappointment here if you're an artist that thrives on the intimacy and interaction when people genuinely pay attention to your music.

Slowbizz actually do a calculation on their site showing how much money artists could make from a 20 date tour. But however nice those numbers might look, there's actually a big howling gap in the equation. Essentially, if the host doesn't transport the artist to their next venue, then the artist is going to have to cover the cost of that themselves. Stop and think about it. Even if your venues are grouped fairly close, it's likely you're still going to have to get to the first one and find your way back from the last one. Now start thinking about playing on a different continent from the one you live on. How much are the flights going to cost? Oh and don't forget the transportation/insurance for any instruments too. Bet you those attractive looking numbers are starting to look less attractive the further you go from your normal area. And that's a problem because why would you pay someone else to find you gig dates in the area you already use?

And now for the real potential kick in the teeth. Let's assume for a moment that you CAN afford to make a tour in a completely different country or continent work financially. And given our internet era, let's assume you've already got fans in that area (one of the reasons you want to play there, after all?). Consider what happens if these fans cannot afford the fee to host or do not have a suitable venue in which to host, but would be prepared to pay a fee to see you perform. That means not only is your host a non-fan, they may well have no connection to one of your existing fans as well. The problem is easily identified once you re-read this statement from the Slowbizz website

The events are in principle only open to your close network of family members and friends. We don't want strangers to invite themselves into the intimacy of your own home

Seen the problem yet? Let me enlighten you. You have (potentially big) fans who have not had the chance to see you perform before because it's the first time you've come to their area and you're now performing just a few miles down the road from them. They might even have already been supporting you for many years. But irrespective of whether or not they could actually attend on the day, they're essentially not even invited, because they don't know the host (and vice versa). Congratulations, I'm willing to bet that at best you've just upset them, and at worst you might even have lost them, and there's no guarantee you'll pick up any new ones from your unknown host anyway. Is this something you seriously want to risk?

And consider the alternative if all your hosts are existing fans (or connected with existing fans). If the financials say you can make this work when you're paying Slowbizz a fee, then why the heck would you be using a middleman anyway? If you can sort something out with your fans, then you get more money and/or they pay less for a great experience when you do it direct. And because they share a connection with you, it's likely your existing fans have also formed some connections between each other even if they've never met before. It's more likely an existing fan would welcome another fan into their home even if the two were essentially strangers, compared to a host who isn't a fan inviting one of your existing fans in.

But these are perhaps two extremes and the real potential lies in a mix of concert hosts between fan and non-fan. Even here, although I can see potential, the jury is out because the scales just look wrong. On the one hand, Slowbizz are currently looking to attract hosts more than they are looking to attract artists, which is good. But on the other they are basically looking to attract 1000 hosts in a year. That's 1000 venues worldwide in one year's time. Now think...what's the average distance between those venues going to be, given we are talking worldwide? Want to revisit my earlier question on travel costs you might have to pay as an artist, given that knowledge?

For me the reality would seem to be that although some pockets of venues may spring up, there is no guarantee these will be somewhere useful to you. To create the host network the company is talking about is going to take way more than a year for it to be of benefit to all but a handful of artists. Start thinking more like five years from now. Or even better ten or more before you could usefully use it for a tour. And even then, that's assuming there are enough people who are interested in hosting concerts on a regular basis (particularly for artists they don't know) once they realise the true costs of doing so. It's an idea worth keeping an eye on for sure, but I'm far from convinced it can work in practice. I think it just as likely if not more likely we'll see some artists working out how to tour using their own fanbase directly before this idea has the chance to grow any real usefulness.

Shirtify
Welcome to a site for the music lover which combines the idea of music streaming with what can best be described as a "t-shirt of the month" club. Basically, in exchange for a monthly fee, the site keeps track of the music you've been listening to on your preferred streaming service and then sends you a shirt from one of your most-played artists over that period. It's also possible to buy a month or 3 month package for this e.g. as a present for someone else. The obvious downside for music fans is the fact they will currently only ship to addresses in the USA and Canada and have no current plans to expand.

As a music lover, this looks like quite an interesting idea, mostly due to the surprise factor (i.e. you don't actually know which artist you'll be getting a shirt from) and the fact it does put some money in the pocket of an artist you wouldn't necessarily buy from unless you went to one of their gigs. However it is also something which has its downside once you look at it with the eyes of an artist.

Shirtify say they pay the artist full retail price for the shirt, which basically means their service is coming at a premium i.e. I find it hard to believe they would offer this service for free, hence must be keeping whatever the difference in price between the shirt and the monthly fee they charge as their fee. If bought direct from the individual artists, it wouldn't surprise me if you could effectively get an extra shirt for free by going direct over the course of a year (i.e. shirts from 13 different artists instead of 12 for the same price) as a result. And therein lies a potential problem, because I'm willing to bet that very few music fans would stop and think about that fact, and that actually they're taking money out of artists pockets as a whole and giving it to a middleman instead. I know I for one was originally caught up in the idea and that thought didn't occur to me until I stopped to think more deeply about it, so I find myself wondering just how great an idea it really is, particularly given the monthly cost anyway.

And Finally
It looks like this will be pretty much the last post from me before the year end. If you're lucky I guess you might land up seeing one more, but if not, it's likely the next post will be my annual review of the year one, which you can expect to appear some time over the Christmas/New Year period as usual. As well as my favourite artists/songs of the year, this time I'll be following up on the statement I made in last year's review of the year post by revealing whether Matthew Ebel has managed the one thing I was looking for to make me declare "Entourage for life", as well as a couple of interesting stories that happened this year that I haven't told you about. Stay tuned, you know you won't want to miss this one.

The final nail?

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 05:08:00 +0000

Well I had been planning to release a different special post, but events of recent days have caused me to postpone that in favour of this one instead.

On the one hand, you could say it's something that was expected months ago and on the other you could say it should have happened months ago, but Sellaband recently made the announcement they are shutting down the forum on their site "soon". Whether this means some time next week, or whether the end of the year is unclear, but either way it seems likely it will happen before 2012.

Whilst some may claim it is no great loss, due to nothing much constructive happening in there for months, the reality remains that a lot of the reason for this is that Sellaband themselves are responsible by not taking part on their own platform, but preferring to spend their time promoting Facebook instead.

They've been holding competitions and polls (amongst other things) over there for months now and therefore directing traffic away from their own website, rather than following the mantra that the more sensible have been trying to instill on people out there. You have no idea how long the popularity of another website is going to last (look what happened with Myspace when Facebook came along), or even whether it will continue to contain features you want, so avoid having to start over from scratch again and realise that all other websites should only be signposts pointing to your own website It's a scary thought that they seem to be trying to encourage the exact opposite.

Scariest of all though is the impression left by the person announcing the closure of the forum. Particularly when you consider what has happened to me over the past couple of weeks.

It started quite simply with Pledge Music following me on Twitter. I hadn't followed them. (I have in fact never even followed Sellaband on Twitter - call it a case of being deliberate to see if/when/what would happen). Whether Pledge picked me out from the description I have there ("searching for new music"), whether they followed me from this blog or whether it was some other way, I have no idea. Whatever the reason, it prompted me to take a look at their Twitter feed.

In many respects it's rather spammy, given the frequency of the "x made a project update" and "y has reached z% of their target" messages, but it does at least suggest there's a lot more happening that the rather limp updating Sellaband have (and indeed had back when the site was a lot more active). I very nearly didn't follow back as a result of the seeming spamfest, but something in the feed caught my eye.

I spotted a conversation which was started by someone mentioning they'd seen a particular artist was fundraising on Pledge and would have supported them if they'd received the previous album (by a different artist) that they had funded on Pledge. Someone from Pledge tweeted back asking what the missing album was and was given the answer along with the fact they'd emailed about it months ago and were told it would be looked into, but nothing had ever happened.

And so time to consider what I found so scary in the Sellaband thread about the forum closure. When confronted with the suggestion that Sellaband should get involved with protecting believers, the question came back "How do you think we can set up a lawsuit against an artist?" along with the suggestion that perhaps believers should check out artists themselves before spending any money.

Eh? Really?? As I've said in the past, people go to a middleman for the trust aspect, otherwise there's no point. To see what has been put in the thread by Sellaband smacks of amateur idiots at best.

Compare by going back to the Pledge user whose last tweet on the subject read

"I'm back on the @PledgeMusic bandwagon after they fixed my Damnwells CD snafu AND tossed in a gift. Excellent!"

That tweet in turn brought another problem with a missing CD for someone else out. The speed and manner in which both problems appear to have been addressed once it was clear they had grabbed the attention of someone is noticeable by following the relevant tweets.

The net result of what I've seen recently is that Sellaband have now convinced me they have absolutely no idea what they are doing. As of the forum closure, I'll only be checking in there once in a while to deal with any money. I'd say there's now a 98% chance I won't be spending money there again, so checking the revenue balance will be my only reason to log in unless Sellaband themselves can get my attention in a positive enough way otherwise (and given how infrequently the balance gets updated, my logins will follow suit).

In contrast, Pledge have gained a few points on the trust meter. Whilst I won't be spending money there in the near future, there is now a chance I might consider spending money on an artist I haven't heard of before on their site (despite the fact I don't really like the T&C of their site either for the seeming lack of protection it gives). I'm now officially watching their site more closely than Sellaband as a result of what has happened recently, so we'll see what happens and whether the forum closure does indeed prove to be the final nail in the Sellaband coffin.

Discoveries and disappointments

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:48:00 +0000

If you already know about my rating system then skip on down to the next header, otherwise here's the lowdown

The rating system
The rating system I use for this blog is somewhat unique. It's not a reflection of how much I like the music itself as much as it is of how far I am along the process of conversion from consumer to fan. So, over time you may well see some of these ratings go up if I mention an artist again. And indeed go down, as musical changes of direction or failure to keep my interest are just some of the reasons that may affect a rating.

Congratulations, you've made a temporary blip of interest on my radar. Now how are you going to keep it?

I've seen enough of you to recognise and remember you, but I'm undecided so I'm not really following you (yet). I may make a spur of the moment decision to check in on what you're up to once in a while, but even that's no guarantee. May also apply to artists I am aware of, but whose music I've decided I don't have enough interest in to want to pursue further based on what I've heard.

I'm liking what I hear in general, but I still wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I will be wandering past your site occasionally, and there is something like a 50% chance I'll be buying your next offering once I find out about it, providing I have the money available.

Now I am a fan, so the chances are I'll be past your site once every month or two at least. There's a 90%+ chance your next offering is already sold, and occasionally I might even be going for something more than the basic package (if you have one)

Reserved for very few, this is about as close to internet stalker as you can get. I am actively watching because I do not want to miss your next release date, tour in my area etc. etc. You may not always be aware of the fact I'm looking over your shoulder to see what you're up to, but trust me, I'm there on a weekly if not more like a daily basis. Depending on how you tend to release your information, I may well be signed to your mailing list as well.

What I've been looking at
The past month or so seems to have been dominated by a mix of discoveries and disappointments.

Cheryl from the Jade Diary tweeted about a video by an artist I hadn't heard of before, and they seem to be one well worth following up on to listen to more of.
Lovers Electric are from Australia and I'm actually pretty willing to bet that if you like listening to Jade Diary, you'll enjoy this duo too.

Despite having an album out with his sideproject less than 6 months ago, it seems Brad Cox is still in full music writing form. An additional track "We Light the Way" has been posted on the We Love the Underground Soundcloud page. In addition to that the new Skitzo Calypso album called "Ghosts" already has a release date early in the New Year. It looks like their website is undergoing a revamp to go with this as there's currently only a frontpage with a countdown timer available.

There's nothing quite like political issues to get artists out in force. The "Occupy Wall Street" movement which has since spread to other cities across the globe has prodded a few of the artists I follow into musical action. Most notable amongst these is
Matthew Ebel, who has made 3 songs he already had regarding monetary inequality downloadable for free from his website homepage. Look for the scrolling banner at the top of the page, if you want to get hold of a copy of "They got the money", "It's raining bankers" and "Not our bed".

Meanwhile Simon Scardanelli's new band Dr Scardo is releasing its first single and it's also along the same lines. Check out the video for "Wall Street Hustle" below - the images in it really say it all.

And of course the lineup wouldn't be complete with some Mysti Mayhem thrown into the mix. Here's a video from her on the subject.

Getonic is a new service which allows artists to sell music direct from their facebook page. OK, you might think that's nothing new, but the twist here is that rather than using a credit card, or even a service such as Paypal, this one allows you to buy using your mobile phone. I haven't looked into the full details behind this one yet, but it seems that the purchase gets added as an item on your mobile phone bill. Prices vary slightly from country to country, but a track cost of $1.50 is said to generate 64 cents of revenue for the artist once the phone charges and Getonic's admin fee are taken into account.

I've started listening to some more of the Popes of Chilitown since originally spotting them on Strummerville, but so far I'm feeling a bit disappointed compared to the track that originally got my attention and I'm starting to think I'm not going to develop any kind of interest. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why, but I've a suspicion I'm finding them a bit too weak lyrically.

Also on the disappointments side there's still no sign of the Natalia Safran album that was supposedly being printed a couple of months ago. In just a few days she'll reach the milestone of having raised her money on Sellaband for this album three years ago.
Lori Greco doesn't seem to be doing much better on this front either, as she's already passed the 2 year mark since raising her money, though at least she is keeping people a lot more informed of what is going on than Natalia has been. The latest news from Lori is that there's a good chance her album won't be released until next year now. And as for Radio Orange - they were announcing on their page more than a year ago that all that was left was some artwork but haven't been seen since, meaning they're also already well past the 2 year mark since they raised their funds on Sellaband. If Sellaband thinks they're going to persuade people to spend money on the site when they've got problems like this still hanging around they must be crazy, yet so far they've done sweet FA in terms of getting things sorted or even explaining to believers what's causing the delay.

And finally, whilst not totally unexpected, I was also sorry to hear of the death of Ray Baisden. As one of the few believers from the early days of Sellaband who was both a part of the community and passionate about music, he'll be missed by both other believers and artists alike.

Music and gaming

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 22:14:00 +0000

If you already know about my rating system then skip on down to the next header, otherwise here's the lowdown.

The rating system
The rating system I use for this blog is somewhat unique. It's not a reflection of how much I like the music itself as much as it is of how far I am along the process of conversion from consumer to fan. So, over time you may well see some of these ratings go up if I mention an artist again. And indeed go down, as musical changes of direction or failure to keep my interest are just some of the reasons that may affect a rating.

Congratulations, you've made a temporary blip of interest on my radar. Now how are you going to keep it?

I've seen enough of you to recognise and remember you, but I'm undecided so I'm not really following you (yet). I may make a spur of the moment decision to check in on what you're up to once in a while, but even that's no guarantee. May also apply to artists I am aware of, but whose music I've decided I don't have enough interest in to want to pursue further based on what I've heard.

I'm liking what I hear in general, but I still wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I will be wandering past your site occasionally, and there is something like a 50% chance I'll be buying your next offering once I find out about it, providing I have the money available.

Now I am a fan, so the chances are I'll be past your site once every month or two at least. There's a 90%+ chance your next offering is already sold, and occasionally I might even be going for something more than the basic package (if you have one)

Reserved for very few, this is about as close to internet stalker as you can get. I am actively watching because I do not want to miss your next release date, tour in my area etc. etc. You may not always be aware of the fact I'm looking over your shoulder to see what you're up to, but trust me, I'm there on a weekly if not more like a daily basis. Depending on how you tend to release your information, I may well be signed to your mailing list as well.

What I've been looking at
Do you like classical music? Instrumental piano? And do you want some free music? If so, then now is your chance to get hold of one song a week all the way up to Christmas from probably one of the most relaxing artists I've had chance to discover on my travels. Fabrizio Paterlini has started an experiment on his Soundcloud page and you can download the results of it for free every week. The link I've given you is to the first week's offering, where he also explains exactly what is behind the idea and what you're likely to be hearing.

Looks like the training of the Last FM music player I've been doing may be mostly on hold for a bit. As I've already said, I'm finding the process rather "hands-on" and I'm currently using the time I've been spending training it to try and dust off my old first person shooter gaming reflexes. And having spent most of the past 5 or so years playing World of Warcraft instead, I can honestly say I'm well out of practice if my first few hours are anything to go by. But if you're wondering why I'm talking about gaming in a music blog, then I should explain it has all come about as a result of Matthew Ebel's latest way to connect with fans. Seems that a number of them are, like me, computer gamers. And so he's started up a special group for those who have one of his VIP or higher subscriptions to be able to meet online and play computer games with or against each other. What exactly will be played is as yet unclear as he's only just announced it, but it's something I'm excited about as the preferred gaming genre seems to be how I started back in University rather a long time ago and what I used to get together with my husband and a group of friends to play in the local village hall before the Internet became just as good an option. It'll be good to get back into the swing of things and who knows, maybe even make a few friends in the process.

Remember GD Allan who was on Sellaband, originally as a solo project and then later as his collaboration Broken Sun? Seems the Aussie has taken his young family and moved to America now. He's start blogging about the move, music and what else he's up to now over here. If you haven't heard any of his music before, you'll also find a lot of tracks to listen to in the same place and he's also started up a Twitter account, so if you are one of the ones who deserted Sellaband long back but are still following my blog, I'm sure he'd appreciate a follow if you were one of the ones who liked his music.

Epyllion are one of the Sellaband artists who have still been dropping by the forum, although the site has been getting quieter and quieter recently in terms of the old believer base logging in. They've just released another track for free called "Lame". You'll find the details on Youtube and I'd describe the offering as catchy college rock. No idea about the "live" front, but on the "recorded/musical" side they do seem to be getting both better and more interesting if the releases since they released their Sellaband album are anything to go by.

Pre-orders for Nemesea's new album "The Quiet Revolution" are now open. You can get it here.

I haven't just been digging around after artists recently, I've also been having a look at a few sites which offer tools for artists.

Vibedeck
This site allows any artist with a Paypal account to sell music directly to fans and get the money straight into their account without using a middleman. You can sell from the Vibedeck site itself or link it to your Facebook, Soundcloud or even a Youtube profile. A "tweet in exchange for a track" option is also possible, so the possibilities for an Indie artist are varied. At the moment Vibedeck takes no money from the purchase, so it's unclear how they will be able to sustain themselves if they take off in any big way. Paypal fees may be payable but it depends on how much you're charging and what options you have set up in your paypal account. Typically you'll see 90 cents in your Paypal account if you sell a track for a dollar, but a more comprehensive guide can be found in Vibedeck's blog. I can't find any obvious drawbacks at the moment and I know at least one artist who has used the site successfully as well, so this is looking like an awesome deal at present. I'd say use it and enjoy it while it lasts.

Fantrail
With so many smartphones coming on the market, the app market is going crazy. One such app currently in Beta which aims to give a way for artists and fans to connect more closely is Fantrail. The basic idea behind it is that any fan who has a smartphone with your app installed will basically be able to check their mobile to see your latest updates without having to visit all of your social media profiles to get the information. They can also buy music via their phone and see any gigs in their area amongst other things. As an artist you are able to see how often each fan does a "positive" action, like buying a track using the app, tweeting about you to their friends etc. and you can then even send them a voicemail message or decide on other ways of thanking the fans who are most active in this way. It's also possible to target mails etc. according to fan location if you wish. That way, a fan halfway across the world isn't going to get spammed about the gig in your hometown next week.

So whilst on the surface this looks like a great and modern way to connect, there are a number of things I really don't like the look of once I dive a little deeper into the site and its T&C. The first and most obvious one is the fact you're pretty much forced to have a facebook login/account to stop it from popping up prompts to log into Facebook, making it an immediate turn-off for someone like me who doesn't use Facebook and has no intention of doing so. In addition it also comes across as a potential spamfest once you do, as users seem to be "encouraged" to have whatever they do automatically tweeted or posted to their facebook profile etc. For one, I really wouldn't want to be spewing out stuff to everyone with a whole load of "I liked this" or "I bought this" or... well you get the drift.

Call me old-fashioned, but another thing I really don't want to see is a whole load of ads being thrown at me when I access an application. The T&C of the site specifically state that ads may be included, so until I actually see how this works in practice and what sort of ads come up I'm reserving judgement on that score. Wouldn't have thought the average artist would be too impressed either if their fans are being showered in advertising from "their" application, particularly if it were to be promoting/tempting people away to another random artist instead.

I also have large privacy concerns in general about the site. For instance the fact that everything is "opt-out" rather than "opt-in", meaning ALL of your information will be public by default rather than you choosing what information you want to share and who you want to share it with (there are, however, settings you can change). I'm also not too impressed with the Rights section in the Artists Terms of Service. Whilst this states you're authorising them to make your content available to the rest of the world but you still own the rights to your content, it also states you're granting them a license to adapt or modify any content you submit (and also includes any other party they sub-license to) without them making payment to you. Confusing and looks like it could lead to some trouble in the right set of circumstances.

So on this one at least I'll keep an open mind, but I'm not feeling as impressed as I feel I ought to be by such a forward-looking service.

Diving into Last FM

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:57:00 +0000

So I've started the training process of Last FM's radio and at time of writing I'm just over a month into the process with around 400 artists added to my library and around 2000 tracks played. And I've still got an awful lot more artists to add. Unfortunately, as I stated in my extremely long post on the blog relaunch, the radio player has got a number of issues with someone like me.

Last FM appears to be set up for the addicted teen rather than the long time music lover. What this basically means is that as soon as you "love" one track the system seems intent on playing it over and over and over again and not offering you anything else by that artist. Likewise it's very keen on playing the same artist a lot and ignoring others in your library if left to its own devices. As a result, someone like me who listens to a huge range of artists stretching back over around a 60 year period (that's something like 20 years older than me if you were wondering) is faced with a lot of work to get it to play artists in the first place and to "tune it" to play a much wider variety of tracks whilst still keeping some idea of the artists and tracks that are genuine favourites. If you have a narrow genre of music and/or a narrow range of artists you listen to, there's a good chance it would work well on its own, but the wider your tastes, the more annoying things can get.

It could be argued that a lot of the problem might go away were I to download the scrobbler and use that for the training process, but as I've stated before the one thing I don't want is to have to download additional software to listen to music.

There are also some more general problems though. As well as the obvious one that it appears not all the artists I listen to have music on the site, there's also the problem that artists with the same name share the same page. And it seems there's no easy way to get the artist you want and get rid of tracks from the artists of the same name that you might not. Seems you have to wait for a track to appear on the player and then ban it. Which unfortunately also seems to make that artist less likely to play in general, hence upsetting the training process. Argh!

Even more.... interesting... are some of the really weird tracks you can come across. Usually because the track being played does not necessarily match up with the album it claims to be from, or because it's the right track but not the claimed artist. As just a few examples, Robbie Williams well-known track "Angels" has been replaced with a pan pipes instrumental version of the same, the Flanders and Swann classic "The Hippopotamus Song" is being sung by some opera singer I don't recognise rather than the duo themselves and if you're not a fan of Howard Jones, then the version of "Things Can Only Get Better" being played will come as a bit of a culture shock, as it comes from his 25th Anniversary concert rather than the 80s version you probably remember and that it's claiming to be.

I've started the training process with a combination of artists I tend to listen to on a regular basis and am working back pretty much chronologically from present day on top of that, letting it pick up some artists naturally from other key ones on the way. As a result it's actually got quite good already at understanding what I listen to from Finland and I've picked up on some artists I haven't listened to much before (or even at all) as a result.

Apart from that, most of my other discoveries to date have come about as a result of me dipping into particular artist radios to force artists to play as part of the training process. So without further ado, it's time to introduce you to what I think are some of the best discoveries I've made through this site to date.

Northern Kings
I think Sellaband must have distracted me too much from the Finnish artist discovery I was going through when I first found it, as I really ought to have picked up on this artist before now. Not exactly an artist in their own right, this is a supergroup formed of 4 lead singers from some very well known metal bands in Finland. And interestingly I listen to all except one of those bands on a regular basis, so this now gives me more incentive to go check out the "missing" one too. Even more interestingly, they play no original music but only metal covers of well known songs. So if you ever wondered what the metal version of Lionel Richie's "Hello" sounds like, or "My Way" (as popularised by Frank Sinatra), or even Kylie Minogue's "I Should Be So Lucky", then this is a great place to stop off. Some of the covers can best be described as strange, and this is definitely one of those cases where you'll either love or hate what you hear. My personal favourite so far is their cover of ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down", but you'll easily find most of the large selection of covers they've done on Youtube.

The Giant Leap
Not an easy artist to find information on, as their website lacks a lot of the interactivity of a modern artist site and only contains snippets rather than full blown songs. What I can tell you at the moment is that they play fairly mainstream, listenable rock, but to find much over and above their biography and discography it looks like I'm going to need to go on an internet hunt. To be brutally honest Last FM is as good, if not better, than their own website for information and that has to be a bad thing. You'd be expecting Last FM to be driving traffic to their website for further information, yet there's pretty much nothing extra over there to be had.

Dark Moor
For those who like their male fronted heavy/symphonic metal along the lines of artists like Stratovarius, Hammerfall, Helloween etc. then this artist from Spain should be right up your street. You'll find a lot of live videos on their website, but sadly it seems you'll need to go elsewhere (e.g. Last FM) if you want to hear recorded versions of tracks.

Fox Amoore
If you like instrumental soundtracks, orchestral or new age music then this appears to be a hidden indie gem. Both restful and interesting at the same time, this is an excellent choice if you want some background music to listen to while you work. There are quite a few tracks to be discovered and it's well worth stopping off at both his Youtube profile and his Myspace page to get an even better idea of what he's created to date. He's also already written some game soundtracks as well as covers of some others.

Ikodo Moonstrife
At first glance it might be easy to dismiss this one as a hobbyist, given they've never actually performed for anyone else, but with a recorded quality higher than many indie artists out there, this is well worth a listen for the more professional sound alone. Once again an instrumental artist, only this time in the electronic/trance fields, I actually think there's some good material here and I'd be interested to see if they ever try to make it out of the hobby stage as a result.

Misha Williams
Here's one for those of you who like the ladies. This young singer-songwriter has already supported more well-known names such as "Girls Aloud" with her similar blend of up-tempo catchy pop/rock tunes. Given her age, this could well be an artist to watch for the future.

The Ditty Bops
A little hard to describe this duo of ladies, other than the fact they seem to write folk tunes which are heavily influenced by music hall themes of the 1920s onwards. The results are surprisingly catchy and extremely interesting lyrically. Well worth checking out if you want to listen to something that little bit different.

As to what's next on the Last FM front, I'm still expecting the training process to take until at least Christmas at the rate I'm going, so expect quite a few changes in artist order, particularly away from the first page or two as well as a lot of new additions if you do stop by before then. I might find a few more new artists during the training to tell you about later, but I'm not really expecting to at this point, because I'm still taking a mostly hands-on approach rather than letting it play whatever it wants.

So before I go for now, here's one final interesting little aside I found out from the age-gender chart in the experimental area of Last FM. To give you a brief description, for any artist, the average age of their listeners is calculated along with the ratio of males to females within that number and this value can then be plotted on a chart of age vs. gender. If given a Last FM user id, the software then takes the most popular artists from that user's profile (currently can select up to 90 artists) and calculates a point on the chart to represent the user. And I've found my own chart very interesting reading indeed.

Age wise it reckons I correspond to (approx) a 25yr old for musical taste, and I'm also fairly gender neutral when it comes to my artist choices i.e. I listen to artists males mostly listen to about as much as artists females mostly listen to. Both these things are pretty much what I was expecting to find, but the interesting part then comes when my top artists are added into the chart. You see, whilst it seems I listen to artists that males of pretty much any average age listen to, when it comes to artists that females mostly listen to, it seems I'm stuck firmly with the teenage market as there's virtually nothing in the female section of the chart above about an average age of 25, even when I expand it to the maximum number of artists the chart currently covers. The few artists I do have on the female side of the divide up there are generally all pretty close to the gender neutral line. Whether this means there aren't that many older female users of Last FM or whether there are but I just don't share any of their tastes in music is something I'm still trying to work out. Have I really been working with males too long and hence picked up more on their music tastes as a result? What does the average 25+ female listen to musically anyway? Any suggestions are more than welcome.

Initial meanderings

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the first of what is going to form the main theme for my blog posts from now on. This is where I'm going to take you more inside the process I go through when discovering new music to show you just how difficult it is to create a fan. And even if you succeed, how difficult it is to keep them. This process is something which largely remains hidden from the artist - it's often only as a person starts to approach the 4th level of the rating system I have that an artist stands any chance of becoming aware there's an interested person, rather than just another number in the list of album sales.

Apart from this rather long initial post, the nature of the music discovery beast means that I can go through extremely quiet periods and then some very busy ones. As a result, I probably won't be posting on a regular schedule, but you'll likely get shorter and more frequent posts on average, compared to the monthly posting schedule I've used in the past.

The rating system
The rating system I'm using for this is somewhat unique. It's not a reflection of how much I like the music itself as much as it is of how far I am along the process of conversion from consumer to fan. So, over time you may well see some of these ratings go up if I mention an artist again. And indeed go down, as musical changes of direction or failure to keep my interest are just some of the reasons that may affect a rating.

Congratulations, you've made a temporary blip of interest on my radar. Now how are you going to keep it?

I've seen enough of you to recognise and remember you, but I'm undecided so I'm not really following you (yet). I may make a spur of the moment decision to check in on what you're up to once in a while, but even that's no guarantee. May also apply to artists I am aware of, but whose music I've decided I don't have enough interest in to want to pursue further based on what I've heard.

I'm liking what I hear in general, but I still wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I will be wandering past your site occasionally, and there is something like a 50% chance I'll be buying your next offering once I find out about it, providing I have the money available.

Now I am a fan, so the chances are I'll be past your site once every month or two at least. There's a 90%+ chance your next offering is already sold, and occasionally I might even be going for something more than the basic package (if you have one)

Reserved for very few, this is about as close to internet stalker as you can get. I am actively watching because I do not want to miss your next release date, tour in my area etc. etc. You may not always be aware of the fact I'm looking over your shoulder to see what you're up to, but trust me, I'm there on a weekly if not more like a daily basis. Depending on how you tend to release your information, I may well be signed to your mailing list as well.

Where I've been
Traditionally the first couple of months after Christmas is often when I take a look at a number of artists I haven't been in touch with for a while to see what they're up to. I don't often go out looking for new music in this period - rather anything out there tends to find me.

One place I really hadn't been for a long while was to visit L-60, and I'd been feeling really guilty about it because Olli is one of those really open and friendly artists who absolutely loves meeting and talking to people and getting to know them. Even if you're a complete stranger. That's a fan creator. Anyway, I had a bit of a shock when I got there because the band has split up. Well... sort of... What's actually happened is that a second band Fivestar Prophet has been created with the 4 members from L-60, plus a new guitarist. And their sound seems to have gone heavier and less mainstream. And quite a lot of both of those. There are only three tracks currently available to listen to online, and as a result I have to admit I'm not quite sure what I think of this new direction. So i'm still considering whether or not to add the album they just released to the queue to buy or not.

Nemesea are getting ready to release their third studio album entitled TQR (The Quiet Revolution). Amongst the guests appearing on the album are a couple of the guys from Bulletproof Messenger, which has only served to make me keep even more of an eye on the progress of the album.

It's only taken 25 years, but Warner have finally let go of the masters for Howard Jones. As a result he's had the lot remastered and the results are now available to buy from his own site.

It seems I wasn't the only one slightly disappointed by Francis Rodino's EP release in comparison to the quality of his album (Remember what I said last year?). Seems that Francis himself actually had similar feelings, as he has subsequently had the lot remastered and released for free to all his mailing list subscribers.

Matthew Ebel is continuing work on "The Lives of Dexter Peterson" (the project I told you about last year). So far, subscribers have been treated to a full early draft copy of the book as well as sketches from the graphic novel and songs from the album as they're being developed. Matthew has even already played one of the songs "The Last Pirate" on a couple of his Ustream shows. The release date for the project was originally set for 17th September 2011 to coincide with his annual fan meetup, but he's recently admitted that it looks like it won't be ready in time. A new date has yet to be mentioned, so I'm expecting the meetup will provide more info on that score. This means he will indeed exceed a year since he originally announced the idea ( as I suspected in this post), but given the complexity of the project and the fact we're hopefully only talking a couple of months, this can still only put a large number of artists on Sellaband to shame, seeing as they can't seem to make just an album in a year after reaching target, despite having had all the fundraising time on top in order to get prepared. (But more about those Sellaband artists later). In the meantime, there's an opportunity to win a free download of the album and novella on its release, by entering the competition he currently has running here. It's open to anyone, not just his subscribers, so why not check it out? You may also be interested to know you can also listen to one of the tracks from the album "I wish I were" in full in its pre-mastered version by visiting this page.

Interest grabbers
Here's the people that have caught my attention without me going looking for them.

In the course of trying to catch up with people I haven't been near for a while, I usually find myself on some interesting diversions. One such discovery is Charetta. If you like strong female vocals in your rock and metal, this is definitely worth a look. As to how I landed up finding their website, well some of you should recognise a familiar name in their lineup. I'd actually started off looking for information on Conflict in the Sky, seeing as their website is way out of date (last updated middle of 2010), and it turns out Chris from there is now playing guitar in this band.

Gayle Skidmore was one of the artists I had money in on Sellaband when the site went bankrupt. Due to the terms and conditions the site came back up with and the fact that she was nowhere near target at the time (none of the artists I had money in were) I pulled my cash. However she was subsequently one of the first to finish raising budget and also release after this, and it just so happens you can listen to the entire thing here on bandcamp. Having spotted the announcement of this and listened to it, she has officially become the first (and so far only) artist on Sellaband where I genuinely wish I'd stayed put, as I would rate this well within the top half of all the albums I've received from Sellaband artists. You could say I have a situation I need to put right here.

I spotted Kris Searle as a result of his Sellaband promotional video. There was a time on Sellaband not so long back where not only would believers have jumped on this, but it would have also garnered attention in the Tribune as well as a good example of a pro-active artist. So you could say this is an artist which clearly demonstrates just how much things have changed on Sellaband, and why it has become a site where you raise money with your existing fans alone, as the vast majority of the ordinary music lovers have given up on the place and certainly won't be tempted by the unrealistic sales revenue he seems to be touting - the knowledge of what has happened with existing artists is well known. Whilst a lot of his music isn't something I'd listen to, it's clear from what I've heard on my travels, there's actually quite a decent songwriter lurking underneath. From a musical point of view it's therefore a shame to see the complete ghost town of interest in him.

My interest in Tim Bennett has increased quite a lot recently. Not only has his album been proving to be one of my favourites, the fact he has continued to keep his Sellaband page updated with what he's doing, despite the seeming lack of interest in the site these days is something which hasn't escaped me. As a result, it's looking likely I may land up following him a little more closely than some of the other artists I initially found on Sellaband.

It had to happen eventually that one of the Finnish artists I already both knew and listened to would sign up on Sellaband. I already own all four Naked albums and they are one of the artists where I usually buy direct from Finland as no UK option is available. So although I already own the albums and although I am not currently planning to buy any parts on Sellaband due to the T&C, I obviously had a great interest in how they'd do. Indeed had I been buying parts, I'd almost certainly have supported them despite already owning the album they were offering. But a couple of weeks later I discovered they were also on Pledge Music trying to fund the same project with the same incentives and they were offering them at a much cheaper price over there. When combined with the fact I know Sellaband lock money into their site, this makes me even angrier about the situation. I wouldn't want to be a fan who funds them on Sellaband only to find out that not only were the incentives offered cheaper elsewhere but that they also couldn't remove their money from Sellaband to get the better deal once they found this out. I think it's fair to say that this is one artist where I'll probably still buy albums after they are released (I do like the music after all), but given what I've seen I definitely won't be funding any project of theirs in advance that I come across either now or in the future.

As a result I also think that fan-funding sites should be insisting on a certain amount of exclusivity within their T&C in order to avoid getting a bad name, rather than the existing practice where the same project can be signed up in as many places as you like at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with artists trying out different sites. I just think they shouldn't be trying to fund the exact same thing at the exact same time from the general public in more than one place.

Scott Bull was another Sellaband signup that managed to grab some of my attention, though for reasons very different to his music. I get the impression he thought the site was something very different to what it currently is, given his arrival in a blaze of forum postings and the circumstances surrounding his departure. Given the lack of his own believers signing up, it certainly gave the impression he was expecting existing people on the site to be falling over themselves to fund him if he made himself unmissable. Unfortunately the "spam the forum to death" approach has been used so many times before by artists in order to try and gain attention that it tends to have the opposite effect. Add to that the general lack of old believers taking an interest in the site and expecting a project to be funded entirely by existing people is pretty much expecting the impossible. I have to admit I did stop by his page and take a listen to the music he had there, but wasn't overly impressed, and with none of the believers that I know are still spending money on the site seemingly taking an interest in his page either, I suspected he was talking to a brick wall. A couple of weeks after he signed up, I found a rather long mail in my inbox, and given what happened next, I now find myself wondering how many of the other "visible" people on the site landed up with one too. It seems he wasn't very happy with the lack of interest in his page and left a few messages on the forum when he then asked Sellaband for his profile to be deleted. Whilst his artist profile was initially converted to a believer profile (as with all artists who have left the site), it looks like the contents of the forum posts may have caused Sellaband to delete his profile entirely, seeing as you get a 404 error if you try and visit it from the forum link. If they have indeed deleted it, this has to be the fastest response from Sellaband seen to date, as the lot (with the exception of the forum posts) disappeared in less than 24hrs after he put the request in.

The websites
The music sites I've been spending time on

Songza
Whilst not very good for new music discovery, this site had been proving itself as an excellent source to find and listen to artists I was already aware of, both from the mainstream and indie markets, even if I didn't already own a copy of their music. Therefore a very good "try before you buy" method that has directly led to a sale for 3 different artists in question already. With no software to download and no need to login to listen (you only need to login to create playlists, or as they call them "stations") it had therefore become my preferred streaming service. Indeed the playlist I linked to for my last review of the year post is hosted on there. However, in the spring, they pulled the plug on all non-US listeners without any warning.

So I'm back to the search for a streaming service that fulfils the criteria I'm after (no software download required, no country limits on songs and the same quality or better that I normally rip my own mp3s at). Until then, I'm mostly back listening to my own collection and chalking one more score up for the idea of having my own copy of music rather than following "the future of music" and the idea of cloud streaming.

I have one basic rule as far as streaming services are concerned - if I can listen to a song just by visiting the artist's own webpage, then I want to be able to listen to it on a streaming service too. It shouldn't matter what country I'm in - if I can listen to it by visiting the artist's own webpage/bandcamp page (etc), why can't I listen to it on your streaming service? Until the industry sorts this out I won't be paying any streaming service - it's bad enough to be building up a collection of music on a free one and have the rug pulled from under you without paying someone a monthly fee, only for them to suddenly do the same one day. And from a consumer point of view, I'm already fed up of disappearing rugs on music sites meaning I have to restart from scratch elsewhere. As someone who had made over 200,000 ratings on Launchcast before that service got pulled, that's just one of many examples of past experience and should give you some idea of why I look at things the way I do.

No doubt if/when Songza comes back up outside the USA it will have restrictions on what you can listen to (the same problem that was starting to put me off Amie St before they sold the site to Amazon) and if that's the case then it will probably have lost my interest for good. Just like other sites before it, such as Pandora, who still are restricted to the US only.

The site most likely to get my interest for streaming music discovery at the moment would therefore seem to be Last FM. Whilst I originally signed up to the site in 2006, I never used it back then because I'm not interested in downloading the scrobbler software. However, as it's now possible to stream quite a lot of music direct from the site I decided to give it another tryout at the beginning of August. The big downside of course is the fact I have to teach it about my music collection first, and whilst I've started that process, it's looking likely it will take until at least Christmas at my current rate of progress. Additionally, I've already encountered a number of problems, so whilst I'm not going to give up on it just yet, it's proving to be a lot more hands-on requirement for the training process than I'd been hoping. If you want to catch up with me on Last FM while I'm still adding and shuffling artists around, you can find me here or by clicking on the "recently played tracks" widget you should have seen over on the right of this page. And yes, I am streaming music at some very odd times of the day at present.

Free albums galore
I stumbled on this while starting to look at the current state of streaming music sites. Not a site in itself, it's basically a blog with links to download music legally for free, most usually the sites of the artists themselves. You can find out more about the criteria the author uses for deciding to include an album by reading their welcome message, but with over 2000 albums listed since the blog was created in a large variety of genres and the number still growing, it's likely I'll be taking a better look at this soon.

Strummerville
Another case of being sent off in a different direction than intended came when I was looking to see what The Lights were up to. Whilst I discovered they have played at the Glastonbury festival this year, it appears they got the opportunity as a result of their association with Strummerville. I wandered onto the site to get the free download The Lights were advertising and landed up checking out a number of other bands as well. The site is actually a charity set up on the death of Joe Strummer (The Clash) to help unsigned bands. Currently inclusion is by invitation only and requires that an artist be unsigned and will make one track available for free download. As might be expected, a lot of bands on the site currently seem to fit within the punk, rock or ska themes, and are also very British, both in origin and sound. From the listener point of view though the site oozes quality music for the most part and it will definitely take you a few days to get through listening to all the artists currently on there. I'll definitely be checking back to see what other bands they add, as this is serving as a nice "taster" starting point to decide if you want to wander off to the artist's own site to find out more about them. The ones that have particularly caught my interest to follow up on so far are The Popes of Chilitown, Bastille, Molotov Jukebox and The Penny Black Remedy

Sellaband
Since my review of the year post, a number of the albums I am waiting for have now appeared, however these have been almost exclusively from those artists who were keeping their believers regularly updated. Here's what little I know about those I'm still waiting for, more than 8 months down the line from my last update.

Natalia Safran
The big fat sound of silence on the artist I've been waiting the longest for continues. I've seen several mentions on her Facebook and Twitter about an album release being "soon", but those messages have been the case for months now. One existing believer has said that the albums are supposed to be in the process of printing, but I'm beginning to think a copy of this album will never be seen.

Radio Orange
Like Natalia Safran, there have seemingly been no updates and no information as to when (if ever) this album will actually be seen. Their Sellaband page claimed in a blog on 13th Nov 2010 that they were only waiting on final artwork but they haven't been seen or heard from since March.

Lori Greco
Last known to still be in the recording studio, although most of the way through the process. I currently have no information as to when the album can be expected though.

Cubworld
Finally reported that he has just started recording in June, more than 18 months after hitting his target. With a DVD to film on top of this, I don't even want to put a guess on the year it will be released.

Sellaband itself is proving to be a real shocker in general under its new management though. Communication with believers has now basically stopped (except for mails/articles trying to get people to buy more parts). Even the re-incarnated "pay and we'll send your CDs home, otherwise we'll keep them and use them as we see fit" which had people up in arms the first time around doesn't seem to have had any proper communication behind it now that it's back, as people who paid back in May landed up waiting a good couple of months before anything actually appeared, and indeed several were even sent the wrong CDs.

Add to this all the comments and complaints on the Jonathan Davis page from people upset because the 24hr viewing of the DVD didn't work properly and/or the fact they haven't received anything just a few months after he completed funding (in comparison those of us who have been waiting years for other artists have been much less noisy about it!). In particular what they'd bought on Sellaband was already available on Amazon at a much cheaper price too (and, well, Kornspace news page from 25th August says it all really). Add the fact that it would appear artists aren't giving believers any of the revenues promised by their projects, generally citing the fact they're recovering expenses that believers weren't made aware of at any point (Aly Cook and Inge are known to be the 2 main exceptions to this complaint) and Sellaband aren't doing anything to rectify the situation. Add the fact that a large number of believers in Nearfield are complaining they still haven't received their CDs and nobody seems interested in doing anything about it, and the fact that Sellaband do not chase up and relay information to believers about what is happening regarding CDs we have been waiting years for and the result is a site which I certainly can't trust, never mind recommend to others. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

In addition various parts of the site seem to be broken or out of date and nobody seems to bother fixing them.

A lot of the solutions are quite simple - Get those long overdue CDs sent out. Get promised revenues paid. And actually do some management and communication, rather than leaving the paying customers (i.e. the believers) in the dark and left to attempt to discover information themselves. Until some definite progress in a positive direction is made on this score, I'm officially slapping an "avoid like the plague" verdict on the site for anyone who might have been thinking about using it. Some issues have been outstanding for way too long now, and the complete apathy from Sellaband management when it comes to sorting them out (and even communicating why they haven't been sorted yet) means I have no confidence in the site or its management at present. A middleman with no clout is useless to say the least, and there's no incentive or reason to fund artists (unknown or otherwise) on such a site.

The developments on the Jonathan Davis story in particular have now led me to request a payout of revenues earned, rather than saving them up with the intention of buying parts in future if things settled down. With both Aly Cook and Inge back for a second funding round and both quite obviously keeping up their end of the agreement with believers (unlike many other artists), they would have potentially been some of the first in the queue to get parts without me adding new money to the site if I could have regained my trust in Sellaband itself. But I'd say Sellaband now have at least twice the work to do to regain my trust compared with how things stood when the new management took over after the bankruptcy.

Albums
I'm at a point where I can't actually afford to buy much in the way of music at the moment, due to lack of income, so I currently have a queue of music building that I'd like to buy but where the funds just aren't available at present.

Currently in the queue (in no particular order)
Come to Dust - Second Person
I Am Not The Night - Julia Johnson
Make Believe - Gayle Skidmore

The one exception I did make was to buy what has probably been my most eagerly anticipated album of the year "The Day The Devil Fooled The World" by We Love the Underground and I definitely wasn't disappointed. I'd heard roughly half of this before of course, as versions of some of the songs had been up on Sellaband, Myspace or Facebook, but Brad still managed to pull off something a little surprising within the rest. There is actually quite a diverse selection of tracks here, with particular standouts being "Transmissions" which is more than a shade reminiscent of David Bowie and my new favourite "We Love The Underground" which sounds like it might even be quite at home in a Tarantino film. I hope he does more with this project, as listening to the album has definitely left me craving more.

However that's not the whole story with this album, because I had a bit of a surprise when I opened the package - it contained two copies of the album, not one. Given I know what the cost of postage from the States to here is like, he can only be making a loss off such generosity. And as a music lover, this gives me even more incentive to find that extra copy a home where it will be genuinely appreciated.

In terms of "expected soon" albums, which will likely either get bought or join the queue above, the list is thankfully quite short at the moment. No doubt it will start to grow as I start wandering past some more artists I haven't been near in a while though.

Album title and release date TBC - Into the Night
The Quiet Revolution (Nov 18th 2011) - Nemesea

So if you're still with me after that extremely long summary of highlights of the past 8 months, I hope to see you for some of my much shorter posts in future (promise!), as well as a few special posts from the fan view of the music industry that, as always, get inspired by what and who I come across.

Why you are worth less than you think

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 10:35:00 +0000

Back in September 2006, I came across a site called Sellaband as a result of it being mentioned in several Yahoo news articles. I didn't actually take a really good look at the site until October though, when I got a friend request on Myspace from an artist who was actually signed up to the place.

Even in those early days, it was a common sight to see people wondering why some artists seemed to find it easy to get money and others with seemingly better music (or better quality of music) would get completely ignored. With the introduction of incentives, this situation has not only remained, but in many ways become more pronounced. Why do some artists with incentives as good as (or better than) others seemingly get ignored, while some of the "worse deals" make their targets?

Sometimes the location has a lot to answer for e.g. if an artist is trying to raise funds on a third party site, then how much the fan trusts that site can come into play. But if we ignore location and concentrate on the incentives side of fundraising, what really does influence this target raising ability?

Novelty has a lot to answer for. In the case of Sellaband, there have been two obvious situations that I can think of where novelty resulted in funding.

The first of these is the album thankyou. Quite simply, as well as getting a CD, the idea is that your name will be listed amongst those who are thanked in the album notes.

In the early days of Sellaband, this was quite a popular incentive. Some artists even offered it as default rather than incentive, meaning you didn't need to buy any extra part(s) to get it. Just think for a moment - when was the last time you read the album notes and found the artist thanking you? Such artists landed up taking cash away from others as a result, but the novelty has pretty much died since. The reason? Largely because a) a lot of artists started doing it so it quickly became repetitive after you'd funded a few and b) when you need a magnifying glass to pick out your name among several hundred others crammed into something the size of a CD cover it doesn't even feel that special - you're just another name in the mass.

Compare that to another experience I had. When Nearfield were raising funds for their album on Sellaband, they produced another CD called "Black Board" and were using it to promote their fundraising in Portugal. Now I don't even like Nearfield's music, yet I am thanked in the album notes for "Black Board". And I had no idea that had happened until I actually saw a copy of the album! The reason for me being thanked is immaterial, rather what matters is the fact the artist had done it because they wanted to not because they were paid to do it. That's the kind of special your fans want to feel. Some may be happy to go with the incentive if it's a novelty for them, but a genuine sentiment like I had from Nearfield is worth at least a thousand "mass thankyous" in the long run any day of the week.

The second case of novelty that happened on Sellaband hinges on the idea of communication. Genuine conversation, rather than an endless stream of "listen to me" or "fund me" posts got more than one artist funded, even though there were better artists musically on the site. Don't underestimate its power, especially on the "passive" passers by you won't even be aware of.

"Passive" fans rarely go for incentives unless they are good value for money in the strictest consumer sense. "Active" fans who will readily share their opinions and talk to you via mail or social networking on a regular basis are much more likely to be persuaded into an incentive, providing you listen and respond to them. Even better, some of the "passive" are likely to join in occasionally if they can follow you communicating with others. And even better if they can see fans posting about you or talking about you with others on their own initiative and not as a result of a request from you. When others are showing signs that they get on with you and trust you will do what you say it makes it that little bit easier for a stranger to test the water and do the same.

And after all, if you aren't talking to other people now, what makes you think anyone will ever be interested in a communication-based incentive (e.g. skype performance, chance to meet the artist etc.) unless they really are a die-hard fanboy (or girl)?

If you want to escape novelty there really is only one thing to offer which has good constant appeal and that is more music. This is one incentive which can really work, but it also depends on a few different things.

Are you offering music you already have?
In this case, it's likely your existing fans will only go for this if it's something rare or something they don't already own. And for the second of these it likely means they are a recent fan, as those with a limited income probably can't afford to pay the extra for the incentive - if they had the money, there's a good chance they'd already own it. However if a stranger happens by and likes most or all of what they hear, there is a chance they'll go for this if they think the amount of extra music you're offering is worth the extra price you want for the incentive and they can afford it. The chance of a stranger going for the incentive also improves if they know of somewhere to listen to at least some of that music first. Basically you're looking at someone who is confident they'll like your music enough to want to increase their collection of your music faster and you just offered a convenient way for them to do that.

Are you offering music nobody has heard yet?
This one appeals a lot more to existing fans than it does to the random stranger who just stumbled across you. Whilst you might get a few strangers going for it anyway, the vast majority still need to make up their minds as to how "into" your music they are - they may be prepared to take a chance on an album they haven't heard before, but to pay extra (even for more music) before they've made up their minds as to how much they really like you is usually pushing it a bit too far.

Aside from "more music", incentives often don't have general appeal. They may appeal to a few people you encounter, but they usually won't appeal to the majority, regardless of whether they are existing fans or not. Something like the free backstage pass can work with existing fans, but it may also depend on country. In other words, if you have a willing fan, but you are not already a regular tourer in the country they are from, or likely to visit there any time soon, it's likely that fan is going to hold onto the extra money they would have paid you for the incentive. Likewise a DVD to go with your CD may work, but often that may come down to its contents or perceived extra value which will vary between individuals (existing fan or otherwise).

But is there a hidden jewel in the crown? Is there something a large number of fans want that artists can provide but which those fans never really mention? I think there is, but equally I believe it's something which doesn't generally work as an incentive.

Many artists I encounter seem to think the ultimate incentive is the custom song. The artist you love listening to will write a song just for you. Sounds feasible, doesn't it? But you'd be wrong. Whilst it's kind of on the right lines, the reality is something very subtly different.

You see, the big problem with this is the fact you're paying for it. And that makes it lose its shine and have less meaning. Just as with the example I gave you earlier about names in the album booklet, there is a certain novelty with the idea of a song written for you. But when anyone with the money can do it, what meaning does it have? The custom song does work when it's a gift for someone else, but in that case the emotion tends to go back in the direction of the sender rather than the artist.

So what do I think is the real jewel in the crown? Actually yes, I think you'll find a lot of people harbouring the hope that you'll write a song for or about them. But as an artist you need to understand it has to be something you want to do, not something you want people to pay you to do. It has to be done as a genuine, from the heart sentiment. And you know the really great thing about this? A lot of the time you'll find this is one of the songs your other fans like a lot, even when they don't know anything about the story behind it. Genuine sentiment transfers beyond the person it was aimed at. But this is also why the custom song doesn't work as an incentive.

This ad campaign has run in different currencies in a number of countries and it demonstrates what I'm trying to say very clearly.

And this is why you're worth less than you think. The consumer just wants their purchase and to be on their way, but for those prepared to stick around you are priceless. The former group aren't that interested in your incentives, because they haven't made a connection with you (yet), and, let's face it, there is plenty of other music around, much of it free. Why would an incentive they have to pay more for stand any chance of grabbing their attention against that, particularly if it's something they have to wait to get? As for the latter group, well, both the size of their wallets and what they already have comes into play. Chances are they may already have, or not be able to afford the incentives you're offering. Over and above that, what they're really after are the kind of things that (just like the ad) money can't buy. You can't put a price on emotion.

Whether it be number of friends on Myspace or number of "Likes" on Facebook, you as an artist need to come to terms with the fact that at one end of the scale those people just aren't into you enough to want to give you money, whereas at the other end you'll either find people who'll give you the money anyway without caring too much about the incentives (after all, like I said in my 1000 true friends post, they are your friends), or more usually can't afford to give you (as much) money. Chances are that you've overestimated your monetary value as a result by at least a factor of 10 because you have no idea of exactly how many real fans you have and/or have formed no connection with them, so have no idea of their circumstances or what really makes them tick. Incentive based funding really isn't the draw you might think, unless you are already well known and/or have a good track record that can be easily traced on the Internet when you might just stand that bit more of a chance of getting it to work.

Review of the year 2010

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:26:00 +0000

Welcome to my review of the year post. This is the time of year when you traditionally find out my favourite Sellaband artists and songs of the year as well as a whole load of other interesting things.

However as 2010 progressed it became ever clearer that I was going to have a big problem when it came to writing a review of the year, and indeed with the continuation of this blog in general. As a result there are a number of changes to the content of this post compared to previous years, but before I get further into that and the reasons behind it, you might want to start listening to the soundtrack that accompanies this blog post because you're in for a very, very long read. And rest assured I'll be giving you an explanation of what you're listening to later as well.

The demise and rebirth of Sellaband
The big story of the year and effectively also the deciding factor in what's happening with this blog has got to be the bankruptcy and subsequent revival of Sellaband itself. On the plus side, the revival of the site allowed me to reclaim nearly $1000 from artists who hadn't reached target, rather than staring at the potential of having to fight administration for the money, and also safeguarding me from the second set of changes to the T&C that will have affected others (the first being the set that went live when the site came back up).

On the minus side comes the reason I pulled that money in the first place, followed by the subsequent efforts of the new administration. The 2 week clause for removal of money from projects when the site first came back up was bad enough, but to have this later changed to a system whereby you can remove no money from the system that you deposit, even if the artist themselves decides to call it quits on Sellaband is more than enough in its own right to make it impossible to understand why any respectable artist would sign up to the site in the first place. Let alone why anyone would put money into the project of an artist they weren't already familiar with. It's hard to feel anything but sorry for artists who decided to retain the faith and stay with Sellaband immediately after the site came back up as a result - effectively trapped by the subsequent set of changes, they are now left to face the prospect of trying to convince enough people to join their projects in order to complete them before the deletion deadline in September comes round, or their existing believers who kept the faith with them will be unable to take their money back out of Sellaband. Ever.

But this locking in of money isn't the only issue the site is facing. As far as I understand it, the takeover was allowed on the understanding that the rights of existing believers would be upheld. So let's look at the things that believers are interested in, to find out what other problems the site has and what's been happening with them in the 10 months since the new administration came into power.

1. Outstanding CDs
A number of artists had raised budgets before the site was declared bankrupt, but their albums had not yet seen the light of day. Some of these albums have eventually come through, however we still have quite a number where fundraising was completed prior to the bankruptcy, and in some cases more than two years ago compared to our current date. Given the length of time involved and the fact there still seems no date when they are likely to be released, it makes me wonder just how interested Sellaband are in sorting out this most fundamental believer right - to actually get believers receiving what they have paid for. After all, let's not forget that the T&C under which those budgets were raised looked somewhat different to the current version. Whilst the current set basically states Sellaband have no responsibility towards believers if an artist fails to deliver, this clause wasn't present in much earlier versions of the T&C.

2. CDs for sale
There was already a lot of controversy over this, even before the bankruptcy, when believers were being asked to pay to have all remaining CDs sent home or basically hand them over for nothing for Sellaband to do with as they willed. Limited Edition CDs got removed from the Sellaband shop. After an outcry, Sellaband said they had found someone to take over the storage of the CDs for believers at no cost, and hence they could continue to be offered for sale. In June, the ability for believers to ask for CDs to be sent home was suspended, while this outcry was going on. However, a look at the situation today reveals that there is still no artist in the Sellaband shop with limited edition CDs for sale (in fact very few artists even offering a CD at all), and indeed a number of artists where LE CDs are still known to be available have no product at all for sale in the Sellaband shop. In addition, the ability to receive your LE CDs at home if you pay for the postage remains suspended with no idea if/when it will resume, hence this is one area which has clearly got worse under the new administration as far as believers are concerned.

3. Revenue payments
Revenue payments seemed to have finally settled down into a regular thing shortly before the site went bankrupt, however the same can't be said of the current situation. The latest official excuse is related to the fact Sellaband mysteriously decided to swap from dollars to Euros for budgets, hence effectively putting a price hike on all new signups and therefore making the site less attractive to potential believers as well. Whilst a couple of payments were made before this change to Euros (not to the schedule in the T&C, but it must be said this could at least be partly excused due to the takeover), no payments have been made since. The official reason is that the Euro system needs testing to make sure it's working correctly, yet with the system seeming to be fundamentally the same, it seems incredible that more than 4 months after what basically amounts to a mere currency conversion of existing numbers, they still seem incapable of crediting balances with revenue and have already had to be prompted at least once even to get the "waiting to be credited" figure updated.

4. Handle the idiots
Fan funding potentially has two different methods of working. Firstly, that you find enough people who are interested enough in you (and/or have formed a relationship with you) who are willing to trust you enough to give you money in advance. Secondly, that some kind of platform exists as an intermediary where people who don't know you, don't need to trust you but rather need to trust the platform enough to hand over money to it for you to use. Whilst the reality in many cases is probably a mix of these methods, in order for a platform such as Sellaband to fit with that second method, there are a number of things that it has to be capable of doing.

The two main things on this score are a) the existence of music experts to guide artists through the process and b) to be able to act as a consumer protection filter so that believers can have the trust that an artist they've never encountered before has at least some idea of what they're doing.

Many of those looking for fan funding haven't even been to a studio before, have no idea of the costs, no idea of how to set up a marketing plan etc. etc. This means that plans presented to believers need to look reasonable i.e. a plan which merely states something along the lines of "to become rich and famous" doesn't just hurt the credibility of the artist but also of the site itself. However there are also those who have some idea that basically need pointing in the right direction or just that little extra bit of help and advice to get them up to scratch. And it doesn't stop there. Basically the WHOLE process needs to be monitored, right up until the point that the CD and/or other incentives are delivered to ensure things are kept on track as much as possible and that the deadline in the T&C can be met. At the end of the day believers generally have absolutely no idea of the things an artist needs to know, or what they cost, or how long they take. Nor do they have any desire or need to know these things. All they want to know is that someone experienced with that knowledge is out there making sure they're not going to get ripped off and that if there is a deadline when things are meant to be delivered, that they actually DO get delivered or they get their money back, rather than being on an endless wait where you have no idea when the end is going to come.

Unfortunately the "anything goes" plan attitude introduced by the previous Sellaband still exists with no such filtering. With a clause in the T&C stating that all the responsibilities fall on the artist's shoulders, not Sellaband, it becomes impossible for believers with no experience of the music industry to know which of these unknown artists they can really trust. And the "experts" page on Sellaband disappeared a while ago, meaning that one of the key reasons I signed up to the site rather than passing it by as an idea that didn't stand a hope of working seemingly doesn't exist. With no experts to handle the idiots and protect the naive consumer, there's little or no reason for people to trust a platform and hence the artists they've never heard of that are on it.

5 Terms and Conditions
As I already mentioned, immediately after the bankruptcy the site came back up with one major change to the T&C as far as believers were concerned. Previously believers could withdraw money from Sellaband at any time, however this had been reduced to two weeks after the money was originally deposited. Later this got removed completely meaning no money being deposited in the system could ever be removed. On the one hand, this appears to signal to me that the site is no longer considered to be a pre-purchase system (otherwise this restriction is clearly in violation of the EU distance selling regulations), but rather regarded as a financial investment product (at least as far as the Dutch Central Bank is concerned). In which case I have to wonder why the T&C don't include the standard messages about risk etc. that you would associate with such a thing. Such a stance is also clearly not suitable for consumers in the first place, yet it is selling a product to consumers we are talking about here, else why offer some of the kind of incentives such as CDs and DVDs and not merely a (probably large) cut of the revenue. When coupled with item 4, this also means investors would basically just look and laugh as the risks are too great given the seeming number of idiots around (based on the contents of the average plan). This stance therefore would mean Sellaband effectively now has no market.

On the other hand, to get back to the idea of a consumer based pre-purchase system, I have to wonder why Sellaband haven't changed the system to follow those of other fan-funding platforms who don't take the money up front but rather wait until the project has received enough interest before taking any money. Whilst I agree that this would mean a change in the way the Sellaband system operates and that will obviously take time, I find it hard to believe that the site was OK being re-started with a 2 week clause, but one day suddenly was told it couldn't refund any money. Rather, I would be inclined to believe that discussions about the issue had probably been going on for some time between the time the site was reincarnated and the point at which the removal of money was completely blocked. More than enough time for Sellaband to assess the situation (they had already seen the negative impact of the 2-week clause after all), and look for/start working on an alternative to deal with the fact that it was looking likely they wouldn't be allowed to refund money. Although existing money in the system would still have had to be dealt with, a system which didn't take money up front would clearly get around the problem the Dutch Central Bank seemingly have with the site. And presented to believers along the lines that although existing money in the system was going to be trapped, the fact the system was in the process of being changed for this reason would have still upset people but to a much lesser extent, as it would have been clear Sellaband were at least trying to make the best of the situation and protect consumers in future. It doesn't appear such a process has been started - indeed if it had been as soon as the problem became known, chances are the changeover would have been pretty much ready for implementation by now. The impression therefore left behind is that Sellaband are more interested in money grabbing, than resolving issues in a way that can help them retain at least some level of faith from their existing customers.

However, as well as this specific situation, there is also a more general situation with the T&C which remains outstanding. At the end of the day, if there are a set of terms and conditions, you have the choice to agree or disagree with these. But irrespective of which you choose to do, the important thing is whether or not they are enforced. With revenues not being paid according to the pattern laid out in the T&C and artists clearly over the deadline for delivery (some by a very long way, even when the current and most lenient set of T&C with regard to timescales is used), Sellaband comes across as untrustworthy and uncaring, and at the end of the day, a scam. Believers are basically being asked to deposit money in a system, understand that they are never able to remove it and have no guarantee that they will ever see whatever it is they deposited the money for in the first place because Sellaband doesn't seem interested in following the T&C that it has laid out. Ask yourself... would YOU become a believer knowing this?

So from a believer point of view, the evidence is damning. Whilst Franz does appear to be making some efforts to try and rekindle a community, the reality is that those efforts are destined to fail. Until Sellaband gets its head out of the sand, realises that the money it gets actually comes from believers and not artists and therefore sets its priorities to fixing the things that are bothering those believers (many of which I've just mentioned), what's left of the core of the old community is basically destined to act as a deterrent rather than a help. The goodwill has been used up - if Sellaband doesn't help believers, believers aren't going to help Sellaband. Which means the grumbling is just going to keep coming up over and over as a reminder to Sellaband and a warning to others who may be looking at the site as a result. No new community can form under those circumstances, and sadly I fear that by the time the penny actually drops the damage will be irreversible. Given the fact nearly a year has passed since the takeover and with no progress in a positive direction as far as believers are concerned, it may in fact already be too late.

I consider the situation so bad, that from my own point of view I won't be depositing any money in Sellaband for the forseeable future, nor buying any parts. It's also had a major side effect on my interaction with the site - in the past 12 months I've probably only listened to a handful of new artists on there, and I've pretty much stopped talking to artists on the site completely because I don't see the point in getting their hopes up when it's clear a large amount of work needs to be done to restore my own faith in the system. Whilst I'll still be hanging around the site, mostly on the forum, at the moment I can't see my interest going any deeper than that until/unless things start to change for the better as far as the paying customers i.e. believers are concerned.

The missing albums
I haven't tracked every album on Sellaband that is outstanding from before the bankruptcy, but here's what I've found out about the albums I'm personally still waiting for. Remember that under the current set of T&C albums should have been completed within 12 months of the date the target was reached, but in earlier versions of the T&C this was only 9 months (or in the case of the earliest set 6 months).

Natalia Safran
Target Reached: November 12th 2008
Status: Unknown. Hasn't been on Sellaband since the bankruptcy. A visit to her own website reveals the latest news about the album to date from 20th August 2010 containing the information "Mick and I are almost finished with our Sellaband album! It has been a long time coming and we cannot wait to let our songs into the air! They are being mixed and mastered and the end is very near...".
Impression: If any artist belongs in the sin bin, this has to be the one. With more than two years passed since the target was reached and no recent update on the artist's own website, never mind Sellaband, I can only describe this as one artist who clearly doesn't deserve to be fan funded. Indeed if you take into account when she actually signed up, it won't be long before we pass three years and start heading into a fourth as far as the full process is concerned. Artists, take note of this prime example of the way NOT to do things.

Radio Orange
Target Reached: June 15th 2009
Status: Finally reappeared on Sellaband in November after an absence of quite some time to announce that the studio work was done and only the album artwork remained to be completed, meaning they were expecting believers to be able to receive it by the end of the year.
Impression: Not a great one given that a year and a half has passed (when their T&C stated 9 months) and the long period of silence. Given the information presented, if the album itself doesn't appear by the end of January, my opinion is likely to drop even further.

Katie Thompson
Target Reached: July 21st 2009
Status: Last Sellaband post on December 9th 2010 states mastering is finished and album design work still needs to be done, also that website, merchandising and first single + video release are being prepared.
Impression: Although this is another album which appears well overdue, Katie has done much better than many of the other overdue artists at keeping her Sellaband believers informed of what is going on and why throughout the process and therefore has retained more of my trust than might otherwise be expected. But I am also hoping for a January release, otherwise it's likely my opinion will start to slip further here as well.

Lori Greco
Target Reached: August 17th 2009
Status: Unclear. There has been no update to her profile page this year although it was last visited towards the end of October. The last forum post from her back at the end of August contains the following information "I have stressed that the CD must be finished for a pre-Christmas release as we are hoping to give away the Christmas song for free in the hope of bringing new listeners to my CD." Clearly the CD release hasn't happened and her website appears to be a very long way out of date with no information about the current situation either. Facebook page seems to have the most recent information buried deep within it which basically states that the album will be available "some time in 2011 but I have no idea which month", suggesting there's probably been a change of producer. It would appear the Christmas song mentioned in the forum post did get made available for free download anyway.
Impression: The intermittent updates on Sellaband and hunting required elsewhere to try and find out what's going on mean I have a lower opinion here than I do of Katie. Given this album is now heading into its 17th month since the target was reached, and the last known information that opinion is also starting to drop rapidly.

Tim Bennett (formerly known as Civilised Tears)
Target Reached: November 5th 2009
Status: Shooting second music video to accompany album. Has previously stated in November that Sellaband were having issues with the manufacturing of his album, hence there would be a delay and were speaking to a new manufacturer as a result.
Impression: Has been excellent at keeping people informed regularly and has been clearly demonstrating work on the album supporting projects, hence I've not been too bothered about the delay so far. Hoping this is one that can be seen by the end of January given that all except the manufacture appears to be done.

BONNIE
Target Reached: November 5th 2009
Status: Whilst they themselves haven't been very present on Sellaband since reaching target, one of their believers has taken on the task of keeping other believers informed via forum posts. Last known at the beginning of December to be waiting for album artwork with all recording completed.
Impression: Positive at the moment as the delay appears small, particularly considering the Sellaband bankruptcy/takeover and there have been updates from them, at least indirectly.

Aly Cook
Target Reached: December 8th 2009
Status: Currently fundraising on IndieGoGo for a tour DVD to support the album release and has stated that she expects the album itself to be ready for release February/March 2011. In fact an e-mail arrived as I've been writing this blog, which now lists March 21st as a worldwide distribution date, although there is no mention of the date on which Sellaband believers can expect to receive the album.
Impression: Most definitely positive at the moment. Has kept believers informed and given there must have been a delay anyway due to Sellaband's bankruptcy, the information quoted is broadly in line with what my estimate on a 12 month release would have turned into as a result.

Cubworld
Target Reached: December 16th 2009
Status: Unclear. Not much information to go on here as last update from July seems to suggest the album was still in pre-production phase. Is known to be active on Twitter and stated back in November that Sellaband had been chasing him for an update. Also looks like Kompis has been trying to get hold of him for an article for 50kmusic, but this hasn't happened yet and the actual current album status therefore remains unknown, despite the fact a recent post suggests there will be more news on this soon.
Impression: I'm slightly disappointed, given this is his second run through Sellaband, as I'd been hoping he'd have learnt a lot from his first run and hence things would be a bit better this time around. Whilst the year is only just up and obviously the Sellaband bankruptcy will have caused some delay, although I'm not overly worried yet, I feel an update (as a minimum) is somewhat overdue.

A Christmas Carol
Before I get onto the music charts you're waiting for, it's time to talk about the direction this blog is heading in the next year. As you can probably guess from what I've already said, the focus on Sellaband itself will be much reduced at best, so I have a few stories to tell to explain the transition and new direction.

Ghost of Christmas past or How to Create a Community
In my last blog post, I promised you a moving story from Sellaband Christmas past, so let me tell you something that not many of you will know. And even those who know (or remember) something about this, almost certainly don't know the full story of what sparked it. Before I move on to the future, join me in a memory from the past. Let me take you back to Christmas 2006, my first Christmas on Sellaband.

But first a few things to set the scene. I'd joined the site back in October as a result of getting a vision in my head. In actual fact, my initial reaction was actually quite a negative one - whilst the initial idea seemed interesting, the idea that someone would spend money on an artist they'd never heard of before just seemed like a non-starter. That initial impression quickly changed though as I read through the information available on the site and a vision of not only why it could work but a broad outline of the actual path of how it would work formed, and in fact how it would eventually lead to the "new music industry" that so many have been talking about. Whilst I've learnt a few new pieces of information about that vision as a result of my interest in Sellaband, I still believe in what I "saw" that day. And whilst I've never revealed the full and complicated explanation of that vision, there are two things relevant to this story that I'll reveal now. The first is that the process can only start with a single platform of experts so that people can have trust in one (i.e. the platform), rather than needing to trust in many (i.e. each individual artist). According to the information on the site at the time, Sellaband already had this - those who have been on the site a while will remember the experts page.

The second thing is that once the first condition was met, a community of music lovers needed to form on that platform - whilst they would be most needed for a later stage of the process, they also form the core of the credibility required to help the idea take off. Sellaband didn't have this when I joined, but unlike other sites which have appeared since which seem pretty dead on the interaction front, there were (a few) obvious conversations happening on Sellaband artist profile pages. Clearly a community could be formed, but it just seemed like nobody was doing it, because at the end of the day all communities need an inspirational leader.

This is the person that not only stands up and says that the impossible can be done, but also makes people believe it to the extent that it actually happens, hence creating a positive cycle that encourages more people to believe in what was originally thought impossible. And the impossible quite literally becomes possible as a result. As a "new music" site, what has been presented to music fans is the idea that you can be a part of the creative process and get to see things that you won't see by merely buying an album, you can get to know the artists/have access to artists in a way you never have before. If all you have is people being polite to each other, in the same way you might nod, smile or say hello to a stranger in the street, then that presented promise is a lie. The inspirational leader on a site like Sellaband, is the one that's going to create the promised level of interaction and show its worth.

Those who know me, know that I don't like to be a public figure online, but the vision I had seen was just too strong to ignore, so I decided to see what I could do to start off the interaction, though I know it's something my own personality doesn't particularly suit. I wasn't really getting anywhere, and in fact had almost decided to give up and probably leave the site altogether, when some real help walked into the place.

I hadn't long written the piece about the things believers should be doing, which Sellaband wanted to publish in the Tribune, when Vegas Dragons joined the site. Brian Taylor had taken one look at the simple statement about my vision to be found on my profile page at that time and he believed in it. And he'd come into the site doing all of the very things I'd been thinking about when I'd written the Tribune article! Artists who were around had been leaving polite thankyou messages to people who believed in them and that was pretty much it at that point as far as communication went, so Brian was the first artist on Sellaband who really started talking to believers and getting to know them as people in a big way.

Believers loved it. Here was an artist that was actually talking to them. Here was the holy grail - the promised interaction, and someone who actually cared about them. You could almost see some of the other artists scratching their heads wondering why people were buying parts - I'm not a musician, but even I can tell you there were people with more talent, better songwriting skills, better recordings etc. out there at the same time and people were walking straight past pretty much all of them. Some other artists started to pick up on the idea that if they talked to believers they got more visitors to their page, and hence potentially more belief as a result, but what was urgently needed was a better way for people to interact than having to go to loads of different pages.

There had been some talk about Sellaband getting a forum, but Sellaband seemed to be saying it was going to take a while, whereas I knew I could set up a free forum in about an hour. It wouldn't necessarily be as good a solution as one integrated with the site, but for the stop-gap I had in mind, it was an incredibly efficient way of getting the job done. Even though I had in the back of my mind the old adage "if you build it, they will come", I'd only received two positive responses to the idea that I set up a forum until Sellaband had one of its own. Despite the doubts I had, Brian was the one who inspired me to go ahead with the idea anyway, and it quickly became a place that people would go to in order to talk to Brian as much as anything else, because it was much easier to carry out a conversation in a forum environment than on the profile pages of the time. Other artists and believers started working out people were actually gathering and talking there, and they started to get involved as a result. The place started to grow.

One of the things I'd set up on the forum to try and get people involved, was a list of potentially controversial topics. One of these was related to the idea of artists buying parts in their own profiles, something I feel to this day is something wrong on a number of levels. From my point of view, if you wanted to spend money on your own project, spending it on Sellaband made little sense even back then due to the money lost as administration fees, and the fact you'd be better off putting it in a bank if your project was going to take a while to reach target, because you'd earn interest on it there (and you wouldn't in Sellaband). Or perhaps even that you put that money towards gigging or promotion instead, so you could get more different (new) people on board to support you, increasing your fan base, which in turn would convince some of the fence-sitters. Also, if you did buy parts, at that time it meant you got a number of limited edition CDs and my argument on that score was that buying a large number of parts would mean you were going to land up selling these in preference to the CD sales that would actually make money for the believers that had taken the leap of faith to support you. You might make money, but they wouldn't see a penny and some of them might feel cheated as a result.

Brian's view on the subject was quite simply along the lines of "If I don't believe in myself, then how can I expect others to believe in me?", to which my counter has always been the fact that you don't have to spend money on parts to demonstrate that. So when Brian announced to me on Skype (we'd quickly got talking a lot to each other on there) that he was planning to spend his Christmas bonus on buying parts in his own project, I pretty much went ballistic at him to talk him out of the idea. You see, in his case I was even more against it. What not a lot of people knew, was the fact Vegas Dragons weren't actually gigging together as a band (hence couldn't get interest in from outside) largely because Brian was in debt. And not just debt but quite a few thousand dollars in debt. To me it was obvious, the money would be much better spent towards sorting the debt problems and/or getting Vegas Dragons doing all the things it ought to be doing. After we'd talked about it for a bit, Brian promised he wouldn't buy the parts after all, and we arranged to talk again a couple of days later after I'd travelled with my husband to the in-laws for Christmas.

So enough of the background and onto the story. It's the evening I've just mentioned and I'm sitting in exactly the same room that I'm writing this post from now, waiting for Brian to call me on Skype. Naturally, I start looking at artist pages while I'm waiting and what has happened while I've been travelling quickly becomes clear. Nearly every page I go to with new parts has the same thing on it. Brian has written a Christmas message on his profile page and uploaded a photo of himself in a santa hat, and that is the new believer picture I see on a profile I visit along with the thankyou message from its artist who somehow couldn't believe what he'd done. Even though it is seen as a commonplace and natural thing these days, the idea of one artist believing in another because they liked their music was unheard of back then. And Brian hadn't believed in just one, he'd believed in fourteen. The yelling I'd given him over a day earlier had only had a partial effect. He believed in what he'd read on my profile page and Sellaband was now his life - artists and believers alike that he'd been talking to had quite literally become his friends - instead of using his Christmas bonus to start working towards sorting out those money problems I mentioned and start doing the things needed to make Vegas Dragons a success, he'd spent it on making a whole lot of other artists happy instead. A part of me wanted to shout at him even so, but how could I? How could anyone when they read the reactions of the artists who had received this surprise, particularly given the time of year? And after all, the deed was already done.

But that's not the end of it. Brian had been offering a copy of the first Vegas Dragons CD as an incentive to buy parts and a number of believers had given him their addresses in order to receive that CD as a result. Because he had those addresses, a number of believers got an unexpected Christmas and/or birthday surprise in the post that year, the contents of which I think was based largely on the relationship he'd built up with that believer to date, but Christmas cards and handwritten thankyou messages personal to each believer and mailed to them were among the list. My own was the red and yellow stuffed dragon which famously appears in the picture with the chessboard on my old forum when Brian foolishly made a bet with my husband by saying he could beat me in a game of chess by the end of the year. (If you don't know my husband, then he doesn't take a bet unless he reckons he has a better than average chance of winning, and he was pretty quick to take Brian up on this offer). To give you an idea of scale it arrived in a cubed box of approx 1m per side. Given we're talking from Australia to the UK, then trust me, you don't want to know the postage.

So if I had to pick the defining moment when the Sellaband community truly started, this incredible level of generosity towards both artists and believers alike, given the background it was coming from would have to be it. Brian cemented his place as the inspirational leader the community needed to form behind because of the way he was saying and doing a lot of the things I already knew from my vision, and 2007 was to pretty much turn me into the sidekick building on that start by helping him with a number of his madcap schemes (some of which ought to have got both of us thrown off the site, but which in fact provided some much needed amusement from the tedious wait between artists hitting 50K) that would further seal his place in Sellaband history.

That inspirational leader has been absent from Sellaband for a long time now with nobody stepping up to fill the gap. But it's also impossible for me to see how anyone could given the current state of the site.

So if you hear artists or believers from the old days talking wistfully about Brian Taylor, hopefully this has been a small insight into how the original Sellaband community formed around him and why this lovable idiot of an underdog still holds quite a high place in many people's hearts.

Ghost of Christmas present or My year with Matthew Ebel
Those of you who remember my review of the year post from this time last year know that I had been getting some bad vibes about Sellaband and had decided to remove a large chunk of money that had been sitting inactive on my balance for a while. This is the story about how some of that money landed up with Matthew Ebel, what my experience has been and what the result of that is. And if you are Matthew Ebel and reading this currently, who knows, maybe you'll find a few clues on that Twitter question of why people believe in you, and maybe I can blow the mind that can't be blown.

Matthew had originally signed up to Sellaband in February 2009, and although circumstances had changed on the site to the point I wasn't believing in artists until I saw some interest in their page, I had started digging almost immediately because it was obvious that this was one place I wanted to buy parts because I liked what I heard a lot. When I start looking for information on an artist I've never heard of before, it's usually a bit like trying to discover a Roman coin in the middle of a field using a metal detector. In Matthew's case the comparison would be an archaeological dig that turned up an entire city - it doesn't matter how many rocks you turn over, there's still something new underneath. To date, I've never had another artist unknown to me produce anywhere near the same level of reaction of "How on earth have I never heard of this artist before, when there's all this information out there just waiting to be found?". And to be honest I'm still turning up some interesting bits and pieces even now.

You can't exactly miss his subscription site and although it was easy to dismiss the idea of a subscription first time around, the two songs a month did sound interesting if expensive, given I'd just tripped over him. However, the song snippets from his monthly releases would tempt me back every so often and I'd also started to explore his back catalog and drop in very quietly on the odd UStream show he was doing. That takes us to about September 2009, by which time I'd begun to realise just how much I liked his music. I'd actually even begun to contemplate the idea of a subscription. After all, I'd been watching the two songs a month popping through for a while, even if they weren't always exactly on time (If you've heard "A Song For My Subscribers" you'll understand) And it wasn't just that - there were always things popping up on his blog and on Twitter. Compared to my experiences with Sellaband artists, this was a whole new world - things that get updated and things that happen (mostly) on time! And there's no team of people or manager here, just the one man. Could it be that I'd found something special here? - an artist clearly demonstrating their trustworthiness much more clearly than anything I'd seen before.

So I have all this going on in my head when Matthew announces the Entourage subscription level, and I watch the first four slots go just like that. But the fifth and final one remains... and remains some more... And I'd just decided to remove a chunk of money from Sellaband that had been sitting inactive on my profile a while.

The tipping point was actually the release of the "High Orbit Holiday Special". Completed from scratch in just three months and I absolutely loved the result. The Entourage slot still didn't go and Sellaband were taking their sweet time over a payout anyway. Looking at the cost of the Entourage, I realised I'd believed more in artists whose music I liked less and where the supporting evidence was much, much weaker. So that's why I made myself a New Year's resolution as I was writing the review of the year post last year - if the Entourage slot was still available when Sellaband got its act together and sent the money I'd requested, I'd take that last Entourage slot. Furthermore, on the strength of the evidence of trustworthiness I'd seen and the amount I liked his music, I'd make that public promise to renew that I made in my blog last January.

You also have to remember that at this point I had never, ever spoken or communicated with Matthew Ebel in any way. This decision was made purely on the evidence I'd seen with my own eyes online and from what others were saying. To this day, I have absolutely no idea what he thinks of me or something quite that incredible - after all, it's not every day that a complete stranger pops up seemingly from nowhere and does the equivalent of saying "I love your music - here have $500". In any sane world that just doesn't happen - when it does happen it's usually a gradual process that takes time.

As you know, the slot didn't go before the money arrived so I took it up. Things continued OK for the first couple of months and then Matthew's basement studio flooded, making it impossible for him to create even one song that month, never mind two. Under the circumstances, I'm pretty sure that most people would have quite happily said forget it (me included) - several hundred gallons of water kind of grabs your attention, particularly when it's captured on video still pouring into the place. In fact I think the water pumping was still happening, when he gave a masterclass in customer service and damage limitation that some people could learn an awful lot from. He offered to send a copy of the live DVD he was working on for free instead to make it up to people for the fact he couldn't do the two songs that month. At a time many people would have been worrying about the water, Matthew was already thinking about his fans.

But that offer did lead to the single time in the past year that I've found myself wondering whether I had made a mistake or not. You see the one thing he didn't make clear at the time was the fact the DVD itself would be quite a while coming. A few months passed, and when he announced he was sending the annual goody bags and it still hadn't shown, my guess was that it ought to be coming with them, but it didn't. In actual fact he was still working on the editing. The DVD did show about 6 months after the flooding which kept my trust intact, but the length of time not being obvious from the start was enough to give it a little rattle, despite the fact I'd not really been expecting the offer in the first place, the regulars weren't making any complaint and my past experience that if Matthew Ebel says he will do something, then you can guarantee that he will do his best to make it happen.

In July he announced he wanted to do a new "proper" album, rather than just releasing the album collections (Songs from the Vault) of the two songs a month he'd been doing up until that point. But this would mean no more 2 songs a month, and he was also going to stop his weekly Ustream shows. Instead of two songs a month, he'd be giving you updates , rough drafts , sketches etc. every month as well as the project itself when completed. Because The lives of Dexter Peterson actually started life as a story Matthew had written, and the plan was to turn this into a graphic novel and write some music to go along with it. As a subscriber, you'd therefore receive a copy of the book, a copy of the graphic novel, the CD and also an audiobook/radio dramatisation/podcast of the story on its completion.

I have extremely mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand, I tend to agree that there felt something missing from a lot of the songs he'd been turning out as part of the two songs a month, but to my mind the problem lies more with the way he seemed to be going about creating songs, rather than the idea itself. Rather than having a vault of half finished ideas/rough drafts maturing, it seems he's been creating songs much in the same way he wrote my custom song - literally pick an idea and have a finished song two weeks later. And I think that forcing of the creative process is why so many of them feel like they're missing that little extra something. I also think the two songs a month idea is an easier step up for someone who has been buying finished CDs but wants to support an artist more, rather than the idea of an album in a year's time - it's a bigger leap of faith and trust that the artist is going to deliver. The Ustream shows change was also a bit of a blow, (though I can see his reasons for it) - the fact it was sitting there on a regular date/time did at least mean you could plan dragging someone in to see what they thought, even if that wasn't the kind of thing likely to happen very often.

On the other hand, I'm extremely excited at the prospect I see here. Having been on Sellaband for so long, I've seen a lot of different artists from signup to completion of project. I've seen what they do and don't do. And I've also funded artists on platforms other than Sellaband.

So hang on a moment and let me stop and repeat a couple of things slowly, so you get the point.

A Sellaband artist
Signs up with a new project and raises funds
(typically) You get a CD at the end of it
The artist may or may not keep you informed throughout the process
The process from original signup to receipt takes between 2 - 5 years

Matthew Ebel
Starts work on a new project whilst collecting subscription money every month
You will get a book, a CD, a graphic novel and an audiobook/radio dramatisation at the end of it
You get updates, and access to background information/drafts etc. every month
The process from original idea (just a first draft of the book available) to receipt takes 12 months.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out there has to be something wrong in this picture somewhere, because the amount of work relative to the timescales stated shows an incredible gulf between the two. Even if you want to play the "full time musician vs. holds down a day job" card. But where exactly is it? Let's look at the evidence.

The Sellaband side is taken from actual data, whereas Matthew is just his plan. The overdue artists I've mentioned above are a pretty good indication of not just the average, but rather the vast majority, as signup dates and target reached dates as a minimum are readily available for all artists if you want to try and work out a few yourself to compare. Yes, there have been some exceptions, but it has usually been the case they are looking for completion funds, rather than needing to do the whole songwriting and recording process from scratch. The obvious conclusion to jump to, given the number of Sellaband artists where we know the time taken, is that Matthew Ebel is being incredibly overambitious and is going to miss by a mile.

Perhaps... Remember I'm no musician - I haven't the foggiest how long something ought to take as a result. I have to admit I will be surprised if he does meet the 12 months and hence the Autumn release he has planned. But when you consider the fact he'd been hitting the two songs a month on time nearly all the time with the previous incarnation of his subscription model, the monthly updates/insights on the current project are happening, plus the fact his Christmas album (the High Orbit Holiday Special) was completed from scratch in just three months and quite a few of his fans seem to think it's possibly the best piece of work he's done to date, I'm not so sure the problem is on his end. Sure, I think there's a pretty high chance he'll miss the deadline, purely because of how ambitious the project is, but compared to what's been seen on the likes of Sellaband, it will be nowhere near what you might expect for the length of delay in comparison. Rather the danger here is that there may just be a large wake-up call on the way for both fan-funding sites and artists alike. Four times the project in a half to a fifth of the time from one man compared to an industry of experts would not only set a new standard, it also ought to leave rather a lot of red faces behind it if the finished result is any good. And I think there's a real chance he can pull this off.

I made a very public promise in my blog when I originally signed up - that I would be renewing when it came around, and that promise has been kept after Matthew sorted a small problem I had with renewing out. So based on what I've seen and told you, I'm also prepared to make another promise publicly now.

As far as I'm concerned there is just one thing that Matthew Ebel needs to do before this time next year. I'm not going to tell anyone (not even him) what it is at this point, because it's something that needs to happen without any pressure or prompting. But if you've been paying attention to this blog post and/or you're smart it should be pretty obvious what it is. If Matthew does successfully manage that one task I have in mind, then he will have done enough to guarantee himself an Entourage member not only for the next year (2012) but for life. The only reason that would stop me would be a financial one. In the current economic climate, there are no guarantees, so at this point I can only hope, rather than make a definite guarantee I'll be able to live up to my end of that deal this time next year, even if he manages to complete his. But whatever happens financially, that's a big statement of trust to be making.

I've been on Sellaband more than 4 years, and I've seen and/or had a lot of contact with a lot of artists and what they've done in that time. And I still have that vision gnawing at the back of my brain. Yet in less than two years, someone I've still never met, never talked to and in actual fact have only exchanged a few e-mails and tweets with, has managed to impress me that he is further ahead of the learning curve on this score than any other artist or fan-funding site that I've seen to date. Things are not perfect, nor is his subscription model "the" answer, but in a large number of ways, he's got the idea. Irrespective of whether you are a fan, an artist or into the fan-funding side he is teaching lessons on a daily basis that you ought to be learning if you want to see a "new music industry". Some of which I don't think he's even aware of. Add to this the amount I like his music and that's why Matthew Ebel is just a single step away from claiming my full trust and support in such a short time.

Any bets as to when he'll make that last step? You can be sure I'll be letting you know when it happens.

Ghost of Christmas future or Where this blog is heading
Once I realised that things didn't seem to be improving with regard to the Sellaband situation it became clear that I was going to have a real problem. I started this blog to help people track what artists were up to on Sellaband e.g. any interesting new arrivals, artists who had reported they were leaving the site etc. etc. but with it being unknown when (or even if) I will buy a part in an artist on Sellaband again, I don't have the interest level required to continue to do this. Even looking at artist profiles on Sellaband in the first place seems kind of pointless when you know you're not going to be spending any money on the site. And with no money trapped in the site, there's no "hatchet day" moving of parts left to do either. Although I've somehow limped through this year in the hopes the situation would improve, the fact has to be faced that it hasn't and there is therefore absolutely no reason for this blog to continue as it's not doing what I set out to do with it, nor is there any indication of when/whether we'll reach a situation where it can once again.

I could have chosen to follow in the footsteps of a number of others and fade away from Sellaband into the background. But in many ways that would be a lot less easy than the last time I considered about doing so 4 years ago because of the things I've seen happen and how they've reinforced what I saw in that vision I keep mentioning. In short, the vision won't leave me alone, and crawling all the way back into the consumer pile doesn't seem like an option as a result.

At the same time, some of the things I've seen have also shown me that some of what Sellaband described as fences and things that I originally thought were boulders are actually entire great mountain ranges standing in the way of a new music industry. And if anyone thinks a couple of sticks of dynamite is going to blow that to smithereens...well.. they've got another think coming.

There are some fundamental shifts that need to happen if an entire industry is to arise, rather than a set of isolated artists making something work for them even if they don't entirely understand why. But it seems that both artists and industry professionals alike have forgotten what it's like out here on the consumer side of the fence, and without that understanding those shifts can't happen. Like I said in 1000 true friends - everything works both ways. That's a key rule that both sides need to understand the implications of.

So that's why I'm inviting you to join me as I look for new music. Rather than "Hatchet day", let me invite you to "Meanderings of a music lover" instead. Think of it a bit like I've been doing with Sellaband, only expanded. Not only who I find, but where and how I find. Come with me as I do something I've talked about before, but never shown you - get a better insight into the "ghosting" I've talked about in the past as I show you what I dig up from where, including artists I already know who almost certainly won't have been aware I've been looking. And there will still be the occasional special as well to get some more of the bits and pieces in my head out into the world.

As a matter of fact it'll actually be my second post under the new format which will properly introduce you to "Meanderings of a music lover" and its rather unique rating system, as the one I'll be posting after a short break is going to be another "special" about the value of music. From the point of view of your hardcore fans all the way down to a consumer, find out who finds value in what and why, and maybe even discover one of the things that many fans would love but tend to keep secret as a result.

The charts
The situation at Sellaband may have driven me away from listening to and discovering artists on the site, but it doesn't mean that I've stopped looking for new music completely. What's actually happened is that I've reverted back to what I was doing before I stumbled over Sellaband and whilst that means a slower process and a much smaller volume of artists, the breather has been rather welcome given the amount I've been doing looking into artists the past 4 years.

As a result, instead of my top favourite artists and songs on Sellaband, what you get this year are two different charts. One containing my favourite songs of the year from artists I'm fairly familiar with and/or am actively following and the other from artists where I've either encountered them for the first time in the last 12 months, or have only started to take an interest in them over that period. As a result, some of the songs I've chosen are actually more than 12 months old.

As well as the usual one song per artist restriction, in order to be included in one of these lists, the song in question must be available to listen to in its entirety online for free and without the need for any login or special software. As a result, where possible I've used Songza to gather these together and the link to the "soundtrack" I gave you at the top of this post is the link to that playlist of songs. Note that they will play in random order rather than the order I'm listing in my charts. Where Songza doesn't appear to have a copy of the song, I've provided a link on the song itself which will take you out to somewhere legal where it can be found (generally the artist's own page or the likes of Myspace or Facebook). The links on artists go to their own websites if you want to check anyone out further.
And for those who don't want to scroll all the way back to the top, here's the playlist link again!

Interestingly, although I follow both signed and unsigned artists and am including both, I believe you'll find the signed are most definitely the minority in the following categories.

Best Songs from artists I know
1. Poets of the Fall - Given and Denied
2. We Love the Underground - Let No Hand Hold Us Down
3. Radius - Prisoner of Your Love
4. Francis Rodino - Other Side
5. Julia Johnson - Lullaby

The top selection comes from an artist who is still independent and unsigned despite being one of the top acts in Finland, and is also still my tip for the best unknown (as far as the rest of the world is concerned) artist currently out there. The track in question is from their 4th album, Twilight Theater and is actually the one which contains the album title within its lyrics. As the album title suggests, there's more of a cinematic experience going on in the album as a whole than just some straighforward rock and the track I've chosen "Given and Denied" is representative as a result.

I've kept following Brad since he left Sellaband, and he's added 2 more tracks to one of his solo projects "We Love the Underground" since then. Whilst he did let me know about the first one, chances are he doesn't realise I spotted the second as well which in fact has grabbed me as the best of the six so far and comes in at number 2 on the artists I know about list because of this.

The remaining three are artists I know from Sellaband. In the case of Radius, I didn't think they'd come up with anything for a while which would beat "Next to Me" but lo and behold the first single from their Sellaband album managed to do just that. The song from Francis is one of the ones from the EP he funded this year at Pledge. And in the case of Julia Johnson, I have Daniel Ward-Murphy to thank for reminding me about her solo album through his blog. For those unaware, Dan always lists the music he's been listening to at the end of whatever he has to say to his own fans, and whilst his own choice of song was completely different to the one I've chosen, it did serve as the prompt which left me with half an eye on her site this year.

Best Songs from New Discoveries
1. Into The Night - Catastrophe
2. Morgan Page - Fight For You
3. Dommin - Dark Holiday
4. The Corner Laughers - For the sake of the cat
5. Vertical Horizon - Save me from Myself
6. Hazle Weatherfield - Nightstand Light
7. La Roux - Bulletproof
8. Modern Science - Wrong Things Said the Right Way
9. Sofia Talvik - Stop
10. The Swimmers - Hundred Hearts
11. Zoe Keating - The Path
12. Yonder Mountain String Band - Complicated
13. Fabrizio Paterlini - Pensiero Notturno
14. Mark Kano - Walking on Broadway

Here's just a few of the stories behind some of the artists making up this list. If you follow my blog over the next 12 months, you'll get to see more of what leads to a list like this as it actually happens.

I originally found Into the Night on thesixtyone when they uploaded 3 tracks from their first album, however it was just at the point I'd started to find out more about them when thesixtyone launched its disastrous site redesign that pretty much cut off all communication between people on the site. As a result it stopped me in my tracks at a key point in the discovery process and it's taken a while for me to get around to consider continuing where I left off by picking up elsewhere. The launch of Songza, the fact it contains both their EP and album and the fact I like what I hear on both is what has restarted my interest. As they're currently working on their second album, it's likely they'll be one of those I'll be following a little more closely in 2011 to find out if my interest is likely to take on a more permanent form. The track I've chosen is from their EP and has what I would describe as expected production quality as a result, and although it is somewhat different to their much heavier style, it's for this very fact that it stands out.

I know a number of my readers are into the female voice, and if you're one of those then Sofia Talvik should be right up your street. Another discovery via thesixtyone, but it's taken some time for her music to start growing on me. Interestingly she's currently attempting to fund "L" - the first of four EPs this year - via Pledge, so if you like what you hear, then that's well worth checking out too.

The story behind Zoe Keating is a classic example of how initial discovery can happen in a slightly unexpected way, as well as the importance of repeat/reminder in creating the tipping point which makes someone take that first step and check you out for the first time. Her name initially came up because she is one of the people Matthew Ebel tweets at occasionally and it's quite obvious from her twitter name that she plays cello. Now whilst I wouldn't describe myself as a fan of classical music, it is something I will listen to, but even as a music lover just that small amount of information isn't enough to get me chasing off to find out if it's something I'd like. Matthew Ebel himself created the tipping point, because in one of his video updates to subscribers he's listening to Pandora, you can catch the odd bit of what he's listening to in the background and he actually tells you that he's listening to Zoe Keating. And whilst I was listening to what Matthew had to say (honest!), enough of the background filtered in to prompt me to wander off to her website later. So if you like instrumental music, and cello in particular, you might find this artist even more interesting than I do.

Likewise Fabrizio Paterlini fits into the classical category as well - in this case with pure instrumental piano. And another discovery from my time at thesixtyone pre site change. Very laid back and relaxing, you'll find it makes for some perfect background music.

And finally
That's all for this time. Thanks for sticking with me all the way through this post which is long even by my standards, and thanks for sticking with me during my journey through Sellaband holding a large knife. Here's hoping you'll want to stay with me in 2011 as I discover artists and let a few ideas of my own out into the world. Happy New Year!

December 1st hatchet day

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:42:00 +0000

Welcome to the last hatchet day posting. As mentioned in my previous hatchet day post, things are changing for next year, but you'll have to wait for my review of the year post in its usual spot between Christmas and New Year to find out exactly what the future holds.

With the 1000 true friends post taking up so much of my time over the past couple of months, the shorter hatchet day postings over that period mean I'm a little behind on some of the things I should have been mentioning.

The most obvious of these comes in the form of Ivan from My First Robot who deserves every credit for being the only new artist I've noticed since the bankruptcy for taking a real interest and attempting to get involved in the "battleground" otherwise known as the Sellaband forum. Trying to work your way into a crowd when you're new is hard enough at the best of times, and it's definitely not been the best of times on Sellaband over the past few months. I seriously don't have enthusiasm for Sellaband at the moment, so I haven't been going round talking to artists like I used to, but just because I appear disinterested, doesn't mean I don't notice and appreciate things like this - I just find it hard to encourage this kind of "right behaviour" when I feel there's so much wrong with the system it's on.

It may also interest you to know that I actually voted for My First Robot in the Sellaband competition that pitted them against So What for a festival spot, even though I personally like their music less and have never actually seen them perform live, whereas I have seen So What live. So why, you ask? Well, for me a festival is about live performance and having tracked down and watched several videos of MFR on Youtube, I actually think they currently have the better live performance, so that's why they got my vote to go. A shame really that Sellaband decided to put an artist many were familiar with already as a result of their time on the site against one basically unknown to Sellaband users - I suspect many went with the obvious choice and just didn't even bother to check out the opposition to make a genuine choice.

So in many ways I'm kind of sad to see them as one of the "new artists" caught up in the whole "Sellaband parts-shifting" controversy. Unlike some of the artists Sellaband is favouring for receipt of parts, they're obviously around and interested, even though active believers don't seem to have been particularly interested in them to date. Given the potential for a big storm about Sellaband shifting money of inactive believers into inactive artists (particularly newer signups) this is one artist I'd rather not see caught in the blast radius through people deciding that all "Sellaband favourites" (or buddy bands as Thor calls them) are lazy good for nothings taking the easy route to a budget by sucking up the vast majority of inactive believer parts. They certainly don't deserve that tag.

I also find myself wondering whether Sellaband is going to dig itself an even bigger hole by starting a competition at this point. It's got a kind of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't feel to it, where you can almost feel people waiting for Sellaband to shift a heap of parts while it's on, hence influencing the result, yet at the same time I wonder just how well the competition is going to do while so many people aren't interested in buying parts due to the no refund policy, and/or one or more of the other ongoing issues lurking around. But so far no parts shifting has happened and there is a rumour floating around that Sellaband have said they won't be shifting any money during the competition, though I've seen no official confirmation (or otherwise) of that fact.

All the parts shifting has actually been making it even more difficult to work out which of the newer artists in particular is actually "out there". One artist has already been accused in the forum of being on the receiving end of parts from Sellaband but not actually being on the site, despite the fact there were status updates from them appearing in-between all the "dead believers" including information on how to get hold of the free track they were promising when they reached 1000 euros. In addition artists are actually getting some "real" believers appearing in between all the "dead" ones and that produces its own set of problems on the artist side as well. With nearly 71 pages of artists containing at least one part, it's obvious there's still a lot of parts shuffling to come, even before Sellaband get around to looking at inactive artists, hence the hell of believers being able to tell which artists are actually active and the hell of the artists knowing whether the believers are "real" or not looks set to continue for months yet.
And that's not a good thing from either point of view.

This is just one of the problems making Sellaband still look like a bad place to be more than 9 months down the line with the new management. With Sellaband locking money in the system, who is going to take a chance on an artist being active or not when it's completely unclear? Seems it's time to get out banging on doors and throwing the spam around again, or brave the Sellaband battlefield (i.e. the forum) if you're an artist wanting to convince people you're alive and not invisible.

This continuing poor looking situation was really the decider for me in asking for the little money on my revenue to be paid out to my Paypal account, rather than dropping it in an artist. The Sellaband system didn't disappoint on this score, but you could also say it failed to impress, seeing as the confirmation that my payout request had been received took seconds to appear from the automated system, but the money didn't arrive for nearly 7 working days after the original request. That's slower than the last time I requested a payout and about the same as the time before that. So one aspect I'd say that hasn't changed from the old Sellaband relative to the new, as this is the first payout I've requested under the new management.

Also on the subject of revenues though is the fact that no money has been credited to believer balances since the swap from dollars to euros. Sellaband say this is because the system needs to be tested, but I'm struggling to understand what the heck is taking so long considering there seems to be nothing fundamentally different with the system in the first place. As a result I'm back up to over 5 euros of revenue waiting to be transferred. So much for a quarterly payout system (as per Sellaband's own T&C) seeing as the last time money was actually transferred to believer balances was somewhat more than three months ago.

One piece of good news, it does appear that Franz from Sellaband is finally starting to take an interest in what little is left of the community. Though to be honest the "history lessons" and feedback he's been getting would have been part of a process best started months ago. Rather than the proactive approach of take over, get to know what's what and then try and move forward, it seems the reactive approach of take over, wonder why things don't happen like you thought and only try and find out why months down the line has been taken instead, and to my mind that puts Sellaband at least 6 months back on where it could have been. Only time will tell if the lessons get taken to heart though - once again it took me "growling" on the forum about revenues not being paid according to the terms and conditions before even the figure "waiting" got updated, and as already stated the money hasn't actually been transferred to believer balances yet, nor does there seem to be any likely date for when it will be.

The other result of my lack of enthusiasm for Sellaband at the moment has been that I've realised I am listening to pretty much no music at all on the site. Despite the fact it is a place where you can listen to music, it seems a part of me has subconsciously rebelled and decided there's little point in listening to an artist's music when there's no likelihood of me buying a part any time in the near future. For existing music I'm finding myself listening to Songza instead, but I haven't yet developed any single preference for a place to discover new music. Of the two sites for this that I've tried recently, weloveyoursongs.com has quite a few interesting looking artists, but the scam of a voting system which reminds me so much of some of the tricks the mobile phone companies use, puts me off wanting to spend much time there. The other site The Indie looks at first glance like a much more interesting site from the point of finding new music, but so far I've been struggling to find much in the way of artists that sound halfway decent. From comments on artists pages dating back to early 2010 or in some cases 2009, it seems to me the site really ought to be showing a lot more life than it is, but with no forum and seemingly no fan community perhaps this shouldn't come as so much of a surprise despite the fact I think it has an awful lot of potential otherwise as far as music lovers are concerned.

Back to Sellaband on the case of the invisible though... how many of you actually noticed Sellaband did a live stream of a Public Enemy concert? The concert was actually streamed on the 2nd November, but the banner announcing it only appeared on 1st November as far as I can tell. Unless you were lucky enough to get it as the random banner on the homepage and clicked through to the details, it's likely you'll never have known about this seeing as I didn't receive any e-mail from Sellaband or see any news article about it. Of course in true Sellaband style the text on the page itself was confusing, stating the live streaming would take place on October 2nd, even though the title clearly said November. Sellaband later put up a news article with a video of an interview they'd done before the concert itself, but I kind of feel the more interesting opportunity was botched here.

With Public Enemy having raised their budget the next "known" artist name to sign up has been Jonathan Davis of KoRn. Funding here is for a live DVD that is from a concert filmed all the way back in 2008 for his solo project Jonathan Davis and the SFA. However you need to buy two parts to actually get the DVD, as one part only grants you online viewing access for 24hrs. So far there's been much less publicity surrounding this signup than when Public Enemy came on board, but it seems a number of the diehard KoRn fans are already aware and have been quite happy to stump up 100 euros each (plus transaction costs) for the signed box set. With a $75,000 budget required, it will be interesting to see exactly how much interest does manage to find its way through the door, and how fast, given the 12 month deletion clause for projects.

Elsewhere on the site another artist we've seen before came back. The Funeral Honors raised virtually no interest the first time they were on Sellaband and disappeared off to Slicethepie where they successfully qualified for the $15,000 funding target. They've come back to Sellaband to try and raise a 34,000 euro budget, but despite having a plan that's better looking than the vast majority out there, it seems the interest level still isn't there. And whilst you might have expected their successful excursion to slicethepie means they've picked up some new fans along the way, it seems they haven't succeeded in bringing anyone back to Sellaband with them to support them as they are still on a big fat 0 euros. For those looking for an amusement factor though, you might be interested in the fact their old profile is still on the site and they seem to be visiting both profiles.

All Ages are actually also a returner to the site. Their original profile was deleted for inactivity back when Sellaband actually had a clearout. I'd already removed the parts I had in them some time before that as part of the hatchet day process. Another case of great music shame about the interest. Seems they haven't learnt anything since their previous visit to Sellaband either, judging by the amount of funding they currently have.

The only other new artist that's managed to make me notice them is a very recent signup Lillith through appearing on the forum asking for advice as they were new on the site. Perhaps further proof that my interest in Sellaband as a site is running at an all time low.

I finally got my act together recently and managed to drop in on one of Aly Cook's "kiwi Sofa" streams... well nearly. In actual fact I arrived about 10 mins after she'd finished while she was busy uploading the recording and pretty much everyone else had already left, so I stayed around and watched that. I think I've been spoiled by the likes of Mysti Mayhem and Matthew Ebel though, because I have to admit I wasn't a big fan of the audio quality. I have to admit it's the first time I've actually heard her live (well, ok, nearly live!) and despite the audio issues all I can say is Wow. I thought Mysti had a big pair of lungs, but I think Aly has an even more powerful voice. If you haven't dropped by her show yet, then my advice is do because she sure can sing. Meantime I'll see if I can get my act together again and make another visit to see if the audio was a one-off or not.

The only other thing worthy to mention at this point is the charity profile that has been started. It would seem this works differently to other profiles on the site, as the information I've read says money cannot be moved from this profile once donated and also that Sellaband don't take any administration fees if you donate to this project. Whilst I think it's an interesting development and also a nice idea in general, I do have a few worries lurking around. Firstly there's the rather bizarre statement on this page on Sellaband stating "UK charity registration pending" when the Foundation's site itself appears to be set up in Germany and the official UK government site clearly states "Unless your organisation is governed by the laws of England and Wales we cannot register you as a charity". Secondly of course is the fact that (in the UK at least) charity donations are tax deductible, meaning that if indeed it does get registered as a UK charity it would make no sense to make a donation through Sellaband anyway, if you believe in their cause and are based in the UK yourself - they'd get at least an extra 20% by you giving them the same money direct! Thirdly, although it states Sellaband doesn't take any administration fees, it isn't clear if you'll still be charged a fee to cover any Paypal/credit card fees on top of the basic donation. Call me overly suspicious, but given some of the things that have happened round Sellaband in the past, this currently comes across as something trying to take advantage of people's good nature, rather than a genuine charitable opportunity. Whilst I'm not averse to the general idea behind projects like this, this particular project is one I'll be staying clear of because I can find no basis for it actually being or even trying to become a charity (UK or otherwise). Even their own site seems to be more interested in company partnerships and sponsors.

So that's it for my last hatchet day post. Look out for my review of the year between Christmas and New Year, when you can discover (amongst other things) a moving Christmas story from Sellaband past, my impressions of my year with Matthew Ebel (remember I'm essentially a complete stranger who dived in at the deep end by joining his direct funding approach at the most expensive level possible back in January) and where (and why) this blog is heading next year, as well as my usual (yet at the same time different) music and artist favourite charts of 2010.

October Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:58:00 +0000

Only a short (well for me at least) post again this month, due to the post about the 1000 true fans model that I've actually been writing on and off since August.

Over the course of October, it's become painfully obvious just how much trouble Sellaband is really in, and you could say that's come about purely as a result of their own doing. Firstly, the interesting change from the front page proudly displaying the number of believers and how many millions invested to a facebook addon has had me laughing. Well I have to, I'd be crying otherwise. Obviously not everyone is on facebook (I'm not - I've had a couple of dabbles in the past and that's it), but given its prevalence, the drop from nearly 70,000 believers to a mere 1,500 people who "like" Sellaband seems rather an extreme change, despite probably having been a lot closer to reality for some while now.

Secondly, Sellaband's "inactive believer parts movement" has come into effect, meaning believers who haven't logged into their profiles in 6 months are having their money diverted into projects other than the ones they originally believed in. So the second chuckle I had to have (or I'd be crying) was based on Sellaband's news article about Public Enemy getting close to reaching their target. The quote "more than a thousand die hard fans worldwide" doesn't sound quite so impressive when you consider that at least 100 of these (and probably closer to 200) are believers who had their money moved for them by Sellaband. They are one of the artists who have reached their targets during this parts movement, and despite beating both the record for highest budget raised on Sellaband and the record for highest total number of believers, the internet has basically been dead on the news front about this to date with searches still only revealing the huge number of old news stories of the original $250,000 budget and its drop to $75,000. Call me unimpressed.

Thirdly, the fact that Sellaband continues to make the site look "pretty" and continues to fail to address basic issues such as the fact the limited editions still aren't being shown in the store, the quarterly revenue payouts (the T&C are clear about when these should be paid and it just isn't happening) and having a set of FAQ which is accurate rather than blatantly false (amongst other things the FAQ still states there's a 2 week chance to reclaim your money, when this clause was taken out of the T&C weeks ago - the reality is you can't withdraw money you deposit in Sellaband at all).

And if you didn't think that little lot was enough, then perhaps you haven't seen the Sellaband commercial yet. Having viewed the English version, I was somewhat dismayed to see the "make money" message back and featuring so strongly. When combined with the issues not being addressed, I don't think Sellaband could currently come across as any more of a scam. Seems the hole just gets deeper.

This "parts movement" going on has been a little disturbing, with certain artists seemingly getting the lion's share of the moved parts based on their perceived ability to bring publicity for Sellaband. The biggest standout names in this are the "Big Name" Public Enemy, the "Dutch Superstar" Hind and the "Sellaband Commercial Stars" Unbuttoned Heart. Whilst there clearly has to be some criteria for deciding who gets moved parts, the fact only the same few names seemed to be showing in the "latest parts sold" for quite a while has raised more than a few questions, and even led to at least one artist stating they are leaving the site.

And talking of publicity, they do say that even bad publicity is good. I'd be inclined to disagree with that statement where fanfunding is concerned, as the impression you leave behind at the end of the process is likely to come back to haunt you later. An example of this came this month in the form of Hind, who managed to release her album and make it available in the shops weeks before all those believers who had pre-ordered it (or in some cases spent 100s of euros to support the project) received their copies. An attitude I find completely disrespectful towards all those people who had gone out of their way for something they could have just waited to buy on its release, and essentially a bad publicity generator for anyone hearing the music for the first time on Sellaband who might have been tempted into becoming a fan. And unfortunately therefore yet another example of an artist seemingly let down by their management - as a music lover, I've so far failed to be impressed by any artist on Sellaband towing "professional" management - the do-it-all-yourself artists seem to have a much better grasp of what motivates and retains fans. Hind could potentially have generated parts for her second project by making people happy at the fact they'd pre-ordered, rather than regretting it - as it is, it's a missed opportunity for her and Sellaband which hasn't particularly helped her reputation.

Ironically, the second stage (the project currently raising funding) for Hind is for the promotion budget for the album, so I'm also reminded of what I said in my post back in February about separating out a promotion budget as a separate project. Don't know whether Epyllion read that or not, but they've chalked another victory up for the DIYers over the "professionals" on that score, by showing the way to do it is to have the people willing to support you AND to offer something new. In their case, the low budget figure may have helped somewhat as well in terms of them becoming the first artist to successfully raise a budget for promotion on Sellaband.

This generally depressing situation with Sellaband has actually had me contemplating whether to buy a part in an artist using the revenue remaining on my balance or not. Whilst there are clearly a number of artists now heading towards target (and indeed a few that have reached it since the parts movement started) there is still the fact that I'm waiting on a number of CDs where artists reached their targets before the bankruptcy. Given the timescales involved and the fact Sellaband seems to be heading away from stability rather than towards it due to the lack of new money entering the system, I'm wondering whether it's even sensible to buy a part at the moment - even if the artist reaches target, will Sellaband go bankrupt again before the artist gets around to releasing their CD? Stay tuned for next month's post when I'll have finished my deliberations and either retrieved the money to Paypal or spent it on one of those I'm interested in that I see getting towards the top of the tree. All in all the site now feels like it's living on borrowed time.

At least the Sellaband store expanded again... well, not much.. but Sylvain Zebo does at least have a series of tracks available for download. You might struggle to find this out though, seeing as the store link has been removed unless you're logged in. If you're not logged in, for artists who have released albums and have them in the Sellaband store you now have to go to their profile and click on the "buy album" button. Interestingly there is no free track download as there has been for other artists in the past - not that that will probably matter, given how hidden this feature is in the first place.

And Finally...
It's getting towards the time of year again when I traditionally do my "review of the year" and given the Sellaband situation, it's given me a bit of a challenge to think about. There will be a post along in its usual slot over the Christmas/New Year period, but as you'll discover, there will be a few interesting changes to its content. Having limped along for most of this year and not really doing the job I'd originally set out to do with this blog, I'll also be revealing what I'll be doing with it next year. In the meantime, the next post should be out on or around the normal hatchet day on 1st December.

1000 True Friends

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:02:00 +0000

1000 true fans is an idea increasingly used in blog posts about music these days. Since the original post, there have been a number of others posting either in defence of the idea or to try and debunk the theory. Interestingly all the posts I've seen talk about it from the artist perspective with no consideration of the process from the fan point of view. So I have two aims with this post. The first is to look at things from that fan perspective to show you that if you want to follow that path of 1000 true fans, you need to understand that the monster you are creating is actually 1000 true friends. The second is to show you just some of the ways in which an understanding of the fan thought process can help you towards creating that monster of 1000 true fans, whether you're an artist, a fan funding site or something else, should you decide it's still something for you.

So let's start with some basics.

What is a fan?
From my own point of view there are 3 types of people wandering around out there. The first I label consumers. These are people who will not go looking for you - rather you need to go looking for them. Traditionally reliant on what the media throws in front of them to decide what they do and don't like, this is your mass-market or long tail. The second type of person is a subset of the consumer, which I refer to as a music lover. Rather than be restricted by what mass media advertises as the thing they should buy, these people also search out music. Maybe your packaging for your CD looks interesting on the shelf, maybe they read a recommendation somewhere or maybe they even heard part of a song. They'll fall over you via some interesting route and like what they hear enough to want to give you a "test drive" i.e. If they're in the right sort of mood when you grab their attention and they've got the money, it's likely you might sell a few tracks or an album just because it looks interesting. The third type of person is the fan. Unlike the first two types of people, they already know who you are, they know where to find you and most importantly they WANT to find you. Irrespective of whether they are one of the quiet lurkers silently following you around or the more rabid and noisy "true fans", they will still be looking on a regular basis to find out when you're next releasing music, whether you're playing a gig in their area etc. etc.

The path to a fan
As far as your music is concerned, everyone starts out as a consumer (or that subset of consumer known as music lover). It's only by following a particular path that they may turn into a fan. If you like music you already know this, even if it is only subconsciously. But let's lay it out anyway.

1.Discovery
It all starts with a song that grabs your attention. "hmm, I like the sound of that - who is it by?". You might hear it anywhere - the radio, the music to a TV advert, the music someone has used for their home-made video on Youtube etc. etc. It doesn't matter. What matters is the fact you've found a song you like enough to want to own. It might not be the first thing by that artist you've heard (chances of this are actually very high) but it's the first thing that has managed to hold your attention.

2. Exploration
What happens next largely depends on how much of a music lover you are, and/or how much that track has got your attention in the first place. Since the advent of the Internet, it has become a lot easier to try and track down an artist, rather than have to go down the town and browse the local record shops, or wait for their next track to appear on the radio. If you've been hooked enough by just that one song, there's a good chance you'll leap straight into the next stage of trying to track down the artist to try and find out what other songs they've done to see if you like them. But except for exceptional circumstances, one song is not going to be enough and repeated exposure is required for the interest level to rise significantly. In other words - whilst someone may buy that one song because they like it, you don't stand a chance of landing up with a fan until they've heard more than one song they like "enough". And that's something that has the potential to take months (or longer), particularly if you don't regularly catch their interest.

3. Conversion
If you reach this point, you've probably sold a few tracks or an album. If someone likes what they hear and they happen to fall over you again at a later date, they may remember you and decide to buy your next song, album or whatever, but you still can't consider them a fan until they have been converted and actually start to seek you out rather than fate bringing you back together. There are actually 2 stages in the conversion - the first provides the fan and the second is the conversion of fan into "true fan". To clear the first stage, as a rough estimate you're probably looking at a minimum of an album's worth of material (i.e. about 10 songs) that the person actually likes, and this must also form at least 75% of everything they've heard of yours up until that point. The higher the percentage of your music that they like, the more likely you are to retain them as a fan over a long period. If there are tracks they actively dislike (rather than it being a take-it-or-leave-it case) you can be in danger of losing them quite quickly.

In addition to this, in order to clear the second stage, not only are you looking at a 90%+ like rate (in practice this is often 100% or very close to), they have to have seen you play live as well. If your live performance disappoints compared to the impression given by your recorded music, at best you'll be left with a fan who will buy your next album when it comes out and at worst you'll probably lose them altogether - the full conversion to "true fan" will not complete. Even worse, getting past this second stage still only creates a pseudo "true fan". Meeting in person will either seal or break the deal - if real life doesn't match the impression you have been giving them, then someone who previously has considered themselves a "true fan" and acted accordingly up until that point could well land up changing their mind.

Interestingly I actually found this post while I was planning this episode in my blog. The thing that amazes me most about it is that its author actually had to stop and think about the process he went through. Is it really not that obvious?

What do fans want?
In two words. More music. But let me give you the longer version.
- unless they were lucky enough to find out about you by the time of your first album, you can be sure they'll want to check out your back catalog and will likely buy some or all of it if and when they can
- they want to know when your next release comes out so they can plan their finances accordingly
- they want to see you perform live to see if you're as good as your music suggests

"True fans" take this one stage further
- they want to own everything you've ever done as well as being the first in the queue for whatever you do in future. Yes, that includes that early demo that you wish in hindsight had never seen the light of day and has been long out of print.
- they have made an emotional connection to you through your music and the image you portray and they think you're one of "their kind of people"

Yes, that's correct. That "true fan" on the other side of the world is actually your best friend (in the mind of said fan at least), even though you're actually complete strangers. Scary thought huh? At some point during the conversion of fan to "true fan" they have crossed an invisible line which means they stop looking at you as a business and start looking at you the same way they would a potential friend. If you're looking for true fans you need to understand that this is the reality, spot when it happens and react accordingly.

That thought scares me. If that's the case, why do I want true fans?
What planet have you been living on? If you don't want these people, you're passing up the opportunity to get yourself some lifelong supporters of you and your music. They think you're worth every penny they pay, despite the large number of people scratching their heads wondering why someone would pay YOU that much for whatever it is you're offering. And even if they can't actually afford the super-duper-top-of-the-line version, you've still got their undying love. Seriously. True fans are there for you and they are often generous, and not just in terms of money, particularly if you're not local to them. You want that bed for the night? You got it. They know what your favourite food or restaurant is? You got it. A luxury you like but can rarely afford to have? You got that as well. The list goes on...

So do you still want to create 1000 true fans? Read on.

Some clues that you already have true fans
- they will give or send you things (often out of the blue)
- they'll visibly talk about your latest project/voting request etc. without you needing to ask for them to do so
- if you mention you have a particular problem, they'll try and help you solve it if they can without expecting anything in return
- fans may come and go, but true fans will still be there whatever the ups and downs and more importantly they'll cut you some slack when you screw up (providing you don't do it too often and don't take them for granted).

Don't forget, they're your best friends (even though you don't know them). Isn't this the kind of way you'd treat your own best friends?

Let me give you an example from a story I've heard. Matthew Ebel has a fan helping him to book shows. His take on the subject is that the fan is doing the same job as a booking agent, therefore she should have the same percentage of his fee that he would pay to a booking agent. Her response - don't be silly. Now read that example again except with the word "friend" wherever I've used the word "fan" and not only should you see the conversation from her point of view, but also get a feeling for where things ought to go next.

How to create and retain true fans
- don't fake it, always be true to yourself
Whilst it's possible to have an image, whatever you do, don't try and come across as something you're not. Your fans need to like you for being you, or they'll feel cheated when they find out the reality. Managers are highly dangerous in this regard. If you've got one of those dealing with your fans rather than dealing with them direct yourself, make sure you stay aware of what is going on between them, and make sure it's known that it's a manager and not you talking to your fans. I'll never forget the story of the Sellaband believer who spent several thousand dollars on an artist on Sellaband, only for her to not even acknowledge him when he was stood directly in front of her, when her manager had been pretending to be her and constantly talking to him telling him how wonderful he was online. In actual fact the artist herself had absolutely no idea of who he was or what he'd been doing. That kind of experience loses fans and must come as more than embarrassment for any self-respecting artist once they find out too. Let's face it, could you really trust someone if you feel deceived?

- realise that it's the little things that matter
Shortly after Second Person raised their $50,000 on Sellaband they held a concert in London. I went down to that concert on my own, not knowing anyone there - I hadn't even been to a Second Person concert before. There are also very few pictures of the "real me" lurking around online. Yet I'd barely stuck my head around the door, before a shout of "Lucretia" (the name I'm known by on Sellaband) came from across the room, and Mark from the band was on his way to meet me. And indeed he was back around several times during the evening to check I was doing OK. When you consider I either had to be introduced to everyone else I met that evening, or at best I had a few uncertain enquiries as to whether I was Lucretia, the fact Mark had made the effort to both find out who I was and look out for me with genuine enthusiasm is something that really stands out. A simple thing perhaps, but the kind of thing that leaves a lasting impression. Just as with friends, it's the little gestures that show you're interested and/or you care about them as an individual that will leave the biggest impressions on your fans.

- find a way of giving true fans what they want
Other posts on the subject of 1000 true fans make the mistake of regarding a true fan as someone who can pay you cash. This is a misconception. I said earlier that a true fan wants to own everything you've ever done or will do in future. Just because they want to own it doesn't mean they can afford to own it - at least not in the traditional sense of paying money. The future is therefore open for artists to do what they do best i.e. get creative. Everyone has different skills and different contacts and the real winners will be those artists that form relationships with each fan in a way that allows the artist to use the fan's skills to help them accomplish some goal whilst rewarding the fan for helping them complete that goal with whatever it is they want to own as a thankyou gift. But to be able to do this, you're going to have to get to know your fans in the first place. At the end of the day, wouldn't you rather have someone who is as "into" your music as you are helping you out, rather than employing someone who is basically only helping you because you're paying them? Trust me, if you can pull this one off, not only will your existing fans love you for it, but you'll find yourself with a queue of new people too as soon as it becomes known what the deal is, because I certainly haven't seen an artist manage this one yet.

In short, if you approach the problem of making new fans the same way you go about the problem of making new friends, you stand a much better chance of landing up with a true fan. Even better, once you prove to them you're as cool and as great to know as they believed you were, they'll pass that word on.

I often hear artists saying they get the best response to their music by mixing with people who share the same interests as them, rather than trying to chase after people on music sites. Duuuh! If you make friends, people may be more inclined to listen to your music and see if they like it. Is it therefore such a leap to realise that by exposing yourself online, you've already prepared the ground, so that complete stranger that pops up from nowhere probably already has some idea of what you're like and what you're into? It's almost certain they have one or more things in common with you or your outlook on life - that's a part of what gave them enough interest in you to stick their head above the parapet in the first place! As a result, the artists I've seen do best at creating fans are those that realise the process of "make friend -> make fan" works backwards as well, and know how to react to a stranger that seems to suddenly appear with an interest. The better (and faster) you are at identifying when someone has, or is in danger of crossing the line and becoming a fan, the more likely you can make a true fan out of them.

Fans and fan funding
Fan funding sites are failing because they are trying to come into the process too late. It can take a long time just to convert one person into a fan. By the time you've gathered enough fans who trust you enough to pay you for something before it has been created, the chances are you'll also have developed the infrastructure and/or the contacts to be able to do it yourself. Why would you ever pay a middleman in this case? Not only do your fans have to trust you, they then have to trust the middleman too, and if the middleman lets you down some of your fans will therefore lose trust in YOU.

Rather than centering on the artist, fan funding sites need to recognise the laws of supply and demand and realise it's actually fans that are in short supply and it is therefore the fan needs that need to be fulfilled, as the artist needs will then be fulfilled automatically. (Stop Press: Artists only have ONE major need, and that's more fans!) Without this, they will only ever be a temporary fad while artists are still busy working out the fact they could do the same thing themselves.

The fan funding site that wins will be the one which gets into the process much earlier and realises that the conversion from consumer to fan is what they actually need to help with as it's where the potential really lies. On the one hand, artists are out there looking for fans. On the other hand, the current situation encourages consumers to remain consumers, rather than converting into those true fans that every artist craves. There is so much choice of music available, but so little chance of ever seeing the artists that make that music perform that there's no incentive to become a fan (see my section above on what fans want). Anyone with half a brain knows there can be a world of difference between a recording and how good an artist actually is. So it's no wonder that there are no superstars any more - that process of becoming a fan I mentioned earlier has been stifled by the sheer amount of choice screaming for attention and the traditional industry's inability to actually link artists with fans under these conditions. Of the three artists I particularly consider myself a fan of, I've only ever seen one perform live in person - the best I've had on the other two is video/Internet performance. And there's still no sign of either of these two ever performing a show in the same country as me, let alone anywhere actually local, despite each having already released at least 4 full albums, and one of the two even being a repeated and well-known award winner and chart topper in their own country.

We're forever being told that the price of technology is coming down and it's much cheaper to do things these days. People all over are saying that streaming media is the future. Yet how many music venues do you know that record concerts? Or even better, stream it? According to the future of music, fans have more access to artists than ever before. The reality is so far the exact opposite of this - despite all the touted advances in technology and all the free services around, the artists you are most interested in are often turning out to be the ones you have least access to. And there's no sign of this situation improving.

In addition, consumers want to try before they buy in the comfort of their own home. Gone are the days of going out on a dark and rainy night only to find out that it was hardly worth it, because the "new band" you went to see were basically just no good live. Without creating the appropriate level of accessibility to meet this need, you won't create fans in future. Accessibility is the one thing than fan-funding sites and more importantly the music industry in general should be looking at creating, and both are failing heavily in this regard. No Accessibility = no reason to engage = no reason to buy and music becomes a throwaway 5 minute track based flash in the pan as a result.

If I'm not getting what I want as a fan, why shouldn't I just be a consumer? This fan disillusion is the true challenge that the music industry needs to face and overcome, now that the music you can listen to is worldwide and no longer limited to artists in your own local area and whoever the music industry in your country is currently pushing.

The cost of true fans
Assuming I've properly managed to get over the idea that fans are actually your friends, it's time to understand what the cost of the 1000 true fans route is, and therefore why it will likely only ever work to an extent, rather than its full potential.

1. Time is not on your side
Can you spare 5 minutes of your time every week for your best friend? In reality, I'm willing to bet you spend somewhat more than 5 minutes a week on average with your best friend. But if we go with the theory that a true fan is your best friend, and attempt to spend just 5 minutes in a week with each, then if you have 1000 true fans, you'd need to spend nearly 12 hours every day, including weekends, to cover the lot. Assuming you sleep for 8 hours, that means you would have just 4 hours to do everything else including actually create music. Clearly not practical. Collecting and retaining a large number of true fans is therefore very difficult through time pressures alone.

2. One true love
Out of all the artists that an individual gets exposed to in their lifetime, you'll likely be able to count the number of artists they are a "true fan" of on just one hand. And possibly just one finger. Whilst they may consider themselves a fan of a much larger number, they'll only ever go that real extra mile for those currently at the top of their own personal pile. Given the millions of artists in the world, chances are it's not your day. The true fan relationship is much like searching for your soulmate - that one true love. Even though the fan is extremely compatible with your music, given enough time, the law of averages states that someone with even more compatible music is going to come along and oust you. How long can you retain your one true musical love status, so you can actually increase your number of true fans rather than merely replacing some of them?

3. Are you superman (or woman)?
It takes a special kind of person to truly cultivate true fans. I've been lucky enough to meet with some during my time on Sellaband, and I suspect a number of others based on their correspondences with myself or others, including one that I personally think can't sing for toffee. But one man's trash is another man's treasure in that regard, and they definitely exhibit all the other signs that would encourage someone who is into their music to consider becoming a true fan.

None of these people ever stop. I still remember sharing a taxi back to the airport in Amsterdam with Lily Vasquez at 4am - two hours before I actually needed to be there. She had pretty much been everywhere and spoken to everyone over the course of the weekend, and whilst I'd attempted to grab a few hours sleep before the taxi she hadn't even been to bed. I'm sat there feeling like the bleary eyed owl that's been woken in the middle of the afternoon, staring out of one half-closed eye wishing everyone would just buzz off and leave it to sleep and Lily was still fired up and on the go. To be able to put that amount of time and dedication into people and still be going takes a special kind of person, and it's exactly that kind of person that is best suited to creating large numbers of true fans. Are you that superman (or woman) or are you the bleary-eyed owl like me?

Whilst the 1000 true fans route sounds idyllic, the reality is that it's pretty much impossible to keep up the level of interaction that's required to keep that going for any period of time. But clearly, you can work with a smaller number and still keep them happy enough to want to retain their "true fan" status.

Fans need to learn too
It's only really since I pushed myself out of the consumer pile and took a real interest in Sellaband, that it's become apparent that for the music industry to move forward, fans need to understand a few things too.

1. "Sold Out" is a reality that isn't going anywhere
Some of the cries most often heard from fans is that an artist has "sold out" and/or doesn't have time for their fans any more. However fans need to realise the reasons why artists don't have a lot of time for them, and the fact this problem isn't going to go away. Just because an artist is doing it all themselves and doesn't have a manager, record label etc. in the way doesn't mean there's going to be any more opportunity to interact with them. We're back to that fact that it takes 12 hours every day in order to spend just 5 minutes of time a week with every true fan.

The average person has absolutely NO idea of the realities that artists have to cope with and the amount of time it takes, and even after 4 years I'd still consider that I've barely started to learn. By educating fans and giving them this understanding, more of them will start to cut you some slack and you'll also find yourself with better fan retention. If people don't understand something, they speculate and ultimately that lack of understanding is what often leads to those cries of "sold out". Engage them, involve them, but overall educate them if you want to beat this.

2. Be more open to interacting with artists
It's a huge temptation to only interact with artists you're really interested in, but by getting to know some of the others who openly exhibit the signs that encourage true fans you could be doing everyone a favour.

At the end of the day, there are a number of artists I've encountered and talked to on Sellaband that I feel truly guilty about the fact that I don't like their music more (or even don't like it at all). From the perspective of creating true fans, they're going about it the right way but for me the "musical spark" just isn't there for me to want to create the relationship. But the fact that I've interacted with these people, or even just paid attention to the way they interact with others gives me the opportunity to tell someone who asks me whether I like a particular artist the fact that even though I don't like their music, they come across as someone worthy of the effort. True fans are looking for interaction, so if I as a music lover can help direct another towards their "musical soulmate" without them having to sift so much of the junk by trial and error, surely that has to be a win for everybody?

3. It works both ways
The good news for potential fans out there is that it works both ways. In my experience, the artists most deserving of true fans are also the ones who appreciate them the most. They will be as excited to meet you as you are to meet them if not more so, assuming they ever get the opportunity. But by the same token that means EVERYTHING works both ways. If you truly want the kind of level of interaction which can only be offered to a "true fan", then you have got to step up to the plate and fulfil your side of the bargain. In the new music industry the artist - true fan relationship is a self-sustaining one, but you're going to have to be a true fan, and not merely a fan. That artist you love is going to need to trust you as much as you do them (if not more so, seeing as they probably know less about you than you do them) if you're going to move forward together, and that means that all the qualities you're looking for in them, they need to be able to find in you too. When they ask for your support in something, you need to be there to give it,assuming it's possible for you to do so. Are you up to that kind of challenge?

So. Artists. Fans. What are you waiting for? Get out there and make some true friends.

September roundup

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 21:33:00 +0000

The main post this month is something I thought should be written as an article in its own right, so here's just a quick roundup of the other things going on.

I mentioned last month that I'd received the mp3s for Francis Rodino's new EP. Well the CD itself has now arrived as well, meaning the Pledge music process has been somewhat faster than the Sellaband one, both in terms of the time for fundraising and the time between completion of fundraising and release. Meanwhile, I'm still waiting on a number of artists from Sellaband for their CDs, including several who completed funding back in 2008.

And this increasing wait for Sellaband artists is just one of many things completely putting people off the site. In the first week of September, the friend from my university days has finally had enough and updated his Sellaband status to read "Goodbye Sellaband. It was nice while it lasted, but it's time to move on". Looking at the list of 25 artists he had bought parts in, it looks like he is still waiting for 3 or 4 CDs as well, but otherwise has decided he won't be buying any more.

AmieStreet closes down and redirects to Amazon. I managed to get nearly all the remaining money I had there into tracks and downloaded, but their servers were obviously overloaded with people in the same kind of rush, as the process took me several attempts over a number of days to complete. This is yet another case that highlights the fact of why I'd much rather have an album than download mp3s. Every time a site like this closes down or moves on you're in danger of losing the music you paid for. At least with a CD, the chances are you can still rip it again quite happily. And at your own leisure rather than being forced into a deadline too - essentially your music backup is already created! The $5 Amazon voucher was no compensation for non-US buyers though, as even if you redeem the voucher it can't actually be spent if you live outside the USA.

I am enjoying the site that the amiestreet people have moved onto though. Whilst Songza is aimed as being for a group of people to collaborate on playlists, I'm actually finding it the best site I visited since Yahoo terminated their Launchcast service. No prizes for guessing it's the music site I'm spending most time on at present. Essentially it allows you to set up a streaming station which only plays what you choose. The main downside compared to Launchcast is that it doesn't suggest artists for you to listen to based on what the station already plays, so essentially you have to go find and add songs yourself. I do have a few gripes with it, such as the fact you can't remove a track you may have added by mistake, nor can you remove a station once you've created it. (My initial experimentation meant I landed up creating 2 stations of the same name). Also the fact you can't listen to a preview of the track to check it's a) the right one and b) it's OK can be a bit of a problem. For example I went and added Lordi's "The Arockralypse" album and it's obvious the encoding is screwed up. This means every track on the entire album is playing in mega-slo-mo satanic, which is somewhat ironic when you consider the band's actual image.

For those of you interested in Indie artists, it's quite interesting what I've dug up on there (and indeed what I haven't). For instance there's no sign of Nemesea, yet all you Lily and Cubworld fans can go listen to their Sellaband albums (amongst those of many other 50K artists). And it doesn't stop there. Radius have their single "Prisoner of your love" on there, even though their album isn't yet released. And there's even music from artists on Sellaband who haven't reached a target such as some Wetwerks tracks. Matthew Ebel's back catalogue appears to have been sneezed on, meaning there's a howling gap after his album "Beer and Coffee" with the next album being "Songs from the vault vol 2.", meaning SFTV vol 1 and a couple of others from the intervening era are missing. There's also quite a few artists I recognise from either Stereofame or Thesixtyone that i've been able to dig up as well. In short it's well worth having a look to see who you can search up, as the site contains a broad selection of well known and indie artists, and also covers music released from at least the 1950s to (almost) current based on who I listen to that I've found. I'm still working on my own (call it personal) radio station, but if you've got anyone you think I ought to listen to, then here's the station you can add to A username I recognise from Sellaband has already come in and started adding some stuff to this one as well. Basically go ahead and knock yourselves out and join them.

Using Songza is currently completely free. More importantly there's absolutely nothing to download - it streams the music without bothering you to install any player, library management software or other junk that sites seem so keen to throw at you these days. There are some adverts on the site, but you can quite happily swap out to another tab or minimise your browser and it will keep playing so you don't have to be disturbed by them at all. But I find myself wondering how long the service will a) remain free and b) whether it will eventually go the same way as the likes of Pandora and lock non-US users out of the system. Which would be a real shame, as this is currently the streaming service most closely meeting what I want from a streaming service.

That's it for the September roundup. The main post looking at the "1000 true fans" model from the fan point of view will be along in the next couple of days, and that's one you really won't want to miss.

End of an Era (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:26:00 +0000

Before I take a look at this month's post, let's just take a quick follow up on last month.

As I start writing this, the Sellaband site should be down for maintenance. With only about 24 hrs to go, a series of news articles appeared about the changes during this maintenance, highlighting a very highly disturbing set of changes for both artists and believers. It's also interesting to note that none of the changes seem to have been communicated direct to artists or believers prior to them coming into force (no e-mail has landed in my direction at least) i.e if you hadn't visited the site and read the articles, then you're likely to be getting a shock next time you visit. Here's a quick summary of the main changes.

- The 2-week refund clause in the T&C is being removed completely. That's right.. no refunds from the Sellaband system EVER. The only money you will be able to get out of the site is the money Sellaband credits to you as part of revenue share (and then only if you haven't tried to buy a part with it).

-instead of using USD, the system is switching to Euros. That means every budget and every balance will be going through a one-time currency conversion, and the new part price will be 10 Euros for all new projects (existing projects are likely to have a figure around 7.8 Euros depending on exact exchange rate at the time). Given the current exchange rate, this means albums have effectively received another price hike to go on top of the one introduced with the previously increased fees. Whilst it does appears fees for deposits may be reduced again under the new system, this increase of more than 25% on part price will likely more than make up for that reduction.

-projects have 12 months to get their funding or be deleted, Whilst this should be one very good way for clearing out the inactives, when combined with the no-refund policy, the increased chance of locking money into the system is likely to scare people off completely. I can't see any self-respecting artist wanting to risk the money of their hard-earned fans (and hence their own reputation and likelihood to retain those fans) in this way, so I'm expecting most if not all of the new artists signing up to be there for the promotion rather than seriously trying to raise a budget (no real change there then, except that it might become even more pronounced). I can also forsee a number of artists with fans trapped in the system reducing their budgets over the next few weeks in an attempt to get out intact before the 12 month deadline strikes as a result.

-if you are a believer who hasn't logged into the site in a while and you have money in there, there is a good chance Sellaband will move your money into an artist of their own choosing. Yes, that's correct - so much for "Your music, your choice" (one of the original slogans of Sellaband). You'll still be entitled to the incentives etc. of the artist your money is moved into should you later turn up, but don't be surprised to see you bought a hip-hop CD even if you were only into classical piano, or some other unlikely/unexpected combinations happening if you don't keep dropping by the place regularly.

-Sellaband themselves will put 5% of the 15% money they receive (i.e. one third of what they receive) from completed projects into new projects. IMO, yet another blow for the "your music, your choice" ideal of the original Sellaband which was designed to let the music lovers choose which projects they wanted to hear, rather than have the choices forced upon them by record companies. To find that 5% of the money you pay for projects you like is going into projects you may not like is something that is not likely to go down well with people who came to the site to support a particular artist - I'm sure they'd much rather that money went to "their" artist than someone else. Rather than new music industry, this feels more like a return to the old, where successful albums were used to finance the less successful ones.

Here's hoping they get all the inconsistencies in the T&C ironed out as well, so that it stops looking like it was written by a 5 year old! (or younger, if that's the way you feel about the current set), but I think for me at least, these changes are probably the final nail in the Sellaband story due to being too disrespectful towards those who have been (and are) willing to put more into music than just buying a finished product from a shop. For sure, no new money will be going in from my end under the incoming set of Terms and Conditions, and unless someone whose music I like comes within completion distance on funding within the next couple of months, you can pretty much guarantee the little money I have remaining on my revenue balance (currently just over an "old" part) will be coming out before Christmas. (I did try to remove it the day before the site maintenance in fact, but surprise surprise, withdrawals were "temporarily unavailable" for the whole day and there was no response to my support request either)

Slim Void albums finally arrive for believers, however the corresponding incentives are seemingly missing. I know this, because with 5 parts I should have been receiving some discount vouchers and there were certainly none in the envelope. Apart from this issue, outstanding CDs are (so far at least) slowly coming through, but there's still a distinct feeling that backlog needs to be caught up with before anyone would start looking seriously at the site, even if we ignore the other gripes around. To give you some idea of the scale of the backlog of projects, of the 36 artists I bought parts in who completed funding, I'm still waiting on 11 for the results (this includes the one I mentioned last month that I was chasing), some of which are already over 12 months since completing funding ,and I certainly don't have parts in everyone who completed funding prior to the bankruptcy.

And so onto the topic for this blog post.

During my time on Sellaband,I've bought parts in a large number of different artists, some of whom raised a budget, some of whom left the site, and some of whom I landed up removing parts from due to the restrictive terms and conditions on the site. As promised in my last installment, this post is going to be about my own personal "pick of the bunch" that I'm keeping a particular eye on. Irrespective of whether Sellaband survives, at the end of the day I'm still a music lover and that means there are artists I will follow for one reason or another that little bit more actively than leaving it to chance encounter at some future date to remind me they exist.

1. Brad Cox/Skitzo Calypso
Although I've been struggling a bit with the Skitzo Calypso back catalog in particular, as quite a bit of it is that bit too far off the mainstream compared to what I listen to, I still consider Brad as a very interesting songwriter. Somewhat obscure lyrically, it makes for a refreshing (and more interesting) change from the large number of artists who seem to have a very limited vocabulary where songwriting is concerned. He's certainly capable of writing stuff I like a lot (as his solo projects Niki Thunders and We Love The Underground have proved) and will remain as one of the top three I'll be lurking around after on a very regular basis as a result.

2. Matthew Ebel
As regular readers of this blog know, I'm actually one of Matthew's 5 Entourage members, having snapped up the last spot a few days into 2010. This has proved to be a great call on my part - as I suspected and stated in a previous blog post, I can't find a song of his that I don't like. Of all the artists I've ever encountered, this makes him only the third for which this statement currently holds true (and he has a fairly decent sized back catalog to have a go at). In songwriting terms, he's clearly at his strongest when he has an emotional connection with his subject matter, whether that be the result of personal experience or his storytelling imagination, and that seems to reflect through on the most popular songs with his fans too.

If you're wondering about the incentives that come as part of my subscription level - well I've got no complaints - the goody bag (including framed/signed CD) arrived OK this past month. In addition, he's already written my custom song and it's actually the last song that's been released as part of his "2 songs a month" subscription. You see, he's now taking on the likes of Sellaband, Slicethepie, Pledge music et al. at their own game. That's right - he's fan funding his next album without using a fan funding site, so the only middleman involved is Paypal (and then only for the fees to transfer the money from you to him).

The project itself basically replaces his 2 free songs a month - instead you get access to the project "as it happens" - written drafts, sketches, rough songs, behind the scenes etc. as well as the finished article, which so far is seemingly going to consist of a book, CD and graphic novel. Add to this the fact he's only started off on this in August and the whole lot is due to be done in 12 months, and I find myself staring at the potential for a very interesting lesson in fan funding. I hope he pulls it off (I have faith that he will at least come close to that 12 month deadline), because it will throw down the gauntlet to ANY fan funding site to explain why they are needed (i.e. you've probably only got until July/August next year to show why you're not an obsolete idea and therefore why artists should use you, rather than pulling in the funding direct themselves). After all, what makes for the more interesting story? - the fact that the monetary and publicity power of a "household name" such as Public Enemy, combined with a company such as Sellaband can't pull off BOTH the funding AND delivery of an album project (with incentives) within 12 months, or a guy who (basically) nobody has ever heard of can on his own. You can be sure I'll keep you up to date on whether or not Matthew Ebel looks like making the grade on this one, unless you want to sign up over here and find out first-hand.

3. Bulletproof Messenger
The first artist on Sellaband that grabbed my attention enough to "want to buy a part now", they actually appeared during one of the competitions on the site and so far look to be the only artist I see definitely heading towards some kind of success. All of their recent gigs have seen them as support to an artist I've actually heard of and who gets regular airplay on one of the UK music TV channels. In many cases the name in question is one I more usually hear as a support name for someone else - but to get to support the support of the well known is clearly getting pretty close towards the top of the pile. I may not be seen to be around these guys - rather consider that I'm lurking heavily in the shadows, ready to reappear (probably when least expected).

4. Phil Tweed
I'm actually still playing chess against my long time favourite from Sellaband. Unlike Brian Taylor, Phil has actually managed to beat me on a few occasions now - I think we're currently running at a rate of him winning one for every three or four I do. Whilst a very slow musical creator in general (think of it as creating a masterpiece rather than a song), I actually prefer his original music to his covers - and believe me I've heard quite a few jazz standard covers in my time. I'm pretty sure I'll be lurking back around in his direction with some money next time he manages to get an album together.

5. Francis Rodino
When I removed my money from Sellaband after the bankruptcy, Francis was one of the artists who got some of it. Whilst believers are left waiting around on Sellaband for CDs of artists who completed their funding back in 2008, Francis has so far managed to raise the funding and release the digital copy for his EP this year via Pledge music. With the album release party scheduled for October and the physical copies currently being duplicated and packaged, it seems likely that Sellaband believers will still be waiting for 2008 albums from some artists when Francis' Pledge supporters have already received their 2010 ones. Pledge shows only just over 100 supporters compared to the more than 650 that are listed for his Sellaband album, so it would be interesting to know whether the price, site or length (i.e. EP vs album) put people off. Or indeed whether the length of time after funding completed for his Sellaband album to be released was the deciding factor (more than 12 months at a time when the contracts were supposedly significantly less).

As my own "pick of the bunch" of the UK artists I've encountered on Sellaband based on his ability to entertain a crowd, it's good to see this release out in a timely fashion whilst at the same time making me wonder what the real story of his Sellaband album taking so long in comparison was. One interesting thing for you though - it may be a little early to make a proper comparison, given the Pledge 192kb mp3 vs Sellaband 320kb mp3 and the fact I don't have the CD yet, but for all you music purists out there, the production on the Pledge EP certainly feels lower that the Sellaband album from what I've had available to me so far. Will be interested to hear what the genuine article (i.e. the disc itself) sounds like.

6. Best of the rest
In addition to the above, there are a few artists I am likely to drop in on occasionally. These are generally ones I've seen perform live and/or who have managed to do something in particular to impress me to the extent that while I may not be the biggest fan of their music, they are certainly someone I'd recommend to others based on my own experiences, and who knows, I may well be caught around their site buying music at a later date if I find something I like.

Aly Cook
At the end of the day, being female, I tend to fit the stereotype that my major likes are more likely to be male. There are a few ladies who have particularly managed to impress though. As the only female in the list that I can claim as one I haven't seen perform live in person, rather it's Aly's approach to music as a business and towards new model music methods of promotion etc. that earns her most of this recommendation. After Matthew Ebel, this is probably the artist I'd be most comfortable to trust with money for direct funding rather than using a middleman of those I've encountered on Sellaband. And as I haven't met her, or even had much direct contact with her (whereas I have with a number of other artists mentioned in this post), I think you'd have to agree that has to be quite some statement.

Daniel Ward-Murphy
Probably my biggest regret here is the fact I don't like his music more. I think the nearest I came to kicking myself that I hadn't bought more parts in his Sellaband album was when he put up the video for "The Queen of Something New" as it managed to grab me in a way that none of his previous stuff had quite managed. (Un)fortunately (depending on your point of view) the rest of the album didn't have quite the same impact when it appeared. A solid performer, the opportunity I had to see him soundcheck is probably the thing that opened me most up to him musically. But I suppose the real thing here is that if I had to choose an underdog I'd like to see kick the traditional music industry in the nuts and achieve success, then I think I'd be making my choice here, purely on the basis that Dan is one of the good guys who prefers to stay out of controversy and just do his thing. Given the adage about where nice guys are supposed to finish, this is one person I think deserves to prove that adage wrong.

Lily
If ever there were an example candidate for the 1000 true fans model, Lily would be it. Whilst I'd say she's currently missing some of the business side to get it to work, in person she has exactly the right personality and approach towards fans that is required. Trust me, if you fall in love with Lily's music, you'll fall in love with her as well. I'm looking at the whole issue of fan funding and 1000 true fans in my next blog post, so hopefully after that you'll get a better understanding of what I'm on about here.

Trail
Hands up who remembers Trail? The ones that got away from Sellaband back in the 50K budget days (after raising something like half that amount) and went to Slicethepie to raise a budget instead. I didn't help fund them over there because I don't like the way the site works, but I still keep a passing eye on them because they have several great tunes. Interestingly when Daniel Ward-Murphy was asking for people to vote for him in the Pepsi Max-IT Legends competition recently, Trail's video for City was one of the videos he was up against. Wonder how many of you noticed that? (They finished 9th to DWM's 3rd in the 3rd round if you were interested)

Nemesea
The first artist to raise 50K on Sellaband and the first artist I went "guardian angel" on (ah... but you don't know that story), I feel they've got a lot of untapped potential they haven't quite managed to release. Hopefully their third studio album will be out soon, but there's very little information about it on their website to date.

So that's my list for you. Like I said earlier, I'll be looking at the idea of 1000 true fans and its relationship to fan funding in the next post. There are plenty of lessons to be learnt from Sellaband (add to that quite a few BY Sellaband) in this area, not least of which is the differences and motivations between the different types of people making up potential sales. So far, I haven't seen a single funding site that understands this and even artists themselves seem to be struggling when it comes to truly understanding why something they do works (or not). So discover 1000 true fans from the fan point of view next time which is going to lead us nicely onto where I'm looking at heading with this blog now that I no longer have the "Sellaband" in the title.

End of an Era

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:43:00 +0000

It's now heading towards six months since the demise and rebirth of Sellaband, and an appropriate update to this blog is long overdue as a result.

Part of the reason for the delay in me putting my thoughts about the whole matter down in writing is hinted at if you went past my Twitter page in the couple of months after the initial bankruptcy. Shortly after the site went bankrupt I started having vision problems, and after a whole series of blood tests they've determined I'm not diabetic (at least not yet), but the reason for my ongoing inability to keep objects in focus at random intervals is still unknown, although they did find my vision in one eye has deteriorated significantly. I was forced to limit my time spent staring at things (particularly computer screens) as a result, so my original posting plans kind of went out the window.

Anyway to get back to the matter at hand, one of the things you ought to have noticed first is that the title of this blog has changed. No longer "The Sellaband knifelady" but merely "The knifelady". I felt it was the only appropriate action to take at the time, and at the moment my view on putting it back hasn't changed. So far, the "new Sellaband" management haven't managed to convince me the site remains worth supporting. Rather the case is more the opposite, particularly when I consider both what has (and hasn't) happened since my last post, and when I look at the current status of the site.

For those who have missed the action as it happens, here's a list of just some of the issues bothering people that were either present on the old site, or when the site reappeared. I'll take a better look at each one in detail in a moment.

1. Changes to Sellaband Terms and Conditions
2. Limited Edition CDs
3. "Leftover" artists
4. Revenue Share
5. "Inactive" artists
6. Discoveries
7. Non-deliveries

1. Changes to terms and conditions
The first big change after the new site came back up was a change in the Terms and Conditions of the site which meant it was no longer possible for believers to remove money from the site before an artist reached their target. This was a fundamental principle behind trusting the original Sellaband - the fact that if an artist left the site or just didn't go anywhere budgetwise you could take your money out at any time. The new T&C mean this has basically changed to a 2 week "cooling off" period. i.e. you can only remove money within the first two weeks of making the original deposit. After that, whilst you can remove your parts from an artist you can't then request that money back out of the site. Effectively it's stuck on the escrow account and you can only buy parts in another artist with it. A bit hard to understand why the escrow account is therefore still referred to as such, because it seems much less likely there could be any claim to this money by believers if the site goes bankrupt again given the new T&C. Most active believers seem to have withdrawn most or all of their remaining funds in the place as a result of this simple change. And yes, I was among them on that score. Two weeks is certainly not enough time for a site to recover after a bankruptcy, and when you're faced with the choice of getting the money within that two weeks or never being able to retrieve it again, most people made the obvious choice. With projects having no fixed time limit, the risk of buying parts which you can't retrieve has soared. Only one project to date has completed funding in less than a fortnight. In short, there's no incentive for believers to buy parts in Sellaband artists any more unless they are a few parts away from their target as the risks now outweigh the potential rewards.

Things don't look that much better from the artist side either. Artists who completed projects under the system where they could choose the budget and incentives, rather than being tied to the 50K deal are now finding they are having to collect the names and addresses of believers who funded them themselves, despite this information being in the Sellaband system. Believers also have to work at this, rather than it being automatic as the best Sellaband does is send a mail asking you to send your details to the artist. So far, two artists I believe in that fall into this category have completed their projects with Sellaband, and I've had to chase up BOTH myself in an attempt to get my CDs (one received so far, the other I'll have to wait until at least the end of August for as the artist is away). Compared to the old Sellaband system, if this is showing the start of a trend it's highly disturbing - I've had no such problems when Sellaband rather than the artist has been the sender for a completed project in the past.

The overall feel given off is now one of the greedy middleman who takes a percentage of the money believers deposit up-front as admin fee, plus a further 10% of the project amount if the project completes, yet does nothing in return for the artist as they are left to organise themselves and deliver the project to believers. Matthew Ebel's reason for leaving the site therefore looks spot on - what is the point of using a middleman if you still have to do all the work yourself?

Sellaband say their reason for the change is because the site was not legal due to the fact you could remove money at any time. Interestingly, the spin-off project of one of the original founders Africa Unsigned, is still running and still offers believers the chance to remove their money at any time. What is legal and what is not? Are Sellaband's reasons genuine or are believers just being fed an excuse for this change in the T&C? The jury is still out on this one.

2. Limited Edition CDs
To add insult to injury on the believers side, Sellaband then came up with a solution to the LE Cds that believers had left with them to be sold via the shop. Quite simply put, they asked believers to either pay for the shipping and have them all sent home or basically treat them as a donation. i.e. they would ask the artists in question if they wanted to pay the shipping to have the CDs sent to them instead. If nobody wanted to pay this postage Sellaband were planning on using them for promotion. Yes, that's correct. Either you had to pay to get the CDs you already paid for sent to you or or they would be given away and you wouldn't receive a penny for what was actually your property. After an outcry, it seems someone came forward to offer free storage for the remaining CDs but several believers are so sick to death of the place they've actually paid to have their remaining CDs sent home, hence severing the last of their ties with the place and their likelihood to even visit again, never mind spend money. Not a good start for the new management.

Despite this backtracking, the issue still isn't resolved. Even though Sellaband have turned round and said, "OK, the CDs can still be kept with us for free and sold in the shop", in actual fact not a single artist is showing LE CDs as being available to buy, even though there are still definitely a large number available for most of the artists in question.

There are also a number of legacy issues to worry believers which have still not been sorted out. Some of these have been discussed on the Sellaband forums, but there are a number that appear to have been overlooked.

3. "Leftover" artists
Firstly there are a number of questions regarding the "leftover" artists from 2008. For those not in the know, there are a number of artists who completed their funding back in 2008 but no CD has yet been seen, despite the 6 month (later changed to 9 month, and more recently in the new T&C 12 months) required for completion of the project. In some cases we know there have been delays due to the "old" Sellaband being very slow in bill paying, but only one of the artists in question is currently looking close to releasing a CD, as believers have finally been asked how many CDs they want sent home. There is also a nice "caveat emptor" in the message from Sellaband which basically states that you can have all CDs sent home as soon as they are available for free, but if you choose to leave them in the shop and then later change your mind, you'll have to pay the postage. Given the lack of Limited Edition CDs actually available in the Sellaband shop (as I've already mentioned) it will be interesting to see how believers react to this one.

But, let's not forget that things are not simple any more. As the site went bankrupt, artists were entitled to release themselves from their contracts with the site and reclaim their masters. What this means for artists who haven't even produced a CD yet is unclear. Do they even have to produce a CD any more? Do they have to sign a completely new contract? And from those few questions, I'm sure you can figure out a flood more that come to mind. The management for Clemence have already asked for her albums and downloads to be removed from the Sellaband shop (this has been done), and this in turn raises questions about the remaining LE CDs believers have left with Sellaband for this artist to be sold in Sellaband's shop.

We then have the case of the post-2008-but-pre-bankruptcy artists. Under Sellaband's incentive system, there were things like publishing share as well as revenue share included, along with vouchers for half price CD copies from the shop. So let's go back to that magic question about the site going bankrupt and artists being entitled to release themselves from their contracts and stop and consider the implications for the revenue and publishing shares for believers. If an artist walks away, is the reality that the contract with believers has been broken too? i.e. that believers will never see any revenue share or publishing from these artists?

One artist falling into this category is Slim Void. At the time of writing, believers have still not received anything from this artist, despite tracks being available to download since April. None of the promised CDs, no discount vouchers - nothing. Nor has there been any announcement as to when these might be expected. A visit to their page merely reveals a plan which states "All done from our side" and no real enlightenment from the comments on their wall either.

4. Revenue Share
But further to the comments I've already made about revenue share, there is of course the fact that this same problem applies to virtually every artist who has ever raised a budget on Sellaband. Nemesea chose not to sign up to the 5 year deal that was offered when artists were given a choice back at the first main T&C change in 2009, and they were out of their 2 year deal period when the site went bankrupt, but for other artists the question of what happens with the revenue shares for believers remains.

Sellaband have recently sorted out the transferring money part at least, meaning the first payment this year to believers has finally been made. However I expect some will be confused by the new 2-tier balance system, where the "old" balance contains money that cannot be removed from Sellaband and you have a second balance (called the revenue balance) with a choice of paying out to Paypal, or transferring to the "old" balance to spend. It's also unclear whether money transferred from the revenue balance to the other is subject to the 2-week "cooling off" period in the T&C from the date you choose to do the transfer, or whether this is immediately locked and cannot be removed. Anyone intending to leave money in the site in the hopes of buying a part later will therefore probably leave this in the revenue balance if they're smart. Though some would say the smarter option is to remove the money altogether.

5. Inactive artists
Obviously the changes to the Terms and Conditions sparked a number of artists who wanted to leave the site. Additionally, regular readers of my blog will know I've been complaining on and off since April 2007 about the fact that Sellaband just don't delete profiles of artists that have left the site. It probably will therefore come as no surprise that there has been very little "tidying up" of inactive profiles since the bankruptcy, covering artists in both these categories. In fact, you don't have to look very hard to find profiles of artists stating in their Sellaband profiles they are "leaving Sellaband" but still showing within the top 100 artists on the site. Whilst Sellaband is putting out some nice "pretty" updates to its website, such as a twitter-style activity feed, it seems that the real issues with the site that could be sorted, such as this one, continue to be as overlooked by the new management as they were with the old.

6. Discoveries
In addition to the obvious problems, there are also some worrying stories beginning to emerge. Reports that the curator handling the bankruptcy is looking into a $300,000 discrepancy in the escrow account as part of that process have been coming to light. Given this represents the equivalent of 6 projects under the original Sellaband T&C (and more than 10% of completed projects so far) it's quite a worrying figure and doesn't inspire confidence, particularly when combined with the other issues floating around.

The other thing discovered has been the existence of "special contracts". In fact, based on the responses to the forum thread, it seems the "special contract" rather than the "standard contract" could perhaps be considered more the norm. The suggestion here, is that the set of T&C artists agree to when they sign up does NOT in fact form the basis of the contract they sign on completion of their budget. Rather than merely a rubber-stamp approval to confirm on the conditions they originally signed to, it would appear contracts have in fact been written up and agreed on an individual basis for many artists in the past after the target has been reached, without believers being aware of this fact. How many of these "special contracts" also have bearing on the next section is unclear

7. Non-deliveries
The rate of non-delivery of promises has actually been quite shocking. Some of the cases are down to artists quite simply promising to tour and promote so that you WILL get a return on investment, and hence convincing believers to buy parts. There are however a number of cases that could be considered more serious than this. Here's just a few of the highlights.

Second Person's album was essentially a concept album consisting of 5 songs with 5 associated videos that all believers would receive. The first video was released along with the album, but the other 4 have never seen the light of day. Second Person cancelled their second Sellaband project a while back because the members "wanted time off to deal with their solo projects", so it is still unknown if/when the rest of these promised videos will ever appear.

Clemence did a 7 song album for believers, however it was then revealed she had gone on to record a further number of songs and would be releasing a CD with a record label containing BOTH these songs and the songs from her Sellaband project. Essentially, purchasers of that CD would get a double album with 14 songs for the same price that they could buy her 7 song album from Sellaband. There was an outcry. Sellaband promised believers they had agreed a deal with Clemence and believers would also get a copy of the other album for free. No prizes for guessing this has never been seen.

AIOIA were another concept base. In this case believers were promised 3 CDs about this "alien culture". The Sellaband funding would be used for one of these albums, one was already being produced and separate funding would be achieved for the third. However the poster of this information subsequently fell out with the artist and apparently various legal actions ensued. As one of those not interested in this particular project, I have no idea what believers eventually received, but judging by the large number of comments on the forum at the time, it certainly wasn't what was promised and believers weren't happy about it.

What now?
So in summary then, despite the fact there are artists continuing to crawl through to targets, the Sellaband landscape actually looks quite bleak. Too many issues remain as big red flags with the system with no clue as to when they will be resolved, and given past performance of artists who have been left unregulated it's still impossible to recommend Sellaband to others nearly six months down the line. Add to this the fact there are other sites out there offering artists exactly the same service under better conditions for both artists and believers and it's clear that without some radical changes soon to address the situation, the only way will be down into another bankruptcy.

As a result, like others I'm waiting to see what Sellaband themselves come up with before I consider putting any money into the site in future. Quite simply there are better choices around. Also believer confidence has been dented too heavily for most existing ones to want to support the place at the moment. Again, another fundamental principle behind the original Sellaband applies here - the fact that they had industry professional experts who would control the process, rather than you feeling you were being asked to give your money to any tom, dick or harry you'd never heard of before that came along is one of the things that gave people confidence to join the site. History has proven somewhat different to this and with artists now left in complete control and Sellaband clearly stating in their T&C they won't be responsible, the question becomes how can you know which artists you should trust? And with existing believers (including me) giving off no-confidence vibes, what chance is there for new blood to be brought into the site?

The issue of non-delivery also has wider implications for fan-funding. I'll be exploring that in two posts time, when I take a look at what lessons there are to be learned based on my Sellaband experiences and revealing why Sellaband as it currently stands and similar services could be definitely proved as obsolete and unnecessary in just over 12 months from now. Anyone interested in fan-funding or the concept of 1000 true fans should definitely not miss this one.

For my next post though, I'll be looking at some of the artists I've encountered on Sellaband. Some are still around the place and some have most definitely moved on, but all have one thing in common - they are ones I am still following. Everyone has their "artist gems" from the site and these are mine. Find out who I'm following and the story behind why next time around.

Sellaband goes bankrupt

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:42:00 +0000

If there's one thing I hate, it's the regularity with which my alarm bells tend to be right. I told you in my February hatchet day post that I'd been rattled out of my comfort zone and it seems the calm has ended and the predicted storm has arrived in the form of Sellaband declaring bankruptcy. Not necessarily what I was thinking of at the time I wrote my original comments, but also a possibility that was in the back of my mind.

Obviously today's announcement affects this blog in a big way, however I'll be waiting for the dust to settle before making a full announcement. I do aim to post some time around the expected March "hatchet day" however with an initial set of thoughts based on how things develop between now and then. I suspect that will still be too soon for a full announcement though.

In the meantime, if you did stumble over this blog, or even came here deliberately looking for more information than can be found by the simple statement on the Sellaband homepage, you might like to know I've reopened a section of the forum I used to run before Sellaband had one of their own. So if you're looking for information, or even to reconnect with other Sellaband artists and believers you'll find them at sellaband.proboards.com. If you had an account there in the old days and didn't delete it, your old login details are still valid, otherwise you'll need to register in order to post (you won't if you just want to read).

Just remember I am unofficial and don't/have never worked for Sellaband, so I don't have an inside line to what exactly is going on - this is more an attempt to give what's left of the community a port in the storm and the opportunity to communicate what they know with each other until the (any?) future of the site becomes clear. So just remember to play nice over there, because you don't want my knives after you! ;-)

February 2010 hatchet day

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:02:00 +0000

Welcome to the new hatchet day posts. Now my quest to do some serious sorting out of parts in artists is mostly done, it's time to get back to something resembling normal service. However, expect a very important announcement on that score later in this post.

Under the hatchet
As I've been dealing with my parts list in general in previous posts, the normal hatchet process has been ignored. Now I'm back in full force, meaning that the 3 month rule is back in effect. i.e. this time around, if I can't find evidence that an artist has been seen on Sellaband on or after 1st November 2009 then out comes my knife. In the case of artists on my following list it means they get removed and in the case of artists on my belief list it means that some or all of the parts get removed.

However there is now one big change from my previous behaviour of immediately putting any parts removed into another artist - this won't be happening unless the new artist is over 50% in budget. Instead the part(s) will remain on my balance until one of two things happens. Either an artist I'm interested in buying (more) parts in passes the 50% requirement, or sufficient time passes such that the money on my balance looks like it's increasing with no sign of a home coming along (in which case it will get removed from the Sellaband system).

So this month sees me drop down to one part in The Quahaugs and remove my part in TheLights as a result of no evidence they've been seen November or later. I've also had a big tidy out in my following list and have removed everyone who is still fundraising that doesn't meet that date requirement either.

Artists in danger of losing parts next month due to my inactivity rules are as follows:
The Quahaugs is obviously in danger of losing my last remaining part and dropping back to a following list alone. All other artists on my belief list except Leave have been seen in December (and the vast majority in January) and so are already safe. And as I've already said, I'll be leaving that part where it is until at least April based on information gained during my transition period.

As you can probably guess, there's now a change to my parts buying in general. Artists are currently moving so slowly on Sellaband at present that I've decided I won't be buying parts in new projects that I'm interested in for the forseeable future unless the artist a) reaches at least 50% in budget or b) gives me a very good reason that convinces me to jump in earlier (including but not limited to reasons such as their music really connects with me, or they obviously have a lot of existing fans arriving too). I'll be reviewing the situation regularly, but until/unless things improve with regard to new believers getting actively involved with the site, I'll now only be following, rather than buying early.

Following
Angie Arsenault is back as a custom artist with a promotion budget of $25,000. I have to admit I'm not a fan of projects such as this. In Angie's case you could say there was no choice in the matter as her album was produced under a different set of conditions for the site, but to separate out a promotion budget from the project it is associated with and expect to raise it separately is something I think is completely wrong in general. To my mind one of two situations should apply - either the budget being raised includes an allowance for promotion, or the artist uses the money they've "saved" by the fact they didn't have to stump up the recording costs themselves to put towards their promotion instead.

Let's face it. If you raise a budget for producing an album, there is no guarantee you will be able to raise the money for a separate promotion budget for that album to coincide with its release (which is what you need). It's basically a totally new project. And unless there is something to tempt those who put funds into the album creation itself to buy parts in the promotion budget as well, it basically feels like you're being asked to pay for the album twice when the promotion is done separately. And if your promotion budget only gets completed after the album, then it's of no use because most of the interest will have evaporated to follow something more current. Don't get me wrong, like many others I think there ought to be some promotion cost somewhere in the equation rather than just a product, particularly when revenue share is involved. I just happen to think that the way many people are trying to do this at present is the wrong one. Even Hind's promotion budget appears to be struggling (at least relative to the fundraising for the album itself), although it's unclear whether this is related to whether she has reached the majority of the interested already or not, or whether it is really the case that people just don't want to pay twice when there really isn't anything new or exciting on offer when you compare it with what was offered for the first project.

So in Angie's case the jury is currently out. Whilst there does appear to be a digital download of something different for your $10, we're back to the fact that it's a digital download of 5 tracks, which doesn't set me personally alive with enthusiasm. So I'll only be following for the time being - this one is currently going to be a very late decision I think.

Ivyrise have a rather interesting blog which basically centres around the theme that the band appears to be trying to drum up interest for their music by basically finding gigs of well known musicians and handing out their CDs to the people waiting in line. So far this effort of street promotion doesn't appear to have attracted much in the way of interested people to support them on Sellaband though. Maybe it's an idea to start sticking something about your Sellaband profile in the CD insert boys? Given they're looking for a 100K budget (ouch!) I have a feeling they're getting a bit overambitious, but the single track on their profile suggests they could be well worth it, if they can first drum up some interest from outside.

Alexis Blue have got a rather infectious chorus on the single profile song they have. Would love to hear some more from these guys as I think there's definitely some potential here.

Junkus Minor grabbed my interest, despite being somewhat atypical of what I normally listen to from Finland. Anyone for some country rock? Actually, having thought about it, they sound like they'd probably be right at home on Laulava Sydän (that's the name of a TV show in Finland for those who were wondering).

All The Fires also have my interest musically but only seem to be offering a download rather than a CD.

Musical stories
Remember I mentioned The Black Doves a few blog posts back and the fact they had left a blog on their page saying they were off to Kickstarter to fund an album and were already over the $1,000 mark? I've been keeping an eye on that project and it appears it failed to reach its $25,000 target - in fact raising only $1,250 by the time the deadline was up. Whilst this is still more than 10 times the amount of their funding on Sellaband at the point they announced they were leaving, it's still interesting to see that their success level in getting support over there isn't really any better either. I'll be interested to see if they come back here, given their profile still exists.

Another artist off to another site is Electric Eel Shock who decided not to come back to Sellaband for a second round, but rather to take their next project elsewhere. Ironically the place they've chosen is the place at the top of the list I was thinking of when I mentioned that I thought Sellaband was now at a disadvantage compared to some other funding sites out there because it had no set time limit for projects and it takes money up front. It will be interesting to see if they can raise their full budget on there, or how much of their success on Sellaband was due to hype.

Blister sent me a message saying they are looking at possibly reducing their budget significantly, but I haven't had any further information on if/when that is likely to take place.

Chris Jones sneaks very quietly out of Sellaband leaving a very interesting issue in his wake. You'll remember from a previous blog post that I was reluctant to buy a part because his budget was in Euros and we had no idea how the currency conversion was going to be handled. Well for those who missed the thread on the forum, with him leaving we just found out. Currency conversion rate does apply to the money you get back as well as the money you spend, as one believer got 52 cents less credited to their balance than the figure that had been removed from it when they bought their one part. So be warned. This confirmation that you're relying on the chance of the exchange rate as well as the chance of the artist reaching their budget makes artists whose budgets aren't in dollars even less attractive to me, although it does make me wonder if someone will start speculating on the exchange rate by buying and removing parts in euro artists to try and increase their balance.

If you're awake, you'll notice I've now added in a link to Twitter on the right hand side of the blog (below the About me section). Despite the fact I'm not really a fan of the thing due to the encouragement of use of URL shorteners, getting an account started properly on there has been well overdue. I'll be tweeting as soon as my blog goes live every month, so here's yet another way to follow me as well as possibly pick up on some of my own unusual interests. And if you're wondering why I consider URL shorteners a real evil, well I guess I shouldn't complain really, because they're likely to keep my husband gainfully employed removing malware from machines. So much for telling people to check out where a link is going to take them before they click on it (potentially exposing their computer to something nasty) when a URL shortener makes it impossible to know where you're going until you get there. Yes folks, I expect the likes of Twitter to be increasingly blamed for a surge in phishing and other attacks, purely due to the behaviour it encourages.

I'm keeping a watchful eye on Pim's new project Africa Unsigned. I haven't signed up myself, but I already see an awful lot of names I recognise buying parts on there, including some who have basically said they've washed their hands of the Sellaband site (a fact I find interesting in itself). The site itself is closer to the previous incarnation of the Sellaband website - just the parts cost is $1 with $10,000 budget required and there is no CD just a digital download of a minimum of 3 tracks. Additionally, it would appear there is a time limit for raising funds as well as the fact the artists appear to have (so far) been selected by a panel in order to get a spot on the site in the first place. Personally I'm not a fan of African music in general, but I wouldn't necessarily rule out finding something on there some day, so I might be taking a peek at it from time to time to see how things are going. I'm also not yet convinced it even has the potential to be viable given western music tastes - it will be interesting to see how much promotion goes into it for one.

I've got a plan
Welcome to this month's selection of the good, the bad and the just plain ugly in plans from artists recently signing up or changing what they have to offer.

This month most of my interest has been taken up with artists reducing budget. Lorraine Jones already appears to have changed hers despite the fact her plan states the sum is provisional. As a result I'll be waiting to see what happens before deciding whether or not to buy back into her - as I've said before inconsistent plans worry me.

Maitreya decides to radically reduce his budget in the hopes of getting a tour budget together before July when it's needed. I won't be joining in with this one because I don't like rap, but given how quiet the site has gone, I'm wondering whether he is going to find the 150 ticket buyers he's looking for through Sellaband. Getting actual dates up might actually help his cause.

John C Fraser also reduces budget again in the hopes of getting a CD funded by April and seems to be getting quite a bit of interest as a result, meaning he's now raised nearly 50% of his new budget. Will I increase my own parts? I'm not sure as yet, due at least in part to that announcement I'll be making later.

Is it me or does the "help I'm lost" section just keep getting crazier? Some real gems turned up in just the last fortnight, some of which are below.

Have we got an Africa Unsigned reject on our hands? Or someone who just can't read? Actually Vini Gawa can't even be the former unless my geography is off as well, but with a plan based round raising $10,000 with $1 parts he looks like he's not got the idea that Sellaband uses a $10 part price at all. Either that or he should actually be a custom artist and Sellaband have just forgotten to set his profile up correctly.

I needed an English translation last month and it looks like I need one again this month. Say hello to Beach Bum Ben whose plan reads "I will release one full song and two half songs (I don't feel totally safe releasing full songs onto the web). When I reach my goal I will record in Hawaii." Add to this the fact he's only offering a download (no CD) and is offering to share all songs via mp3 for 3 parts and.. well.. are you as confused as me?

I love the way artists are still using the site purely as a way to promote themselves rather than actually trying to fundraise on it (what the site's intended use is now) Vadim seems to be just one such example of this given his plan reads "my goal is to get promoted on this website and get the music labels and producers interested in me! I need You support! :)"

And finally, the usual selection of one-liners. Now again want to "Play everywhere!". Nichelle Colvin wants to be "the biggest artist ever" and Minoti would like "To make good music for everyone to enjoy."

The real Sellaband success story
I promised you this story in my last blog post. It all starts because I had spotted something which looked vaguely familiar some time before Christmas, but couldn't quite place where I'd seen it before. I kind of forgot about it, but when searching for something completely unrelated I came across the following PM I received way back on May 18th 2007. (spelling errors and all)

you obiously have great taste!
I can tell by the money you've invested so far on this.

If we could get one or two of your shares, we'd obviously be enternally grateful! We'll make it to $50,000 i'm sure!

http://www.sellaband.com/twelve34 - if anything, let me know what you think!

You're probably having a very good laugh at this point, or indeed even wondering what this message has to do with anything. I don't know if any other believers received an identical message at that same time from this very clueless sounding artist, or just their own tailormade version. What I can tell you though is that the artist joined the ranks of the ignored/unfunded as far as believers were concerned (as you can probably guess) and I'm guessing the profile itself got deleted due to inactivity back when Sellaband actually had a clearout. I do know the artist in question apparently got some interest from an indie label and subsequently released an album.

But you'll still be wondering what even this has to do with anything unless you've been sharp enough to spot the same thing I did. So let me enlighten you. You see, the sender of that message has remained on Sellaband and obviously learnt quite a bit just by quietly watching it in the intervening years. How do I know this? Because their current project has just successfully raised a budget on Sellaband at a time when parts aren't selling particularly well. So say hello to Eric from Epyllion next time you see him, because I regard this conversion from completely clueless to creating the strategy to successfully raise a budget (and in a relatively short time after signing up the new project too) as the real Sellaband success story out there. Let's see if they manage to confirm that further by releasing their album in March or April as well. And who knows, maybe in another 3 years we might be looking at a real contender for the "outside success story" I suspect many of you were hoping this would be. Given the change I've seen demonstrated here, I'd say don't rule out that possibility just yet.

So for all you clueless artists out there, there is a big lesson to be learnt here. Wake up, get some advice and use it and get serious and who knows, you too could actually successfully raise some money on Sellaband.

Oh and if you were wondering what it was I originally spotted, have a look in the biography section of Epyllion's profile. I thought there was an artist name in there that looked familiar, and if you cross-reference it with the PM I quoted above, you'll find the confirmation of that thought.

Sellaband
And so to that announcement I promised you earlier. As you might have guessed from previous blog posts and the changes I've mentioned with regard to parts buying earlier in this thread, I've decided to officially scale back my activities on Sellaband. The final straw on that score came this past month as a result of the Nearfield thread on the forum. I'd already been unsettled by Mandyleigh's blog at the start of the month, and as I've mentioned so many times you're probably sick to death of it by now, I'm not happy with the fact Sellaband don't even appear to be enforcing their own T&C and doing even the most basic of reality checks on artist plans. Answering questions on the support site (using the "feedback" link) appears to have virtually stopped, and for there to be complete silence from both an artist and Sellaband itself on the subject raised by the Nearfield thread has made me start to wonder if there's something going off in the background. Maybe even something with legal implications. And as I'm writing this blog, Mandyleigh starts a thread on the forum with the followup to the link I just gave you. It's unclear what the true situation behind this one is, but it seems it already serves to reinforce what I've already been saying re: artist education, advice etc - if you want to create a "new music industry" you first have to be able to educate in all aspects of the existing one or someone is going to walk straight into a problem through inexperience. As I said on the forum, you don't give a five year old the car keys and expect him to drive himself to school.

So maybe I'm just shooting at shadows, but it's almost like an air of "the calm before the storm" is developing. And if there is a storm developing out there about something, the signs are it's going to make previous storms about Sellaband look like a light drizzle. It's too quiet out there at the moment in more ways than one, and that's rattled me outside my comfort zone.

But what does this mean both for me and this blog? Well for starters, I'm going to withdraw pretty much all the money remaining on my Sellaband balance from the site. I REALLY don't like what I'm seeing (or in some cases not seeing) at present, so the loose money is coming out. I will however be continuing the blog (and hatchet day) and I will be continuing to look for music on the site, although I won't be buying any more parts unless it's over 50% in budget and moving significantly forwards. I'll be updating my "about me" in the next few days to reflect that. Call me the eternal optimist, or even call me crazy, but I still have hopes Sellaband will get their act together and realise what it is that has made them different to other sites out there in the past, and learn how to use that to their advantage.

So at this point I can only hope there aren't too many legacy problems around, and the site will still be around for this blog post next month. So hopefully I'll see you then and we'll see what's happened in the meantime.

January 2010 hatchet day

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:10:00 +0000

Welcome to the first hatchet day of 2010 which also marks the third and final phase of my parts shuffling since the site went live. As you'll see, there's still a few cases where things are not 100% sorted even so, but the original aim of getting to a state I'm happy with under the new T&C I think has been pretty much achieved and I'll work through the remaining issues as and when things become relevant.

Results from last month
Finally the conclusion of the Paypal story, and yes the money has finally arrived in my Paypal account (including Christmas it's taken about twice as long as I was used to under the old system - might be interesting to compare without a holiday in the way). So you might think this is the end of the story. However, there's an interesting and relevant twist to my removal story, which I'll be revealing later in this blog. Meanwhile, you might want to note that the removal I've done now officially puts me back under $10,000 in Sellaband in total in terms of combining parts in artists with those floating round in my balance.

Parts changes
It's a long time ago now given the Christmas break, but the most interesting of the changes happened when Cubworld changed his plan and became only the second artist to see a parts increase from me since the new site went live. For those who are unaware, I didn't even buy a part in his first album although the opportunity was there. The case of the fence sitter who never quite managed to find enough in the music to buy a part applied. And to a large degree, the fence-sitting still applies. This time around he found enough to drag me into buying one part, and it probably would have stopped there, if it hadn't been for the timing of the plan change and the contents of his new plan.

Let me explain:

If you've been following my blog since the latest Sellaband site change, you'll know that I'm not altogether happy with it. Whilst I think it could have been a useful thing, the fact that Sellaband have basically washed their hands of having anything to do with what artists come up with, don't even seem to be interested in enforcing section 5.5 of their own fundraising terms and conditions and also have gone entirely backwards to the bad old days as far as the "housekeeping" to deal with inactive artists (or artists who have left Sellaband) is concerned, means I think we're back to the complete mess/farce we were looking at a year ago. To sort out the still interested, the clueless and the good-intentioned who merely need a bit of guidance from all the junk out there is even more of a nightmare than it was under the simple 1 part = 1 CD system we had before. As someone looking for artists to support, I consider it too much work unless the artist has a provable track record or can demonstrate a certain level of existing support in the first place. So once again, I found myself questioning what I'm still doing here. It was whilst I was contemplating this question and reminding myself of how and why I came to be here in the first place that Cubworld changed his plan.

I remember the airport baggage handler who used to sing songs for his wife and kids who signed up to the site, and who was so nervous the first time he performed at Paradiso, he almost forgot to plug in his guitar (and in fact looked like he'd have probably jumped a mile if someone had walked up and tapped him on the shoulder at that point). As I said in my review of the year post, to hand someone like that $50,000 when they basically have no experience of the music industry is like handing them a ten tonne ball and telling them that in order to achieve success they have to go run to the finish line over there (which is an infinite distance away). And whilst it's fair to say that finish line is still a long way away, the whole point is that unlike some others who have been handed a ten tonne ball, I've seen he's still trying to roll it, push it, kick it etc. inch by inch towards that destination. So having been talking to a number of artists now and watching what's been going on since the site changes, you could say I'm refining my rules and Cubworld has been the first of very few ever likely to benefit as a result.

As a "small believer who turned big" thinking (seemingly in error) that by supporting artists through on Sellaband it would give Sellaband something they could use to help promote themselves, many of my parts purchases have been as much for the benefit of Sellaband in the past as for the artists themselves. Now Sellaband have firmly removed themselves from that equation (if indeed they ever genuinely were in it) my focus for multi-part belief has moved towards those whose music I have a real liking for, or if I think someone has demonstrable proof that makes them worth supporting. And my standards on that one are very high, as I'm not expecting to receive all the money back (though it would be nice). Cubworld's plan is one I felt respects the original reason many believers (including myself) landed up buying parts, and he's demonstrated to me that unlike some others he is at least going to be trying to gig/sell CDs etc. I still believe there is a home for the CDs out there, given enough time and effort, hence my reasons for upgrading to 10 parts. i.e. I felt he was one of the few on here who was definitely worth support.

Next we come to the part changes due to phase 3 of the process I've been going through since the site change.

Wetwerks are still showing no signs of getting any kind of plan online, despite their October post and the fact they have been visiting their profile, even though it seems they haven't been saying a lot. Hence I've added to the continuing parts leakage on their profile again by dropping all the way back down to one part.

I also can't currently see Vegas Dragons getting any plan sorted soon, so again have dropped back to one part.

I am still talking to Phil Tweed, but given some developing stories on Sellaband plus the fact it seems he's still at a bit of a loss what to do, I have a horrible feeling I'm going to be reducing parts here as well soon. Probably the most heart-wrenching decision I'm likely to be making on here due to how much I like his music, but something which is starting to look ever more inevitable, despite the fact I keep convincing myself to put the decision off.

Finally in the case of Blister, I'm holding station on 5 parts at the moment due to past incentives, but it seems they haven't been seen on the site yet this year, so I will be keeping a close eye on this one.

There are still other cases where I'm not completely happy, but I think most are likely to resolve themselves during the normal hatchet process, so as stated earlier, I'll be waiting for the remaining cases to become relevant.

As for new part purchases? Absolutely none have been made. I'm now adding artists to my following list pretty much exclusively. Until I've fully researched an artist it's unlikely I'll be buying any parts in new signups in future, and given the amount of time that takes it means it will already be obvious whether there is a fanbase willing to support them or not by the time I get through the process for those I'm most interested in. Thank Sellaband for not enforcing their own terms and conditions as the reason for this, as it seems my new approach is going to be the only halfway reliable way I'll be able to sort out the idiots as a result. i.e. I'm generally not going to buying parts in future unless artists get much closer to their budgets than they are at present - obviously the best way to overcome this is if I already know you.

I've got a plan
It looks like The Esoteric Gender (who I mentioned in a previous blog post) now have a much better set of incentives online. They're working themselves towards the top of the list of artists I'm interested in and most likely to buy parts in as a result.

The perils of copying others comes into play in the form of Tyla Gang. Originally with a budget of $100,000 it seems their budget has now been halved on that score after having words with Sellaband. And whilst their incentives section itself is now empty compared to what it had before, their plan reveals a set of incentives including a Public Enemy T-shirt for 10 parts. Hmm... did I miss something happening here? If you like classic rock, you'll be right at home listening to their music though.

Alex Highton is one of the newer custom artists on the site, though I am a little confused as to how he landed up as one. All the signs are that (to me at least) he looks closer to most of the "normal" artists signing up, rather than someone with the level of plan you'd expect of a custom artist. However, I am impressed with the way he's approached the forum and he is supposed to be getting a revised budget and incentives online soon, so could well be one to watch as a result.

The list of artists belonging to the "help I'm lost" section also continues to increase at an alarming rate.

Koma Umbu are "Getting Rich and famous"

Can we expect a HUGE influx of Brazilian fans starting any time soon? Jesse Hart's plan reads as follows "A tour for Jesse's fans in Brazil. His main base of fans are in Brazil, he just needs the support to get there and share his music with his biggest fans. Tour is already scheduled for March/April and Jesse will be in Brazil by Jan. 15 setting up gigs". I might be wrong of course, but somehow I think there's rather a lot of misplaced optimism on this fundraising plan.

Also joining the crowd who thinks they can raise a budget in no time whatsoever is Shicehouse who signed up on December 19th with the following plan "We desperately need an economical injection to produce our new video "Sex With The Easter Bunny", which we want to release as fast as possible (January/February 2010). The thing will be completely free to watch on YouTube and downloadable on our MySpyce site".

Gritty has the following plan for consideration along with a budget of $100K. "Use my existing fan base and street team to tour and reinvest into my future projects including film works". Am I really surprised he's currently raised $0?

Clemont offers inspiration in the form of "A dream is a wish your heart makes..". A really big shame about the plan tbh as there's some excellent music on this particular profile.

Nipun the LORD would like "To earn some money by selling my songs". What more to say but welcome to the club?

And of course there are plenty more out there who joined up in December or earlier in January to join this brief selection, so I'll leave it up to you to see how many more of them you can find.

Following
Despite all the other things going off on Sellaband, I'd say the average music quality just keeps getting better and better, which makes it very difficult to pick out the real highlights for you. It's just a real shame that some of the best music seems to be coming these days with plans which are far from straightforward.

Airspace represent some of the best rock I've heard on here for quite a while, and if they'd signed up back when I was believing as soon as I found something I liked, they'd have landed up with me as their first believer. So a real shame that their plan has me going ouch and hence I'm only interested in following at present to see what happens. The 20K raised is supposed to be going to fund ONLY 2 singles and their associated videos. (5K per video and 5K for recording the single). So it's unclear exactly what is offered for the download (presumably the 2 singles - which for $10 looks a bit steep) plus the fact they appear to have completely missed the fact 10% of the project cost goes to Sellaband, meaning their numbers don't add up. Is the lack of business acumen seemingly displayed here the reason they were turned down for a grant I wonder?

Likewise Skelley's Dream is displaying some real quality music I'd have happily bought parts in in the past - this time soul, sometimes with hints of jazz or R&B depending on which of the large selection of uploaded tracks you listen to. But likewise the plan makes you wonder what exactly is going on. For starters most of it appears to have been copied directly from the "hints" on working out costs that you can find on the artist sign up form. Particularly confusing as a result is the section "1 CD to 500-700 Believers worldwide costs Between $1000 - $2000. The more we can reach, the more we raise for the instruments". On the one hand their profile has the "1 CD per believer" set to no and on the other, how more believers means there is more money left over for the instruments they want to buy with 25% of the revenue share is something I'm completely lost on. If you are offering a CD per believer and you have more believers it means your costs go up not down. Or do they mean money raised rather than revenue? So anyone who can translate their plan into English for me is more than welcome, because it seems my own grasp of the language doesn't stand a chance in working this one out myself. (and I was born and still live in England!)

Elsewhere Silver and Blue turned up early in December with some catchy tunes, one of which made my top 20 of the year. But if it isn't the plan, it seems it's the page attendance stopping me on artists instead most of the time. And they haven't been seen since the day they signed up. Also the fact they have no incentives means a 45K budget could well be difficult to reach.

If you want something a little out of the ordinary to listen to, then Voodoo Pharmacology is a very interesting find. No physical CD though, which is the next reason I get stopped on artists once the plan and the page attendance boxes get checked.

Here's one for all you lovers of the ladies out there that also has my interest. I'm half surprised Sommersby hasn't leapt onto Sound of Sirens yet and dragged them into the Dream Team, and as one of the few I've seen sign up since my last hatchet day blog who actually appear to have something halfway reasonable in the plan department as well as the music department, they have to have one of my strongest recommendations for you to check them out this time around.

And seemingly more proof that it's currently the ladies giving the better demonstration of having a clue comes in the form of the Jo Harman Project. The single track on the profile is actually made up of snippets glued together from her EP tracks. The biggest question comes in the form of how many fans she already has, given how new her band is, because I'd say the music itself suggests she is certainly one to watch.

There are quite a few more artists on my following list gained since the start of December, but given that this month is going to be shorter than usual due to the fact my hatchet day post gets delayed over Christmas/New Year, there is a chance I might mention a few more next month - it all depends how many more artists turn up and grab my attention.

Sellaband
Welcome to paint drying. Unless your name is Hind, or you're lucky to have a certain believer on board who is rapidly heading for $100,000 in the Sellaband system (yep that's correct, 5 zeros!). Very few artists other than those covered by the conditions I just stated are making steady progress forwards (if you are one of the exceptions, you can be sure you're doing a great job) - it's mostly a case of a few parts up and/or down. As a result I've been looking at what I should do about the money I have floating on my balance - it seems there are not enough artists turning up with a decent plan and/or support to tempt me in early these days, and with parts being sold sparsely in general, a big whack of parts from me isn't likely to have any noticeable extra effect of attracting believers into an artist I think is really worth supporting. I'm also not a fan of passive middlemen in general, so leaving large chunks of money lurking round doing nothing for long periods of time isn't an option either. As a result, I decided it's time I actually took some of the money I have back out of the Sellaband system. Hence the Paypal payout in December (and watch this space, because unless things improve in the next couple of weeks, it's likely I'll be having another one soon)

And so to the twist I mentioned earlier that you've been waiting for. I'm going to tell you where the bulk of the money I removed in December has gone and why.

You've heard me mention Matthew Ebel a few times already. So hopefully you're starting to get the idea that I like his music. Seriously, can someone tell me how I never fell over him and listened to his music before he hit Sellaband, because once you know he exists he seems to be basically everywhere (although usually buried rather than obvious). Blog posts, industry articles about him and how he is approaching a "modern" music industry - the more I look the more I keep finding even now. You may not realise, but I basically keep two lists of people in my head when it comes to Sellaband - those whose music I like a lot and those who have shown proof they are worth supporting (irrespective of whether I personally like their music or not). For someone to appear on one of those lists is hard enough, but to appear on both is insanely difficult. Let me tell you now that Matthew is towards the top of the list on both.

So the setup for the situation is the fact I not only have someone whose music I like, and they've also given me enough evidence they are worth supporting. Sellaband themselves have turned into a passive middleman, few parts are being sold unless an artist is new or getting the "big believer" push and I'm staring at money on my balance doing nothing as a result. Even a "push" from me isn't likely to make Matthew hit his target any time soon, so I figure it's more logical to remove some of that money and take a subscription now when it can actually show my support and do him some good. I know the money goes direct to him, and I also know his site has been running more than a year - would people still be renewing subscriptions if they weren't happy? i.e. this is just one piece of undenyable proof that I know I'm looking at someone who can deliver.

But between the time I arrived at this conclusion and the time I actually managed to get a payout to work, my plan of taking a subscription changed.

Matthew announced he was creating a new subscription option called the "Entourage" back in October that was only available for 5 people to take up (and also somewhat more expensive than his existing options). As might be expected with a seemingly rabid fanbase (albeit quite a small one) the first 4 went as soon as they became available, but the 5th seemingly got stuck. It sat there and sat there and sat there, and despite the odd mention that only 4 slots were taken on his weekly show, still nobody bit. When you consider I've spent more parts on Sellaband before in artists whose music I like less and I had more than enough money sitting round on my Sellaband balance, I think you can guess what's coming next. Yes folks, instead of taking one of his more general subscriptions as originally intended, I've followed the old Sellaband adage of putting my money where my mouth is and snapped up that last Entourage spot using money reclaimed from the Sellaband system. And trust me, assuming I'm still walking this earth and have the money, I'll guarantee you now that it'll be renewed next year too. So it all goes to show - why bother with a middleman in the first place unless there's a very good reason to do so? So unless Sellaband suddenly decide they have something to offer after all, I suspect this may not be the last time I decide there's more benefit to be had on both sides by taking my support to the artist instead. A hint of the way my Sellaband involvement is likely heading in future? Only time will tell.

And before you ask, I still have my 15 parts in his profile in the (vain?) hope that people (including Sellaband themselves) are going to wake up and realise the potentials they're missing here. If you've been following me, you'll know I might mention that something looks interesting or good, but I won't generally start raving publicly about an artist. So trust me when I say that I'm raving here about an artist genuinely worth supporting - it's a statement I can't repeat enough.

And Finally
Hopefully by the time the 1st February blog post rolls round, I'll be able to reveal what I think is the real Sellaband success story as I'm currently waiting for the last few pieces to fall into place on that score. Keep your hopes up for this one, because I'm pretty sure this story is going to teach a few people something interesting they weren't aware of before. The February hatchet day also marks the first time I'll be running a proper hatchet day checking for inactive artists since the site changes, so things could be very interesting on that score too.

Review of the Year 2009

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:46:00 +0000

Welcome to this year's review, when you can find out my highlights and disappointments of 2009 and discover all kinds of other things such as my top artists and songs of the year.

But before we get to the really good stuff, let's give you a quick update on just a few of the more interesting things that have happened since my last "hatchet day" post.

A quick update
Wow. I'm amazed. Do I scare people round here or something? Are you afraid I might just tell you the truth (and hearing the truth scares you), or are you all quite happy in your current knowledge? With several people having said on the forum that they were quite interested in the old "believer questions" sections from the Tribune, and the fact I'm one of the believers who was never asked to participate in that, this is why I opened up the opportunity for you to ask me anything you wanted (as stated in my previous 2 hatchet day posts). But it seems I won't be answering any questions in this special after all, as not a single one appeared in my inbox! With the readership of this blog seemingly continuing to grow, only you readers can know the reasons why not a single one of you took me up on this offer and you can therefore also be sure it's going to be a long time before I make a similar offer again.

It looks like my post about Scrooge coming to Sellaband had an effect on Jon Robert's parts. Less than 24 hours after publishing my blog, he'd lost another one. And it hasn't entirely stopped there, as he's since lost more but also gained one - the net result being that he's back on the same budget he was on before he changed his plan. Guess the only thing to say here is that obviously Scrooge is very active on Sellaband this year and things like Christmas spirit and charity have been lost in favour of a greedy Christmas charts parts competition. Bah Humbug. I'll also let you decide for yourselves what you think this means for artists currently on Sellaband, because as far as I'm aware, I'm still the only mention of his charity initiative (as far as Sellaband itself or other active users is concerned) in the first place.

I also had another go at a Paypal payout, and this time it looks like it has worked. Watch this space though, as although the money has disappeared from my Sellaband balance, it still hasn't appeared in my Paypal account, so the story may not be quite over yet. Christmas has managed to get in the way as far as the 5-7 working days quoted is concerned though, so there's still a few days left before I need to consider throwing some knives around. So fingers crossed the outcome will be known before my January hatchet day blog gets posted.

Top 10 artists of 2009
I like an awful lot of music, but this is the only time of the year you can discover who my real favourites are. As with all things, the list changes each year, often as I discover more about each artist and their music. To be eligible for this, the artist needs to be currently raising a budget on Sellaband or have completed one within the last 12 months and have posted at least one new song on that profile during that time. So here's the list for 2009

1. We Love The Underground
2. Phil Tweed
3. Matthew Ebel
4. Civilized Tears
5. Ulrik
6. MOPI
7. The Jade Diary
8. The Lights
9. Voodoo Johnson
10. Conflict in the sky

Most noticeable this year is that the 2-way scrap for my affections at the top has most definitely become a 3-way scrap. And to be honest it's been so close between the top three that I don't think I actually officially decided the order until I wrote it here. Brad manages to hang onto first place by a whisker, mostly as a result of coming up with more new material than Phil. But both these two should watch out next year, because there's a very real threat of displacement coming from third place in the form of new entry Matthew Ebel. Squeezed into third place this time around partly because of being a new find and partly because although he definitely has the talent (you might want to put the innocents to bed before you check this out though), he's not quite 100% there 100% of the time. Given that he's been putting out at least 2 new songs every month, the fact he doesn't necessarily write stuff that is easy to play in the first place (watch him play live and solo when 3 hands are required for starters!) and is now going to be putting out an album every 6 months (with or without the help of Sellaband), it's obvious the odd missed note is more of a case of familiarity/practice due to the volume of material than anything else. And if this makes you worry about "filler", well I haven't seen any. I also haven't found a song that I don't like yet, and that's pretty much a rarity in itself.

Quite a few slots obviously became free this year as a result of artists leaving, going pretty much inactive, or becoming ineligible due to finishing their fundraising more than a year ago, so it's made for some quite interesting changes from last year further down in the list, as a few of my "near misses" from last time around managed to fight their way on this time against some of the newcomers, most notably Civilized Tears who went all the way up to 4th. This year the near misses are as follows: Derek Daisey, Jon Allen and Taylor Horn.

Top 20 songs of 2009
Here's the list of my favourite songs for this year. To be eligible for this, the song needs to be currently on the artist's Sellaband profile and I also impose a limit of one song per artist. The new requirement for this year is that the artist must either be currently fundraising or have reached their target in the last 12 months.

1. A few good men -Phil Tweed
2. Who do you find - Ulrik
3. Drive away - Matthew Ebel
4. Feel it down - MOPI
5. Drop dead girl - Mount Fabric
6. Words you bleed - Derek Daisey
7. Open her eyes - Silverimage
8. Bad habit - Voodoo Johnson
9. 7:30 plane - Matt Byers
10. January blues - The Lights
11. Dead man's suit - Jon Allen
12. Love called me home - The Jade Diary
13. The universe is burning - Marc Supsic
14. My enemy - Silver and Blue
15. The comedown (we are not saints) - We Love The Underground
16. Country storm - Aly Cook
17. Death clock - Conflict in the Sky
18. Candy whore - Six Eyes Lost
19. Back up - Taylor Horn
20. Take me - Broken Sun

Sadly a few of the artists on this list appear to be going inactive, which is a real shame. You'll find all the listed songs in my playlist until February, when I'll revert to a playlist which only contains fundraising artists. Most interesting in this top twenty list is probably either Mount Fabric, as I feel this particular song is one of the flashes of genius that occasionally pop up from the often quite mediocre I've heard from that direction, or Silver and Blue who are so new on the site I haven't even had the opportunity to mention them in a hatchet day post yet.

Dropped the ball
Here's my list of artists who I think have real music potential, but look like they're in the process of dropping the ball.
1. Matt Byers
2. Silverimage
3. Voodoo Johnson

Amazingly Matt still seems to be listed on Sellaband despite all the site changes and the fact I mentioned him in this category last year as having not been seen for ages round the site. The last seen date on his profile is still listed as unknown. Silverimage left a message on their own wall back in August mentioning that not only were they having problems with the site, but there was also a split in progress. Voodoo Johnson also haven't been seen around the site in more than 3 months now so the question of whether they're actually interested in fundraising any more is coming to the fore. It will be interesting to see if any of these recover or disappear over the next few months.

Sellaband albums
What's my favourite of the albums produced so far? Just a top 5 here as there's still a relatively small number to choose from. The main factor deciding the order is how much I like the tracks on an album and therefore how likely I'd have been to go out and buy it if I'd heard it first.

1. Arm Yourself - BulletProof Messenger
2. Circles and Squares - Francis Rodino
3. In Control - Nemesea
4. The Elements - Second Person
5. Until the Morning Light - Daniel Ward-Murphy

So interestingly, no change from last year, although I have to make special mention for Unseen by Ellie Williams at this point, as I think it's easily the best Sellaband album Tony Platt has produced to date and shows exactly why he's considered a world class producer. So from a personal point of view, whilst I have a lower liking for the songs themselves than I do for those of some other artists, I'd still say this album is highly recommended as not to be missed due to its quality.

I also got surprised by one of the album releases this year, as it contained a derivative work of a very well known song. I say derivative, because while the lyrics had been altered, the song itself was the same (just the artist's own interpretation as opposed to a straight copy). Interestingly the artist in question had had the cover (i.e. exactly the same song but with its original lyrics) on their page when they were fundraising. I'm slightly surprised Sellaband let this one through given the terms and conditions under which this album was produced, particularly as the last time I looked, the original composer was still alive, so here's hoping the correct dues have indeed been paid. Meanwhile, I'll leave you to try and work out for yourselves which artist I'm referring to.

Disappointments of the year

1. Vegas Dragons
Let me take you off sideways first by talking about Cubworld raising his 50K (trust me, the relevance will become clear by the end). When you consider that when Jake originally signed up to the site, he was just an airport baggage handler who sang songs for his wife and kids, the idea of giving someone like that 50K to make an album and therefore effectively get started in the music industry from nothing is like handing them a ten tonne ball and telling them they need to carry it to a finish line that's an infinite distance away. And despite starting from nothing, as soon as he was given it I've seen him try and pick that ball up and carry it, or even effectively just keep pushing and shoving, trying to roll it on the ground towards that finish line. It's fair to say he's still an infinite distance away, but equally you can see that having been given that ball, he has both moved and is still trying to keep moving. You'll find out the full story in my hatchet day post, but this is just part of the reason why Cubworld became only the second artist on my belief list to see a parts increase since the site change - the fact that he's making that effort deserves respect.

But you might be wondering where the relevance of Cubworld to Vegas Dragons is. If you know the history you shouldn't be, because you should be aware that the story behind Vegas Dragons also means a ten tonne ball effectively got handed out in that direction as well. And as one of those doing a large part of the handing, you could say I've had a vested interest in trying to help out beyond handing over my part of that particular 50K.

So it was when I was writing the "review of the year" blog this time last year, that I noticed the Vegas Dragons website had gone offline. For those who don't know the story, when Brian first joined the site, there was no Vegas Dragons website. Not only did I create the site for him free of charge using my limited knowledge and experience, but I also paid for the first year of hosting (which turned out to be 18 months in the end, due to the special offer on at the time). I also rethemed the site to match Lovingly Cruel on its release (again for free) and indeed would probably have continued to maintain it for as long as he wanted, providing he just picked up the hosting tab. Towards the end of December last year is when the money I'd paid ran out and I contacted Brian to let him know (despite the fact the reminder e-mail that the site was due for renewal would have been sent straight to him anyway). The bill has never been paid. And like any independent web developer worth their salt, I still have a backup of the site, so it wouldn't exactly have been hard (and indeed still isn't) to get the site back working again - seriously, how hard is it to pay one small bill?. Add to this some of the other things that need to be done and still haven't, and it soon becomes clear that when it comes to dealing with ten tonne balls, Cubworld and Vegas Dragons are a world apart. And perhaps a second lesson to be learned as well - that despite the best will in the world and the support of others, there does come a point where artists have to wake up and realise it's no use waiting for things to happen, you actually have to do something yourself rather than expect that others will do everything for you. Don't get me wrong, there's still a friendship there - it's just a highly frustrating situation when it's known and agreed what needs to be done, but it just doesn't happen. So if you're wondering what happened to the Vegas Dragons website, that's the story behind that particular disappearance. And if you think carefully, maybe this story can also go some way towards explaining just part of the reason behind my own changes in parts buying as time has passed, and hence why I have a certain reluctance these days to jump in and support, even when I see something that I think has potential.

2. Sellaband
Probably no surprise here, but some of the reasons for my own disappointment may be a little bit different from what you might expect. I could probably write an entire blog on this subject alone, but let's keep it simple with a summary list of the more important ones in no particular order.

- failure to maintain "housekeeping" of inactive profiles - this was only done for a couple of months before the June site change, and we've been back at the bad old days of them not deleting inactive ones, or removing artists who are stating on their profiles they've left the site since.
- coming up with a confusing and complicated incentive/plan system which seems to be just as complicated and confusing for artists to get changed. Even artists are struggling to know how to fill this in to make sense, never mind the poor believers who have to try and interpret what everything really means themselves now. Sorting out those with good intentions from the (often total) idiots is a nightmare as a result.
- failure to enforce section 5.5 in the current fundraising terms and conditions. Just go back over the blogs I've posted since the last site change and look at the "help I'm lost" part of the section I have dealing with artist plans. Despite some of these plans being more than 2 months old now, they still don't conform to this section of the T&C and Sellaband appear to be doing nothing to rectify the situation. This is also only the tip of an ever increasing iceberg as far as this particular problem is concerned.
- no Sellabration. 2009 was probably the last chance I would have been able to do some travelling (particularly abroad) for a while and I'd been aiming to go. It's unlikely I'll be getting out much this year, even if it does return.
- isolation rather than fostering of community. I remember mentioning in last year's blog that I feared this was the way they were heading and it looks like that fear came true.

I may still be listening to and following interesting new music on the site, but is it really any wonder that even I have become somewhat apathetic as far as believing in artists is concerned?

And you shouldn't be surprised that I don't mention ArenaFest in that particular list. After all, who described it in an earlier blog post as "looking like a big if"? So whatever the story behind its failure to occur, it should be obvious that the fact it didn't happen was obviously not an entirely unexpected possibility to me, and hence couldn't be that much of a source of disappointment as a result.

3. Believers
A slightly misleading title perhaps. One thing this year of disruption on Sellaband has given me is a time to reflect on the "good old days" when I used to talk to other believers and artists on Skype, or could be found trading comments with others on their pages. But if it wasn't for "Mr Silver Balls" himself (i.e. UBG) I'd be inclined to think I'm the earliest active believer left. Particularly distressing to me was to discover the apparent loss of Dolly. The first I noticed something was wrong was when I discovered the music interests she had on her page had been replaced with some philosophy about the dangers of herd behaviour. If you visit her page today, it's gone - the photos, everything in fact except for the fact her "about me" is now populated by the following quote from Henry David Thoreau. “Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.” If you aren't familiar with Dolly, then let me tell you she is (or should that be was given the seeming disappearance) employed by Sellaband and has an appreciation of music that goes beyond the average. Musically, you got the sense that Dolly was dining on caviar while you had a tin of baked beans at hand. Not in a snobbish way, but rather for her appreciation of music as an art form rather than just your run-of-the-mill enjoyment that the average person has. To see a believer such as this go AWOL is probably the icing on the cake of the sadness I feel at seeing so many of the believers who were around with me in the early days drift away from the site, and it truly makes me wonder what the future holds if true supporters of music such as Dolly no longer have interest in the site.

The forgotten
As regular readers of my blog will know, it tends to be very long. As a result I often reach a stage where I intended to talk about someone or something and don't get around to it because the blog is already quite long. And often I intend to talk about it the next month as a result, but then find the same effectively happens again. So here are just some of those who ought to have been mentioned but weren't through lack of space.

NRG Rising
There's been more than one point when I ought to have written about these ladies, but somehow something else always worked its way further up in my memory. Probably the best reggae I've heard on the site since Alioune K decided to call it quits, although the demos themselves aren't the best in quality. I'll be interested to see what their first actual single sounds like, as whilst I'm not a huge reggae fan, I am currently keeping watch from a distance and will almost certainly take a better look at them once the budget raised figure starts to become that bit more serious.

M Harris
I had been hoping the arrival of Public Enemy might have a knock-on effect in this direction, but with rumours floating around that PE aren't even promoting their Sellaband profile on their current tour, this might be a long time in coming. There is also the question of what exactly a M Harris CD is going to sound like, given the current profile contents. I originally said a long time ago that it was obvious there was more to him than just rap, and now Sellaband is allowing more than 3 tracks on a profile the range starts to become that much clearer. On an artist where a track like "Do it" has me reaching for the skip button, but I could quite happily listen to something like "(ethnic)" for hours on end, it opens questions as to what exactly he is planning for a Sellaband album. Irrespective of whether it falls more towards the rap/hip-hop end or the jazz end of the range though, it seems neither are particularly popular amongst current believers.

Jon Allen
As one of several custom artists that came in at the same time, this turned out to be an artist I was extremely interested in but a combination of the high part price and its corresponding absurd plan/incentives put me off. With Amazon selling the album in question for less than 10 GBP, the only reasons to take an interest in the Sellaband profile were really those of the extra EP+download plus the concert ticket. And the problem with the concert ticket is of course the fact you'd really have to be in the UK to take advantage of that in the first place. Sadly a profile that therefore looked only of real interest to UK believers who didn't already own the album (which would presumably rule out most of his existing fanbase) and hence something which has held a sense of doom from the start, even without the low profile attendance.

The Fanclub
Well here's another interesting custom artist, and one that makes me wonder if we're now seeing the "custom promotion profile" appearing. There's always been a big question over artists who seemingly are using the site merely for promotion rather than having any genuine intention of raising a budget and the frustration it can bring to music lovers who are genuinely looking for someone who is genuinely interested too. So cue an artist who doesn't have a website (just a glorified e-mail signup) and whose management company doesn't have a website either (just a nice "under development" page) despite the fact they're quite happily mentioning all the experience they have on their myspace site. Roll forward a couple of months and recheck, and find that nothing has changed on this score, and what you have basically looks like a profile that's just on Sellaband for the promotion. Either that or their choice of signup time on Sellaband is bad, which let's face it, isn't that much of a recommendation for their management either.

Kompis is to this year's post what netvalar was to last year's. I always read the 50K music mag, but due to its timing I never tend to make any comment or post about it, because I'm either still writing my own blog post or busy taking a breather having just finished writing one. It doesn't mean I don't appreciate the effort though. In a world where Sellaband appear to have given up on community, it's always great to find there are still other believers still trying to do their bit to keep a spark alive. So this is me raising a glass to Kompis for his efforts in that direction.

And finally...
I'll be taking a short breather before my January hatchet day post. That means you should be able to expect that particular installment in about a week's time, when I'll hopefully be able to tell you the finish of the stories I've left ongoing here as well as give you a catch-up on the new artists of interest and my parts changes. Happy New year and here's hoping for a better 2010 on Sellaband than 2009 has been.

So you think you're ready for Sellaband?

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:36:00 +0000

So you're an independent artist and you think you're ready to raise funds for your project on Sellaband, rather than taking the traditional label route? Judging by the artists currently signing up, it's probably fair to say that actually, you're not. So whilst it may not be completely comprehensive, this is my guide to the absolute essentials you need if you're to have any kind of success on Sellaband.

Where are your believers going to come from?
This is the first and most important question you should be asking, and if you can't answer it, then you're not even ready to start thinking about the rest of what this blog post contains.

A common mistake artists make is that they think believers will magically appear from thin air and start throwing money at their Sellaband profile. It does happen occasionally, but at least 999 times out of 1000 you can guarantee it won't. You therefore need to get together a strategy for collecting believers or it's likely you'll remain stuck pretty close to $0.

The most important source of believers you have is your existing fanbase - make use of this. Even if people don't want to spend their $10 now, encourage them to sign up and "follow" you. This doesn't cost any money to do and is in fact no more different to signing up on the likes of Myspace or Facebook. This can have two benefits. Firstly, it shows other people who may be looking at your Sellaband profile that you have a number of other people who are interested in your project. Secondly, it gives you a group of people you can potentially work with at a later date to improve your visibility on the site. The idea here is a simple one. Once you have attracted a certain number of followers, let them know that you now have a a certain number of people who haven't believed yet, and offer them some incentive to do so now. If you get enough interest, you should be able to give yourself a push in the charts and hence get the interest of others who may not have looked at you before.

What do your (potential) believers want?
Having got a rough idea of how many believers you think you can get and from where, you then need to find out what those people are looking for. Again, with people from your existing fanbase this can potentially be quite easy to determine. (You do actually have a mailing list don't you?) Send out a questionnaire asking if they're happy with only a download, or whether they'd be looking for an album. Would they want revenue share? What kind of incentives would encourage them to buy more than one part? Basically get a feel for what is in the heads of your existing fans first to find out how many are genuinely interested. You need these people to show their support for you by buying parts, so be sure to find out what makes them tick! Existing fans who think you are worth supporting and are prepared to demonstrate that fact are a great help in convincing strangers to trust in you too.

In the case of existing believers on Sellaband who are probably encountering you for the first time, you need to do your research. Who actively posts on the forum? Who posts on the pages of other artists in a similar genre to you? (or even follows or believes in those artists) Are these people actually buying parts at this time? Is there any information on their profile page which might be of use? For further hints, you would also do well to read this blog post by another Sellaband believer. If you're really lucky some believers may come to you of their own accord, but to stand the best chance of getting believers already on Sellaband, you have to first learn how active they are and what they're interested in. That should give you some idea of how likely you are to attract believers already on Sellaband to start with. It's also important to remember that not every Sellaband believer is after the same thing, so you need to discover the size of your potential market.

Hint: When was the last time you spent $100 on an artist? When was the last time you spent $100 on an artist you had never heard of before? With any luck you'll realise from the answers to these questions that the incentive area you'll need to put most thought into is the 2-10 parts range as the majority of people who can be tempted into buying more than one part are unlikely to go higher than this unless they are existing die-hard fans.

You'll need all of the information above to help you set up your plan and budget. It sounds like a lot of work (and it is!) but in reality it's only the start of the groundwork you need to do in order to come up with a realistic budget and plan that will make you look interesting to potential believers.

Setting up the budget
Now you've been able to come up with some estimate of where your believers are going to come from, how many parts they might be looking to buy and what incentives will convince them to buy those parts, you have the extra information needed on a fan funding site to start working out your budget.

1. Recording costs
This is probably the easiest to determine for many artists, as it's likely they will have had at least some experience in a studio. Consider where you are going to record, mix and master, who you are going to use as a producer, how many songs you want to record, whether you need session musicians or any special equipment etc. If you're completely inexperienced, Sellaband have some guideline costs on the form you fill in for your artist project, but for a more accurate estimate you would probably be better getting the advice of a similar artist already on Sellaband who has recorded before. Ask around, most active artists are usually more than friendly and willing to share their experiences!

2. Believer costs
If you're looking at sending a CD to every believer, then don't forget to calculate postage costs for this. Additionally you need to consider any incentives which will need posting in this cost e.g. T-shirts, other CDs etc. As a rough guide postage within the same or neighbouring countries is likely to work out to about $2 for one CD or $5 for long-distance/abroad. However, remember that instead of shipping yourself, Sellaband can do some or all of the shipping for you, so it might also be worth investigating this option depending on the location of you and your believers. Depending on the system in use for calculating postage, larger quantities may work out slightly cheaper per unit unless the package is really large.

Hint: Don't forget that on a system of 1 CD per believer, if every believer were to buy two parts instead of just one, you would halve your potential postage costs. This is why getting believers to buy more than one part can be so important!

A hidden cost that many artists forget is one related to revenue share. If you are looking at sharing revenue with believers then you'll need at least basic bookkeeping skills, or preferably be looking to hire an accountant. Sellaband requires accounts to be sent to them every three months once your project is completed and delivered if you are sharing revenue so that they can administer the revenue sharing for believers. Whilst I'd hope that as an independent artist, you already have the services of an accountant for your annual taxes, it's important to remember this Sellaband requirement is likely to produce more work than your accountant would normally be doing.

3. Promotion/marketing costs
Are you planning to use any of the budget for marketing or promoting your project after it's completed? This is especially important to consider if you are sharing revenue - if people don't even know you have a product, how are you going to generate sales and hence that revenue? How many CDs (or extra CDs) are you going to produce as an initial run for your merch stand at shows, or for existing outlets who already sell your CDs? What about promo copies for radio stations etc.? And what about your website - do you already have someone who takes care of that for you, or are you going to be looking for someone to update or redesign it to better promote your project once it's completed?

4. Sellaband cost
Finally, don't forget to add 10% to the figure you've reached so far, as that is the fee Sellaband will take on completion.

Now you've got an initial budget estimate, it's time to run a reality check. For this purpose I'm going to assume you're on the standard $10 per part, but it's possible to adapt the calculation for other part prices. For every $10,000 of budget you are looking to raise, you should be planning to bring at least 100 of your existing friends/family/fans with you to help you get your project funded. Don't forget, Sellaband is a fan funding site - so if you don't have any of these people to call on, you probably shouldn't be looking at using it. If it's looking like the number of fans you need to bring is too high, then you'll need to revise your budget or incentives, or possibly look at funding some of the costs out of your own pocket instead of including them in your Sellaband budget.

Setting up your Sellaband account
Now all the groundwork is laid, you should have a set of incentives, a plan and a budget which gives you a chance of success, so it's finally time to create and set up your Sellaband profile.

1. Use the budget information you've gathered to help you fill in the initial signup form as many of these details are rather hard to get changed later without input from Sellaband.
2. Don't forget to include your biography, photos and preferably more than one song on your page. Links to other sites you appear on (e.g. myspace, your own website etc), videos of you performing or a list of upcoming shows can help too
3. Fill in your plan section. A good plan will generally include all the features I've already got you to consider, such as incentives, what is included in the project and how you plan to market it and a rough budget outline. For a good example check out this one from Aly Cook
4. Fill out the incentives section with the list of incentives you worked out, taking care to check this ties up with any relevant information in your plan. Discrepancies cause questions and too many questions often cause potential believers who have never encountered an artist before to walk away from such a profile without investing.
5. Make sure you have your genres filled in, or your profile will not be visible to people searching for artists on Sellaband.

Hint: Some information such as your plan and incentives section can be changed by Sellaband, even if you can't do so yourself, so contact them if you need to get those last few problems ironed out.

Time to promote
Once your profile is active, it will appear for a short time (generally up to a week) in the "Happening Now" section of the site. After this point, the most effective way to be noticed is to be appearing in the weekly charts or high up on the search. Existing believers are more likely to check out artists who are gaining budget, particularly on a regular basis, so try and get your existing fanbase moving to support you first, and it's likely more believers from Sellaband itself will join in automatically. Making your presence known by participating in discussions or asking questions on the forum can also help you gain some attention, but be very wary of how much self-promotion of your project you do both on the forum and believer/artist walls, as the line between making it known you exist and spamming can get crossed very easily. Basically try not to come across as a walking advert, but rather show your interest in others and what is going on around you and you're more likely to get some kind of positive reaction with a bit of patience.

Don't disappear! You should be looking to add something new to your profile (or change something on it) at least once a month. There are so many artists on Sellaband, that believers will quickly forget about you if you don't do enough to keep their interest, and even existing fans may not be enough to convince people you are still interested in fundraising on Sellaband.

Hint: Many believers on Sellaband are music lovers. That means that unless they get really hooked on your music (i.e. become "real" fans), they're only likely to take a passing interest in you on other sites. So if you don't put the effort in on Sellaband, it's very easy to get stuck or even lose support, unless you can keep convincing new people from outside of Sellaband to join to support you.

Finally, remember that this is only a guideline that can hopefully give you a fighting chance against all the other artists out there. Never forget, some artists can get luckier than others!

December 1st 2009 Hatchet Day

noreply@blogger.com (The knifelady) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:02:00 +0000

It's been a bit of a strange month this time around with some things not working out quite the way I was thinking (or in some cases hoping) they would. And a rather busy month again, so expect another blog post from hell as far as the length goes.

Results from last month
I had a conversation with Aly Cook regarding the postage question I raised in my last post which removed the only slight reservation I had. In fact, I'd have to say that given the response, she's actually got things worked out better on this score than most if not all others I've seen so far, as it appears she already has a kind of mini-distribution system in place which is definitely going to cut the postage costs down.

It looks like I'm going to have to contact Sellaband as it would appear the Paypal payout system doesn't work. I tried a small payout more than a fortnight ago, and so far there's been no change to my Sellaband balance and nothing appearing in my Paypal account either. It appears the problem originates from clicking on the link in the confirmation e-mail you receive from the Sellaband system - I suspected there might be a problem at the time I first tried this, but thought it best to give it a bit of time to see if something actually did happen first. And with another large chunk of money sitting back in my balance after this hatchet day, it's looking even more likely I'm actually going to want to start extracting money out of the system. So watch this space for further developments on this story next time around. Why can't things be easy just for once?...

Transition phase 2 hatchet changes
As I mentioned last month, today is when I've made another large swathe of destruction through my artist list.

Of those I mentioned last month as being particularly under threat MDATA survived by turning up and posting a new plan and budget. Though to be brutally honest, the plan itself looks like it was cobbled together in five minutes over a couple of pints. Chalk another one up for the headache list!

Achilla were the only other artist on the "under threat" list from last month that showed, but they landed up losing the part anyway due to my warning last month about those who hadn't contacted me being given one more month to either do so or put a plan online.

Additionally, I dropped back down to one part in Inge M before she hit her target as she reached the 80% threshold and the plan+incentives still didn't match up despite the warning I'd previously left on her page. I'm willing to bet most people didn't notice me do that though as my removal was around the time when someone else pulled out significantly more parts than me. So, the other artist whose page I left a warning on about plan+incentives not matching at about the same time as I left the warning for Inge should take very good notice of what I've just said.

However I did stay where I was on Civilised Tears after a lot of thought about it. Not 100% happy with the deal for the number of parts I had, but equally it was a borderline case. I did decide however, that it would make it that bit harder for them to get parts from me on their new project should a borderline case occur there also (but more about that later).

Now that the majority of my old artist list has either met the hatchet or gone at least some way towards fitting my comfort zone, the best thing I can probably do is give you a status of what I know about who is left, because to be quite honest there are a lot of artists out there still giving me a headache in one form or another.

Dealing with the special cases first, the contact I've had from Leave is that he will be back on Sellaband properly in March, so that is the earliest any new plan is likely to go live. Whilst the option to remove the part was obviously raised, I've decided to leave it intact until April, when I'll review the situation. Grant Stevens was one of those who nearly left the site as a result of the mess Sellaband made and as a result he's stepped back for a while reviewing options. Again as I only have the one part and the fact he actually contacted me he earns himself a reprieve until February, when I'll look at the situation again (assuming he doesn't make a decision himself first). Marc Supsic currently has no plan to change his plan (he doesn't currently believe there is an option that can work for him), nor any desire to actively chase the old 50K plan, but he still intends to be around for the community aspect and see how things develop. As a result of my conversations with him, I've dropped back down to the one part for now and will see how things with Sellaband and with Marc himself progress over the next few months. I kind of hope he can find something and as he is one of the few remaining on the site with the "curse of the knifelady" I'd actually quite like a #1 CD.

Next we have the artists where I still hold multiple parts. The Jade Diary and The Quahaugs are effectively safe, providing my "inactivity" criteria is met as the extra parts match incentives I've received in the past. Likewise Matthew Ebel is safe, being the only artist so far where I've actually increased the number of parts I originally held. i.e. I currently have no plan to reduce in any of these cases. I've had contact with both Vegas Dragons and Phil Tweed and can therefore confirm that both are effectively "stuck" regarding what exactly to do about a new plan, although in both cases a reduced budget does seem to be top of the list of what they're looking at. But the stalemate will have to break here one way or another some time in January, as I'm not comfortable on the level of parts I have for either while they remain with no plan i.e. currently it's looking like it will be me that breaks that stalemate by reducing parts in January if there's looking like no change in the current situation. In the case of Wetwerks and Blister, I've reduced to 10 parts and 5 parts respectively this month. For Wetwerks, there's been no change since last month, nor does it appear they've been seen in November. Things haven't felt quite the same since the split with Seth, and given how long anything seems to be taking in the Wetwerks camp these days, it leaves me with serious doubts as to whether they'd come anywhere near managing to meet a 12 month deadline after hitting their target. Given also that I've been chasing around to try and find what the situation is with them, the parts drop today is really more of a warning of further parts drop to come, should they not pick up their game. In the case of Blister, the jury is still out. They'll respond to messages left, but there's still no sign of a plan. As a result I've dropped a couple of parts and it looks like this month I'm going to have to go chasing more in that direction to find out what's going on, so expect a strong possibility of further change here. Mount Fabric, MOPI and Devine Soundsystem are all cases where their plan doesn't quite fit with what I'd buy if they were a new artist, but I haven't yet decided whether to change parts or stay where I am. It may be that I even leave that decision until they get nearer to target - I seem to have enough else to still be chasing around at the moment, so it's not top of my priority list. And finally MR-10 and We Love The Underground still have some work to do on the plan vs. incentives issue before they'll convince my parts to stay put in the longer term. Watch this space for further developments on that score.

As for the one-parters I have left, I consider the majority OK, though in many cases it's unlikely they'll recieve any more parts from me due to the nature of their plan. So here's the remainder where the question marks are still around. The Black Doves had changed their plan prior to my last blog post but it took them a few extra days to work out their missing genres were the reason their page wasn't showing up in the artist search. However, having tried a Kickstarter account, it appears that just today they've decided to pursue their funding over there instead. In some ways not surprising given they're showing a wider range of incentives over there, and the fact they've already raised nearly 10 times the amount they currently have in their Sellaband fund probably also has a lot to do with it. What does this tell us about the issue I've mentioned with people not wanting to tie up money for an unknown length of time? - we can say that either they'll reach their budget on Kickstarter within the next 55 days or no money will change hands. So I shall be keeping an eye on that profile over the next month to see what happens. Meg & Mark currently don't have their new plan, but they don't see the point in getting one together until they start to accrue a decent budget. I'm not sure this thought is going to work for them, because there will always be those who don't like what you've got on offer, and leave irrespective of when you put the plan up (and personally I think the sooner you sort something, the better), but for the time being at least I plan to stay put and see how things develop. At least they've thought about how they're going to approach it, rather than being all-at-sea as some others seem to be. Plans for Sunsoma, Ulrik, Cubworld and Conflict in the Sky are not yet finalised, but there is some indication that things are being worked on, so I continue to keep an eye on these. Additionally there are a couple of artists whose plans I'm not 100% happy about, but am merely keeping an eye on at present rather than removing the parts. The Lights plan to only offer an EP rather than a full album and that has me back wobbling on the fence and Lunic I think are being rather ambitious in taking on a 100K plan when all other previous 50K artists who have come back for round two have either gone again or are looking at severely reducing their budgets. With the third party sales from their first album currently only running at one cent per part, that doesn't give me the greatest of confidence either. Also as previously mentioned, MDATA's plan gives me cause for concern through looking like they're lost without a clue and a similar thing applies where Clem is concerned.

So hopefully this gives you some idea of why I say artists are still giving me headaches!

As for some of the more interesting of those artists I've completely dropped from my belief list, Toz is still around but his plan no longer contains a CD hence the reason for my change. Chloe Michelle has decided to leave Sellaband as she now has the ability to record a CD herself and has left a message on my page with her contact details for me to get free copies. And given the mutations compared to the original idea of The Collaboration Project plus a 100K plan, I decided to remove the part I had as I don't even view the project as viable on Sellaband at present. Even a "big name" such as Public Enemy has failed to reach 100K so far and their plan requires them to sell somewhat less parts to do so. Should they make some decent progress towards the target, I'll look at TCP again, but given the lack of movement since the plan change, I don't think it's been understood that such a large budget basically requires a large number of believers to be brought in from outside of Sellaband if it's to be financed and so I don't see the sense in hanging around waiting for nothing.

There have also been some interesting reappearances since my last blog post. The Chupacabra profile is still being watched, despite them supposedly having left the site due to being signed. And although I've removed my parts, I'll continue to keep an eye on this profile as a result.

It would also appear that Scrooge has come to Sellaband this year. About a week after I removed my last part in Jon Robert (one of my phase one changes) he turned up and posted a new plan and incentives. I very nearly bought the part back at that point, but instead decided to wait and see what happened first. Jon's new plan is to do a charity Christmas record on behalf of a local hospital, and it's clear from the video he's posted he's looking to do it sooner rather than later i.e. this year. In addition to his own take on traditional Christmas holiday songs, he's also offering an EP of his own music as part of the deal. And there is, of course, no revenue share because all the revenue is for charity. Since his plan went live, he's received a grand total of 3 parts and actually lost one to give a net gain of 2 parts in three weeks. Under the "old" Sellaband, such an action for charity would have been given news coverage as a minimum, or back in the days of the Tribune, there would have been an article written about it. Despite the fact the plan change would have had to have been approved by Sellaband, obviously something like this is no longer seen as important these days, unless you happen to fit the criteria of being a 50K artist or having a custom budget, and so it looks like it's left to me to make the first (and only?) mention of its existence. If there is still a community out there that's interested in proving Thor's tagline wrong, then I'd say this is the time to stand up and be counted, otherwise this just adds more fuel to the fire of the growing idea I have to remove the bulk of my reclaimed money out of the Sellaband system (when the payout actually works). "It's all about the money" is not the reason I signed up on Sellaband and if that's the way we're heading I'd rather spend my money out in the real world where it can actually do some artists some good. So community, it's in your hands whether you want to prove the Scrooge theory or not, and therefore determine whether I buy back into Jon as a result. Seriously, how far have things actually sunk? - I'd say this new reality looks quite shocking for the average artist.

New parts
Only the two new parts this time around, and you'll find out more about why later in this post.

I've bought a part in Gayle Skidmore, as I hinted was likely in last month's post, although things have slowed a bit since the SEAT competition.

Secondly, as can probably be expected I've joined the express train currently known as Hind. Only with the one part at the moment, although I have been tempted to take a second just to be able to see how revenue share compares on "known" artists to the "unknowns" we've had before. The dollar/euro exchange rate makes calculations very easy at the moment as 10 euros is almost exactly equal to 15 dollars. Ironically, the similarities between her plan/incentive levels and the old "Sellaband incentive scheme" (or insultives, as some liked to call it) stand out here. Just most noticeable that the revenue share is slightly lower and the parts 50% more expensive than the change that had so many believers up in arms 12 months ago. Not convinced that even Hind can return $15 worth of revenue to a believer for the break-even on the extra part at this point, but the speed of movement coupled with the number of new believers arriving is tempting me to take a serious look at her numbers. And on that score, I'm also still trying to decide whether the change to the revenue share icon in the incentives section (Sellaband added the word "max") is clear enough in meaning for people to understand it doesn't apply to every believer, even when a project does share some revenue.

I've got a plan
This month, Ariel managed to give an almost perfect demonstration of how not to change a plan. Not particularly because of the plan change itself, but rather for the method of its execution. The change to a 2-4 song download for $10 is such a radical change away from the original concept of getting a physical album for the same money, that merely submitting the plan and effectively leaving it to Sellaband to spring it on believers was always going to be asking for trouble. Rather submitting it to your existing believers first and then getting the feedback before you go anywhere near the idea of sending the plan to Sellaband is the way to go (particularly in cases like this). Even if you still feel you have to go ahead with it, and there's nothing you can alter as a result of the feedback you received, at least you've had the decency to ask what people think rather than giving them (as one person put it) a slap in the face. And from an artist point of view it's good if you do that too, because at least you'll get some idea of who (and how many) will pull out because they don't like your new offer. The wall reaction is likely to be less offputting to new people looking at your profile too! Whilst you can't please all of the people all of the time, it's fair to say that creating a PR disaster of the level achieved here isn't going to win confidence. Here's hoping that now her budget is finally closed there aren't going to be any repercussions later.

This brings me very neatly onto Poppy and The Jezebels. They say there is a very fine line between genius and insanity, and I'm still trying to work out which side of that line this profile falls on. With so many people turning their noses up at spending $10 for 4 downloads on Ariel's plan, the idea of paying $2.50 (and let's not forget, in advance!) to download just one song ought to be considered equally crazy, yet parts have been quite literally flying out the door. Is this proof that the average Sellaband believer now has more interest in revenue than they do in music? Or is it the case that the involvement of SEG International is the key factor here? I'd say the fact that this artist has had more UK music press to date than Sellaband itself has had in its entire life is probably down to this company, so is this the "magic ingredient" that seems to have wowed people into thinking about the "next big thing"? But are things really as attractive as they look at first glance?

We know from the press article that the plan here involves sending you a download code which you use in a (not yet specified) UK retailer in order to make it eligible for the UK charts. But traditionally the music industry as a whole puts a rather large roadblock in the way where downloads are concerned. As someone who loves artists from Finland, I'm getting to the point where I can't count the number of times I've been re-directed away from an online shop to my regional (i.e. UK) variant where the download just doesn't exist. It's extremely frustrating to find something is there but you just cannot legally download it purely because you are deemed to live in the wrong country. (Why do you think I love CDs? They seem to cross borders much more easily!) The sooner the music industry gets its act together and recognises it needs to think and act globally these days, the better as far as your average (and often frustrated) music lover is concerned. We've also seen this principle demonstrated when believers from the Netherlands tried to download Ellie Williams charity single and couldn't. So the question of whether all downloads from Sellaband believers in Poppy will count in the first place towards the UK charts is still open, not to mention whether believers from outside the UK will even be able to use the download code their $2.50 has bought them in the first place. And the question is still unanswered at this point, despite having been asked. Are we looking at a very well kept industry secret or a clear case of "Caveat Emptor" here? After all, let's not forget what section 4.9 in the believers terms and conditions has to say on the subject.

But let's also look at the effect this project could actually have on the UK singles chart. With everyone buying one part each, there would be 10,000 downloads, however with the number opting for revenue share, this figure is likely to come down closer to 1000. Whilst the UK chart company doesn't make sales figures for records generally available, it does provide first week sales figures for many number one singles. Figures in recent years have shown that first week sales figures have been between approx 30,000 to 120,000 units (depending on the week) for the single that reached number one. And OK, that doesn't tell us what you need to reach position 40, but I'd say the difference between 10,000 and 1,000 is significant enough to turn what looks like a real possibility of chart success into a drop in the ocean based on the figures I've seen. It's obvious that the more chart eligible believers the better here, because even without knowing what the net revenue on a single is, I would reckon a minimum of 100,000 units sold will be needed for the break even on the revenue share (and I wouldn't even be surprised to be told that figure needs to be much higher in reality) i.e. I reckon the single would need to go at least top ten and preferably hit the top spot for all you revenue share enthusiasts out there to be looking at getting your money back, never mind turning a profit. So a genius plan or a disaster waiting to happen? I'm genuinely interested to watch what happens with this one. As for me buying parts, if I like the single, there is a good chance you'll get my fraction of a cent contribution towards the revenue when it's released, but I very much doubt you'll see my name on the believer list.

Innovative plan of the month has to go to Grooveduke. I've already been a bit of a fence sitter where he is concerned, but on average have been leaning slightly away rather than slightly towards buying a part in the past based on the music. His new plan, however, has caused me to sit up and take some serious notice. The one part for a download obviously doesn't attract me and given that I'm "fence sitting" a CD for 2 parts doesn't look that appealing either. (If I did go for the 2 parts it would definitely be a late conversion.) Where the interest comes is when we start moving into higher numbers of multiple parts. You see I believe this plan works, at least in principle and providing you are a touring artist who can sell CDs via gigs. If you can believe in the sales figures he says he has had in the past, plus believe that his sales of original material can do as well as sales of known covers, then this definitely looks like a plan which can turn a profit (allbeit a small one) with a little bit of tweaking to the numbers he is currently quoting. And whilst I'm not here for that side of things, it is something I would like to see proved purely to show the rest of the "little guys" out there that there is something you can do to make Sellaband work for you without needing to be a custom artist with a fancy banner. The basic plan to turn a profit requires you to buy a minimum of 16 parts. This gives you 29 CDs, meaning 28 can be sold back to the band at $5.75 a piece (we assume you want one for yourself) giving you $1 of profit (excluding transaction fees effect). But if we take into account the 75 cent transaction fee from Sellaband and the handling fee for depositing that amount of money in the first place, you've actually got to start looking much higher than this for the deal to turn a profit. Depositing 52 parts leads to more than $38 dollars in fees (assuming we use a credit card and not Paypal where the fee is much higher), meaning that the expected $55 dollar profit from the basic plan actually drops to more like $17 once all 100 of the "extra" CDs produced by this number of parts are sold. If you then have to add in the effects of a currency conversion fee as well due to your location this profit then drops further. (as a guideline a 3% currency conversion fee on the cost to deposit 52 parts would bring you back to pretty much break even once the CDs are sold, taking the fees I've previously mentioned into account). Obviously this is a deal that can only work for the bigger believer, or where the believer can sell CDs for more than they can to the band, or where they're not concerned about fees. Essentially the CDs are the revenue share and also treated as an advance that the band will buy back as they sell CDs at shows. Grooveduke has already said he wants an initial stock of 100, meaning that the vast majority of CDs produced as a result of parts already bought are effectively already sold back to the band or taken by believers, meaning anyone jumping in now would likely start seeing their CDs bought as soon as he starts selling CDs at gigs. So I have been sorely tempted to jump in and give things a really serious push, particularly given the number of parts floating in my balance at the moment, but due to questions with the plan and also with his own health, not to mention the fact that even with a push from me it's still not going to be enough to look like closing the budget, I also have to think about who else could possibly take an interest in this. And yes, I am talking to him about it (ball is back in my court at the moment on that score - round hatchet day is always a bad time of the month!), but I am still undecided at present whether to help give this plan the chance I think it deserves to prove itself, despite the fact it means deviating from the way I'm approaching things on Sellaband these days.

So let's move onto the "Help I'm lost" section with just the tiniest of selections from what I've seen out there.
Top of the list this month is DraMatik who is apparently "Working onit!". OOpsNice with "world champion" and Angel Reese with "my plan is to be successful with my career." Although for best effect MrCharles Deluxe surely has to be a winner with "There's no plan!". His words, not mine.

Most amusing plan start has to go to The Tijuana Bibles with "I will spend all the money on alcohol, when I have consumed the requisite amount I wlll commence the creation of the album sleeve which I will paint myself. The music will come to me later on.... it always does.". At least the second half (which I haven't quoted) is a slight improvement over that first half. Although I guess some might not see it that way. Oh and don't forget to check out the Nov 25th blog post on this artist page.

And then of course there's the plan I really shouldn't mention for obvious reasons when you read what it is, but I'm going to anyway. The only thing I will say about it is that obviously it worked. So say hello to ZeroDuo whose plan reads as follows: "We are Zeroduo and we joined the Sellaband community to share our music with you. Our funding target is the lowest possible: we don't need a high budget for our project. We've already set up almost everything we need to get our music online and we're already live on the net: you can find us on youtube, myspace, facebook, bandcamp, reverbnation and soon on iTunes, rhapsody and amazonmp3. Feel free to promote us if you like our music. We're Zeroduo. End of story."

Following
Well I had dreams that my following list was going to explode in size now that I'd started looking for new artists on Sellaband again, but it seems this is not to be the case. On the one hand a lot of artists signing up now are not offering a CD and so that pretty much rules them out of consideration for a part from me. On the other hand, one look through the average plan does nothing to convince me that the artist has any kind of clue. What I see tends to come across as simple as "Oh we sign up, we get money, we make some music" rather than there being any indication of how exactly any of that is going to be achieved. Seriously, give me some rough budget plans, give me some idea of whether you've got studios, producers etc. in mind, or even whether you've actually even recorded before so I can see if you have even the tiniest inkling of what is actually involved with being an independent, rather than being just some random idiot that walked off the street who thinks that things happen magically and automatically! The emphasis is no longer on Sellaband to make sure you know what you're doing - you've got to do that yourself if you want to be an independent artist. So if you want my money you need to convince me of that. Clarification or questions are one thing, but if it feels like I'm having to forcibly extract every single piece of information then it's just not on as far as I'm concerned. I'm not some high powered business executive (my degree is scientific, not anything to do with subjects like business, marketing or accountancy), so let's face it, if you can't get past me then how on earth do you ever expect to attract any kind of serious investor who is surely going to demand something much more comprehensive than I ever will?

So as a result of the above, I find myself following a lot fewer new artists than I was expecting. I'm also putting together a blog post about approaching Sellaband these days (about 70% complete at the moment), because none of the "old rules" or even the tips and tricks Sellaband have come up with go anywhere near far enough in what you need to be able to do to stand even the slightest chance out there.

But back to the topic at hand. Here is the list of who I'm keeping an eye on at the moment.

Civilised Tears are back with a remix project, but with a CD only available for 5 parts, I'm in two minds as to whether to buy in or not. Sure I love the music in its original form, but I need to take a better listen to some of the remixes anyway and I'm still thinking that's a bit steep.

Most of the other stuff I seem to be interested in fits into some kind of rock category this month.

Derek Daisey has a full album's worth of material on his page, so plenty for you to get your teeth into.

Echo Of Souls is one for those of you who like your rock that little bit harder, but if I understand their plan correctly, what they're coming up with is only a 7 song album and their budget is really for completion and marketing of this.

Mystic Traversion have some great music, but the information on their profile is potentially confusing. Their incentives section is showing one CD per believer, but if you look in the incentives, they all refer to "in addition to your album download", making it unclear whether the main deal is for a download only and physical copies will only be sent if you take an incentive level or whether the album download + 1CD per believer refers to a third title to be produced from the budget and the extra physical CD titles mentioned are in addition to this.

Ian Fleming and the Secret Agents have also got some good stuff going on, but without any extra incentives I think they're going to struggle to get any interest in. Plus with only a 15K budget and offering a physical album per believer, this looks unsound from a postage point of view as the plan basically expects 1,500 people to show up wanting a CD.

Ophelia Syndrome appear to be having a good shuffle around with their incentives. I was originally following them, then stopped following them when the CD option was removed and have now started following them again now that it's back (albeit now for 5 parts). In many ways they remind me of a cross between Lunic and Angie Arsenault. I'm still extremely unsure as to whether I'll land up buying in, so will be watching to see which way things go next.

Moving slightly further away from the rock, we have Chris Difford. I'm interested, but the eye-popping part price of $25 is putting me off. Unlike Public Enemy, who have a history of producing albums of a wide range of sizes which therefore retail at a wide range of prices, a quick search on Amazon reveals Chris's previous titles lurking around (and generally under) the £10 mark. And with a quick run past a currency converter to turn that price into dollars, it makes me wonder where the incentive is to buy this one before it's actually released.

And finally we have The Jeffersons, who at the moment look like they might actually be the first to tempt me into buying into a project without a CD. I haven't fallen in love enough to want to part with $20 for one of those, but the fact the download is only $5 does tempt me into considering the download only option. One thing is for sure though, it will be a late belief should I decide to go for this.

Sellaband
It's funny sometimes how things come full circle. When I first signed up to Sellaband, I was expecting to see something more like the way things are heading today. i.e. a collection of known (or semi-known) artists who wanted to do things themselves, trying to raise a budget and widen their fanbase in the process. In that sense, the "custom artists" on Sellaband fulfil the idea of Sellaband I had before I first took a look at the artist pages on the site. In three years, that means Sellaband is finally catching up to where I was the day I had my "vision". Because now is where the bomb drops, and where the danger truly begins, because it was actually looking at the artist pages that changed that original idea I had of Sellaband and, in fact, showed me both a series of dangers behind the way I had been thinking and a new series of possibilities.

Sellaband's biggest asset compared to other music funding sites out there has always been its believers. Even back in the early days when believers didn't have a proper profile and inboxes didn't exist, you could still find conversations between one believer and another, an artist and a believer, or even 2 artists taking place on artist walls. Yet this kind of interaction is also the most fragile part of the Sellaband ecosystem. Unlike artists (who are pretty much like buses - it seems there's always another one along shortly), keeping believers happy, involved and interested enough to participate in "the Sellaband experience" as a whole is the biggest challenge if it is not to get as deserted a feel as other funding sites. And as things stand at the moment that's a really big danger for Sellaband, because if it loses its believer interaction completely to become merely just another funding site, then it is immediately at a disadvantage to the competition both because it takes money up front and because projects have no time limit. The site doesn't need artists who turn up with their own believers in tow and then leave again with them. It needs to be able to convince the believers to stay around and interact with other artists and believers on the site if it's to remain healthy and of interest to other artists out there.

So much of the "new" Sellaband reminds me very much of October-November 2006. Parts static in a large number of artists and just a few new or existing acts with some serious forward motion. But the one thing noticeably absent (or at least at a much lower level than back then) is the wall interaction going on. Hind is proving to be the new Nemesea in this regard - so much of the interaction and parts speed is reminiscent of the "parts war", the difference being this time it's a larger number of small believers and not so much of the big believer fight. It will be interesting to see if it continues to develop back to the mass page refreshing and acceleration in both parts and comments as she approaches her target that we saw with Nemesea.

The site has a chance of a new lease of life, but it needs to aggressively capture the new believers, just as it did in the couple of months following Nemesea hitting their target if it's to stand any chance in the longer term. And more importantly, this time it needs to work on keeping them. The next few months will tell if the phoenix can rise from the ashes, or whether the restrictions compared to other funding sites will eventually kill it. There are, after all, other revenue streams potentially more profitable than an escrow account that neither Sellaband nor its competition has made proper use of yet. Can Sellaband still be the first one to work it out? I'm still here, so obviously I'm still living in hope.

November also saw me celebrating what I consider a milestone on Sellaband. The balance credited by Sellaband to my account finally passed the $1,000 dollar mark. i.e. I've now offically got back almost 10% of the money I've put into the system in the first place (yes I know I'm showing less than 1000 parts in artists at the moment, but remember I have money sitting on my balance too and I've also succcessfully requested 2 payouts in the past). I have Second Person to thank for the majority of this (more than 60% in fact) mostly due to the fact that all of my "early part" CDs in them have sold via Sellaband. In fact, if I hadn't participated in the 50K countdown by buying parts, they would officially be the first multi-part artist I'd be in profit on. (As it is I haven't broken even on any yet). Next most noticeable in the list of artists I have parts in has to be Bulletproof Messenger, who are the only artist in my list who have so far created more revenue from the "my music sales" column than the ad revenue column. And by rather a long way too. $40.43 doesn't sound like much when you consider I have 55 parts, but compared to the $6.30 ad revenue, it's a lot, particularly as we're not even a year in. Even artists like Nemesea and Julia Marcell who are mentioned by many as being artists that believers are happy with haven't managed this kind of level of success. Now if only their LE CDs were selling as fast via Sellaband as their sales outside of the place, I'd definitely consider them the most successful Sellaband artist to date. Third on the list for me comes Nemesea for creating more than 13 parts of revenue via Sellaband without me leaving any of their CDs in the Sellaband system. So a big, big thanks from me to these three artists as I consider the faith already repaid.

And Finally
Two reminders. Firstly, the fact that the next proper "hatchet day" won't appear until at least the first week in January as I always put the hatchet away over the Christmas/New Year period. There will however be two posts appear before this one - my set of tips and tricks for Sellaband (hopefully within the next week or so) and the "review of the year" special which will appear some time over the Christmas/New Year period depending on when I get time to write it. Which brings me neatly onto the second reminder that as part of that special I am open to answering a maximum of 10 questions publicly in my blog post, whether that be about myself (be sensible in what you ask!) or my experiences with Sellaband. As I stated last month, you need to send questions to the inbox on my Sellaband profile by December 20th. And don't worry, I won't be revealing who has asked the question (unless the person asking wants me to of course), so that even leaves it open for any curious members of Sellaband staff!