Oh yes, it’s that time of year again! The time when the normal gigs simply dry up and are miraculously replaced by a plethora of festive extravaganzas. Having just got back from Maggie Reilly’s tour in Germany, I have spent the best part of today thrashing away on a ukelele; an instrument I simply cannot play (yet). But, full of Christmas spirit, I shall persevere and conquer the little beast for your listening pleasure! Those of you who made it to one of Clare Teal’s Christmas shows last year will probably have some idea of what I’m up to. Those of you that didn’t, will simply have to wait and see…
So this is just a quick little post to let you know about some of the Christmas fun we have planned for you this year.
And as soon as these shows are over, I shall be throwing myself headfirst into Clare Teal’s Festive Fiesta!! Oh yes indeed folks; there’s gonna be costume changes galore and some extreme multi-instrumentalism from all concerned. We don’t like to make it easy for ourselves! We’ll be playing just six shows this year. Here are the dates for your diary:
10th Exeter Barnfield Theatre
15th Burnley Mechanics
16th Pizza Express Maidstone
17th Farnham Maltings
18th Bath Chapel Arts Centre
19th Bath Chapel Arts Centre
These special gigs were a huge hit last year and we’re adding even more Christmas stuff to the show, as well as the traditional ‘greatest hits of 2010’ set up front. Definitely book early for these shows; especially the two Bath gigs which were rammed last year and I’m sure we’ll have some special guests somewhere on the way too. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed for updates…
And of course, with Christmas just around the corner, what better gift to impress your friends than a copy of my new solo album Mandala?! I’ll be selling copies at all of the above shows too. Goes without saying really…
See you there. Must dash, I still need to learn how to play in Db on the ukelele  🙂 x
Thought it was about time I drew your attention to this great competition, the final stages of which are imminent.
A little while ago I was approached by Hellen Bach (who works closely with the Children In Need team) and our good friend AD Chivers to be a judge in the Young Songwriters competition for Barnardos. AD had been responsible for whittling down the hundreds of entires and my job was to choose five finalists from the twenty shortlisted for the Scotland and East of England region.
I was astounded by the quality of some of the entries and it really brought home how important a competition like this really is in these times. Many of you will be aware of my Saturday night X Factor tirades on Twitter. The general public are regularly exposed to nothing more than a parade of sub-standard karaoke singers and fed the notion that this is the future of music in our country. Well let me tell you; we have a host of extraordinarily talented young musicians and songwriters right under our noses and the Barnardos Young Songwriters Competition is a great way to give these young people a voice.
It was a great honour to be involved in the judging and I was also able to contribute to the recording sessions for the final four songs at the wonderful British Grove Studios, under the direction of producer AD Chivers. I played on two tracks; Imogen Mechie’s Build My Wings and Bethan Funning’s Spaceships & Moonbeams with some great musicians including Grant Windsor, John Bleese and Ian Matthews from Kasabian.
But now it’s over to you folks…
The winner of the competition will be decided by whichever song of the final four gets the most downloads from the Young Songwriters website. 45p from each download goes directly to support Barnardos. I really do think that this is such a worthwhile cause, both as a charity and as a concept to support young musical talent. Now I don’t want to sway your votes too much, but my personal favourite is Build My Wings, and not just because I’m on it;Â it has hit written all over it.
You can check out the songs of all four finalists at the Young Songwriters website. Please do go have a listen and download your favourite tunes. The competition closes on 12th December and the winner with the most downloads will be announced on the 14th.
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…
