We'll be debuting 4 new tunes tomorrow on Pete's hallowed stage. Had rehearsal last night at SweatShop in Williamsburg, and Angela (drums) and Cheever (bass) caught on right away....as usual. We played 'til around 1am, then figured they were as good as they're gonna get for tomorrow's show. After a quick ride to my apt from Angela, I passed out watching Iron Man (1, not 2, so don't spoil it for me ;) Will try to take some video clips of the show for those who can't make it.
Details:
7:30pm Friday, June 4th
Pete's Candy Store
2nd stop into Brooklyn on the L
709 Lorimer
FREE!
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Day Job Dilemna
I'm anxiously sitting here at my admin job at quarter to 6 on a Wednesday waiting for my boss to leave, when what I REALLY want to be doing is standing in front of my microphone, figuring out a melody for one the new DCCs tracks. But I know that by the time I take my 45 minute commute home, I will be starving and lifeless, and WORSE, creativity-less. This lends to the age-old self-haunting question -- when can I quit my day job?
I'm a lucky one. I know this. I have a job, which is something a lot of people right now cannot say. And it affords me to be able to live in kick-ass New York City and buy microphones and guitars. But I can't help but wonder, how much do I really need this steady money, and what toll is this 40 hour work week taking on my songwriting? I'd love to hear some thoughts from other artists...anyone? Success stories? Advice?
I'm a lucky one. I know this. I have a job, which is something a lot of people right now cannot say. And it affords me to be able to live in kick-ass New York City and buy microphones and guitars. But I can't help but wonder, how much do I really need this steady money, and what toll is this 40 hour work week taking on my songwriting? I'd love to hear some thoughts from other artists...anyone? Success stories? Advice?
Monday, March 8, 2010
Jango is a waste, don't bother
So it's been three months since we went nuts with Jango's airplay system, and the results were...well, disappointing. I had no real illusions about the service making or breaking us, but I did expect to see at least moderate success. First a little back story...
The Delancey festival offered - as part of the signup process - the option to get 50 free plays on Jango's airplay system. That meant we could upload a few of our tracks, and have them played right after any artist(s) currently in Jango's regular circulation. So, for example, we could have one of our tracks played right after a Lady GaGa track and the listener would see a popup asking whether they liked or disliked what they were hearing. If the user chose "yes", then they would see a page that asked for (optional) comments on the track, band etc. When this happens, we get an email saying that someone has become our "fan", and that we could go on to contact them directly with show notices or whatever. The idea is to create a one-on-one relationship with each person who (claims to have) liked our music.
After a trickle of new "fans" turned to a steady stream of 5-10 new ones per day, I thought, "This is great! We're getting far more exposure than we've ever had, and people seem to be reacting well to what they hear. Wonderful!" So I bought 4000 more plays at around $100. Seemed like a slam-dunk investment. $100 for 4000 plays meant $0.025 per play. 4000 plays got us around 80+ "fans", which is about 2% of the people who had a chance to hear a given track. Normally 1% is considered a decent ROI for most marketing campaigns, so 2% seemed about right for such a highly-targeted system. (There were also stretches where we upped that to more like 5%, which was simply exhilarating to watch unfold each day).
So all seemed great on the face of it, and though I'm not entirely convinced that its useless (building an international emailing list is worth the price alone), but there is one ENORMOUS problem: not even one of the people who became a "fan" bought any tracks! Not one! When we got our reports from emusic, itunes, amazon, etc. for the month we supposedly acquired almost 500 new "fans", I was absolutely stunned.
At first I thought, "This has to be a mistake. We're don't suck THAT badly, do we?" Perhaps we are not as excellently awesome as would like to believe, but not a single track? None?!? Can't be. We received comments on our Jango profile page like "You rock!" and "keep it up" and "love it". Why would someone take the time to write such things and then not pick up even a single track?
Then I thought, perhaps we set up our "Buy Now" links incorrectly. Nope. They all worked fine.
I finally came to unfortunate conclusion that Jango is probably either rigging the numbers to keep people hooked on purchasing plays after the initial trial period, or far overstating the meaning of a new "fan". They recently started using "new fan" and "song like" interchangeably, which makes me think that they are trying to boost the number of new "fans" reported in the weekly updates. So when we get an email saying "JoeXYZ has become your fan!", what they really mean is that user clicked the "I like it" button to get past the "Support Jango" nagger screen so they can continue listening to music for free. The listener, after all, is not paying Jango a dime. The artists and advertisers do. Well not us. Not anymore.
The Delancey festival offered - as part of the signup process - the option to get 50 free plays on Jango's airplay system. That meant we could upload a few of our tracks, and have them played right after any artist(s) currently in Jango's regular circulation. So, for example, we could have one of our tracks played right after a Lady GaGa track and the listener would see a popup asking whether they liked or disliked what they were hearing. If the user chose "yes", then they would see a page that asked for (optional) comments on the track, band etc. When this happens, we get an email saying that someone has become our "fan", and that we could go on to contact them directly with show notices or whatever. The idea is to create a one-on-one relationship with each person who (claims to have) liked our music.
After a trickle of new "fans" turned to a steady stream of 5-10 new ones per day, I thought, "This is great! We're getting far more exposure than we've ever had, and people seem to be reacting well to what they hear. Wonderful!" So I bought 4000 more plays at around $100. Seemed like a slam-dunk investment. $100 for 4000 plays meant $0.025 per play. 4000 plays got us around 80+ "fans", which is about 2% of the people who had a chance to hear a given track. Normally 1% is considered a decent ROI for most marketing campaigns, so 2% seemed about right for such a highly-targeted system. (There were also stretches where we upped that to more like 5%, which was simply exhilarating to watch unfold each day).
So all seemed great on the face of it, and though I'm not entirely convinced that its useless (building an international emailing list is worth the price alone), but there is one ENORMOUS problem: not even one of the people who became a "fan" bought any tracks! Not one! When we got our reports from emusic, itunes, amazon, etc. for the month we supposedly acquired almost 500 new "fans", I was absolutely stunned.
At first I thought, "This has to be a mistake. We're don't suck THAT badly, do we?" Perhaps we are not as excellently awesome as would like to believe, but not a single track? None?!? Can't be. We received comments on our Jango profile page like "You rock!" and "keep it up" and "love it". Why would someone take the time to write such things and then not pick up even a single track?
Then I thought, perhaps we set up our "Buy Now" links incorrectly. Nope. They all worked fine.
I finally came to unfortunate conclusion that Jango is probably either rigging the numbers to keep people hooked on purchasing plays after the initial trial period, or far overstating the meaning of a new "fan". They recently started using "new fan" and "song like" interchangeably, which makes me think that they are trying to boost the number of new "fans" reported in the weekly updates. So when we get an email saying "JoeXYZ has become your fan!", what they really mean is that user clicked the "I like it" button to get past the "Support Jango" nagger screen so they can continue listening to music for free. The listener, after all, is not paying Jango a dime. The artists and advertisers do. Well not us. Not anymore.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Surf Bar
Sometimes the best songs are written on the fly, or while waiting for someone to show up to the bar where you're supposed to meet. I ended up finishing song lyrics at Surf Bar last night while waiting for a friend who was a half hour late for Tiki drinks. Oh well. She actually did me a favor. Cheers! Dead Copycats.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Phase I Underway
New tracks are now being crafted in earnest. Some are band new and others have been around for a while in the form of rough ideas recorded on cellphones, but all are a departure from what we've done in the past. In terms of tone and mood, we're not going goth, but expect more weight and more drive.
The thing I am most excited about is that unlike the first album, which was almost entirely comprised of material written before the band was formed, this one is a real collaboration. You've heard what we can do, now get ready for what we want to do...
The thing I am most excited about is that unlike the first album, which was almost entirely comprised of material written before the band was formed, this one is a real collaboration. You've heard what we can do, now get ready for what we want to do...
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Pocket Change
New realization today: When it comes to digital distribution models, monthly download allotment plans are the most helpful to new/unknown bands.
In such a model, the user purchases a pre-determined number of downloads per month, and uses them to freely acquire music available from the site's catalog. eMusic, for example, has a 45 download per month package which can be used to grab anything from their site, so if you were to download an album with 10 tracks, you would end up with 35 downloads remaining for the month. The key factor here is that the downloads do not roll over to the next month. So if you have 6 downloads remaining on the last day of the month, it's "use 'em or lose 'em". Very similar to most cellphone minute plans.
The result of this no-rollover policy is that if it's two days before your downloads are refreshed, and you've still got a dozen or so sitting around, you are likely to just grab something - anything - to avoid feeling as though you wasted money. In that moment of consumer desperation, you'll be much more willing to grab that new indie album you've heard about. Or that experimental jazz record you've been meaning to check out but couldn't justify with other more "practical" choices available. Such a justification is much harder when you've got to break out the credit card for each new acquisition.
This leftover pocket change is not enough to make every unknown band famous, but it just might give a few of them a chance to reach the next level.
In such a model, the user purchases a pre-determined number of downloads per month, and uses them to freely acquire music available from the site's catalog. eMusic, for example, has a 45 download per month package which can be used to grab anything from their site, so if you were to download an album with 10 tracks, you would end up with 35 downloads remaining for the month. The key factor here is that the downloads do not roll over to the next month. So if you have 6 downloads remaining on the last day of the month, it's "use 'em or lose 'em". Very similar to most cellphone minute plans.
The result of this no-rollover policy is that if it's two days before your downloads are refreshed, and you've still got a dozen or so sitting around, you are likely to just grab something - anything - to avoid feeling as though you wasted money. In that moment of consumer desperation, you'll be much more willing to grab that new indie album you've heard about. Or that experimental jazz record you've been meaning to check out but couldn't justify with other more "practical" choices available. Such a justification is much harder when you've got to break out the credit card for each new acquisition.
This leftover pocket change is not enough to make every unknown band famous, but it just might give a few of them a chance to reach the next level.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Mag Article
Just did an interview for dammagazine.com, which will appear sometime in the next couple of issues (check back for more details). We talked a bit about the writing process and how we got together. I don't expect much of what was said to make it to press. But we'll see...
Here's one of the photos they (might) use:
As for our current status. Still writing, writing, writing...
Here's one of the photos they (might) use:
As for our current status. Still writing, writing, writing...
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