Instant Xmas Musical Message.

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Back in my day, nine-year-olds were able to talk to their cousins merely by traipsing through a crossfire blizzard for half an hour to visit them at their house. This was in Scotland in the 1970s where telephones were as rare as the term 'suave' was common.

No sooner had I pressed 'publish' on my previous entry, which aired my perspective on gadgetry, when I was bombarded by technology at every turn, as if being laughed at, pointed at and kicked in the nether-regions by The Devils Hoof. Not being one to believe in coincidences I attempted and am still attempting to discover what all the fuss is about.....and why.

The first 'techno-oddity' that I encountered was that the date of publication of the first entry to this blog. It states December, 22nd. It was, infact, published very late on the 24th. Even allowing for global timelines there should be no such discrepancy. I haven't lost any sleep on that one. Two days later, as my kids were messing about with their Xmas presents, I was more than taken aback when I switched on the television to check on the cricket score. Typically, it was an ad break.

Down here in Australia we have become immune to  this, amongst other forms of advertising. What I couldn't swallow was the fact that every single advertisement was for toys! As if parents hadn't gone out of their way enough for their children and children weren't already enjoying the festivities, these bright, loud and slick advertisements bombard us in what can only be called 'inappropriate.' (Actually, I have a few other words to add but not here). The age-group targeted was to be from 6-10. No secret was made of this as each advertisement hurriedly mentioned it at the end. When it came to the fifth advertisement I gave up on the cricket score. Such a small luxury at a supposedly festive time was blasted from my mind. (Fortunately the game was a walkover and I was only seeking a score to satisfy some deep-seated tradition that I have developed since emigrating here in 1979).

Later on that day I was in for a real eye-opener.

My nine-year-old daughter was sitting next to me on the couch messing about with her mobile phone. The phone, which she acquired from her Mum, had the numbers of her Mum, myself and her nine-year-old cousin. There is enough credit on the phone to ring either her Mum or myself in an emergency or to text her cousin at 1c per text. My curiosity got the better of me and I asked her what the phone actually 'did.' As she flipped from one 'app' to the next I could myself increasing in age more rapidly than I was ten minutes earlier.

After the third or fourth app I started becoming light-headed as my interest wained until I saw something on the screen that I actually recognised. P.D.F! I'd seen that before.....but I wasn't 100% sure of what it was. This was enough to re-ignite my interest, however. Imagine my delight when my daughter reached the part of the phone where the ringtones were stored. I thought I'd died and gone to Vegas when I saw the first two were 'Smoke On The Water' and 'The Benny Hill Theme.' It got better. My daughter told me that these were two of her three favourite ringtones with the third being 'Advertising Space' by Robbie Williams. (I kid you not).

So there I was being over the moon that not only did my daughter have 'my' kind of music on her mobile phone but she did it without being brainwashed into it by ads or her parents. 'Smoke On The Water' is occasionally advertised on 'Best Of' albums, 'The Benny Hill Theme' doesn't need advertising, nor does the Robbie Williams track, both for totally different reasons.

So where does this leave the independent musician?

Fortunately, sites such as Nimbit, Audiolife, ReverbNation and MyMusicSite have made it possible for us to make our own ringtones available for download on a near-global scale. In internet terms it's still somewhat primitive, with editing

and costing being done by the site. Reading the blurb from each of the sites, they state that they are still attempting to improve the costing issue but due to the fact that it is dependent on a vast array of service providers globally, no adequate solution seems imminent....so we're told.

I find this unfortunate on every front that this is the case. First and foremost, service providers stand to be the first to gain from allowing independent musicians the flexibility to set their own price. As is the case with having a free account with Nimbit, as I do, a minimum price is set by the company. Surely with the potential supplementary cash flow that we're dealing with here, this could be achieved. Admittedly this wouldn't allow independent musicians the ability to offer free ringtones but it would be a vast improvement on the current situation where a 30-second ringtone costs can cost upwards of three times the entire track. This doesn't have to be the case.

There is one area of producing ringtones that baffles me. I have no idea why one is unable to create their own  30-second ringtone as opposed to either the first 30 seconds of a track or a randomly selected clip. I find editing song-clips as previews to my commercially available material on Nimbit not only immensely enjoyable, it has proven to me that it really does make a difference as to how it is received.

Although a baffling oversight on behalf of the major players who seem able to squeeze money from every quarter and at every turn, I suspect that this may well change.

In the meantime, I'll exercise my right to misplace my mobile phone for a few days only to have it turn-up floating in the bath or inside a CD cover.

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mp3? iPod? Blackberry? Where's The Music?

The Rolling Stones via last.fm

Once upon a time, not so long ago, all one had to do to listen to music was switch on what was called

a radio. Admittedly the reception wasn't always the best and the selection of music left something to be desired but it was all we had and were happy with it. It has become blindingly (and deafeningly) obvious that we weren't.

The next great leap forward was the record player. People were now able to pick and choose who they listened to and when. The tape deck soon followed, making it possible to not only store larger amounts of music which was increasing in diversity faster than technology at the time but to transport around with us almost everywhere we went.

One morning I woke up and discovered that the aforementioned sound-players had been trampled almost to death by 'things' with names that still make no sense to me. CDs were but a dream. Admittedly I am middle-aged in years but I have never viewed myself as being middle-aged in mind. I guess most people my age don't. I have something of a minor mental dilemma with the speed at which technology is advancing today and my reaction to it and the speed at which it was advancing a generation ago and middle-aged peoples' responses to it then.

My parents speak first-hand about the invention of the television. There's no mention of confusion about the event. Quite the opposite. They tell me that my grandparents were the same. They also speak first-hand of 'Beatlemania' and how The Rolling Stones arrived as the bad boys of the scene merely because of their supposedly long and unkempt hair. Imagine how two groups of English guys playing music seemed to have more of an effect than the television?

Slightly earlier in the United States Elvis Presley caused something of a stir with his adventurous hip-swivelling. It was hardy the work of Satan but certain parts of American society at the time made enough of an issue about it that he was only filmed from the waist up on The Ed Sullivan Show. This merely served to increase his popularity. (I wonder if those people are still around?).

Now that music has become so easy to access it's difficult to take in. One certainly can't take in all of it and even taking in what you like would be more than a full-time occupation. Irrespective, record companies, internet sites, companies producing sound devices and a string of other interested parties are doing their darndest to force-feed their 'products' upon us. By 'products' I refer to anything to do with you listening to a song. The band, the individual artist, the record label, the merchandise, the sound device, the box-set DVD, the speakers, the earpieces and so forth.

I still have no idea what 'mp3' actually stands for. I know that it's a type of sound file and the type of sound file that my music is stored in. I know that an iPod plays mp3 files. I have only a vague idea of what a 'Blackberry' is. I assume that it's a 'fifty-billion-devices-in-one' affair with another

ninety-billion apps. I know that an app is an application and in the computer world it's something that's added on which makes something do more.

As a musician you may wonder why I'm so ignorant about these things as they are part of what I do. I choose to remain ignorant, not as something to boast loudly about as do (far too) many people who think inverted snobbery is cool (man). I do so because I don't need to know. I don't need to know how many Mbs a song is. I do need to know at what bit-rate it's processed at for various sites. These are things that I have picked up along the way through necessity. This very laptop on which I'm typing can do 90% more than it does but I don't need it to, just  the same as I don't have any need to learn rock-climbing.

I'm on Twitter as scotsbob. That's a funny sort of thing. I was rather enjoying it until they got rid of FutureTweets. The only reason that I go on there now is that, for what ever reason, it does well in the Google search engine. Really well, infact. I only have to think about Twitter and an alert comes up. It's a bit beyond my scope of knowledge or great interest, but I'll take what's there.

I deliberately mentioned Twitter as a segue into percentages.

As an independent musician it's all about percentages. For those of you reading who are independent musicians, sit down and have a

shot of something strong. You're not going to like what you hear initially but ideally it will spur you on, as it has me, to keep chiseling away without waiting for every day to be 'the day' or to lose faith in yourself.

I've always had a great fascination with statistics. My manager, Haych Storm© will verify this. At any given time I can give you an estimate to the nearest 5% of songs listened to, emails opened, responses received, and so forth from any given site that I'm on. This can then be relatively accurately translated to a 'hit rate' with regard to downloads or CD sales.

The hit rate for the independent musician is approximately 0.1%. This figure is pretty consistent across each individual set and thus, obviously, them all combined. One sale per thousand supporters. It doesn't sound good, eh? There is an upside. I have found that this one sale per thousand transfers somehow. It may not be the same person but it does seem to transfer. Any independent musician who gives astronomical percentages should be signed by Columbia Records or the likes as it is such figures that attract such companies. Either that or their family and friends are buying multiple copies of their material.

As for supporters, such a small percentage is partly to do with 'cross-supporting,' that is supporting an artist on different websites. This gives a falsely high reading and should be accounted for. There is also the sincerity factor. In the age where one can type compliments to an artist the actual sincerity of it may be questioned. On the flip-side it can be argued that a compliment doesn't need to transfer in financial terms to be sincere. I enjoy many genres of music but I don't purchase it.

This leaves the independent musician with a few punches to roll with and some rough calculations to do. I don't believe that there is such a thing as too much advertising. I do, however,

believe that there does exist advertising which is too aggressive and inappropriate.

Spreading oneself far and wide is all very well but it should be calculated, weighted and timed. I'm not one for putting every song that I have recorded on every website that I'm on. I only put a few on each site, generally a similar collection but not identical. I have recently taken to making each single available for download as soon as it is released. I use the same message on each of my sites and run a brief 'coming soon' campaign. I also make it clear on each site that they are not available on iTunes as some sites deceptively give the impression. I discovered through experience that once I had paid my fee for an album I basically vanished into a tiny silver button. Not at all handy for promotional purposes.

I have been distributing digital downloads via Nimbit for some months now using their free account and can't speak highly enough of them. I have been reliably informed by numerous people that the download process is a smooth affair and the fact that they offer PayPal as an option is a real bonus to those who have downloaded. For the artist they also provide outstanding tracking statistics, an easy website install with individual codes for each storefront to track performance and their MyStore can be added as a tab on both Facebook profiles and pages.

I have also been using Audiolife for some time as they cater

for physical CDs. Again, their digital downloads are an easy affair and CD delivery is prompt. I would suggest using the cheapest option as this option took 14 days exactly to reach Tasmania from the date of purchase. Audiolife is also now in partnership with ReverbNation whose store utilises Audiolife software.

If you are an independent musician who is reliant on music as a an income, as I am, prepare yourself for stress and be patient. many people say that hope is over-rated. It's only over-rated if you become totally reliant on it.
To become totally reliant on hope is detracting from your primary focus in the industry. You are a musician first and foremost. The remaining factors are necessities but one has to have a song to advertise, show off, and so forth. Keeping ones eye on the song and not the dollar will reduce stress no end.

So, am I a grumpy old musician? You bet.....but not really.

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