REBOOT Announcement
I’m happy to announce the release of my new album electronica REBOOT. I’ve been working on this project on and off for over 2 years. In this and future posts, I’ll share some behind-the-scenes information on the project and DIY music publishing that I hope will save you some time.
Get Reboot Now
I decided to currently offer REBOOT using a “pay what you will” model. Although the suggested pricing is $6 for the 7 song album + digital booklet and $1 for singles, you can name your own price including specifying $0 for free downloads. You can download/buy from my Bandcamp page – http://markmosher.bandcamp.com.
About Reboot
First let me say that I think you fellow electronic music artists are going to enjoy the album. It’s loaded with complex layers and lots of synth “ear candy”. The album was composed, performed, produced, and mastered using Ableton Live and a Windows Laptop. With the exception of vocals, ALL instruments are virtual – in other words the album is 99.9% digital. Most songs are made up of around 30 tracks.
Production Notes
Virtual Instruments: Ableton Sampler, Operator, Simpler, Impulse; Lennar Digital Sylenth1; reFX Vanguard, Slayer 2; Tone2 Gladiator 2; Camel Audio Alchemy; Native Instrument Absynth 4, Massive; Cakewalk Dimension Pro, Image-Line Morphine, Toxic Biohazard III; Future Audio Workshop Circle; SonicCharge Synplant, FXPansion DCAM Synth Squad. I think I go them all ;^).
Controllers: Novaton Remote SL, Korg nanoKey/Kontrol, M-Audio Trigger Finger, Akai APC40, QWERTY Keyboard, Wacom Bamboo Tablet
Digital Effects: All effects were produced using Ableton Live’s built-in effects or with effects within virtual instruments with the exception of Image-Line Gross Beat and Multiband Compressor
Finalizing & Tagging: Sony SoundForge 9, Mp3tag
Phased Plan for Digital Distribution
I decided to distribute digital only for now and do a phased release and slowly build up distribution channels. This will allow me to stay focused on music and not get completely bogged down in managing distribution. In addition to launching a landing page on a publishing site I wanted to integrate links into www.markmoshermusic.com/music.htm so I could build equity on my own site and centralize distribution.
Bandcamp Publishing Solution
After much experimentation with various social media music distribution sites, I settled on Bandcamp for phase 1. I really like Bandcamp. It focuses more on distribution than trying to compete with social media sites. Instead it offers many sharing options that allow visitors to spread the word. It simply makes publishing a breeze. It’s very simple and clean. Integrating with PayPal is a snap. It also has some nice widgets that allowed me to use Bandamp for heavy lifting on the music page on my site.
Pay What You Will
Bandcamp also supports the top high-rez audio formats and offers a flexible system that allows for many options for payment. Pay what you will, minimum payments, free but force an email address and more.
More on Self-Publishing…
If you’ve never self-published, there are a tone of little details behind the scenes – tagging, ISRC codes… I’ll post more on this in the future.
Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Composer, Sound Designer
Louisville/Denver/Boulder
http://www.modulatethis.com
http://www.markmoshermusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/markmosher
7 responses to “Mark Mosher Electronica Album REBOOT – Production Notes and Insights Into DIY Distribution with Bandcamp”
When you DIY there are a lot of things to think about so I thought I’d share. I’m glad you found the self-publishing info helpfull.
Thanks for your support on the album!
LikeLike
Thanks!!!
LikeLike
Thanks for the post… I enjoyed reading about the software used and the self-publishing tools. The album sounds great as well.
LikeLike
HeyMark !
Congratulations on your new album ! I’m an avid reader of your blog which is one of my favourite RSS feeds. Keep it up man, good work !
Cheers,
LikeLike
Ah – Soundclick was one that had escaped my recent searches. I will check them out too.
I agree on RN – they are trying to do too much. Focussed apps/services work best. I haven’t looked into it yet, but it’d be cool if Bandcamp’s list management could be mashed with something like Mailchimp.
LikeLike
Yeah, very straight forward. Again, very complimentary if you already have a site.
Reverbnation has some potential and I have a presence there, but it seems like they are trying to do to much. I don’t care for the equity cap system.
I’m still prefering Soundclick right now for this sort of thing even thought it doesn’t look as sexy. Soundclick has a nice split between listener and artist and still gets a lot of traffic.
LikeLike
I’m thinking Bandcamp for my old stuff – it seems straightforward. Reverbnation is way much.
LikeLike