I’m finally getting around to putting more of my albums on CD, thanks to the on-demand manufacturing capability afforded by Kunaki. You can see which albums of mine are available via this collection, and on each of them you can buy the album via Bandcamp, Mirlo, or direct from Kunaki.
If you buy from Bandcamp or Mirlo the album will also come with the digital download in your choice of formats.
Anyway, inside you can vote on which additional albums I should focus on making available!
But doing so also required, for very annoying reasons, removing it from all other streaming platforms as well, because the distributor I was working with, TooLost, had no option for removing music from just one platform without deleting and re-uploading everything2.
So, when is my music going to get back onto the other streaming platforms? Ehhh.
Performers who do streaming-based performances on VRChat and other places have a few options for actually providing their stream. Once upon a time it was preetty common for people to use Twitch or YouTube Live, but those are now being locked down due to advertising considerations. So, many people currently use VRCDN, an inexpensive but limited hosted service that you have to pay monthly for. But for folks with a bit more technical acumen, there’s another choice, Owncast, which is basically a self-hosted Twitch-like.
Here’s how I have mine set up and how I run it for (basically1) free.
Today I had my first gig with the Internet Archive in their mini concerts series. It was a really good experience (and if you’re a musician, especially one who performs online, I urge you to sign up for it yourself!) and I’d like to share some thoughts with folks in general! (And if anyone from IA is reading this, hello!!!!)
Today was the second day of VRelium Enchanted, which I performed at and had a really good time. I’m going to talk a bit about how VRChat performances work and some thoughts about my most recent one, in particular.
UPDATE: This is obsolete! It might still be useful for some folks (especially those working on a budget or trying to get ideas of how to cobble someting together), but my current setup is completely different and much easier to work with.
People sometimes ask me how they can start making music, or how they can get better at making music when they’ve hit a wall.
A thing that has worked for me quite a lot over the years is participating in Song Fight!, an online songwriting competition that’s been going for a bit over 25 years now. It’s an incredibly low-stakes yet highly-satisfying way of learning how to make music and how to hone your craft.
It also really could use more new people participating!
As I talked about previously, there are many different services for getting your music online with the major streaming providers. Here’s my thoughts on a few that I’ve worked with, and a couple that are on my radar and I plan on trying out in the future.
Of course, the best place to sell your music is on places like Mirlo and Bandcamp, where you actually get paid well for things and your buyers are able to retain access to your music in exchange, but the unfortunate reality of music in the current era is that most listeners are going to the streamers to listen to stuff, so if you want your stuff to be listened to, this is where you have to put it.
I’ve been looking into physical releases again lately. After my recent vinyl releases, my various polls have found that people are much more interested in buying things on CD than vinyl, because they’re a much easier means of doing a physical collection.
The manufacturing space used to be a lot bigger, but these days there’s not a whole lot of options. For most musicians, there are two paths to go down: on-demand and short-run.
After my previous review of elasticStage, a customer service representative reached out to me and told me that they’d improved their cutting process to reduce the surface noise, and asked if I’d be interested in receiving (at no charge) a recut of the two records. I agreed to this, and the replacement records arrived today.
On both of my albums, I am extremely pleased to report that the audio quality has improved in every possible way! The surface noise is essentially gone, and everything sounds perfectly clean. Some of the subtler sounds that had been lost behind the surface noise before are now super apparent, too.
The difference is much more profound on Transitions than on Refactor, but both albums have definitely improved as a result of their process change.
The actual manufacturing and delivery time was also greatly reduced from the last time, which tells me that they’ve probably cleared a backlog in their manufacturing.
Furality is an annual virtual furry conference that takes place entirely in VRChat. I have a dealer’s den booth this year, booth 816 (second level of the 2D Art + Miscellaneous) section, and I’m super excited!
Last night Furality opened up a dealer’s den preview so that we could check that our booths are set up correctly, and as a treat we got to see a decent chunk of the world and the overall style of the show, and I gotta say, it’s incredible. The Furality team have knocked it out of the park this year, and have really outdone themselves. From what I’ve seen this isn’t just going to be an incredible con, it’s going to be an amazing VRChat experience, and I am absolutely thrilled to be a part of it.
If you’re at all in VRChat (even if you aren’t at all interested in furry stuff), or heck, even if you’ve been thinking of trying VRChat out, I highly recommend coming to Furality Somna so that you can experience the joy. Also, you don’t need a VR setup to use VRChat! it just helps with the immersion (although just a warning, if you play it on desktop or cellphone you’ll probably end up really wanting to get a headset anyway).
Also, I plan on doing various impromptu shows at various places throughout the con, and if you see me wandering around, feel free to come up and say “hi!”
Back in April I learned about elasticStage, an on-demand vinyl production company that makes it easy for musicians to get their music on vinyl without any up-front costs. I ended up setting up Transitions and Refactor for manufacturing, and ordered some test copies.
My lead time at the time was around 6 weeks, and I was told the records would ship on May 14. They ended up shipping a couple days later than expected, but I still ended up receiving them today, which isn’t too much further after the original estimate.
Anyway, here’s my review of how the product turned out.
UPDATE: elasticStage have responded to my review by sending me updated copies. Definitely check out what’s new!
Bandcamp Friday is a thing that Bandcamp started in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, primarily to help out performing musicians who no longer had access to live performance venues due to the COVID lockdowns. It was a very nice gesture on their part, to help offset some of the suck of the world affecting musicians by waiving their cut of the purchase price.
As someone who wasn’t a performing musician at the time, I still benefitted from it, as it gave me an occasional tiny boost to my (already tiny) music income.
But at this point it’s an entrenched tradition and it’s actually causing more harm than good. It might be time for it to end, or at least be reconsidered.
