Silver Wolf Music

Hi there! It’s summer and it seems like every time I leave my house and run around downtown there is somebody on a street playing music. Summer means busking and every musician in the world is in the street playing a tune. I love music straight from the source. I am trying slowly but surely to break myself of my internet radio addiction and go to the artist for my music fix. Since most of the bands I listen to won’t be playing in my city anytime soon I have turned to Soundcloud for new music. Soundcloud is a great free tool for musicians that want to share their art with fans without paying a huge fee. Actually the basic Soundcloud account is free and offers limited music uploads.

I have a Soundcloud but I’m not going to share it; I’m shy. But you should definitely look into joining Soundcloud if there is music you want to share with the world. That is what Soundcloud is about, sharing. Feel free to make your music public, private, or anything in between. Some artists even enable their listeners to download the music. For musicians who want to promote their music, Soundcloud is the way to go.

The best feature about this site is it enables users to leave comments on the song at whatever point of the song they feel. This is great when you want to share a key part of the song that really wows you to the band. Some artists use this feature to explain the song’s structure which is a cool bit that I wish more artists did. It would be neat to see the process that led to the formation of a song since that opportunity doesn’t pop up nearly enough.

Pros:

• New music can be uploaded to the web for fans to listen to.
• Basic accounts are free and the next level up is only a few bucks a month so it isn’t a huge expense.
• Fans can leave comments on the songs.
• Can be shared on multiple social media sites like Facebook and Twitter with no problems.
• You can reach a global audience by keeping your songs public and making them available for search.
• Great way to connect with other artists locally and around the world.

Cons:

• Free account maxes out a couple hours of music.
• Does not give options for changing the layout of the artist webpage.

Soundcloud has been my go to site for music sharing and listening to cool remixes. How do you use Soundcloud?

I was searching around the interwebs when I stumbled on Pitchfork’s Kickstarter. My initial knee-jerk reaction was to be mad that Pitchfork, a giant in the music world, would ask fans for support when there are so many little music sites trying to get off the ground. Of course I clicked on the link just to see what exactly was going on. Surprisingly, Pitchfork has set up a Kickstarter page with the purpose of linking to Kickstarter projects they support. What an interesting way for the big guys to reach out and lift up the little guys. I assume any band getting the Pitchfork seal of approval is like getting the Colbert bump. Lucky ducks!

But it got me thinking about the music industry a decade ago versus the music industry today. Things are certainly changing. I got my Radiohead In Rainbows album when it was released online for pay what you can. It was the first time a major artist in a  big way ignored the record industry and reached out directly to fans. Kickstarter is a big way for even smaller artists to do the same thing, get rid of the middle man.

Kickstarter in a Nutshell

Artists put up an idea and instead of begging fans to chip in a few bucks for things that could possibly be made Kickstarter encourages artists to put up financial incentives. Maybe for $5 you get a virtual hug or a letter in the mail. I could potentially create a Kickstarter for my uke trio project named Unicorn Baby! Baby!, put it on Kickstarter, and attempt to fund it with the promise of virtual hugs and snail mail letters. Most artists give out more interesting incentives then this but you get the gist. The great thing about the site is the campaign is all funded by people like you. It’s the first time the audience is really getting what they paid for up front, well the promise of something at least. And it makes us want to work together to see the artist meet their goal because without our help Kickstarter takes a big cut of the profit. That is capitalism though.

A lot of people are making Kickstarter drives these days to fund more than music projects. I have seen artists of all kinds reaching out to fans for financial support. Starting a Kickstarter is simple but it still depends on fan support, something that can be intimidating to reach for. I encourage young artists to get their foot in the door with Kickstarter rather than turning to loan sharks. Crowdfunding is cool.

A lot of things are changing in the world of music including how we get it. The days of vinyl record may be making a comeback but people are just as content to get their music in digital formats. I have long been a fan of buying straight from the artist so vinyl and CDs were my thing. But nowadays the convenience of having the music at the tip of your fingers is more important than that trek to the local record shop. The resurgence of vinyl enthusiasts and Record Store Day makes me happy to be a music fan but I am certain Spotify and other online digital music sites are poised to take over.

What is Spotify? 

A giant music aggregator and then some. Any song you can think of is probably sitting in the Spotify library waiting for you to remember it. I’ve searched and come up with only a handful of songs Spotify hasn’t been able to find. Spotify is like iTunes if you had spent a fortune and if you don’t mind the grief of advertisements every so often, Spotify is for you. Some of my friends still haven’t heard about Spotify and are content to stay with Pandora through the long haul. For me, Spotify seems like a reskinned version of Groove Shark but with more social media features. I have always loved sharing music with friends so Spotify allows me to share without switching to my email or web browser.

A lot of things about Spotify are really neat, especially the ability to share playlists at the touch of a button. For someone who loves keeping their friends in the loop about new artists this is a great feature. There are  a lot of aspects about Spotify that do make me a little hesitant. The ability to get music for “free” always comes at a price and artists have historically gotten the short end of the stick. I worry that larger record labels may prey on artists by using Spotify to promote the music but giving musicians only a sliver of the profits. My searched of Spotify’s music collection made it easy to find Top 40 artists and some smaller groups that had gotten media attention. Finding smaller groups on lesser known record labels proved more difficult. I don’t see Spotify being a very accessible forum for music when record labels are buying their way in.

For now, I’ll stick with my guts and go with band pages. The great thing is sites like Soundcloud and Bandcamp allow artists to share their music directly with fans without censorship of materials. So how do you like your music? Analogue, digital, everything in between. Let me know below!