Here’s a quick review of the experience so far.
The price is pretty good. $20/year, similar to many of the other distributors.
They care a lot about metadata, and allow you to enter existing ISRCs and UPCs if you have them. (Which I technically do but I can’t be bothered to look them up or deal with their bad user interface, but more on that in a bit.)
They also allow people to declare their use of generative AI, so if people are insisting on using that stuff, they can be filed appropriately. (And hopefully those of us who have nothing to lie about won’t be penalized for the quagmire that techbros with deep pockets and shallow thoughts1 have unleashed upon us.)
The UX on the uploader is pretty terrible. It tries way too hard to be “app-like,” but also has so much negative space and no visibility into the item you’re working on, so the UI has a lot of scrolling and clicking.
You also need to individually specify a lot of metadata on a per-track basis; there’s no way to just, like, apply the same performer/writer credits to all the tracks on a release, or things like recording year, recording country, etc., and a lot of the UI elements have these awful custom controls with a very slow/annoying search mechanism and piss-poor defaults. (Why does it default to Aaron Copeland for every credit?! Aside from him being alphabetically first in their database, of course. You’d think they’d only be drawing from names that I’ve already submitted things with. You’d think.)
The actual upload flow is also a bit confusing and weird, and of course it doesn’t try to take in the existing metadata from my FLAC files, even though they’re all already perfectly tagged with the majority of the information they are looking for.
Every single track edit is its own little tiny usability nightmare, and it makes my chronic pain flare up very quickly. And I have a lot of tracks to get through if I’m going to make all my stuff available again.
Ideally I could just upload, like, a bunch of .flac files and a JSON/CSV/whatever file with my metadata. I can handle that just fine. Let me write a trivial bandcrash-to-whatever converter and call it a day. But no, everything has to be built the long way around.
Of the points on my classic rant about web usability, they have violated at least seven of those principles, although at least they provide some amount of keyboard accessibility. Not enough, mind you, but at least an effort was made.
When you first sign up you have to declare your label name up front, and the UI for it makes it very easy to make a mistake. And it can’t be changed once you’ve signed up.
Also, the way referral links work are kinda bad from a privacy standpoint. Let’s just say I wish things would let you use a preferred name and leave it at that.
As an independent musician with accessibility needs, I would absolutely love it if AI could help me with the parts of the process that are physically painful for me to do. The tedious, mechanial parts, like formatting my upload metadata and submitting it to the system (with my oversight, of course).
But no, all of the AI bullshit out there is working on replacing the parts that I enjoy doing, and the parts that make my stuff unique.
Music/AI tech people, do better. Focus on solving the problems that need to be solved, please.
Anyway. I sent them a support request asking them to make a better bulk-editing interface, because as things are it’s kind of untenable from a usability standpoint. But nobody ever gives a shit about people with chronic pain disabilities or motor issues, I’ve found, and that’s a bigger rant about the usability of the web itself at this point.
It’s a bit sad that of all the distributors I’ve used, Distrokid with its straight-from-1998 Extremely Web 1.0 interface is the only one that doesn’t make me want to gnaw my own foot off while using it. (But then again, I feel like Web 1.0 actually had pretty good usability from the get-go.)
But anyway. If you don’t care about (or are willing to deal with) the UX issues, it might be worth a try. Also, if you sign up with my affiliate link you get 25% off your first year (a savings of $5), and I get $10.
(And please, if you run into a site which is difficult for you to use, please let the people who run it know. So much of the modern web was built by people who have never heard the first thing about accessibility.)
Of course, if you’d prefer to support me on a platform other than Bandcamp, the same discography is available for about the same price over on Mirlo, and also my artist page on Subvert has recently been activated as well, although my entire discography is not up there just yet.
And if you prefer physical media that can be arranged, and if you want to go a bit more analog, there’s a place for that too.
Anyway, this month I actually do have a new release, although it isn’t much of one, and it’s also pay-what-you-want-including-$0.
As far as other stuff goes, I unfortunately haven’t made any progress on the next album due to some ongoing health issues, but those seem to be resolving (or at least abating) so hopefully I can spend some time in the studio again.
#BandcampFriday #FairTradeMusic #Mirlo #Subvert #Bandcamp ]]>
Music made for a game jam that didn’t go super well.
I will be performing a full one-hour set with Skyline Festival on February 28, to celebrate the three-year anniversary of Wolfie’s Hangout. It is also being streamed to Twitch.
]]>
I will be performing a full one-hour set with Skyline Festival on February 28, to celebrate the three-year anniversary of Wolfie’s Hangout. It is also being streamed to Twitch.
Briefly, here’s what’s going on:
Anyway. No idea when Misfits will be done (Strawberry Jam 10 has the time-based priority, of course), but it’s been a long time coming. If you want to track its progress, feel free to follow the Patreon or whatever.
#Status #Updates #Misfits #Production #StrawberryJam ]]>I performed a short set of songs at Trans Academy’s' Moonlit gathering! Join group TRANS.7885 to join future events like these, or watch on twitch.
I performed a short set of songs at Trans Academy’s' Moonlit gathering! Join group TRANS.7885 to join future events like these, or watch on twitch.
I performed at VRelium Arcadia, their special show celebrating the second anniversary of VRelium’s formation! Join group RELIUM.8220 for access to future shows.
]]>
I performed at VRelium Arcadia, their special show celebrating the second anniversary of VRelium’s formation! Join group RELIUM.8220 for access to future shows.
As is typical, this show was a benefit fundraiser; this time the charity was Shatterproof, an organization that’s working to stop the addiction fatality epidemic through evidence-based efforts. Please consider making a donation!
PHOHEA.2927 for access to thr group!]]>I performed at a show celebrating the growth of Phoenix Haven, a VRChat group about giving people second chances. Join VRChat group PHOHEA.2927 for access to thr group!
So here’s how my performing setup works!
Previously I was using an amalgam of the built-in mic on my headset, the line input on my onboard audio, and VoiceMeeter to tie everything together. Unfortunately, this setup had some pretty severe limitations, especially when it came to managing latency (particularly with backing tracks), as well as being able to add live effects to the signal chain. It also led to some embarrassing situations where my audio would go haywire due to a connector coming loose or the like.
A few years ago, I upgraded my recording studio from a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 to an 18i20, so I had this spare 18i8 just sitting around. I was using it on my office computer (where I do my video editing and programming), but it was massive overkill for those needs, and I came to realize it works much better for my performance setup instead. So now I have a plain old headphone amp in the office, and the 18i8 is on my VR computer.
The 18i8 has a handy feature where you can set up multiple output/monitor submixes, so for example you can have different audio levels of different things going to the headphones, the line outputs, and so on. It also has a built-in “loopback” interface, where you can give it a monitor mix that then appears as a standard audio input to the computer. These features are extremely useful for this use case (as well as any other live performance or studio recording situation).
I have the following connections:
I have the reverb unit set to 100% wet, so that it is only being used as a bus send. I also have a bypass toggle pedal so that I can cut to a purely dry signal when needed (such as in A Long Plastic Hallway, which uses lack-of-reverb as an effect for emphasis).
First, I use the multiple input functionality to provide Windows audio devices for all of the necessary channels.
Windows 10 and 11 also have a feature where you can assign arbitrary labels to your audio inputs and outputs; I use this to give the following names to the playback channels:
and I also set labels on my VR headset’s microphone and speakers, just to make them easier to keep track of.
In Focusrite Control I have separate submixes for all three of the outputs, as well as the loopback interface.
Headphone 1 gets the monitor mix that goes to my IEMs. It receives all of the input channels, as well as all three2 “Playback” channels (which are used to route multiple separate software outputs into separate mixes).
Headphone 2 gets the same, minus the microphone (to avoid feedback), and is connected to the line input on my lunchbox amp.3
Line 1-2 (reverb send) gets just the instruments; I bake the reverb into my backing tracks.
Loopback gets the mix that goes out to the stream and/or world.
Unlike before, I do not need Voicemeeter, and I do not even have it installed anymore, as all of the audio that goes to the stream is now handled by the 18i8, and I do not need to mix anything into or from my VR headset.
I have configured VLC (which I use for playing my backing tracks) to output to the Playback 1+2 device by default.
OBS allows you to set up multi-channel audio recording. I set OBS to use channel 1 in the stream, and to record all 6 channels to separate tracks in my local recording. Then I have the following audio input sources:
| Input name | Source name | OBS output track | Video audio channel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loopback | Live mix | 1 | 1+2 |
| Input 1-2 | Mic + guitar | 2 | 3+4 |
| Input 3-4 | Piano | 3 | 5+6 |
| Input 5-6 | Reverb | 3 | 5+6 |
| Headset mic | Headset mic | 5 (panned left) | 9 |
As well as the following audio output captures:
| Output name | Source name | OBS output track | Video audio channel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headset speakers | Headset speakers | 5 (panned right) | 10 |
| Playback 1+2 (playback) | Backing track | 4 | 7+8 |
| Playback 3+4 (game audio) | Game audio | 6 | 11+12 |
| Playback 5+6 (control room) | Control room | 5 (panned right) | 10 |
Finally, I have a bunch of visuals set up; mostly this is Spout2 to capture my in-game streaming camera, and Waveform to let me do various audio visualizers in varying combinations.
When doing a mic boosted performance, I set my system audio output to Playback 3+4 (Game Audio) and VRChat’s audio input to Loopback. This way, my full final audio mix goes to my VRChat microphone, and I hear the game in my IEMs. My backing track works the same as anywhere else.
The one downside to this setup is that my lip sync will also follow my instruments and backing track, but there’s not a lot I can do about that aside from adding face tracking to my VR setup.
If I want to record my performance, I launch OBS and set it to record. OBS is not involved in the signal chain going to the world at all.
Most streamed performances involve a Discord voice call for coordinating between the show runners and the performers. This is where the “control room” channel comes in; I set Discord’s voice to use my VR headset’s microphone as input, and Playback 5+6 as speakers. This way the voice chat only hears my voice (rather than all of my instruments), and I can hear anything they say on my IEMs. The Discord call gets recorded to track 5, with the left channel being me and the right channel being everyone else.
Otherwise, my audio setup is as follows:
As far as running the stream itself goes, typically I stream either to my Owncloud instance or to VRCDN depending on the needs of the show. Larger shows provide their own streaming ingest.
And now the really nice thing about this setup is that I can do some audio editing and remixing in retrospect. I do most of my video editing in DaVinci Resolve, which has pretty good multichannel audio support.
By default, the video will be pulled in with the following stereo audio tracks:
| Track | Channels | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1+2 | Live mix |
| 2 | 3+4 | Mic (left) + guitar (right) |
| 3 | 5+6 | Piano + reverb |
| 4 | 7+8 | Backing track |
| 5 | 9+10 | Headset mic (left) + Discord call (right) |
| 6 | 11+12 | Game audio/audience |
Typically what I’ll do is separate out the audio tracks from the video, and I’ll shift track 6 back to compensate for the latency between me and the audience. For mic-boost performances this isn’t much (usually under a second) and can usually be ignored, but for streamed performances this will be multiple seconds (often on the order of 20 or more!) and this is especially important during those magical times when people either respond to my banter or sing along with me! (The latter happens with the call-and-response bits in Safety In Numbers, and it fills me with warm fuzzies every time.)
If the track 1 (live mix) audio is fine, I’ll use it and track 6 directly, and mute the other tracks. However, sometimes I need to get fancy and change the mix in retrospect. In that case, I’ll change my audio tracks as such:
In this situation, I’ll mute tracks 2-4, and use track 1 to line up tracks 5 and 6, which will have differing amounts of latency. Then I’ll mute track 1 and unmute 2-4, and then adjust my recorded mix as necessary.
Track 6 in particular needs to be lined up pretty carefully, as OBS captures outputs with no latency at all, but inputs get about 300ms of latency due to limitations in Windows audio. In theory I could have OBS add 300ms or so of latency to the output capture, but it’s fiddly and I’d still need to adjust things anyway, so I’d might as well just do it once when I edit.6
When I’m performing there’s a lot of stuff to keep track of. If I’m only doing 1-2 songs I can load the .wav files into VLC and it’s no big deal, but many of my shows are much more complicated and my ADHD brain can only hold so much stuff in my working memory.
So, I have a Final Cut Pro library that contains all of my backing tracks; some songs have multiple versions available (e.g. with and without guitar mixed in, or album vs. live versions). In the library files I also have brief version notes and the dominant key signature, and with this I can quickly put together a set list with a reasonable progression and fitting the time constraints.
A few of the songs also have a lyric display baked in, because try as I might, I just can’t memorize every song7. For some songs I’ll use Croonify to prepare a synchronized lyric display (replacing Croonify’s stem-separated audio with my own clean backing track), but for others I’ll just put up some basic text with the necessary cues to keep me from messing up too badly.
When I prepare my set, I’ll also put in a bit of visual stuff for my own reference, such as having it display the title of the next song or little notes like “2 songs left” or specific banter points I need to hit.
When I encode the video I’ll just use Final Cut’s “Export File (default)” to do a quick lossless encode and then I’ll use FFmpeg to encode the final video at a more useful bitrate, with:
ffmpeg -i "2026-02-30 example.mov" -b:a 320k \ "~/Sync/backing tracks/shows/2026-02-30 example.mp4"
Finally, I use SyncThing to automatically synchronize my ~/Sync directory between my various computers, which is super handy. (It’s also a lot easier than dealing with network shares!)
When it’s time to perform, I’ll use SteamVR’s desktop overlay function to float my VLC window in the world with me, and so then I’ll always have my visual reference where I need it. (So if you see me looking downward a lot, it isn’t just me being introverted.)
When it comes to actually performing, I make sure that VLC has keyboard focus and then I can just press the space bar on my keyboard to start and, if necessary, pause the backing track.
Sound checks used to be rather difficult; previously, I’d do a laborious process of recording the loopback interface into Audacity while performing parts of my set, listen back afterwards, and then try making incremental adjustments. This process was super annoying.
Nowadays I’ve found a much better way; basically:
First, I open two instances of VLC:
Then, I can unpause my backing track player and perform for 10 seconds, then pause the backing track while I listen to how it sounded. This gives me a much faster means of iterating on my adjustments and getting things sounding really good.
Props to Niko Fox for turning me on to this specific wireless IEM unit. ↩
I actually have all four going to it but Playback 7+8 isn’t used for anything. Someday I might figure out a way of using it for a click track or additional audio cues, though. ↩
I don’t usually have the amplifier’s speakers on when I’m performing but it’s nice to have when I’m practicing. Additionally, the amplifier’s line output and instrument input are no longer connected to anything, as they are not needed in this setup. I do still use the amplifier’s power bus for my pedal board, however. ↩
Note that other people in the instance won’t see the lips move, though, although for me it’s most important that my local camera does. If you need the lip movement to be visible to someone else (for example, someone else recording/streaming you directly), set your microphone output level to 5%, which will broadcast your visemes to others while keeping the audio level as low as possible. ↩
Or I could try to remember to set my VRChat camera to “audio from camera” mode and pass the stereo through normally, but I usually forget to do this. It also makes communicating with others on stage much more difficult since consciously overriding the incorrect positional audio cues is super hard to brain. ↩
In theory one could use ASIO to mitigate the latency (via the respective OBS plugin), but there’s still going to be some latency, and I err on the side of pragmatism since I’m going to have to adjust things anyway. Also, even if the latency can be eliminated from OBS’s point of view, it’s still going to be present for VRChat, so it’s going to need to be adjusted between the visuals and the audio, and that is, in my experience, much harder to do well. ↩
There’s also the issue of ASIO often requiring exclusive access to the device, which means it might not even work in this situation to begin with.
So basically, ASIO might work but I haven’t tried it nor have I seen any compelling reason to.
Although I’m proud to say that most of the songs I perform I do have completely memorized, and the more I perform songs I’m not off-book on yet, the closer I get to getting there. Assistive technology FTW. ↩
I’m pleased as punch to have performed at VRelium’s 2025 holiday show, benefitting The Trevor Project. I did not come up with any holiday-appropriate music to sing.
]]>
I’m pleased as punch to have performed at VRelium’s 2025 holiday show, benefitting The Trevor Project. I did not come up with any holiday-appropriate music to sing.
First, here’s the criteria I laid out as what I’d see as feeling “successful.”
The amount of income I get from my music would be sufficient as a living wage
This is still incredibly far away, and I’m not sure it will ever be achievable with the way the music industry is, especially for independent musicians. It’s also kind of a low priority for me, though, as my other sources of income are sufficient for now.
Any time I release something new, I have a fanbase that acquires it without prompting
This isn’t something I’ve really had a good measure of, but I will say that this still hasn’t been the case for my two releases this year
Any release pays for its own production costs within its first month of release
I’d say I still haven’t hit this benchmark just yet. Neither of my releases this year cost in terms of software or equipment (in that I didn’t have to buy anything new for them), but like, I’m still super far in the hole in terms of my startup costs, and even distributing The War Machine to streaming cost $5 which I haven’t yet recouped.
strawberry jelly :9 has made around $94 this year, though, and I also got a job out of it, so, that’s worth something.
I have enough fans that YouTube actively tries to retain my content rather than treating my channel as a liability
This still hasn’t quite changed, although I’m starting to feel it turn a corner, especially with my move to self-administering my videos. (On that note, gosh, I’m falling behind on that project…)
Any release I put out gets visibility in the various streaming platforms' algorithms
Nope, but also I’ve decided to just not care about streaming for now, which feels like a much healthier solution to the problem.
People approach me to express interest in hiring me
This is something that’s changed! In that, as mentioned, some of the work I did on strawberry jelly :9 got me hired as the composer for a small game. It isn’t much, but it’s something.
Concert organizers approach me to express interest in me performing with them
And this one I can happily say has definitely been satisfied; quite a few of my VRChat performances have now been things where people approached me to play at them, instead of me needing to seek out and apply for things.
I am approached with offers for representation, either via an agent or a record label
I am still not signed with a record label (and at this point I’m not sure I even want to be), but I do have a booking agent for my VRChat shows! And she’s the one who approached me with the idea, after having booked me for a couple of events.
I have people trying to interpret my songs on their own, whether correctly or incorrectly, and reading their own meaning into them regardless
This has happened a little bit. So far as I know nobody’s yet to submit their own interpretations to Genius or whatever, but people have asked questions about some of my lines, and that’s a good first step!
Also, here’s a thing I didn’t think of on the original list but which is something that I feel is very much worth celebrating:
People start to recognize me for my music
And this is another cool thing that’s been happening. The performances I’ve done in VRChat have led to people recognizing me as a musician in random places and folks will even compliment me on my music. More than one person has even had a favorite song of mine! (It seems to be tied between Freak Flag and Material Change.)
I also got a surge of interest and recognition after my presence at Furality. (Also a nice little spike of streaming playtime, which unfortunately didn’t last long.)
It’s still only something that occurs in very small pockets in VRChat, and is often intertwined with the work I do for Trans Academy, but it’s been super gratifying and feels great.
Here’s a breakdown of some of my activity:
In 2026, as usual, I hope to get a couple of albums done. Here’s what’s on my current backlog (which is, regrettably, nearly the exact same backlog as I had for 2025):
I also want to get the rest of my back-catalog up on YouTube, which would be a lot easier if I stop thinking that I need to go overboard on the visualizers, and I also want to get some work done on a Canimus-enabled player of some sort. Which isn’t super relevant to making music, but it’s very relevant to helping musicians to be heard in general.
Finally, my plan for performing has been to do 1-2 bigger shows a month, and I’m pretty sure that’s something that I can make happen.
#Introspection #Career #Goals #Success ]]>
I performed a half-hour set with Skyline Festival on November 21! The show was for the benefit of Feeding America, a very important charity in this day and age.
]]>
I performed a half-hour set with Skyline Festival on November 21! The show was for the benefit of Feeding America, a very important charity in this day and age.
I’ve been slowly working on fully tagging all of my releases. At this point it’s at about 90% coverage, with nearly everything having genre tags and most things also having instrument and mood tags.
Some years I produce a lot of music for Novembeat. Some years, not so much. Usually it ends up with an album at the end.
So far I’ve made 10 tracks (all posted on the YouTube playlist) which is on the low end but it’s been fun to play with things all the same. I might do more this month although I haven’t been super motivated. The last few tracks I worked on I at least streamed live on YouTube which was a lot of fun.
Some of the tracks I’ve made so far are ones that I definitely want to revisit as full tracks and don’t want to do a half-assed release at the end of the month, and the other tracks are ones that are fun as tooling around but nothing I am really super inspired to release on an album, so I think this year I’m just going to limit it to the playlist (same as I did last year) and treat it as a fun exercise instead of it being A Thing. Especially since I no longer really feel the pressure to feed the streaming algorithms.
I’m still working on the soundtrack for a game, and it’s coming1 along nicely. Our goal is to release the game in 2026, although there’s nothing more firm than that which I can disclose publicly.
I’m also continuing to work on music for some other clients, and collecting more ideas/gumption for whittling down my album production backlog.
I’m excited for two performances, Skyline Aurora Fest this Friday and the Trans Furs Support System anniversary show next Saturday. I’ve upgraded my performance setup even further to make these the best shows I can. Some highlights:
I’m also trying to get in on the beta for the EOZ immersive gloves in order to get proper hand tracking while I perform, although it’ll still be some time before that happens. Right now it’s definitely the most promising option that’s coming to market in the foreseeable future.
Switching to self-administered releases on my channel has been the best decision I’ve made, for unexpected reasons.
Normally, when releasing music to YouTube, you have to go through a distributor, i.e. the same companies that put music on services like Spotify and Apple Music. Technically, YouTube Music releases are separate from regular YouTube, and the “official artist channel” function is just a way of getting YouTube Music releases to appear on the “releases” tab of the official artist website.
The plus side to this method is that all music listened through YouTube Music gets administered like any other music stream, and YouTube pays out around half a penny per play, which isn’t nothing. And it’s also nice that these releases show up on the release tab, and have all of the necessary metadata for music business things. But it has several downsides as well:
And none of these are issues for self-administered videos! So far I’ve had the following benefits already:
It isn’t perfect, of course. Since I’m going through regular YouTube plays, I don’t automatically get paid for listens (not that I was making that much to begin with), although hopefully I’ll hit a monetization threshold at some point. Also, if someone does get recommended a song through the feed, they’ll just get it on its own with no link into its respective playlist (although I suppose I could at least put a link in the description). Also there’s no way for me to organize playlists into groups; I think that feature does become available to larger creators, but I haven’t hit whatever threshold is necessary for that just yet.
I could do more whole-album videos to preserve the album-oriented listening experience, and I’ll probably get around to doing that when I’m done clearing this reupload backlog.
I am a busy bee and I still have to manage my energy and chronic pain (and being up this late to blog about it certainly isn’t helping). But things are feeling pretty okay right now.
heh ↩
I’ll replace the Refactor videos with the new ones on Monday because they new ones are way better and that album is pretty special to me (and I’ll just delist the old videos rather than delete them outright), but I think I’ll leave Radio Ready and Instrumental alone.
In any case here’s my current tentative YouTube album rerelease schedule:
| Week | Monday release | Thursday release |
|---|---|---|
| 11/10/2025 | Refactor | strawberry jelly :9 |
| 11/17/2025 | foodsexsleep | …Or Die Trying OST |
| 11/24/2025 | Love and Monsters | Novembeat 2017 |
| 12/01/2025 | Songs of Substance | Novembeat 2023: Pawmune and Friends |
| 12/08/2025 | s7rawberry | Novembeat 2019 |
| 12/15/2025 | Novembeat 2016 | Novembeat 2018 |
| 12/22/2025 | Transformative Instrumentals, vol. 1 | The Balance of Sappho OST |
| 12/29/2025 | Admiralo Island Witches Club | Novembeat 2021 |
| 01/05/2026 | Treestoration | Herbal Spice Problem + Brickris Tetout |
| 01/12/2026 | Deadnames |
which would actually cover my entire back-catalog, aside from Wiener Dog on a Motorcycle (which I still want to do a full music video for instead of a visualizer release) and pointed little quill which is still available on YouTube Music.
Of course this is subject to change due to any number of factors, especially if I actually manage to get one of my backburnered albums out in the interim.
#YouTube #Video ]]>