As you know, all of my albums come out first on Bandcamp (as of writing, I’m in their top 5 ‘current best-sellers’ thanks to you – I won’t bother linking to it (though I did get a screengrab).
I may or may not put this on iTunes/Amazon/eMusic etc. I haven’t decided yet. I’d MUCH rather you got it from Bandcamp, for all our sakes. Here’s why:
You get to choose your file type. With Bandcamp I can release 24bit audiophile FLAC versions and the highest possible quality MP3 versions (we well as AAC/ALAC and OGG) all in the same place. No faffing about for you searching out the best format, just choose the one you want.
Sleevenotes, artwork, extras. I can add PDFs of sleevenotes, photos, lyrics, individual art for each track. and I can change it. As often as I want. Freedom
The ‘Pay What You Want’ thing. It just makes sense – not only does it let you put in the price that represents both what you can afford, and what you think it’s worth, but it means that people who are in parts of the world where they otherwise can’t get ‘legal’ digital music can download it without paying, and if you ever lose your copy in a harddrive crash, you can just come and download it again for free. Or if you decide you want to give FLAC a go and see what all the hi-res fuss is about – again, you can replace it for free.
Payment is easy. OK, so not quite as easy as buying on iTunes if you’ve got an iTunes account, but its’ way more friendly. If you’ve got a PayPal account, it’s 3 clicks and a password confirmation. If you haven’t, you can pay with a credit/debit card.
Full previews. Let’s be honest, in the grand scheme of things HARDLY ANYONE HAS HEARD OF ME. Even fewer have heard my music. Hiding it away behind 30 second previews on iTunes/Amazon is utterly insane. As would be hosting it all on a listening service that’s separate from the buying/download bit. It’s utterly vital for indie musicians to remember, you don’t get an audience by selling music, you have the chance to sell music ONCE YOU HAVE AN AUDIENCE. The unlimited listening makes people hearing what I do as easy as possible. You can listen on the site, on Facebook, other people can blog it. It’s just great! A lot of the people who may hear my stuff are likely to need quite a while to decide they want it enough to buy it. It may take years. I don’t want to stop them listening in those intervening years. I’m in this for the long game, not some get rich quick plan. You can listen on the site as much as you want. That’s great. …it’s also worth noting that the pages will also play on an iPhone/iPad, thanks to them being HTML5, not Flash-driven – you can’t download from Bandcamp to either of those, but that’s because Apple are idiots, nothing Bandcamp can do about that.
Sharing via social media. Bandcamp is SO friendly. the URL turns into an embedded player on Facebook, anyone can blog it and have it playable to their friends, every page (album or track) has facebook and twitter share buttons, when you’ve bought it and it’s downloading, there are sharing buttons there too. It’s made for sharing.
Sharing the love via Creative Commons. iTunes and Amazon don’t give me the option to change the license terms on my music. It’s All Rights Reserved or nothing. But I don’t want to make it illegal for you to share the music with your friends. I don’t want to make it illegal for you to add the music to your videos, to remix it, to sample it… If you’re not making money from it, you can do what you want with it. If you want to make money off it, we negotiate the terms as normal. That’s friendly, right?
Here it is, my brand new album, Believe In Peace. Click the play button while you read the rest of this, and download it if you like what you hear:
So, in case you’ve missed the rest of the info about it, Believe In Peace was recorded live in Minneapolis last summer, improvised in an exhibition of art by a wonderful artist called Geoff Bush.
Geoff’s work explores the symbols and themes of the I Ching, focussing on his meta-theme of ‘Believe In Peace’, hence the album title. [Read more →]
I’m going to stick to what happened to Lobelia, Flapjack and I during the year, rather than a world-events review. I leave that to those who have the time and resources to do the subject justice.
We kicked off 2011 in a new (if temporary) home, one where for the first time in a long time we would be able to record vocals and guitar. I’d finished 2010 with a couple of new tracks being recorded, so plans were hatched for both Lo and I to start making new records. [Read more →]
Today’s my birthday, and to celebrate, I’m offering you a free download. Please feel free to go and grab an album of your choice from my site, with no obligation to pay at all. if you feel like paying, please download two albums – the first one’s on me.
All I ask in return is that if you like it, you tell your friends about it. On Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Forums, or even in actual real life. However feels most comfortable to you.
So head over to http://music.stevelawson.net and have a listen to the stuff there, or just click the download link on my latest album in the widget below:
All kinds of awesome fun was had last night as we hosted our first house concert since we got to Birmingham.
The remarkable Emily Baker agreed to come and play – she’s been a favourite of Lobelia and I since we shared a bill with her at the Ginglik many years ago. [Read more →]
You may remember that back in August, a trip to Edinburgh to do some work with the Arts Council happened to coincide with the opportunity to guest with beatboxing genius Shlomo on his Edinburgh Fringe show.
I’d seen Shlo play a few times, and love his music – he’s one of the most musical and versatile beatboxers I’ve ever come across, and as meeting him confirmed, always seemed like a really lovely bloke too. [Read more →]
Over the last week or so I’ve been thinking about the best way to bring the Recycle Collective back into effect.
A lil’ bit of history – the early part of my ‘solo’ career actually involved a fair bit of collaboration – I did two duet albums – with Jez Carr on piano and Theo Travis on sax/flute, and then in 2005 spent much of the year focused on exploring the collaborative potential of all this looping stuff.
A big part of that was getting together with other musicians, in particular Cleveland Watkiss and BJ Cole, to experiment, try things out, record. It became apparent fairly quickly that what we were doing really ought to be happening in front of an audience, so I put together the first idea for the Recycle Collective – a series of improvised music nights in London, with no prior stylistic constraint.
after a couple of events that were based around solo and duo playing, mostly, I settled on a format of 3 musicians, 3 sets, each set progression solo > duo > trio. So you had each musician playing solo, all 3 possible duo combinations, and 3 loosely curated trio sets… It resulted in some remarkable music and quite a fabulous underground reputation for providing some of the loveliest improvised music in London.
Now that we’re in Birmingham and a little more settled, I’m going to see about bringing it back up here. So here’s a lil’ taster of the kind of thing that happened – it’s an improv duet of Cleveland Watkiss and I, from April 2005 – one of those sessions that inspired me to start the collective:
This week sees the first anniversary of the release of ‘Slow Food’ – my half of the ‘two albums in two days’ project that Trip Wamsley and I recorded when Lobelia and I visited Louisiana in the summer of 2010. Listen and download/buy here: [Read more →]
I’m just back from a fabulous weekend at Greenbelt – where I’ve spent my August Bank Holiday for all but 3 of the last 22years (and one of those was only because Greenbelt was moved to an earlier slot in the year, so I’ve actually only missed 2 in 22 years – this being my 20th GB).
Anyway, time to catch up on two interesting things that have happened. Firstly, I was interviewed last week by the wonderful Tom Robinson for his ‘Fresh On The Net’ BBC Introducing show on BBC 6Music - click here to go and listen to it (the listen again runs out in about 3 days, but I’ll chop the audio and get it uploaded somewhere ) It’s a wonderfully succinct, pithy interview – sadly not because I’ve discovered how not to waffle, but more because they edited it rather well – my bit is 33 minutes into the recording, but the rest is worth listening to for some great new music… [Read more →]
FINALLY – you asked for it, so it’s here. Live So Far on CD! It’s our live album from our US tour in 2010 – a mix of solo tunes from Lobelia and I, plus two VERY special guests in the from of Todd Reynolds on violin and Neil Alexander on keyboards.
It was a really special tour for us – if you’ve not heard the album yet, here it is. Click the picture to order the CD.
and if that’s not enough, Lobelia’s new album, Beautifully Undone, which I mixed and mastered, and play bass on one tune of (and took the photo on the cover of!) is also out on limited edition CD. Listen to that here too:
As you know, all of my albums come out first on Bandcamp (as of writing, I’m in their top 5 ‘current best-sellers’ thanks to you – I won’t bother linking to it (though I did get a screengrab).
