The bright side of Lockdown music

One of the plus points of the terrible toll taken on the music industry by Covid has been that by taking to Social Media you can find artists who you would never have heard, simply because they are physically so far away. It means you get the chance to sample, often for free, or for very little cost some brilliant music. 

My discovery of the day is Rachel Collis who popped up as a Facebook Ad this morning offering 3 free songs. A quick play of the video was enough, just my sort of sounds (how DOES Facebook know?) So I signed up to receive a song each from her last two albums and a bonus in the form of an acoustic version of  her song 'The Art Of Letting Go'. She compares herself to Carol King and Joni Mitchell, for me she is far more contemporary than that implies with Sarah Mclachlan and Tori Amos as other touch points for her voice. She embraces the big ballad style on her most recent album, but for me I think the first purchase may well be her previous album 'Remains of the Day'. And that is, as you may have heard me say before, the important point. Don't just take the freebie, BUY SOMETHING.  

An artist I don't need to be pushed to take that advice for is Kim Edgar. I've spoken about her before, and her new album 'Held' is up for preorder at her website and on Bandcamp. Judging by the one song available so far this could be her best yet (a high bar) and I'm looking forward to a review of the whole thing when it's released. 

Marketing of music at the moment is a tricky business, trust me, I'm on the inside with several acts trying to get them noticed above the general background noise. Rachel Collis, like another band I've been listening to, a Scottish country duo Ashton Lane, has a VIP page where for a monthly subscription you get exclusive songs, cheap deals on their back catalogue and access to the band. I've ended up supporting about a dozen of these pages over lockdown but sadly with work at a premium have had to back away from most of them, even at $5 per month it all adds up. 

One of the problems with this is that lack of experience with marketing is that you can end up, as a couple of the people I've been supporting have, with some scary expensive tools, CRM (Customer relationship managers), email marketing portals and the like. That's where my new venture Marketing4Music comes in. I'm hoping to bring the marketing tools and expertise used in other industries to music, so that rather than Infusionsoft at $75 or more per month, meaning that 15 of your subscribers are paying just for that you can use much cheaper or free alternatives.  Rachel Collis is using the very reasonably priced Aweber email tool so hopefully she is making some money on it...

Get in touch if I can help you market your music, and please support independent music.

Kim Edgar - A name you should know.

Out there in the world there are hundreds, thousands of people quietly making a living from music sitting off the radar as far as the average music lover is concerned.

Last year Kim Edgar visited us in Crianlarich. here she is in the bar at The Ben More promoting her show. Sadly I didn't get to see her play, (drinks to serve, plates to clear) but I did investigate her albums, and found gold.

You may think you can classify her music by looking at the website and have parceled her off as folky singer/songwriter, true up to a point but each of her albums has a definite character and, most unusual in today's musical climate, show her writing and performing maturing and evolving.

Debut "Butterflies and Broken Glass" appeared in 2008 and drew the inevitable, lazy, comparisons with Sandi Thom and Amy MacDonald. Kim's songwriting was more assured and the arrangements less obvious than either of those relentlessly commercial artists. A review said "very moving, literate, allusive and expressively sung", and they were right, another review clearly written by some who had listened on fast forward described it as slick folk pop, no!

Album two "The Ornate Lie" in 2012 was a step forward particularly musically. Extra bite to the songs, a bigger production, and a more confident performance overall. The Tori Amos influence was more overt this time, but a perceptive review spotted signs of Aimee Mann as well.  

Most recently "Stories Untold" from 2016, is less ornate. Simpler arrangements, more folk, less Tori. Some of the songs, particularly 'Significant Other Deceased' remind me of Cara Dillon. It sounds like Kim has wanted to focus the listener on the lyrics, which have again taken a step forward. Try 'Well Worn' and especially 'Things Crack, Then Shatter' an affecting song simply sung and played.

As well as her solo work Kim plays, mostly in Germany, with the band Cara operating more in the Irish music world, does sessions, workshops, and directs choirs. So overall she is making a living (as far as I can see) playing her music, and finding an audience. In 2017 that is an achievement. The inevitable stripped down, keyboard & guitar live shows are part of life (Over The Rhine make the same compromise). She reminds me of Nerina Pallot in some ways, although she is 6 albums into her career has gone the big label route a couple of times, and had closer brushes with the "big time". But Nerina seems from the outside at least to have made more effort to satisfy commercial demands and her albums are less consistent and only intermittently hit the highs routine in Kim's music.

I've talked before about the difficulties of making a living in music, Kim has a good website, has the Social Media firing and gets good reviews for albums and live work. But you haven't heard of her and you should. Kim Edgar is a major talent, the equal and better of anyone in her field. As a fan I would like her to be heard widely and receive the rewards her music deserves (try Bandcamp Kim). This may of course not be what Kim wants.

Paying The Cost...

It's Record Store Day and amid the celebrations of all things vinyl & CD, there is the ever present dischord of the difficulty of making a living from music in 2017.
  
I wrote about Over The Rhine recently, and how difficult it is for people like them to make a living from their music.The financial risk in running a tour in Europe is huge for an independent artist. The costs of travel, and the fact that ticket sales can be a lottery at best mean budgeting a 3 week plus stay is next to impossible.

Allan Holdsworth passed away recently. A guitarist of prodigious talent feted by his peers who copied his style, admired by fans of Jazz & Rock, and who died in a financial position that left his family needing a Go Fund Me campaign to pay for his funeral. The question for me is where were all the fans who have mostly donated about $20, the price of a cd, when he was alive? His recently released compilation is £17 on Amazon. The carelessness of the online stores in pricing is highlighted by the fact that one had his career box set as a download for £6 for a while rather than £60.00. Who suffers? The artist.


I was lucky enough to meet Kim Edgar last year. A Scottish singer with 3 great albums, she was doing a short tour of the Highlands and came to Crianlarich. Her audience? Two. The Reasoning were a highly regarded Progressive Rock band from Wales. One of the factors causing their demise was the imposition of VAT on downloads in the U.K. The accounting costs moved their Bandcamp sales from acceptable to untenable.

Why are we in this position? Is the music not good enough? Hardly. If you don't like any of the above, and please try them, then there are hundreds of other artists who in a better time and place would be selling records by the boatload. Poor promotion? Possibly in some cases, but getting your head above the noise on Twitter is a struggle, the cost of physical product and distribution is a risk too far in many cases. The real answer lies in the culture of the music industry; exploitative for so long and now unwilling, or unable, to make the radical changes needed to move past the short-termism of the X Factor model and nurture artists for rewards in the future. Vinyl won't I'm afraid save the industry, it is a fad, and will fade. CDs still sell to some extent, but digital formats are where the world is going. The major streaming portals need to engage with the industry outside the few remaining major labels to achieve an equitable share out of the revenue. I recognise that they can't deal with every artist one at a time, but working with Bandcamp, CD Baby and their like would bring enough artists into the fold to encourage others to join in. Will it happen? Something has to. Something also has to be done to make music vital to teenagers, as it was in my (long ago) time. How? New music that energises and excites them as happened in the 60's, punk and grunge. We aren't going to find that on reality TV.

Part of my business Selling Service is helping artists find an audience. Talk to me if you want to learn more about getting your message out. tim@selling-service.co.uk