lowstring

Blogs will become Record Labels?

An interesting view on the future of the music biz

Myspace Crossposter Plugin for Wordpress

For all of the bands that are using wordpress to power their website, here is another neat little tool to save you some time. The Myspace Crossposter Plugin for Wordpress allows any Myspace user (not just bands) to simultaneously post to their Myspace blog when publishing a new Wordpress post. Now you only have to worry about posting news in one location!

Speaking of ways to interact with Myspace (while not actually having to go there), the Myspace API has officially been released and I have started to mess with it. Functionality is pretty limited right now, but maybe in the future they will add more features. I want to see (or build..wink wink) a centralized web app for bands that will interact with all of these different sites making it easier for bands to update content.

Ursession getting old

After a few months on Ursession I have pretty much given up on the site. I realize the site is still in beta but I do not see the allure for any band to waste too much time on the site. Don’t get me wrong, anybody listening to your music is a good thing, but I wouldn’t rely solely on Ursession.

My main problem with Ursession, besides the fact that it looks like it was designed in 1995 is that the voting system is totally unrealistic and reminds me of tagworld. Basically a new user that signs up will be inundated with emails that say “hey I checked out your music and left you a vote, return the favor and vote for me”. People are for the most part generally nice, and if they get an email like this, they will “return the favor” without evaluating the artist’s music, which just inflates the voting results and creates false numbers for both the artists. The artist that sends out the most emails, 90% of the time will end up with the most votes. Notice this band/artist’s music and quality of this music has never even entered into the equation.

If you go to Ursession and listen to some of the “top” artists you will soon realize that they aren’t the “top” artist because of their music. Is Ursession going to give a record contract to these people? I highly doubt it.

Ursession is just another ill fated attempt at creating an online community for music/musicians in an already flooded market and won’t succeed, “revolutionary” or not.

Acoustic EP Update

I have been experiencing some writers block as of late so I am concentrating on getting some of the acoustic versions done for my Acoustic EP that I plan to release later this year. Usually when I hit a road block I start recording covers to keep my recording chops, but in this case I am basically recording covers of songs I wrote, so it is proving to be interesting. Here are the first two I have attempted:

Why Did You Do It? - Acoustic EP
Had Enough - Acoustic EP

I’m finding it pretty easy to get these acoustic versions down, and some have even started to take on a life of their own. I have also realized how dark some of my lyrics are lol.

On a some what happy note, I have covered one of my favorite Beach Boy songs “God Only Knows”. The song itself is not the happiest of Beach Boys song, but I think the way I did it makes it sound happier than it really is lol. My version sounds like it should be in a Shrek movie or something……… anyways enjoy.

God Only Knows (Beach Boys Cover)

urSESSION Pre Launch, Last.FM to pay Artist Royalties, Amie Street

urSESSION Pre-launch

To tell you the truth I had pretty much forgotten about urSession because it was supposed to go live late last year, but to my surprise I received an email inviting me to join the pre-launch of their site over the weekend. What is urSession? UrSession is a “revolutionary” website/label envisioned by Shavo Odadjian (System of a Down bass player) that features user generated and rated content. Artists and Bands can upload music and/or videos showing off their band or individual talents. Other users can then vote for and or rate this uploaded content. An online talent show or just an online version of American Idol? The winner(s) will get a chance at a urSession label deal.
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Band - Myspace, Virb, Tagworld & Facebook Profile Statistics

I have been using mint to keep track of website visitor statistics ever since Shaun Inman released it. One of the cool things about mint is that you can install different plugins to extend features in mint. In the mint world these plugins are called “pepper“. I came across a pepper that would allow users to track myspace visitors and display the results with mint. After a few quick steps I actually had it working. This pepper is really rather simple but at the same time genius (at least I think so). Read the full post »

Had Enough - EP

To purchase this album visit the lowstring.com store. By purchasing the album, you will help fund my full album release which is due out in ‘08. If you do not wish to purchase the album then download, share, give away, and spread the love!

Right Click and “Save As” to download

1. Not Me (Mix 7)
2. Had Enough
3. Lonely Eyes
4. Change
5. Leave Me Alone (Demo)
6. Rest In Peace (Demo)
7. Listen To The Rain (Demo)
8. Tonight -
9. Full Album ZIP

2007, Ambition, Goals, and looking forward to 2008

Another year gone by and another year without a full length release. This is proving to be much harder than I thought! I have been working on the same album for over a year now and have not made much headway. I think that I need to write a plan, with smaller goals that are achievable, and help me get this first one under my belt.

On a positive note I did achieve some goals that I set for myself in 2007.
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Seth Godin’s Music Lessons

Seth has listed 15 Music lessons on his blog. Interesting read, and worth checking out.

I personally like #13 (the second #13 mind you…… which he may change to #14 when he notices his mistake)

13. Whenever possible, sell subscriptions
Few businesses can successfully sell subscriptions (magazines being the very best example), but when you can, the whole world changes. HBO, for example, is able to spend its money making shows for its viewers rather than working to find viewers for every show.

The biggest opportunity for the music business is to combine permission with subscription. The possibilities are endless. And I know it’s hard to believe, but the good old days are yet to happen.

I personally think that in the not so distant future, music/media will be delivered digitally via a subscription of some sort. Music will become a utility, much like cable tv….etc.

New Lowstring.com Digital Downloads Store

Recently I have been exploring different digital download paypal scripts that would allow me to sell digital files directly from lowstring.com. I decided to use an open source option I found at bradsucks.net. Brad (also a musician) was nice enough to offer up a script he compiled for doing just what I wanted to do. You can download the script yourself here: http://www.bradsucks.net/projects/bsdds/. This script is pretty straight forward, but does have some bugs that I had to fix. There isn’t much documentation per say, but if you know anything about php you can figure out what is going on. Mainly the bugs were just some path issues.

Feel free to visit the new Lowstring Media Store and check it out. The store is a work in progress as I am still tweaking it, but it does work. If you have any problems with it, feel free to drop me an email and I will try and resolve your issue. Most of my songs will still be available via a free download, but I would appreciate that if you enjoy the music, please feel free to donate some money to the cause. If you would like to donate and not purchase a song/album then feel free to use the donate button in the sidebar. Money earned will go towards the release of my first full length album, which I am hoping will be ready early 2008. As always thanks for visiting the site, and spread the word!