Hey all - 99% of the blogs doesn't make it through its first year, so we've been doing great comparatively! But time has come to realize that four posts in half a year doesn't make a blog. The fire has gone, and other pressing matters are competing for my time and attention... It's been good, and the few of you reading this: We'll be in touch! (VB)
Just a quick note that around this time the total amount that believers put in artists on Sellaband should hit 2 million US dollars. With that the time to the first million and the time needed for the second aren't too different. Still not much departure from the straight line, although you can see that for a short while around measurement day 330 the was a slight hint of a 'hockeystick' pattern... instead of that it proved just to be Hurricane Ellie passing by, as soon after her hitting the 50k the daily increase in investment was back at the pre-Ellie Williams level. Still, some releases are coming up: Julia's has just been, and we can look forward to Vegas Dragons, Solidtube and Confused5 in a while. Shall we see reinvestments in the above curve?
With an online listening session tonight (or more like tomorrow morning at the artists home, how confusing this worldwide music bizz can be!) Mandyleigh Storm launched her debut album Fire & Storm, following Clemence's release earlier this week. I won't be reviewing it, as everybody can have a listen themselves and buy it at my little Sellaband shop (Look at the column to the right of this blog)! Should I have warned for commercial messages? Nah! This believer-nags-his-friends-to-buy-records-off-of-him is all part of the Sellaband universe :-) (VB)
The second of the two London Sellagigs was on Sunday at 229, which turned out to be more or less part of the student's housing next to it. I liked this venue better than Storm, with a smarter positioning of the seating area and the bar (one could order while watching the show!) and not in the least because of the reasonably priced pints... Today, again, was a showcase of quite a number of Sellaband artists: Clem, Cris Tanzi, Rebecka Haak, Rox Clayton-Scott (supported on guitar by Dave Patrick, the organizer of the evening) Kaitee Page and finally Julia Marcell. This lineup made for a majority of bands with (at least partial) acoustic instrumentation, to which Kaitee's rock unfortunately contrasted too much in my opinion. That aside though, all artists did a great job on stage. I fell at the spot for Cris Tanzi's music which came across to me so much more powerful live than on her profile page. I immediately bought the CD and became a believer once I got to a computer! Rebecka's songs proved their "earworm" quality by sounding already familiar this second time I heard them, and Julia's performance with full string quartet instumentation gave a great preview to her upcoming CD release! I had a great night!
The Sellagig weekend of the 1st and 3rd of February started off in Storm, Leicester Square. This gig, brought together by Dreb of Sheet Metal, featured the Sellaband artists Luckyhorse, Rebecka Haak, Kaitee Page, MDATA and Sheet Metal - a wide variety of what Sellaband has to offer. I won't be reviewing each and every artist, but I do want to single out Kaitee whose band -which she always portrayed as a somewhat loosely cohesive bunch- played well together and did a really professional show that would have suited a bigger room. It also looked good, and my only remark as a photographer to Kaitee would be to heed her own songs' title: Open your eyes! My surprise of the evening was definitely Rebecka Haak, who I had expected to sing some nice sweet songs but instead blew me away with strong and emotionally intense material. The songs also impressed musically - catching your ear immediately while being original at the same time. It was no surprise that at the other Sellagig two days later the songs already felt familiar. One of Sellaband's underrated! (VB) (photos © vincentbuller)
Alright, the news is a couple of months old, but today I actually saw a Sellaband CD on the shelves of a brick and mortar record store! You can buy a regular edition In Control by Nemesea at Velvet in Delft for a bit less than 10 euro. It must have been pure excitement (or the remainder of that virus) that made me do such a louse photo job. Anyway, now going for that first Second Person CD - one of whose sales I might actually benefit.... (VB)
The Volkskrant, one of the two Dutch major national newspapers, had a short snippet about the Amazon deal this morning. Alright, numbers are always difficult for a journalist (35k instead of 30k, 7 artists having albums out?) and as far as I know the deal was only with Amazon.co.uk and not the .com parent company (not really sure what the organization structure of Amazon is). But small articles like these appearing more regularly are the key to making Sellaband the household name it should be. At least they spelled the name right! (VB)
And maybe a tree will rise out of me (T-Ka)
It Might Like You (Julia Marcell)
Pasión de Mujer (Lily Vasquez)
Fire & Storm (Mandyleigh Storm)
The Elements (Second Person)
