Given that I have no space for more CDs I am increasingly more taken with online purchasing of music and I’ve been finding some great music on Bandcamp lately.
Top of the list is Richard Skelton’s “The Complete Landings” – an album that totally transcends drone / folk / experimental labels and just is amazing and evocative. The closest thing I can connect it with are the William Breeze viola sections on Coil albums from the Seasonal EP’s but this manages to stretch it out and sounds in many ways more aleatoric.
Also awesome is the new Dead Voices On Air album “Michael and the Angel’s fought”. Spybey’s output has been returning to his more glorious early 90s quality of late and this album is deeply ambient without being saccharine. No attempt at Krautrock drums and no mere skiving off his Zoviet France past… this is great immersive and quietly challenging.
The Dadavistic Orchestra is a collaboration between The Black Dog and Psychic Warriors of Gaia members and as such it is unsurprisingly ambient. What is surprising is how well the elements coalesce, while very spacious (every track is around 11mins long) there is much subtle motion going on.
Andrew Liles is a name associated with the more recent Nurse With Wound material and his own relentless release schedule perhaps errs on the side of overkill. But what makes his bandcamp releases special is that he tailors them to the download market by compiling completist editions (similar to Skelton) and adding alternate mixes like the great binaural mix for All Closed Doors.
So releasing my music on Bandcamp, I feel like i’m in fine company. However a quick look at my statistics gives me pause for thought.
For the period April 25, 2011 to November 23, 2011:
Total number of plays: 218
Complete plays:83
Partial plays: 83
Skips: 52
A “complete” play means the track was played past the 90% mark. A “partial” play means the track was played past the 10% mark, but stopped before the 90% mark. A “skip” means the track was stopped before the 10% mark.
So that seems OK. What about the “Buzz”? This covers visits to my page without plays.
Total Visits: 526
So less than 1/2 of the people who visited my page even hit play on the player. That seems a bit odd. Maybe this doesn’t take into account bots and referrers? So what about the all important sales and downloads…
Total Sales and Downloads: 17
Only 17 out of a potential 526? I have 3 albums up there at the moment that people can download for free! So what is the ratio of free downloads to sales?
7 sales. 10 downloads. People sure do like streaming their music then.
And that also means only 3% of the people visiting the page can be bothered downloading or purchasing it.
Only 41% actually click to listen and only 15% listen to tracks all the way through.
Lawrence English wrote a great article on Collapse Board about how to go about being an independent musician in this day and age and I know that i’m not really ticking many, if any of these boxes. I hate being a tireless champion of myself, don’t like playing live and can’t afford to travel around. Lawrence was, himself, berating Pimmon, Tim Coster and I because we wanted to sell our merch cheap at the recent gig claiming we were “underselling ourselves”. However even free doesn’t seem cheap enough for the majority.
I’ve said before that I make music primarily for myself. I don’t actually get all those artists who say they can’t listen to stuff they have done after they have done it. I totally wouldn’t bother making anything if this was the case. I make music I want to hear that I don’t hear. I buy music that I want to hear and would buy my own music if someone else was making it. But this makes me seriously wonder what the point is in releasing material at all.
My latest is something i’m very proud of. As far as constructing a workable solution to electro-acoustic music that can be performed actively in public without stress and listened to passively at home, I feel i’ve nailed it. Remnants is the true sequel to Mise En Scene, an album that Francois Couture described as “among the top five albums of electro-acoustic music of 2006.” But sadly only a handful of people might actually be able to comment on that.
All the work towards the 
