Category: New Music Strategies

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A New Way To Pay For My Music…

I had this idea ages ago, but have finally got round to putting it in place.

As an alternative to just heading over to Bandcamp and paying with paypal or a credit/debit card, I’ve now added the option via the MP3s page here (which isn’t really an MP3s page at all, it’s just all my albums embedded from Bandcamp, so you can listen then download them in whatever format you like, but anyway…) – you can now ‘pay’ by buying me something from my Amazon wishlist. Continue reading “A New Way To Pay For My Music…”

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Whatsapp, Louis C.K. And The Problem Of Advertising

I think it was through searching for an ostatus Android app (more on that later), but I stumbled across WhatsApp’s ‘Why We Don’t Sell Ads‘ page. This could easily be subtitled ‘what’s wrong with the rest of the internet?’ – a beautifully written personalised rebuttal of the consensus that ad-revenue and it’s even more pernicious big brother, data-mining are the ways to fund the internet. Continue reading “Whatsapp, Louis C.K. And The Problem Of Advertising”

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Talking About A Revolution – Feb 2001, Bass Player Magazine

From the February 2001 issue of Bass Player Magazine – the strapline on the cover was “The Future Of Bass – Fearless Forecasts From 40 Pros” – of which I was one.

Here’s the last paragraph of what I wrote: “As the major labels focus their attention on an increasingly vapid and temporal bunch of faceless clothes horses, the Net will open up more and more channels for heartfelt independent original music”. Continue reading “Talking About A Revolution – Feb 2001, Bass Player Magazine”

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No More Unsigned Artists – A Solution To A Semantic Problem

Any And All Records LogoMy first 5 or 6 albums were released on Pillow Mountain Records. I would be referred to in American magazine articles as ‘Pillow Mountain Records recording artist Steve Lawson’, and my music would be described as ‘his prolific back catalogue, on Pillow Mountain Records’. No-one ever referred to me as an unsigned artist, no review ever had ‘private release’ next to it (what the hell does that mean anyway?) No-one ever accused me of vanity publishing.

Only, Pillow Mountain Records never existed. It never had a bank account, never had any staff, never did anything. It existed in name only. It was a way of me lifting myself out of the conversation about being signed or unsigned, and focussing on making music. Continue reading “No More Unsigned Artists – A Solution To A Semantic Problem”

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Some Thoughts on Lowery vs White (a compilation of Facebook responses)

EVERYTHING IS IN FLUX

Right, if you’ve been living underground for the last few days, you’ll have missed first this blog post by an intern at NPR and then this response by singer/songwriter and college lecturer David Lowery.

I sadly don’t have time to go through Lowery’s post point by point. Despite how widely it’s been distributed, I don’t, in all honesty think it warrants that level of scrutiny. I also really like this response from Erin McKeown. If you can’t be bothered wading through 1800 words from me on the subject, just read Erin’s post. It’s better than mine anyway. Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Lowery vs White (a compilation of Facebook responses)”

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10 Essays – Limited Edition Essays On Postcards

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen this morning that I tweeted asking this:

Tweet Screen Shot requesting one word subjects for essays

One word to write something interesting about – I got loads of fantastic responses including

Chance -::- Timing -::- Serenity -::- Sound -::- Interconnectedness -::- Loss -::- Enlightenment -::- Family -::-  Grace -::- Serendipity -::- Truth -::- Steve -::- Focus -::- Metamorphosis -::- Temperament -::- Humility -::- Creativity -::- Intention Continue reading “10 Essays – Limited Edition Essays On Postcards”

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Entire Catalogue USB Stick gets a Facelift + An Album For You To Sell

Steve Lawson Back Catalogue USB Stick photo with PostcardI’ve been meaning to do this for AGES, and have finally found the time needed. If you order the Entire Steve Lawson and Lobelia catalog on USB Stick (currently sat at 20 albums), it now comes with a lil’ label telling you what it is, and a postcard with a list of all the albums on it! Just like in the picture. As you can see, the USB sticks we’re using at the moment are tiny. REALLY really small. V. cute. 4gb of music and video.

The other thing that’s been updated is the ordering process, which is now fully via Bandcamp, so just head to the Believe In Peace page and buy it there. (or any of the other recent albums… will add it to all of them in good time…)

Some Thoughts On Big Catalogs Continue reading “Entire Catalogue USB Stick gets a Facelift + An Album For You To Sell”

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Talking About Twitter… Again.

If you remember, three years ago (I know, 3 years on the internet is like 500 years in normal life – sorry ’bout that) Andrew Dubber and I made a lil’ video talking about Twitter for musicians.

It’s proved very popular over the years, and has been incorporated into the curriculum on a number of music courses.

So a couple of weeks back, we recorded a follow up. Here it is. Enjoy 🙂

Twitter – 3 years on from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.

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What is Success? Starting from scratch

She Makes War, Live at All Hallows in Leeds

“What Happens Now For Music?” is a growth area of exploration, both for academics and industry analysts, consultants and representative bodies.

The old machine that has controlled things for the last 40-50 years have their lobbyists and their clumsy, internet-ruining political agenda, but for the rest of us who give a shit about little things like ethics, art and culture, the questions are WAY bigger than ‘how can we pretend we’re making less money while actually making more money so that we can make EVEN more money, and still blame the internet for our made up failure?’

No, the bigger questions start with challenging the foundational principles of what the relationship is between a culture and its soundtrack, and how we can define success for those musicians who are somehow meaningfully engaged in the process of creating that soundtrack. Continue reading “What is Success? Starting from scratch”

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A Little “Buy Music With Bandcamp” Primer…

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?

Convinced? Here you go:

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