In this day and age, distribution of your music has become accessible to every musician, whether they are signed or not. You can get your music up on the net and make it available for free or for sale. Various sites can produce several hundreds of your CD’s relatively cheaply for you to sell them at your gigs. The challenge has become choosing which of these plethora of online services to use. To help with that decision, here is my review of one such site: Bandcamp.
I noticed bandcamp.com while I was researching the web. Compared to sites like CDBaby and Reverbnation, Bandcamp seemed cleaner and more focused so I decided to give it a try.
Bandcamp is very clear about what it does. It hosts music for free or for sale in a very clean site. Bandcamp has far less number of features than a site like Reverbnation; but the few features it has, it has them clean and smooth.
If you decide to host your music in Bandcamp, you are asked to upload a high quality wav file (rather than an mp3) and they can convert it to many different formats including typical mp3’s at various bitrates or other higher quality formats. This way, you upload one file (which is high quality) and then your fans can get whatever version they want. If there are audiophiles among your fans they will enjoy getting hi-fi versions. Bandcamp also makes sure the file that your fan downloads have proper mp3 tags and album/track art so that when they play your song in their favorite device/player, they have all the catalog information correctly.
Uploading your songs and creating albums are pretty easy. Once you upload your music, fans can stream your songs from the Bandcamp site or from elsewhere (blogs, facebook etc.) through player widgets you can post. You can decide whether to make downloads available for free or for sale. One interesting feature in Bandcamp is that it allows your fans to pay more than the minimum price you put. In other words you can set your song to be a “name-your-price” song with a minimum of 99 cents and if your fans want to support you more they can pay two dollars or more.
On the main Bandcamp page, there are some interesting statistics. On Bandcamp, albums outsell tracks 5 to 1 and on name-your-price albums fans typically pay %50 more than the minimum price. These are very encouraging stats. Selling an album as opposed to a track is by definition increased volume for the artist.
Also on the first page there is a five-minute video that does a good job of summarizing how Bandcamp works as well as a well written FAQ section. I strongly recommend checking them out.
Bandcamp also allows you to collect a fan’s email address in exchange for a free download.
For the artist Bandcamp also provides detailed statistics about how many people listen to / buy / download your tracks or where in the web are people talking about your music (linking to your Bandcamp page).
Now let’s look at the price tag for the service. Creating an account and uploading music to Bandcamp is free. They make money from individual sale transactions. and their cut is only 15%. They make the payments to your Paypal account.
What could be improved in Bandcamp? Right now, your Bandcamp page will only have your music and album art. It would be nice if you could put a blog, a bio, some photos and most importantly your upcoming gigs. Not being able to blog and announce my upcoming gigs on Bandcamp has forced me to do those things at other places and is a bit inconvenient. If you want one page to do all of this then Bandcamp is probably not what you want.
On the other hand if you are OK (or even prefer) to distribute your online presence on to multiple sites then as far as music hosting goes, I think Bandcamp is really good. It has a good set of features, is easy to use, clean and very affordable.
Songwriters in Seattle had a really cool and unexpected bit of national media attention Monday with our song, “A Black Market For Mooncakes” being part of a segment on NPR’s Marketplace. I’ve been asked a lot about how it happened, all the way back to the origin story of the song, so I thought I’d give you the lowdown on how it went down. First, here are the links to the NPR piece itself, as they have the text of what was read on air along with the whole song posted here:
So what’s the connection to Marketplace in the first place? Back in Sept. of 2010 my friend Skye Hansen posted a link to a Marketplace article by NPR Marketplace China correspondent Rob Schmitz called “A Black Market For Mooncakes” on her Facebook wall. I had only seen the headline come across my screen and it struck me as unique and poetic - so off the cuff I immediately commented on the post, “Sounds like a song title…” (completely in jest, of course). What Skye commented back was magical:
“There’s a black market for mooncakes That appears in the dead of night It’s right next to that store with the fallingstar jam And other unearthly delights!”
As I was at once surprised and blown away, I definitely wanted to make this into a real song. So I did try in vain for a few weeks to see if I could do anything with it, to no avail. Thus the Songwriters in Seattle “mashup” event where I brought what I thought could be a decent seed for a group collaboration. After some discussion about Rob’s article and the potential themes of China’s repression, underground rebellion, people coming together despite restriction to celebrate their passions, and the poetic symbol of the cosmic eatery, it was agreed that we’d give it a shot. (Note: Rob’s article wasn’t really about any of those things - it was more what we were inspired to think about based on the seed idea). With the throwing out of my portion of the attempted lyrics and some tweeking of Skye’s original chorus, we went to work.
As you can imagine, 10 songwriters in a room trying to write the same song was…challenging. Lyrics and associated chords were written (and crossed out) with big black markers on large sheets of paper and stuck to the walls. There was much chaotic guitar playing and random singing. Some were frustrated, some thought it was going nowhere - or at least nowhere worthwhile. But after 3 hours or so, we had something - it wasn’t much, but we had something and it was actually pretty good. With me standing up at the sheets on the wall and trying to direct everyone to verses and choruses that would make a reasonable finished structure with what we had (only one verse of lyrics in addition to what we started with plus the chords to the two sections), we hit record on Jessica Lynne’s iPhone and ran through it best we could:
(Warning - this is super rough, with beer bottles clanking as they fall over, yelling directions, and other such fumbling to get through) [audio:/audio/BlackMarket_SiSmash.mp3]
Now fast forward a few months…based on that recording I obviously had some work to do to make the song into a listenable finished piece, but it finally came together. Recording was fun as this is not anywhere near a typical style for me. Breaking out the nylon string guitar for a flamenco solo and faking castanets with spoons from the kid’s toy percussion set were especially unusual. And then singing along with Jessica Lynne and David Rix to make us sound like a much larger group was a real kick. Overall, I am very happy with how the song and recording turned out. I feel it represents the collaborative talents and aspirations of Songwriters in Seattle very well.
Many thanks again to David whose great idea and, more importantly, his action it was to send the recording to the original author of the Marketplace article which inspired the song, Rob Schmitz, and got the next part of the story started. Rob’s response:
“All I can say is: Wow. I knew I had hit upon something when I reported the mooncakes story, but I never in my wildest dreams thought it was worthy of moving a group of musicians to song. Well done. I¹m honored my bizarre little story inspired your group to write and perform this piece.”
Rob forwarded it to his producers in LA and next thing you know, David and I are working out the details with Marketplace Producer Fiona Ng to get the song on the air and linked on their website. Some vague details about what we should expect and when…then a few days later…boom! “I thought it was kinda catchy…” - Marketplace host, Kai Ryssdal. How cool is that? Thanks to Rob and Fiona for making it all happen.
There you have it! This is yet another great example of the amazing things that can happen when we work together!
Sound catchy? That’s the title of a book by “America’s #1 Vocal Coach” Roger Love that I bought some dozen years ago. At the time, I was living in cramped quarters, and when I would try to practice the funny sounds that he has his students pronounce, I would hear snickers from the people walking by in the hallway. That killed my desire to practice for awhile, but since joining Songwriters in Seattle and living where I might have better luck hiding in my apartment to practice, I decided to break out the book and instructional CD once again and go at it.
OK, so you’re thinking, “Oh, this guy’s promoting a book that he hasn’t even gotten any proof of results from yet.” Very true. But since looking at all the profiles of songwriters who would really like to have someone else sing their stuff for them, I decided to let them at least have the opportunity now to make up their own minds regarding Roger Love, regardless of whether or not I’ve become an excellent singer because of him. This guy promises that with his instructional CD, you will, with regular practice, be able to sing three octaves in full voice, with a technique that he calls “Middle Voice.” I’ve only heard one guy sing three octaves in full voice, and that was Bob Seger doing the studio version of “Katmandu.” His technique was based on cocaine and whiskey. But Bob can barely get it today. Roger’s technique has eighty-year-olds singing like they were twenty!
So check him out. His web site is RogerLove.com. He’s got some other books besides the one I bought some twelve years ago, so you’ve got a lot to choose from, and they all have instructional CDs with the books. And who knows; with regular practice, you too may be able to belt out three octaves of “Katmandu!”
Matthew Meadows is a rock guitarist and singer with a background in computer programming and ballet dancing. This is one smart and talented guy! His latest recorded collection of songs, Etherati, is making waves as he puts his tech skills to use with tireless online promotion. Matthew rocks and many people are taking notice! He’s played in a number of bands, both in Seattle as well as his former home of Austin, TX, but mostly pushes on these days as a solo artist. What exciting musical conquests does Matthew have in mind for the future? Learn more about him (and connect with him) on his Reverbnation page. He’s even got a new tune called “The Ringmaster” - check it out!
Lastly, Matthew’s SiS podcast visit was a lot of fun as he walked us through not only his music, but how he approaches promotion and connecting with the right people in the industry. You can listen to that here.
There’s been a lot of podcast activity on the website recently, and to top it off the SiS podcast is now available on iTunes! This is the easiest and fastest way to get the podcast straight to your mobile device. When you subscribe, iTunes will automatically check and download the latest monthly podcast automatically! Click here to get started:
If you lose track of the link or want to tell a friend, the podcast is easily searchable on iTunes as well. Please subscribe, rate it, do a quick customer review, and share the link! The first year (12 episodes) is already up and ready to download. This is a great way to get to know the musicians of Songwriters in Seattle - now more accessible than ever.
