Geraint

OK, no replies, but might as well document what's happening. Of the three tracks, two got approved by AudioJungle, one rejected. My plan is to write a few more, and then when I have enough rejected ones I'll try those on Pond5. Some good news: even with AudioJungle-exclusive tracks, you can still release on Spotify/etc. as long as it's just the actual services, and not YouTube ContentID or other licensing deals. I was worried that I'd lose ownership of the music in some way (which would have been the case for), but I feel better that I can still release it.

Hi 🙂! It's been a while. Does anyone have experience with submitting music to stock-music sites? I wrote a couple of things (link, might remove later) and sent them to PremiumBeat/Shutterstock first - might as well aim high, right?. I got (what I assume is) the standard rejection email, and was thinking of trying AudioJungle next. Is this a sensible plan? Is there something else I should be trying? How high is the bar for different sites? Should I be submitting to more places, or putting more time into each piece? Thanks! Geraint

@GeraintLuff I keep it separate from my personal one, but that seems to mean I don't post as much because I try to keep it music-related instead of just posting whatever nonsense entertains me.

TL;DR - I don't believe the advantages of "the blockchain" are relevant to us, and its disadvantages (inefficient, unstable) will only get worse. I think what we're missing is a traditional non-profit. Firstly, cost: I don't think there is a solution you can build with the blockchain or "smart contracts" which you can't build with ordinary accounting ledgers and traditional legal contracts, more cheaply and with more oversight. In terms of payment, the transaction fees end up higher than PayPal (once it starts to get congested - see next paragraph). The only advantages are anonymity (does anyone actually freak out that Spotify knows what music you like?) and decentralisation (you don't have to trust a third-party accountant, but you also have no customer service or regulatory body to call if something goes wrong). Secondly, technology: as a software person with a background in maths and cryptography, I don't believe "the blockchain" is a scalable solution. It is simply too inefficient (proof-of-work is ludicrous, but even proof-of-stake setups have problems) to be able to work effectively once things get big. The principles behind a blockchain (or directed-acyclic-graph like IOTA, or whatever) have been around and in use for a while - what is new is tying them to a currency system, which people are supposed to invest in for its own sake. Bitcoin is apparently a success - and certainly, some people have made a ton of money from it as an investment. However, even in the midst of this Stripe stopped accepting Bitcoins as payment, and Microsoft and Steam aren't sure about it either. Recently, a Bitcoin conference stopped letting you buy tickets with it because of speed and transaction fees. Some other currencies look better now, but still they are driven by the idea that the currency is a good investment vehicle. Thirdly, markets: There is one argument that I agree with: with smart contracts one can design a system that doesn't have a middleman (labels, iTunes, everything) trying to suck up the spare money. People value music and are happy to pay for it, but there isn't a lot of surplus, and too many extra layers makes it not worth it for artists. Well, you can design a system that allows "direct" payments, but not everyone will be equipped to set up and administrate that, and what then? I think it will end up in the "non-traditional" section of CD Baby's list of outlets, at best. Labels charge "duplication fees" for digital files, iTunes take 30% (!) because they can (Bandcamp takes 5% for roughly the same service, but still lose out because of convenience and breadth of catalogue - iTunes gets 30% because it's popular enough to demand it.) I think the actual thing we want to disrupt there is... greed, basically. Creating a technological solution with no middlemen will just grow new middlemen, or existing ones will adapt. Plus, labels aren't completely parasitic and useless. What I think we need is benign middlemen, such as a social enterprise or (even better) a non-profit.

Thanks! I've posted the finished album in the "Showcase" section, if you're curious how it came out.

Hi! Sorry for taking a while to reply. Yeah, it was OK in the end. I should have promoted it a bit more, but didn't really know how. There were a few contributors I didn't know, but for the final stretch it was basically friends, family and coworkers who came together to put me over the line. It felt more like when you do a sponsored run and hit up all your Facebook friends for money, rather than "hey, this internet stranger is great at music, let's fund them" - and that's kinda OK, and being supported by friends and family is good, but it's not what I'd expected when I decided to do it. I'd set my goal based on approximately 75% of what I thought it would actually cost (for everything including printing CDs), but afterwards some friends more familiar with Kickstarter said that they would have chosen a lower goal. Even so, in the end the Kickstarter covered less than half of the expenses. (It might have been fully half but I went for a couple of extras, including hiring a cellist to play the instrumental versions which now make up Disc 2). A handful of people kept checking in because I'd said 6 months and it took a year and a half instead (my fault, I got stuck in a loop), but most people either forgot about it completely or told me that year-long delays are common. I am pleased with how the album came out, though! Getting someone else to mix it was really good, they gave it a fresh and clear sound, but they also made very different creative decisions which were sometimes at odds to what I wanted, and that took a lot of back-and-forth to sort out. I paid a little extra at the end to have individual stems for every track, so that I can dissect the mixes and learn from them. Mastering also made a big difference, but I don't understand mastering myself at all. I think my ideal future setup might be to get better at mixing so I can do my own to release quality (I once had an amazing 3 days of work experience with Mike Senior, but don't have any training/experience aside from that), and then have someone else master it. A couple of weeks ago I finally mailed out CDs to all my backers, and it should be on Spotify/iTunes/CD-Baby in a few days' time (Saturday). It's good to have it finished, but now I'm trying to spread the word around on Facebook and Twitter, and while it's not quite as awkward as promoting a Kickstarter, I'm a bit lost there as well. So overall, I definitely would have done it very differently, but as well as a pretty decent-sounding album, there were also side-effects (from experience to mixing stems) that should be useful in future. Geraint

Hi - so I have a Kickstarter currently active, to raise funds for mixing/mastering my album of epic-cinematic songs: http://kck.st/1UiqZpe There are 8 days left now, and I'm looking to drum up some support for the final push. Any advice on more ways to spread the word? Geraint

Ah-hah! Found a bunch at http://mixoff.org/ I can test on. Still happy to be directed towards more, if anybody happens to know of any.

Hi everyone, I'm in search of "un-mixed tracks" - that is, tracks that have been written and recorded, and all the parts are there, but they haven't taken the final leap into being polished, well-balanced pieces of audio. What I'm actually trying to do is to write a software tool to do a hacky approximation to mixing/mastering. I've been using the prototype myself and it's been working OK (although my tracks are kinda half-mixed anyway, because I get them to "sound good" as I go along). To see whether the idea has any legs, I'd love to be able to try it out on some more "raw" stems from a completely different setup. So, does anyone have any un-mixed tracks/stems they might be prepared to let me play with, or know where would be a good place to find such things? In return, you will either get a fairly-OK-sounding mix or a horrible mangled mess, but definitely my thanks either way! Geraint

That's good to hear. If there are any other keys or tempos you want for any of the samples, just let me know.

I think I still might need to improve the interface - make it show file sizes, perhaps. I did knock it together in an evening! Perhaps also some more zip files, so people can get whole directories at once. What do you mean when you say you don't have synth capability? Do you mean, you don't have any decent synths? Or no synths that reasonably sound like real instruments?