This week’s POTW is from Daniel Feinberg, an indie artist based in Seattle. My personal favourite of his (so far) is the charming Hand Drawn Map, which I’ve included in my Chilled Folk Playlist.
Daniel’s playlist is a showcase of unsigned artists, and is aptly titled Undiscovered.
What’s really great about being in a community of independent musicians is how many artists really understand that we’re in this together, and that we all benefit when we do things that help each other out and work together.
My POTW for this week is another female-focussed playlist, drawing attention to lesser-known women in music. Let’s Hear it for the Girls is another playlist from Susan Moss / MoonDreams, who has been amazingly supportive of my work; she’s even been very kind, putting Sleepwalker at the top of this list (at the time of writing) – the best spot. Being a fairly prolific playlister, her name will crop up again – I just haven’t written that article yet!
One of Susan’s most recent offerings, Keep Moving (Basement Recording), is on my Chilled Retro playlist currently, and is a raw folk-rock song about keeping going when the going is tough, which I can rather relate to after everything that’s been going on with my Dad’s health the last few months.
I hope you enjoy listening to this little slice of girl-power… more to come!
This week’s POTW is another one from Atom Collector Records, who are doing a great job of championing musicians who release music independently of any record label via their site, Soundcloud and Spotify in particular.
This playlist is from their ‘the 100’ series, where they put together 100 tracks (or thereabouts) from lesser-known musicians, and it features classical and ambient tracks. It is still being compiled as I write, as there are much less than 100 tracks currently. That means you’ll have to come back later and listen again if you want to get the full ambient goodness of it.
Today’s POTW, Girls Who Can, is compiled by CeCe Hemmingway, one half of British electronic act Hemmingway. Based in Chelmsford, Essex, the band have a big, contemporary, sound bridging the gap between electronica and guitar based rock, with David Moriaty’s cutting solos.
It’s worth pointing out that CeCe not only provides the vocals, she’s also a skilled music producer, as you will hear on tracks such as Rise Again. In fact, all the tracks on this playlist are produced by women: let’s hear it for the girls!
There were various articles last summer predicting doom and gloom for Soundcloud before they were rescued. That triggered some research into what alternatives there are, which has resulted in my writing a series of blog posts aimed at musicians and music geeks to share what I found out. This one deals with the Musicoin.org site, one of the first block-chain enabled sites for music.
Musicoin is a site started in early 2017 for musicians to post their original tracks for streaming. Unlike Soundcloud, it is a blockchain powered site, and musicians are paid every time a track is played, in the cryptocurrency Musicoin ($MUSIC). The amount paid is set to vary depending on the token’s value against the US dollar, but whilst 1 Musicoin is worth less than $0.10 USD, the website will pay musicians 1 $MUSIC per play of a track. This is initially stored in the artist’s online account, and must be transferred to a desktop wallet before being exchanged for ‘real money’. There is a mysterious process in the background, whereby ‘miners’ generate the $MUSIC which pays both them and the artists and listeners get to stream for free.
To find new tracks, the curious can follow up on activity in their personalised news feed or search on genres, but music discovery on Musicoin is currently mainly through the ‘new releases’ and ‘new artists’ lists, or looking at tracks in the ‘top tipped’ or ‘top played’ lists. This biases music discovery towards the better known acts on the site and to those who release new music more often.
The idea of musicians benefitting directly, rather than via an intermediary such as a distributor like Distrokid or CDBaby is pretty revolutionary, but it’s early days. The site is struggling to cope with demand and lacks more advanced features such as playlisting, or showing albums as such rather than as individual tracks, finding similar artists to what you tend to listen to, and so on. Spotify is very good at this and is the one they will have to beat.
It’s really hard to break through to make a living from music if you’re an unknown independent, so many artists have been excited about the possibilities of a site like Musicoin using the blockchain to pay musicians directly and immediately. To put it in context, some distributors don’t pass on streaming royalties to artists for 3 months or even 6 months after activity has taken place; it’s no wonder a lot of artists describe themselves as ‘starving’! Even though tokens transfer as soon as a track is played, I haven’t got touched my $MUSIC so far, because you need to exchange it for either ‘real money’ or Bitcoin to be able to do anything useful with it (like buying food), and you need to be exchanging enough for the value not to be wiped out by exchange fees. There always seems to be a middle-man taking a cut one way or another!
It’s worth noting that the Musicoin token has been subject to wild fluctuations in value along with other better known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and the application to blockchain technology to music distribution is new, so it’s quite an experimental place for musicians to be at present. To give you an idea of the currency’s volatility, when I signed up with Musicoin in January, a token was worth around $0.05, quickly rising to $0.11 within a few short weeks, before plummeting to around $0.02 as at mid February. It’s difficult to know where it is going to land, assuming it will eventually reach a more stable value. So far it is beating Spotify’s rates, but where it lands will depend on factors such as global governmental regulation of cryptocurrency, the security of currency exchanges against hackers, and how well the site’s developers manage to keep up with demand and bring improvements to the site’s functionality.
Pros
The musicoin site allows anyone to listen free of charge to all the verified musicians on the site. (A verified musician has a green tick next to their name). There is no advertising to distract listeners from the music.
There is a social aspect to the site – you can follow artists and comment on their tracks, like you can on Soundcloud. You have a personalised feed showing the most recent activity by artists you follow.
Tracks shared to Twitter and Facebook can play ’embedded’ which makes sharing easy.
Musicians can earn more per play than with other streaming services like Spotify (exchange rate permitting) and it happens straight away. There is also the opportunity to tip music you particularly like, from your own supply of Musicoins.
The site is currently dominated by indie musicians. Artists are visible to other users for a short time when they release new material, and their comments on and tipping of others’ tracks can be seen. The artist of the week feature is not currently beyond the reach of a little-known artist – there seems to be an element of randomness in the selection process.
Cons
The Musicoin site is still in Beta at the time of writing and can be quite slow loading tracks when it is busy, and it sometimes crashes. It needs more features before it will be a serious contender for consumer music streaming.
Artists and other users are unable to make playlists or group album tracks together as playlists within the site at present. (There is a workaround though, by Rapoet/Self Suffice, if your artist website allows you to reuse his code to playlist your chosen tracks).
You can’t currently review a list of who you are following, or see a list of who is following you like you can on Soundcloud, or directly contact followers when you release new material. You have to rely on users seeing this in their feed.
The music discovery features help the better known artists on the site much more than new artists.
The Musicoin desk-top wallet uses a lot of computer memory in order to store the blockchain data. (I’m told there are other options, but it is more complex to set up.)
Artists need to have other active social media, such as Twitter and/or Bandcamp or Soundcloud in order to get verified. Without verification, artists cannot add more than one track and listeners have to pay per track played. You might need to get established on some other sites first if you’re just starting out.
Blockchain is still like the Wild West! Not many people understand it all that well except for the serious computer geeks, and there is a learning curve to conquer in order to use it correctly. There is also potential to lose your tokens – e.g. if an exchange is hacked, you lose your password or you make a mistake entering a wallet address during a transfer. No banks are involved until you have exchanged your tokens for real money. This means that you are solely responsible for any losses.
Verdict
Musicians who get onto a new platform early tend to be the ones who reap the biggest benefits from it. Musicoin might not ultimately be the platform that becomes the go-to blockchain platform for music, but it has that potential as one of the earliest applications of the technology to music.
In my opinion it’s worth artists being present on this site, collecting Musicoin and seeing where it goes as it develops. It should be part of a much broader distribution strategy for your music, however, and to make a success of being a Musicoin artist, you will need to promote your Musicoin tracks outside of the platform, as music discovery within the site caters to the better known artists with the most followers.
(PS: If you’d like to check out my tunes on the site, here’s the link.)
This week’s POTW comes from artist The Transient Creep of Olivine, from Texas, who has kindly included Savannah and Spiralesque in their Instrumentals playlist. Again, this playlist features artists that would mostly fall under the radar, so it’s another great one for music discovery.
The Transient Creep’s own music is magical and ever so slightly dystopian – I recommend With the Rabbit, Down the Hole, which conjures up that whole feeling of Alice in Wonderland, which is presumably an intentional reference in the track’s title.
There were various articles last summer predicting doom and gloom for Soundcloud before they were rescued. With that in mind, I did a little research into what alternatives independent musicians have to Soundcloud.
This is part 4 of the series aimed at independent artists. Comments relate to the free version of Bandcamp: there is a Pro subscription available allowing more advanced features like uploading videos and customising your bandcamp domain name, but it costs $10 per month, beyond the budget for many small artists.
Bandcamp’s front page
Bandcamp is a well-established site for indie artists, geared up around selling downloads. Musicians can also allow listeners to stream their material, so they can decide if they will like it before they buy. Posting music here is a way of releasing material, but Bandcamp do not offer distribution services beyond their site, so this doesn’t get you onto Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify and so on: you will need to release your work through an additional distribution service if you want to get into those outlets.
Bandcamp is not a particularly suitable place for sharing rough mixes or material you’re not sure about to get feedback – listeners can’t leave comments and it may cause confusion if you post unfinished material in your store. That said, you can post tracks for free, allowing people to download for ‘£0 or more’, so that does give an option to differentiate between work in progress and finished items that you charge for. Anyone doing that would need to make sure it was well communicated, however, and there are possible reputation issues if you post work before it is really listenable.
There are some social aspects to Bandcamp, but it’s somewhat limited: You can ‘like’ tracks via Facebook or tweet them directly from inside the site; music fans have their own pages and can follow each other as well as their favourite artists. Bandcamp encourage you to follow other fans with similar taste and check out their ‘collection’, to aid music discovery. There’s also a music discovery page with features and which shows which albums or tracks are being bought right now, with the option to click through and listen. When you follow an artist, they can email to let you know when they have a new track available.
Pros:
Great for showing off albums.
Try-before-you-buy feature
You can limit the number of free streams of each track you allow listeners if you wish
You control the download price (unlike some online stores), and can offer free downloads on tracks you wish to share but not sell.
Fans can add a tip for the music they like best, when downloading.
Fans can follow artists they like, and artists can subsequently email them.
You can link your gig information to Bandcamp via the Songkick app.
Cons:
This site is not really suitable for getting feedback for work in progress.
The social dimension of the site is quite limited.
Music discovery is also fairly limited: users have to be actively seeking out new music.
Downloading is already on the wane – streaming is growing fast, but is not the focus of this site. This could affect the site’s relevance within just a few years, if the site does not adapt accordingly.
Verdict:
Where Bandcamp works best is as a well known online store, especially if you don’t provide music downloads direct from your own website. Because this site is very well known, it’s still a standard place for indie artists to be – at least for now. You can use Bandcamp alongside your distribution deal (e.g. through CDBaby) providing that the distribution contract is non-exclusive, so that you get the benefit of being on both platforms.
This week’s POTW is by GJART, another independent electronic musician, whose influences overlap a little with mine, as he is inspired by such familiar names as the Human League, Kraftwerk and OMD. If you want to check out his music, here’s a fab video he filmed and provided the music for with a wintry theme. You can also hear his tunes on Musicoin.org.
To give a boost to independent artists, GJART’s compiled the GJART loves #1 playlist of electronic music. (He also has a non-electronic playlist, GJART Loves #2 which I think you’ll also enjoy). The #1 playlist has a slightly industrial electronic vibe in keeping with GJART’s own influences, but is pretty chilled with it.
My POTW this week is the wonderful Ethereal Dreamscapes, from Susan Moss of MoonDreams music, who was the creator behind the first week’s playlist. I think we have rather similar taste in music, if this list is anything to go by. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it, too.
This week’s POTW follows directly on from last week’s, as it is another from Haven Yates‘ Triple 25 series. So, I’ll say no more and let you listen… enjoy!