Just a quick post to let you know about an exciting new night we’re starting over at the fabulous Hideaway in Streatham, which launches tomorrow night Thursday May 3rd!
The idea is to showcase new and emerging vocalists and give them a chance to perform their material in a great venue. If you haven’t been to Hideaway yet, frankly you’re missing out. Recently voted Venue of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, this relatively new club is fast becoming the capitol’s premier jazz venue. And the food is bloody excellent…
The Voice shows will be on the third Thursday every month, but we’re launching the night tomorrow (3rd May, and we’ll be back again on the 24th). The band will feature Janette Mason on piano/keyboards, me on bass (obviously) and Frank Tontoh on drums. We’ve got some great singers coming down tomorrow including Polly Gibbons, Fran Lewis and Peter Borthwick. A great mix of jazz, soul and blues. It’s gonna be great so you should all come down. And because it’s the launch tomorrow; it’s free entry!!
In the run-up to releasing Mandala I spent a lot of time investigating the various channels I could employ to sell the album online. There are myriad ways to get your music onto iTunes, Amazon MP3, and eMusic etc and equally as many routes to selling physical packages online too. But here’s the catch; they all cost you money to set up and you have no control over pricing, availability or branding. Services like Tunecore will put your music onto a variety of digital stores, as well as streaming services like Spotify for an annual fee of $49.99 per album. Reverb Nation now also offers a variety of digital distribution packages ranging between $35-60 per year, per ‘release’ (ie; single, album, EP), but has no options for selling physical CDs and seems mainly aimed at the US market.
Enter Bandcamp!!
Bandcamp is a website that enables a band/artist to easily distribute their music directly to the public, both digitally and physically. It is well worth reading their excellent blog to keep up to date with all the new features they regularly add to the service. It is one of the best new sites to have sprung up over the last few years to embrace the changes in the music industry and the way artists engage with their audience.
Some benefits for artists/bands:
Easy to set up. You can have your album on sale within 30 minutes..
Integrates with existing website via custom urls, custom headers, design etc
Fans can stream the music in it’s entirety, unlike the dreaded 30 second previews of iTunes etc.
Offer high-quality downloads in a variety of formats. Also offers the possibility of including an instant download with physical packages
Excellent sharing options to place widgets and links on other sites
Various pricing options including ‘pay what you want’, set pricing and everything in between. Plus the facility to generate free download codes for promotion etc
Receive payments instantly via PayPal
Bandcamp only takes 15% commission on sales and has no annual fees
and some benefits for fans/listeners:
Listen to full tracks/albums online, so you can try before you buy
Know that you are supporting the artists directly when you buy the music (and not Steve Jobs)
Easy to share your discoveries via Facebook, Twitter, embeddable widgets/music players
Download music in various high-quality formats (MP3, FLAC etc)
I have been a big supporter of Bandcamp since it first started up. I know as a listener I am far more likely to buy an album download from Bandcamp than any other digital store; mainly due to the superior quality of the downloaded files and because I want to directly support the artist when I buy their music. I know of several people that sell their music on iTunes and see a surprisingly small return from sales. Bandcamp is a great resource for independent music.
Over the last few weeks I have noticed more and more artists turning to Bandcamp to sell their music. I have turned several of my friends onto the site this month. Most recently the fantastic pianist Janette Mason has uploaded both her solo albums for download. I also convinced my good friend Steve Alexander to offer his excellent Isometric album on Bandcamp. Artists like Zoe Keating and Steve Lawson have been selling their music through the site for quite some time now, with great success. Both have made use of the ‘pay what you want’ model to some degree, which allows fans to name their own price and pay what they think the music is worth (with or without a lower limit).
This is the pricing model I have opted for with Mandala. At the moment, the digital version is £5 (or more) and the physical CD is priced at £10 (or more). This enables people to pay a little more if they would like to show some extra support for the project and indeed any future projects. I have found that most people do add a little extra than the minimum price, especially for the download. I know that both Steve and Zoe have had fans pay upwards of $100 for albums downloads as a show of support for their music.
Just saying, you know…
Incidentally, Bandcamp have just added Facebook ‘Like’ buttons to their pages, which is by far the easiest and quickest way to share your favourite albums with your friends right now. Please do take a moment to scoot over to my Bandcamp page and click the ‘Like’ button under the album artwork. Even if you’ve already bought it; every little helps in spreading the word! You may have also noticed that I have added my own little ‘Like’ button to this very site recently (it’s at the top of the sidebar on the right), which will magically add you to the small but perfectly formed gang on my Facebook page if you are that way inclined…
So what have you discovered via Bandcamp recently? I’ve downloaded a few corkers recently. Here’s a few recommendations (in no particular order)
Until next time, here’s one of their lovely widgets so you can stream the solo album whilst having a look around. This is the Grande version, in case you were wondering…
Well it’s been pretty manic here at Little Towers folks…
At the beginning of the month I was back in Denmark with Maggie Reilly for theKorsør Open Air Festival. We were on a rather interesting bill with various 70’s bands including ELO, Sailor, The Rubettes, Suzi Quatro, and Showaddywaddy (!). I was in and out of Denmark in one day which proved a tad strenuous, but (crappy weather withstanding) we had a fantastic time on stage. It was great to play a big festival with Maggie again and I certainly blew the cobwebs away from my little Warwick amp. Haven’t been able to crank it up like that for a while but when you’re stood next to drum-monster Steve Alexander it’s only right!
Clare Teal’s new album is coming along very nicely too, thanks for asking. It’s based on the Great British Songbook tour and features some lovely arrangements by Grant Windsor. Grant, Ben and I were recording some backing vocals just last week and Clare is in the studio right now putting down her final vocals. We’re expecting that one to be ready in the Autumn so keep your eyes peeled.
As many of you already know, I’m off on tour with the marvelous Duke Special later this week. We’ll be playing fourteen shows around Ireland over the next three weeks starting in Letterkenny this Thursday. The Uk leg of the tour was a great success and I’m really looking forward to getting out there and playing the new material. The tour features music from the Duke’s The Stage, A Book & The Silver Screenboxset, including of course most of the songs from Mother Courage & Her Children which we performed at the National Theatre last Autumn. Expect copious bloggery on our return! Here’s a list of where you can find us…
Last Sunday was Lea DeLaria’s birthday show at Ronnie Scott’s. And let me tell you, it was a blast! We played two long sets which allowed us to pull out some great tunes from Lea’s back catalogue that we haven’t done for a while. It was great to revisit a couple of the great Gil Goldstein arrangements from Lea’s first two albums: Tatooed Love Boys andCool were great fun live. We also had a couple of very special guests. Ian Shaw came up and joined us for a couple of storming duets with Lea and the marvelous Justin Bond (aka Kiki from Kiki & Herb) performed a number with his MD Lance Horne and totally brought the house down. The whole show was such a scream and Lea got a big standing ovation at the end of the night. Hoping we’ll be back there soon…
So, what other news? I hear you ask…
Well the new Divine Comedy single At The Indie Discocame out on Monday and has been getting a lot of airplay this month. The download bundle features two B-sides, On The Barge and At The Indie Disco Mk1 and the video. Surely that’s more than worth £1.79 of anyone’s money?! Off you go…
And finally I have one important date for your diaries. I will be performing with the lovely Kate Eden at the Bull’s Head in Barnes on the 25th June. This show will feature Janette Mason on piano and hopefully some special guests. We are going to film this show so it promises to be a very special night…
And don’t forget to check out Kate’s sparkly new Reverb Nation page and sign up to the mailing list so we can keep you up to date with all forthcoming shows!
Right then. I have another sitar lesson in a couple of hours and really should be brushing up on my meends (Ha!). Although I have yet again broken the 2nd string. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt playing the sitar over the last few months it’s that there is literally no end to the amount of money one needs to spend on strings. Mine has nineteen strings and it is a rare, nay freak occurrence for them all to be on and in one piece at once. Boring? Probably. I am meaning to do another post in the near future about my experiences learning the instrument, but frankly right now I’m far too busy!
