john

Now you come to mention it Teresa, I think you are right... perhaps spill from the revival of jazz influence on pop and the increase in motom influence?

ideal

Hey Kathleen, Good to meet you. Welcome to Songstuff!

Hi and welcome to Songstuff

Hey Andrew Great to meet you. Welcome aboard Cheers John

Hey here's an interesting interview about artists and artistry with David Bowie... He makes some very interesting observations... cheers john

Time to get-a-publishing! Have you played your music anywhere? A local gig perhaps? Seriously though... time to take stock and plan. I always recommend to artists that they plan a launch. I don't mean here... my hope is taht we could help you with advice etc. I mean a launch for the purposes of engaging the general public. if you have the music, collect some photos of you (playing, posing etc.) if you don't have any, get some. Pick good shots. Trim them up in an editing app. Similarly start drafting some text about you. Write promo text, but you will absolutely need a biography (we have articles about writing a bio and creating an Electronic Press Kit - EPK). You could start with filling in your Songstuff About Me page and using that to develop your bio before publishing it on Reverb Nation. Look at articles in our Music Business section. http://www.songstuff.com/music-business/article/ I would also look to create a SoundCloud page. I hope this helps. Cheers John

Achazia Achazia (real name, Gry) is from Oslo, Norway. She is an artist, composer and ethereal musician. As a gamer, Achazia is fascinated by how music can help you to immerse in games. She has some of her music in multiplayer and mobile games. Achazia currently has a song, "Empress of Vincenza" placed with fantasy radio station Radio Rivendell. The song is part of a project/compilation called Book of Ages with other composers. Click through and support! Achazia on SoundCloud Achazia on Songstuff

Ha! Ain't heard this for a while! Nice one, thanks Randy!

Definitely. More commercial appeal here and the Amy Winehouse comparison in feel is hard to avoid.

Thanks Rudi. A different style, but with with enough elements that remind me of the Amy Winehouse appeal. This is little less commercial than Amy's mainstream stuff, but it's kind of in the ball park of songs with Amy playing guitar and singing in a stripped down solo or duet. Nice find

Nice track! I do like people with an original take on things. Thanks man!

Hi gang A wee delay in changing the featured artist on the boards and publishing the newsletter... I'm in hospital with suspected appendicitis! I am so lucky! Thankfully I have an iPad to help me stay sane. Yesterday was a washout, but If I can update the site from here I will. I am fairly certain that some of what is needed is on my laptop, but we'll see. With any luck I will be home later today... meanwhile, please entertain me with your favourite tracks! Extra points if any of those happen to be songs by another member of the community! Cheers John

Welcome to Songstuff!

Love your intro Jason... Welcome to Songstuff!

Hey Eric, welcome to Songstuff! Good to have you aboard.

Well that bites the big one, Mike! You might have been better finding a cheap runner to get about. There comes a point in a cars life when it just eats money with an endless list of repairs. Fingers crossed it stays on the road for a good long time with no real expense.

Hey Rob, Can you add it here: http://forums.songstuff.com/member/articles/ This is accessible through the member hub and it is a feature I intend to make more of... indeed the member tips may move in there entirely. Click into the singing category and click to add a new article. Fill in the fields. I will then edit the article for basic format (mainly titles), for speed and easy reference. I really need to do an article about format for articles! Once done we can post a link back here Cheers John

Hey A decent mic will make a difference, and you may need to get real instruments in there, but abart from a decent interface to record guitars on the tracks that I used them on, I have made a lot of music with software only apart from the vocals. It is an artform making synths sound like real instruments... so there would be some learning ahead to make it good enough. Here's a track that is essentially cakewalk Sonar v1 plus vst synths, vst sampler and vocals: http://johnmoxey.com/musicandvideo/songs/bibi-m/miserable-girl/ Cheers John

In your email yes yes maybe, if members would like that yes, but I ain't telling cos that would be unethical dark stuff, unless you turn on a light, then it is just "stuff"

Hi Gang As you may have noticed, we've started releasing a regular newsletter again. We had only stopped the newsletter because, with all the structural changes on the site 2015 - 2016, and despite the popularity of the newsletter, we just didn't have time to do it justice. We've come back with a much leaner, simpler newsletter. It's largely focused on promoting Songstuff artists and writers to our members. But, as ever, we want to know what you think! In addition to leaving comments in reply to this topic, please answer the questions in the attached poll! Many thanks for your help. Cheers John

Hey Oscar Welcome to Songstuff! Good to meet you. Cheers John

Hi rather than type it all again, you might find this topic useful: In in there I talk about monitors, closed back, open back and semi closed back cans, when to use and why, plus what the trade off are. The link there is to one specific post but I am on my Moby and so didn't copy the general topic link by mistake. In general I would open back cans for mixing and production. The reasons are straight forward: Closed backs are are only to reduce spill into microphones during recording. Closed backs color the sound, adjusting the tone Using closed backs increases ear fatigue Ideally you should use monitors as much as possible during mixing. Cans are very useful for setting up an accurate stereo image, but they do not give an accurate bass representation. One other thing is to use a reference recording. One that you are familiar with and can use to judge the bias of any amp/monitor/can combination. It can also be useful to look up general impressions of other producers/engineers. For example, Yamaha NS10s are popular near-field studio monitors, but they have a high end bias, making tracks too hot at the high end. The result being that engineers pull back on the high end, resulting in a track that completely lacks a high end on any other system! Engineers used to try and tame it using tissue paper.... But I digress. Lol Great rock monitors as it happens and really good for highlighting poor quality in a track. you get the idea. I hope that helps.

Hi it's a concept often applied to games and gaming consoles, where the console company gain exclusivity for a game, often indefinitely, in return for fees, preferential commissions, BIG promotion, bundling with consoles etc. The same thing applied to music has some slight differences but the concept is the same. First, you have to get your head around the modern role and value of albums. So low is the current likely earnings that often they are a loss leader, a promotional vehicle for the purpose of recruiting more fans. Money is instead made on sync rights, ticket sales, and merchandise. There are other income streams, such as appearance money, but these are less common. Second, you have to consider the importance to the artist of being thee artist on a network. Even the simplest of platforms will have listeners in the multimillions. This is a numbers game for labels. They have target percentages for conversion across the different stages of relationship between artists and listeners. For example: Browser to Listener 30% Listener to Subscriber/follower 12% Subscriber/follower to Paying Fan 18% Paying Fan to Super Fan 10% They are likely to have have other categories, and percentages assigned to every conversion (change of relationship status). This includes loss of fans and partial loss or cooling of interest. The label tries to engineer better conversion rates, all with the aim of creating as many super fans as possible (super fans buy everything, including duplicate copies to preserve mint condition copies, different versions of a release (such as with different sleeve art, a bonus song, a bundled video of the song and a load more options). Just going by the above percentages, say exposure was a nice round 1,000,000 browsers. That would yield: 300,000 listeners 24,000 subscribers/followers 4,320 paying fans 432 super fans Make initial exposure 50,000,000 and that would yield: 15,000,000 listeners 1,2000,000 subscribers 216,000 fans 21,6000 super fans Then there are ways to increase conversions. They apply a lot of psychological tricks at every stage including using exclusivity, time limited, number limited, competition, controversy, and a load more brand loyalty tricks. They also factor in recruiting fans for stable mates and harder to measure stuff such as increased exposure outside the network, and specifically an increase in desirability due to lack of access. This is what the sales company offering the windowing is looking for. Think of it as similar to the well known phenomenon of a person being more desirable as a mate as soon as they are in a relationship. Sales companies use many other ways to build this and keep interest dynamic, such as special offers, time limiting access or price, bonuses, bundles and more. Hardly a comprehensive breakdown, but hopefully enough to demonstrate the numbers involved. It is important to realise that subscribers/followers is an important step. This means that the label can target people interested in the band to some extent. Not only that they can now pitch multiple records, tickets, merchandise etc, over and over in many different ways. Each of those pitches will likewise have conversion factors. Because of this, a new subscriber/follower is potentially far, far more valuable than any single sale where they have no method of pushing sales messages to you. This idea of limiting (including exclusivity) is used out with music all the time. It is also not new within the music industry. For example, take an old music industry model: A small label has a limited budget. As such they can only create so many physical copies for the first run, they can only afford so much promotion and publicity. There is also a lag between money going out, money coming in and using that money to create and distribute more copies. Say the small label can press 20,000 copies. Without limitation sales typically peak just after release and then die away into what they call "long tail" sales. Without additional incentives, without a queue of prepared super fans, the label maybe only sells 3,000 copies, 2,200 of which are in the first week. With queued, super fans they sell 14,000 copies with say 6,000 in the first week and the rest sold over months or years.. Chart position somewhere areound 300. With warmed up super fans prepared and ready, they sell 17,000 copies with 10,000 in the first week 4,000 in the second week etc. With the rest sold over months or years. Chart position peak, Number 100 With warmed up super fans, prepared and ready for release, incentivised with a bonus and with a time limit on the release of 2 weeks, they sell all 28,000, with 18,000 in week 1 and 10,000 in week 2. Best chart position achieved is 46. Additional sales came from people who thought "I'll get in at some point" converted because if they don't buy now they never get it PLUS sales because higher chart position meant increased exposure. Of course the label had to gamble and get a second press because sales were so fast they knew they could sell more units. Sales were deliberately compressed in time scale. It boosted overall sales directly and indirectly, forcing a far higher chart position than they would otherwise have achieved! This whole exercise also created more subscribers/followers, fans and super fans. All in all very useful to label and band. I hope this all makes sense? Cheers John

Hey As you can probably guess, much of it is about making and maintaining contacts, and making the most of them once you have them. As a publisher placement of tracks with mainly production companies is vital... sync rights are still very valuable.Old school publishing contracts of the 70s, 80s and 90s are far less common. Administration deals are where it is at... the only issue being that publishers have far less rights. In fact more recently they have no rights. It's more about service provision to the writer... and the writer has the power to walk away any time they want. At the same time, there is far less speculation on the part of the publisher... less risk. They get paid for what they do, simple as that. At the same time, you do not need to speculate money as publishing advances. ie no rights owned, lower percentage profit, but less speculation costs. It is not so much of an investment... more of a simple service transaction. You need to have great relationships with production companies, artists, managers, labels and even radio programmers. Making and building those relationships takes a significant investment of time... and that is a big part of your risk. I hope your negotiating skills are good? Running a label can work... but it is more of a risk. These days, I wouldn't do it without at least the experience built from multiple self-releases.... otherwise it is a bottomless pit of ways to lose money. It is also much harder to make money. The income streams are different, and often music is simply a loss leader, a promotion tool, while the products are merchandise and live performance ticket sales.That said, many labels are branching into other areas of the music industry including publishing. You probably know all that already, but hey Cheers John