My Download Store Stats, Closure
Well, it was a fun experiment for the past six months, setting up a download store for my unreleased music. But following the removal of a few tunes for an upcoming release, I’ve decided I’d rather have more people listen to my music than have a little extra pocket money, so I’ve reverted to giving everything away for free (still in 320kbps mp3 and FLAC formats).
For those curious about the kind of money I was making with the store, here are some stats: Since launch, 56 generous souls purchased music from the store, with 120 items sold in total, earning me about £299 (minus the monthly E-Junkie service plan fee and PayPal charges). Not a bad run for a musical nobody such as myself.
Hopefully the disclosure of my sales information doesn’t come off sounding either like a complaint or a boast—just keeping you all in the loop. Thanks very much to everyone who stumped-up for the downloads; the warm fuzzy feeling you must have felt supporting independent music will have hopefully made up for the slight annoyance of seeing it all freely available again.
In an altogether non-unrelated subject, this little read and the subsequent discussion may provide some entertainment. As a die-hard cynic I couldn’t help but revel in its unrelenting, though thoroughly entertaining, pessimism. Certainly brought up a few smiles reading it, that’s for sure.
Well, I’ll limp on, musically, trying my damnedest to get this album finished before 2010…
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19 Responses to “My Download Store Stats, Closure”:
“Not a bad run for a musical nobody such as myself”
Hardly. I think that you’re pretty well known in the right circles, but that you also do yourself a disservice by having such limited physical releases of your albums. The ‘Death of An Aura’ EP is the obvious example, but even with ‘Lemodie’ my order from a retailer was never filled and then it was pretty quickly sold out. I’d gladly purchase both of them if available today, especially if available from a U.S. distributor.
True, I would buy Lemodie but only discovered your work this year really. And £129 from Amazon doesn’t appeal…
Can you get Bleep to do it in FLAC?
Dude, I sincerely think your unreleased stuff is worth paying for – but never mind. At least stick a donation button in there so people can help you out if they feel so inclined. But- generous of you regardless-
Cheers.
m@
I agree, there’s people out there waiting for new material to give it airplay, there’s people willing to pay (not as many as I’d imagined by the looks of it.) but definately keep that donate button there!
Ben—I’ll look into getting Lemodie available in FLAC. There’s no reason why they can’t get FLAC up, but as we witnessed when waiting for DoaA in FLAC, it may take a while.
As for the limited releases, that’s unfortunately out of my hands; it’s up to the label to decide how many to press up initially, and when, if at all, to repress. Labels need to convince distributors that there’s suitable demand for a repress—a difficult task unless they can tie it in with a new release, which then calls for extra cash. But if anyone does want to see Lemodie repressed, then please feel free to let Benbecula know about this.
Yeah, I was wondering what the £129 Lemodie on Amazon was all about. ??? Crazy.
To be honest, donation buttons tend to be a bit of a waste of time, in my experience. I’ve seen some folks offer ‘shoutbox’ messages in exchange for donations, which is novel, but I don’t feel it’d be worth the time to implement. Perhaps I’ll get a PayPal button on the sidebar at somepoint. I think there’s even a WordPress plugin for it…
Musical nobody? You’re offending my taste, dude
Absolutely love your music. Thank you, Chris.
On the donation front – I recently made the entire Posthuman back-catalogue available for free download – in both torrent form, and free mp3 download via last.fm. I put everything up – but kept the birate of tracks still commercially available under 128kbs.
I embedded a link to a donation page, asking for anyone who d/l’d and enjoyed to give what they could.
I was quite pleasantly surprised at the number of donations that came in – don’t underestimate the goodwill of the music buying public. I would say around one in ten torrent downloads ended up in a contribution, ranging from a couple of quid, up to twenty quid.
The volume one .rar in FLAC seems to be bugged. I get this error when i open it.
! C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\Ochre_Vol_I_FLAC.zip: Unexpected end of archive
Ive tried downloading it twice now to no avail.
Thankyou bunches for your kind generosity Chris!
I’ll have a look at that Aaron, thanks for notifying me.
Sorry about that Aaron—I’ll sort this out once I have my main PC up and running again. Until then I might just remove the FLAC link.
Hey Josh—that seems like a great move, making all your tracks available for download—even the commercial ones in a limited bitrate. Quite a brave move too, but it obviously seems to work well for you—one of the advantages of having your own label. I can’t imagine trying to talk a label into giving away free album downloads though, even if it makes sense to get people listening as easily as possible.
Yeah, I’ve popped up a little donation button on the sidebar, and have received my first donation.
Thanks.
I just discovered your stuff a few weeks ago and immediately bought Lemodie off Bleep. Fantastic. I am looking forward to your next album.
Hey Chris,
I grabbed a lot of this music way back when you first had a huge play list available for download, so I decided to grab them all again sorted by volume – which is great being able to see how your music has evolved. In sorting out my itunes I have discovered a few rogue tracks and wondered where they fit in to the scheme of things, as they are not on the the current media player (unless I am not seeing them for looking)
They are: Neroreto, Peti & Circades
Also, unless they were scrambled during download, the PDF files in the archives are named wrong – the PDF named Vol 1 has the Vol 3 image, Vol 2 the vol 1, and vol 3 the vol 2.
Not meaning to be picky, I just thought you would like to know
All the best Chris, and yes I totally agree with the other posters that we need access to some hard copies of your music – maybe an organised petition is in order. I am totally confident that whatever they press would sell out very quick indeed – what do they have to loose!
keep up the beautiful music
Simon
Hi Simon,
Thanks very much for the kind words, and for letting me know about my inadvertent artwork shuffling! I knew I’d have to screw something up, and have to re-upload those massive zips again…
Circadies is off the last download EP, Death of an Aura, and will probably also be on the next album, hence the removal. As for Petl and Neoretro, a new 12″ EP containing both of these tracks, plus the Bass Recorder remix I did—as well as a new track—is imminent. I’ll put some release info up once I have a date.
Sorry to be the bringer of upload doom……
As for the special tracks I will delete them, erase my memory and forget I ever heard them while looking forward to future releases.
*eyes start to glaze over*
Tracks…..what tracks…..no idea what your talking about there….
best regards
Simon.
Oh, and please come and play a gig in Birmingham …..hell I’m sure I could fit a few hundred people in my apartment if needs be…… ok – maybe not.