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)
This week another page in the diary got written... with a song! A Christmas song has appeared out of thin air - was it perhaps the ghost of Christmas past that held the pen? In these dark days close to Yule the past, present and future get easily intertwined. Although the signature at the bottom of the page is easily taken for that of a known songstress of our time one can never be sure!
A week or two ago I told you about the old diary I found at the attic - and now I'm getting back to it because it makes me believe I'm insane. When I picked it up again yesterday a new entry had appeared out of nowhere... someone's still writing in it! Is it a ghost of times long past? Only if 'recording software' once had a meaning different from what we know today... piecing together parts of the puzzle. Although I feel this ghost is benign it definitely has some unfinished business to attend to! Read with me:So I did finally get to sleep after recording my little improvisational session in the middle of the night. Now, the morning after the birth of a song, I wake up wondering if what I have created is any good at all! This is when I get critical and judgemental; this is when the real work begins.
I open up my recording software to retrieve my last piece of creation and while looking at the piano track on the screen, I remember - oh yeah, this is 15 minutes long! Yikes!! That is way too long for a song, unless we’re talking about Led Zeppelin of course. So what I attempt to do is go through the recording and see what parts I want to keep and what parts can be canned in order to make something that somewhat resembles a modern song structure. This is where some self doubt, combined with the ego’s desires, tries to make it’s way in. Is this good enough? Can I really make a song worth listening to out of this? Will people like it?
I try to calm the voices in my head and get to work. I take the track and start cutting it up and changing the sequence of sections or repeating certain passages with a little copy and paste. This of course, is just to give an idea of what order the music will be in. The next part will be arranging the music and re-recording the whole thing plus adding layers if I decide to do so.
Thinking of how music makes a great gift, I thought Sellaband may have a lot of gift giving potential for the upcoming holiday season. But currently there are only two options besides wrapping one of your superfluous Cubworld, Nemesea or Second Person Limited Editions: Ordering a CD from the store which to my knowledge does not know how to gift-wrap, or to get one or more gift parts.
When clearing out an old dusty attic recently I came across a diary that looked as if it's been lying there for ages. I started reading and it appeared to be from a musician, or composer, of times long past. After hours of reading I came to the last page, where the date read November 4th, but as with the earlier pages the year had been omitted. On closer scrutiny the ink on this page seems to be different from the other ones... almost fresh. As the content may be of interest to the Sellablog readership I copy this entry:With so much noise going on in my head at times, the daylight seems to pass by too quickly and the nights can be restless and long. Last night, I decided to try what many have suggested and get out of bed instead of trying to force some shut eye. So I did. I got up, at about 1AM, and went to sit at my piano.
Of course, one of the main reasons why I could not get to sleep was because of a melody in my head that would not leave me alone. Sitting across an impressive line-up of black and white keys, I decided to see if this melody could actually take me somewhere. When my fingers finally made contact with the notes, and a feeling of calm entered my mind, I then realized that I was to be taken somewhere. With my recording software on, I played the piano for over 15 minutes non-stop. Of course, that is quite a bit long for a song but I always try to leave limitations and judgement at the door when the creative process comes to visit me.
The music always comes first. Then, as I’m sliding into different piano chords, a melody escapes my vocal chords (ever so softly as I am doing my best not to wake the neighbours!) and sporadic words appear. At first, they don’t mean anything to me, but when I let them come, they somehow turn into phrases. The emotions of the music dictate the meaning of these lyrics and soon enough, I have a theme for a song.
Sellaband has before been accused of being a 'pyramid scheme', but in my opinion people making these accusations just don't understand the Sellaband model. A true pyramid scheme is built on money flowing from newer entrants to older ones, who are then the only ones making actual money and usually for no apparent reason or value add.
Despite her September 12 profile start date, Kaitee Page has only been actively pursuing the Sellaband 50k recording budget since the 17th of October - yet she managed to secure over $2000 in those first 10 days. This also at a time that much attention went to no less than three artists over the famous 40k limit, walking or running their final stretch to the finish line. So what are we looking at here? Is it just the novelty of a girl with a violin (or viola, as I stood corrected) or is it more the long list of people from the industry she has already worked with? Nothing to do but ask herself!
Dutch (near monopolistic) concert organizer Mojo announced through the Dutch media this week that it will seek cooperation with record companies. According to Mojo they need the record companies to scout and support new artists - who can then of course have their gigs arranged by Mojo. Mojo sounds even willing to pay the record industry for their A&R work, thus sharing in the increase that live performances have in the total artist revenue. For a moment I thought this was a bad thing, keeping the dinosaurs alive - but then I remembered that We Are The Record Company! It must be that Sellaband staff are already talking to Mojo and soon cash will be flowing our way... or do we really expect SellaGig to take off soon? (VB)
I don't want to dramatize Light's departure from Sellaband this week, but it was a sad moment when her profile page actually disappeared. Her reasons for focusing her attention elsewhere are completely her own, but truth is that her Sellaband account only barely made it past $4000 in almost a year. One of the most original and hardworking artists on Sellaband, who has at this time financed and recorded two CDs by herself, would not get to 50k within 10 years at this rate. To me, this means that Sellaband is still far from the green pastures where musicians from any genre will find an audience to finance their CD, given they have enough quality. Light's music will not die, but it will not live through Sellaband either. The Long Tail of Sellaband is still quite a short one...
Now, in this never ending search after what Sellaband actually IS (a record company? a community? a way to meet friends who like your music?) I think Bulletproof Messenger (BPM) have just made an interesting move. In sight of the 50k finish line they have asked existing believers to hold off further investments.... unless as parts given to other people to increase the fan base. While this may not be entirely without benefit to the band, I think this is a great way of paying back some of the 1st place visibility to SAB. Kennedy would have been proud.... (if he were in any way interested in music, that is. Oh well). Below a quoted message from BPM to their believers. (VB)
Worth to you, that is. Just a day before Sellaband laid out their new plans Radiohead announced big time that anyone downloading their new album can set their own price. This was actually one of the models proposed in the forum discussions leading to the new Sellaband plan, but I am not unhappy that it's not in there. It's definitely a nice gesture and perhaps one of the models of the future, but it may help big time if you're one of worlds most famous bands to make people pay even voluntarily. I just don't think it would have been a great model for music that has to still find its audience... or is that just being conservative? Now, let me read the remainder of the SAB plans...
Trusting that others would bring their pricey photo gear to Zwoel, the Amsterdam gig at famous standup comedian stage Toomler, this is just the best pic I made. Even between its fellow camera phones, mine just seems proud to underachieve big time! Nevertheless, I don't care. It was nice to have an introduction to BBConnected, a band with a nice stage presence, but I came for T-Ka who has managed to skip Amsterdam sofar in her long line of concerts. No regrets there - the two person band laid down a great rhythm to which T-Ka herself could layer her keyboard and vocals. Just great sights and sounds... next time, just not on a Sunday night please!
The crazy things you do when you're on Sellaband.... would I have otherwise travelled two-and-a-half hours forth and two-and-a-half hours back to see Bim do their first 6-or-7-song performance on a small open air festival in Chesham? No! Of course not! Most likely because I would have never even heard of Bim...
So, about the gig: it was good to have seen it! While delaying the performance had obviously not helped to quiet the inevitable nerves of a first gig, Bim proved they really don't need the two covers they were playing. I'm pretty sure the only reason they did play those covers is the time and effort it takes to ready all their material for live performance. Bim's own songs really stand being performed live on stage, and I believe they are accessible enough to not need famous filler songs to keep the audience's attention. It was interesting to see how the cello player they brought with them added to the material, and that the songs do not depend on the electronics that were used on their home studio recordings. Speaking of electronics... the PA system used was rather basic, proving that Rebecca's and Tim's voices are truly good even without layers of filtering and reverb. Not to say there weren't the occasional uncertain notes, but I'm very sure that was also because it just is hard to sing harmonies with just one voice per vocal group - especially when you're not used to using amplification or singing outside. More live performances will surely make Bim a live treat just as much as their recorded songs are on your own CD or mp3 player. So when they do play that concert hall in perhaps two years' time, I can say "I've seen their first gig!".
As a final note: being late did make me miss the stage acts of two other Sellaband artists, Cris Tanzi and Rachaelrachael, who made this a partial Sellaband happening (VB)
With all the discussions about the future essentials of Sellaband on the forums I couldn't help but think of some four guys' own revolution about 35 years ago. A revolution of a different kind, but some of their lyrics' lines do strike a chord with me. All rights respected!
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)
