Thought I'd plug this one even though it's a $5 minimum. It's Local Current Volume 1, a collection of 17 Twin Cities tracks recorded live in studio. The funds are split between the artists and Minnesota Public Radio, but I'm not sure on the division:
It's a bunch of good stuff and worth the $5 I think.
The sonorities of field recording, glitched digressions, electroacoustic idylls, dreamy soundscapes, abysmal notes, dilated, diluted, purified, desecrated water...
Together these artists have releases across labels such as Touch, Porter, Laverna, Sub Rosa, Ripples, Cronica, Zymogen and more.
This seems to be an early album, much better than her recent EP. Great, full alto, slightly in the KD Lang timbre. Folked-up pop in the Feist vein? The arrangements are impressively big.
Here's a band that I happened across on eMu about a year or so ago, and I picked up their debut EP for what was then five credits. Since then they've released this album on Bandcamp, NYOP:
...but it seems they've also renamed themselves "Latristic" since that was released, and reinvented themselves as a trip-hop act. Their new album under that name is free for an e-mail address:
I don't like this new stuff as much - the production is a bit lacking and it's a bit more, eh, well... let's just say I'm not a huge trip-hop fan. But it's pretty good for what it is, I suppose.
In the past I've been concerned with what to pay for "Name Your Price" albums on Bandcamp. Implicitly anyone can type in $0 and get the album; some artists even encourage people to download for free (or at least ask people to pay what they can). I've operated on the assumption that if an artist does not explicitly say it's ok to get it for free, I'd better be willing to pay at least $1 for it.
However, I think there are limits even to this. Looking over more albums, searching for more interesting discoveries, I've found evidence that free downloading can be a hardship on artists. Some will mention that they have a monthly quota of free downloads (sending people offsite if they still won't pay something); others saying that they only get a fixed number of free downloads per month, so please pay something.
1. Artists get 200 free downloads to offer each month.
2. Artists with accounts before 9/15/2010 get 500 per month.
3. At the beginning of each month, the free downloads are refreshed up to 200/500.
4. Artists may purchase additional free downloads rather cheaply.
5. For each $500 in sales, at artist gets 1000 additional free downloads.
6. Tracks and albums are counted as 1 download.
Something that is not reflected in this information is what Paypal made take from sales. Some artists ask that people give at least a certain amount so that they don't incur a negative balance. I think that the break-even point in under $1, but I am not certain.
Do with this what you will. From now on, if I'm not willing to spend at least $1 on a Name Your Price album, I'll wait until the beginning of the month to get it for free. I also won't take more tha one free album from a single artist in a month. At least the artists will be in a better position to know how to use their resources.
Thanks for looking into this, BT. The standard Paypal fee for receiving payments is 2.9% + $0.30 USD for payments between $0.00 USD - $3,000.00 USD, so about 33 cents on that first dollar. Bandcamp takes 15% (I read somewhere), so another 15c, making 48c, so 52c to the artist (then it seems 18c charges and 82c to the artist from each subsequent dollar within a single payment).
I've been tending to go somewhere around $2 when I decide to pay for a NYOP/have-it-for-free-if-you-want album that I would otherwise not have bought (i.e. I'm kind of interested partly because it's not full price) - it feels more like the artist gets a little something, but that's probably too small a margin of difference to make that a very rational feeling. Most I've paid on bandcamp is $10, so I'm finding the range is pretty wide based on level of personal commitment to the particular music.
Once I paid a little more for one album and then took a second by the same artist for free - I notice now that this reduces the Paypal hit for the artist and so was a better move than two small payments.
With the free downloads quota I'm not sure how much to see that as a constraint - if I don't use a free download and the quota gets used up it just means a different person, equally anonymous to the artist, used the free download instead of me (and it is probably a good thing for the artist for folk who consistently post recs to boards like this to be among the downloaders), so if my interest is at that level it seems it may still be appropriate to use the offer. Good to know that cherry picking and downloading individual tracks disadvantages the artist, though.
Germanprof, I'm not sure there is a clear takeaway with regard to free downloading. I suspect that some artists see it as a resource that they need conserve or that they are hoping will not get overused. Certainly there are examples of things that are free that are nonetheless subject to abuse; I never liked being the guy who nursed a single drink over the course of happy hour. From the perspective of the artists, free downloads might not just be something to offer but part of a larger strategy to expose themselves in conjunction with press and live performance. The Causeway Suite, to take an example (for which I paid a few pounds (damned exchange rate has killed me for eight years now)), seems part of the composer's efforts to coordinate numerous resources to allow for large scale performance. Taking it just because it's free seems irresponsible. Conversely, the paltry amount the composer might get from my payment might offer the opportunity for greater exposure.
Again, there's no clear answer, but I think that there is some way to make even free downloading work better for the artists.
Bad Thoughts, thank you for finding that info on Bandcamp reimbursements and downloads.
Okay, here's something I found while searching for jazz. I'm not gonna make an entry for it; I'll leave that to someone who might be able to put it in better perspective. I might actually dl it myself. I'm pretty sure that some of you will really like it. It's free, btw...
@ Bad Thoughts - I'm right with you on the overall ethic. What makes Bandcamp hard to read sometimes re free downloads is the range from folk who are putting up stuff that is essentially free netlabel fare with the chance to donate a little if so inclined to folk who are putting up stuff that is essentially a full release with a creative payment model. I've been trying here to adopt your proposed categorization earlier in this thread to distinguish a little between the apparent intentions.
@BT - Very interesting. Personally if something appeals to me and is free I'll grab it, but if it's NYOP (even with no minimum) I'll wait until I have more time to listen. But your point about only paying for one album makes sense. I just threw in an extra dollar on one album because I also wanted an EP which I grabbed for free instead.
Thanks all a useful discussion I've come to this morning. I've often wondered how much to pay on sites such as Bandcamp. I tend to avoid releases priced in US$ because of the exchange costs - my main credit card charges a minimum £1.50 per overseas transaction. I wouldn't mind if I could add up all my purchases in a month and pay one bill, but for single purchases it is not generally worth it. For James Hamilton, priced in pounds I'm now glad I did pay a bit more for the album and downloaded the EP for free.
Tagged ambient, experimental, metal. Not even close. Nothing all that experimental about it. And if this is ambient, then Bing Crosby is screamo. It's metal/instrumental rock. But really quite enjoyable instrumental metal. And (explicitly) free.
No urgent recommendations for today, rather some interesting recordings:
Wynn Walent's Eating an Ocean: somber folk songs--decent lyics with a vaguely Cat Stevens voice. Perhaps more of a curiosity because the guy appears to be an international aid worker in Haiti. NYOP ("All proceeds from this album will go towards haitian relief efforts")
Wise Children's Absence and Reunion: in the Mumford and Sons vein. The first half has some exhilarating moments. Free or NYOP.
Not all tracks are equally successful to my ear, but some are good. During track 2 I was leaning away from linking the album here. Then track 3 was more impressive. Tends towards thin, higher register drones, sometimes a bit screechy, but gets variegated in its better moments. Free/NYOP (i.e. NYOP with explicit invitation to enter zero if wished)
Andrew Rothbard's solo debut is a totally tripped-out mix of pop-influenced folk and dark, heavy psych. He spent the last dozen years playing keyboards and bass (simultaneously) in legendary outfits VSS, Slaves and Pleasure Forever, and Abandoned Meander continues to showcase his virtuoso abilities. After the demise of Pleasure Forever, Rothbard became a bit of a recluse, obsessively working on the songs that evolved into this psych-folk masterpiece. He spent three years on the project, working each track into a state of absolute perfection.
- More. . .
released 07 June 2008
David Lee Myers - feedback, noise, samples, spoken voice
Marco Oppedisano - electric and acoustic guitars, samples
Kimberly Fiedelman,
Barbara Dartley - voice samples
More ambient than classical, these are two works that build slowly around motifs on piano and orchestral textures, adding more typical ambient drones and swells along the way. The artist gets a little carried away with the synthesized strings for a few minutes in the second piece (the attack is too strong, making them seem less organic), but overall this is beautiful. NYOP
This band is getting a lot of attention from the Boston press for their upcoming album (this isn't it). Self-described as Mexican-Americana, they definitely plays energetic, barely north-of-the-border music, using accordion, horns and jarana along with mandolin. For some reason, they started the album off with a sleeper, but the rest gets the blood pumping.
The Asleep by Coldstream
Improvisaatioita Kanssa Siniaanet by Jukka Vakkinen-Kannonen
The second one is more noise, different from other recent releases. The first is in more familiar vein, though I find the sounds in the first track a little too bright. Both GBP 0.50 or more.
I already described this in the listening-to-now thread, but after several listenings I find this intriguing. It's a bit somber, in tone reminiscent to late Pink Floyd, at times insistent like Springsteen or Titus Andronicus, acoustic through and through. NYOP
Comments
Pretty good post-bop piano trio, a bit like Taylor Haskins with a more drum-centered sound. NYOP.
It's a bunch of good stuff and worth the $5 I think.
Craig
The sonorities of field recording, glitched digressions, electroacoustic idylls, dreamy soundscapes, abysmal notes, dilated, diluted, purified, desecrated water...
Together these artists have releases across labels such as Touch, Porter, Laverna, Sub Rosa, Ripples, Cronica, Zymogen and more.
NYP or free @ The Archive.
This seems to be an early album, much better than her recent EP. Great, full alto, slightly in the KD Lang timbre. Folked-up pop in the Feist vein? The arrangements are impressively big.
NYOP
- With artists like Sufjan Stevens, Trumans Water and Julianna Barwick.
...but it seems they've also renamed themselves "Latristic" since that was released, and reinvented themselves as a trip-hop act. Their new album under that name is free for an e-mail address:
I don't like this new stuff as much - the production is a bit lacking and it's a bit more, eh, well... let's just say I'm not a huge trip-hop fan. But it's pretty good for what it is, I suppose.
Various SEM label artists - One Minute For The Sun - Free.
However, I think there are limits even to this. Looking over more albums, searching for more interesting discoveries, I've found evidence that free downloading can be a hardship on artists. Some will mention that they have a monthly quota of free downloads (sending people offsite if they still won't pay something); others saying that they only get a fixed number of free downloads per month, so please pay something.
Anyway, I found an entry on the Bandcamp blog that explains policy on free downloads.
1. Artists get 200 free downloads to offer each month.
2. Artists with accounts before 9/15/2010 get 500 per month.
3. At the beginning of each month, the free downloads are refreshed up to 200/500.
4. Artists may purchase additional free downloads rather cheaply.
5. For each $500 in sales, at artist gets 1000 additional free downloads.
6. Tracks and albums are counted as 1 download.
Something that is not reflected in this information is what Paypal made take from sales. Some artists ask that people give at least a certain amount so that they don't incur a negative balance. I think that the break-even point in under $1, but I am not certain.
Do with this what you will. From now on, if I'm not willing to spend at least $1 on a Name Your Price album, I'll wait until the beginning of the month to get it for free. I also won't take more tha one free album from a single artist in a month. At least the artists will be in a better position to know how to use their resources.
I've been tending to go somewhere around $2 when I decide to pay for a NYOP/have-it-for-free-if-you-want album that I would otherwise not have bought (i.e. I'm kind of interested partly because it's not full price) - it feels more like the artist gets a little something, but that's probably too small a margin of difference to make that a very rational feeling. Most I've paid on bandcamp is $10, so I'm finding the range is pretty wide based on level of personal commitment to the particular music.
Once I paid a little more for one album and then took a second by the same artist for free - I notice now that this reduces the Paypal hit for the artist and so was a better move than two small payments.
With the free downloads quota I'm not sure how much to see that as a constraint - if I don't use a free download and the quota gets used up it just means a different person, equally anonymous to the artist, used the free download instead of me (and it is probably a good thing for the artist for folk who consistently post recs to boards like this to be among the downloaders), so if my interest is at that level it seems it may still be appropriate to use the offer. Good to know that cherry picking and downloading individual tracks disadvantages the artist, though.
Again, there's no clear answer, but I think that there is some way to make even free downloading work better for the artists.
Okay, here's something I found while searching for jazz. I'm not gonna make an entry for it; I'll leave that to someone who might be able to put it in better perspective. I might actually dl it myself. I'm pretty sure that some of you will really like it. It's free, btw...
http://scramblerseequill.bandcamp.com
Absent Distance by Absent Distance
Tagged ambient, experimental, metal. Not even close. Nothing all that experimental about it. And if this is ambient, then Bing Crosby is screamo. It's metal/instrumental rock. But really quite enjoyable instrumental metal. And (explicitly) free.
Wynn Walent's Eating an Ocean: somber folk songs--decent lyics with a vaguely Cat Stevens voice. Perhaps more of a curiosity because the guy appears to be an international aid worker in Haiti. NYOP ("All proceeds from this album will go towards haitian relief efforts")
Wise Children's Absence and Reunion: in the Mumford and Sons vein. The first half has some exhilarating moments. Free or NYOP.
color of heaven by Janes scenic drive
Not all tracks are equally successful to my ear, but some are good. During track 2 I was leaning away from linking the album here. Then track 3 was more impressive. Tends towards thin, higher register drones, sometimes a bit screechy, but gets variegated in its better moments. Free/NYOP (i.e. NYOP with explicit invitation to enter zero if wished)
Andrew Douglas Rothbard - Exodusarabesque - (13 February 2009)
Andrew Douglas Rothbard: Guitar, Vox, Keys, Beats, and Paint.
9 USD, - not cheap but excellent
I grabbed this one from emu years ago, also excellent:
Andrew Douglas Rothbard - Abandoned Meander (31 October 2006)
- No longer on eMu.
released 07 June 2008
David Lee Myers - feedback, noise, samples, spoken voice
Marco Oppedisano - electric and acoustic guitars, samples
Kimberly Fiedelman,
Barbara Dartley - voice samples
- Gorgeous !
Edit: Also on eMu - Hmmm ? ?
Rhegos, Lithos by Regolith
More ambient than classical, these are two works that build slowly around motifs on piano and orchestral textures, adding more typical ambient drones and swells along the way. The artist gets a little carried away with the synthesized strings for a few minutes in the second piece (the attack is too strong, making them seem less organic), but overall this is beautiful. NYOP
Heliopause by Off Land
Enjoyed this. Warm ambient with some rhythms. NYOP/$1 minimum. One 20 minute track.
Same artist has a "Selected works" album for free download. Mixed bag but some nice things. Has an album on emusic also that sounds from the samples as if it rather overdoes the bird noises. I'm settling for Heliopause for now.
Carpenter Bird by David Wax Museum
Wow!
This band is getting a lot of attention from the Boston press for their upcoming album (this isn't it). Self-described as Mexican-Americana, they definitely plays energetic, barely north-of-the-border music, using accordion, horns and jarana along with mandolin. For some reason, they started the album off with a sleeper, but the rest gets the blood pumping.
NYOP
The Asleep by Coldstream
Improvisaatioita Kanssa Siniaanet by Jukka Vakkinen-Kannonen
The second one is more noise, different from other recent releases. The first is in more familiar vein, though I find the sounds in the first track a little too bright. Both GBP 0.50 or more.
Loud, noisy, New Surf inspired. Free.
Chinese singer (in English) backed by guitar riffing on Sex Pistols. Free (not sure if for email).
I already described this in the listening-to-now thread, but after several listenings I find this intriguing. It's a bit somber, in tone reminiscent to late Pink Floyd, at times insistent like Springsteen or Titus Andronicus, acoustic through and through. NYOP