Ochre

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I haven’t really come across much talk about Amie Street across the net, in blogs or on forums, which seems unusual given its apparently novel approach to music sales (I guess it could use a few more artists on there).

Rather than assume a fixed price for album and single track sales, the pricing structure varies according to the track’s popularity. At first, the music is available for free download, then as the tracks rack up download counts the price goes up by a few cents, until it settles on a price deemed fair by the listeners, i.e. what they’re prepared to pay for it. The tracks are eventually capped at the heady heights of ninety-eight cents each.

As a new member, all my tracks currently on there are free—just put a check next to all the tracks you want, select download in the actions drop-down (or alternatively click on the whole albums you want), sign-in, and you’ll be presented with a zip of your selected tracks.

I’ve uploaded the same 320kbps mp3s that I’m currently selling here (a little artistic licence with the term selling—’for sale’ would be more accurate! ) so the quality is as good as you can get with an mp3; the only difference being you support me directly via my own store and have a chance to download the FLACs too. But as the tracks on Amie Street are currently free, you may as well grab them there, and leave a ‘REC’ (that’s recommendation to you and I) for your favourite tracks, and help me gain a little more exposure on the site.

The REC system works by remunerating those who have REC’d tracks, giving them money back as the tracks gain in popularity, incentivising feedback and helping listeners find other similar tracks they might enjoy by other artists.

It’ll be interesting to see if and how this takes off, but what do you think? Have you used Amie Street or anything similar?

Anyway, get downloading, tagging and REC’ing!

A couple of you were asking about the surround version of Reception (see here for more info), so here it is:

Reception.ac3

Working in surround is still somewhat of a novelty for me, and I’m sure I’ve yet to get to grips fully with it, so let me know if you hear anything that sounds like it shouldn’t be there and I’ll make appropriate adjustments.

You might have noticed a few changes to the site of late, as I’ve just updated Wordpress to the new 2.5 version, which includes a whole host of updates on the admin side of things to make my life a little easier. Cosmetically though, there are few changes, although you’ll have noticed the addition of Gravatars to the comments section.

For the uninitiated, Gravatars are ‘Globally Recognised Avatars’, and exist to make it easier for us to have a uniform identity across the net (the avatar equivalent of OpenID, if you will). It will become quickly apparent, by the dearth of avatars in my comments section, that this is very much A New Thing, and has yet to catch on within the online world (although I have noticed one or two commenters have caught on already).

So, if you fancy procuring a Gravatar, all you need is an email address to sign up and associate an avatar with and you’re all set (you can assign multiple emails with different avatars).

Continuing the theme of updates, I’ve tweaked and tinkered with the download store, mainly to a) reduce the number of tracks I have to tend to, and b) by popular request, arrange the downloads into more manageable album-sized chunks, with the option of buying individual albums separately.

The previously ‘orphaned’ tracks are now separated into three volumes, imaginatively titled I, II and III (yes, I did take a pinch of inspiration from the recent NIN release), and are now approximately grouped chronologically (by completion date, rather than upload date). Each album is about 45 mins long, and will cost you just £2 (~$4—yep, I’ve switched currencies, allowing me to accept Google Checkout now too!).

Finally, I’ve also provided each release in 320kbps and FLAC formats, as a single purchase, to save you having to pick which format when buying. You’ll get links to separate zips of each format emailed to you—just choose which you’d like to download.

Just a quickie: a couple of my recent mastering projects might interest those who enjoy a bit of Boards of Canada-esque electronica (both of which are free to download, I might add).

First up is the new compilation on Twoism Records (borne out of the Twoism BoC community) called One on Twoism (Volume 2)—yes, there’s a One on Twoism Volume One too! Try saying that quickly.

Second up is the Inspired by… Boards of Canada: A Few New Tunes release, on the budding Myuzyk netlabel. It’s a bit more eclectic than the Twoism release, but still very much worth a listen.

Both releases are available in lossless FLAC too, as well as mp3!

Here’s an interesting (and at times chucklesome) essay by ex-Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder, concerning the music industry and its ongoing existential crisis. Topics covered include an increasingly fickle and attention-starved attitude towards listening, the loudness war’s attempt to catch the consumer’s ear for a moment—along with the ensuing ear fatigue that sets in when you try to listen intently, and musings on alternative modes of operation and distribution. Bang-on the nail and well worth a read.

Coincidentally, making use of the boutique-approach discussed by Wilder, Trent Reznor just released some new NIN, entitled Ghosts I-IV, directly available through his site (or at least, it will be available once the server-crushing traffic wanes—I ended up getting the free release through a NIN-authorised torrent). There’s an almost bewildering variety of products and prices available in addition to the free version, right up to the $300 Ultra-Mega-3000 Edition.

It’s interesting to see these special editions increasingly being offered alongside standard releases, to subsidise the mp3 and basic CD releases. Giving away part of the release for free also makes a lot of sense, especially when there are so many tracks on offer anyway; Ghosts I clocks in at almost half an hour of music, free for familiarisation, to become lodged in the mind of listeners, who’ll then hopefully be back for more. Assuming I get enough material written, I can see myself utilising a similar method. After all, why limit a release to a single CD or 74 minutes of music if you’ve written the equivalent of two CDs? Package it all together as a single release, and give away 30–40% of it as mp3s to get people listening straight away before you’re eclipsed by next week’s news. Little use saving it for a separate release if no-one will give either release a chance.

It’s that time of year again when the North-East of England sees the biennial AV Festival descend upon its streets for a week. Working feverishly over the preceding fortnight, I managed to get involved by writing a piece of music for the festivities being held in Newcastle’s Culture Lab, as part of the Music & Machines VIII conference.

This year the symposium shared the AV Festival’s theme of Broadcast, featuring a variety of lectures, presentations and interventions by various key writers, artists and musicians. In between the scheduled presentations, artists from Newcastle University presented a series of installations and performance pieces taking inspiration from Jeffrey Sconce’s notion of Haunted Media, using sample material sourced from Antonin Artaud’s Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu, a recording originally commissioned by Radio France sixty years ago for a broadcast that never was (unsurprising, given the blasphemous and and somewhat scatological subject matter).

My resulting contribution was a 4.1 9-minute piece called Reception (here mixed down to stereo):

Download

Other highlights of the weekend for me were Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec’s Reality Soundtrack and Tetsuo Kogawa’s Deconstructing Broadcasting.