Introducing KADE

Live improvised electronica.

Shep and I have been developing a new approach to electronic music where by we can improvise stuff on the fly. These tunes are recorded jams we did in the last month which we have tweaked and mastered and released on the world.

We are looking for unique performance opportunities and perhaps even a residency so get in touch via Bitnormal Records contact sheet if you are interested in booking us!

Press Campaigns

Rysic Cygo Press Release

Today I thought I would blog a bit about how Shep and I have chosen to promote our artists on Bitnormal Records and about the things we've been considering with regards to press campaigns.

When starting the label, we asked ourselves what we felt we could offer artists who might potentially sign with us. We decided that a netlabel model was best for us as we had no capital to press and distribute physical releases and we had limited time alongside our various other projects to commit to the full time promotion of the label and its roster.

We decided that what we could offer was promtion through Twitter, Facebook etc, a nice, functional website providing info and links and a space from which to stream and download releases.

We also felt that it would be fair to offer press campaings for new releases. This would involve building a network of reliable contacts that would be happy to feature and review our artists. After scouring the internet and building a list of the websites that looked like they would welcome a press release from us, we set about looking at how best to capture the writer's attention and not over-step the social parameters of sending out lots of info on a regular basis.

It was my thinking that it would be best to build an email template in html so that press recieved one email that looked sweet, exhibited the label branding and all the artist info in one foul-swoop. The problem we hit upon instantly was that most email clients filter images contained in emails and it is up to the user to enable visual content. This negates the impact I was aiming for and forced us to consider other options.

So the choice was either a plain text email (often widely accepted and preffered by many) or an attachment.

I still felt that an attachment would be better. As someone who has written reviews in the past, I still felt that a one-stop-shop for all links, bio and art work etc would be better for the writer than a plain text email that forced them to dig out info themselves. Also I thought that building the brand was an important aspect of standardising our press releases and creating a sense of community and cohesiveness.

Above is an example of what we have been sending out. This isactually the press release for my forth coming album under the name Rysic Cygo. The template is standard and we just drop the pics and the text in for each release. We add the links in with InDesign and export as a pdf document. This then gets attached to a personalised plain text email which goes out to the press contacts on the 3rd Monday of each month (as and when we have a release obviously!)

Eventually I would like to look at the question of how often we send out press and create a 1st, 2nd and 3rd waves of press that builds towards a wide spread campaign for our international artists but that will take time and we need more contacts to make that worth while.

Props to Pete 'Dedpop' Clark for the design elements of the rpess release which are taken from the website he designed for us.

Self Publishing

Today I am thinking about the notion of value.

In just over a month, Shep and I will be speaking at a Self Publishing Fair at +Derby QUAD.



We will be talking about netaudio and digital distribution in oppostition to the music industry and how rising technologies can affect how musicians are able to self-publish.

For me, the concept of netaudio is intrisically based on the notion of value; that is to say, how much value a person places on the product. In the last few months I have been closely analysing the sales statistics of Bitnormal releases. As a netlabel we aim to make our releases available for a nominal price (that includes free!) in order to give the user the option of having the audio for nothing or choosing to support the label by offering a nominal fee. But does this model work? Is it self sustaining?

It is important to remember that audiences do not invest in music as a stand alone construct. They invest in the aesthetic of the artists themselves. This is a matter of semiotics. That is to say, the meaning that audiences derive from the sounds and the images associated with the artist.

It interests me then, that some things sell more than others.

What is it that drives audiences to invest time and money into an artist and what kinds of choices exist in the gap between streaming audio online and clicking that download button?

I have written a few words on the topic of value and aesthetic before but today I am wondering if there are any new words to say...