Digital Distribution

I've been thinking recently about what to do regarding my next album's release online.

In the past I've always stated that releasing my albums on iTunes and Spotify were primarily for marketing purposes. I don't expect to make much money from it, not even enough to keep it up online really (it costs around £30 a year, which is ok for the first year, but after an initial burst the sales tend to fall away), but I've always said that as two of the biggest music services in the world, it looks good to have them up on there. It's free advertising.

Isn't it?

I've been toying with a few ideas to change it around. Should I release my album via Bandcamp, a service I have heard nothing but good reports about, and one that doesn't charge a fee? Or maybe I should just have them online on somewhere like SoundCloud, giving the downloads away for free or in exchange for an email address. Or should I even go whole hog and release them as a torrent? It wouldn't be illegal, after all, and I wouldn't be the first to do it.

Maybe it's time for a fresh start with iTunes instead. 'The List' has been available online now for almost 3 years. Should I take down my old albums and start again with the new one? Just stockpiling them on iTunes is not only expensive (it's £30 per album per year), but it could also leave potential new listeners with a 'don't even know where to start' mentality. Maybe I could implement one of the other strategies above for the previous two albums and have my next album up on the major platforms.

As always, comments are more than welcomed on this :)

See you soon,

Sam.

NEW WEBSITE!

How many times can I start a blog with 'I'm sorry it's been so long' or something of that ilk?

But yeah, it's been a while and I'm sorry for that. I have been kind of busy with other projects, but it's still no excuse. The 'other projects' do however give me something to talk about in this blog post!

First off, I've taken up Instagram. You can see all the photos I've shared here - http://instagram.com/instasamdraisey

I've also started a new website purely for wedding bookings. I went the whole 'professional' route for this (sort of!). I've had a photo-shoot done, the results of which are on the site, but I'll share one of the photos with you here so you get an idea :)

I've done some new recordings for it too! A CD of 11 of my most popular covers. I call it 'Musician For Hire', not really an album title, as it's not an 'official' release, but at least it has a name! I've included the Soundcloud  playlist for it below. Feel free to check out the recordings and let me know what you think.

I've also recently done some new videos for it, adding a couple of songs that didn't quite make it onto the CD. Filming this was great fun, as I had to erect a backdrop and add lighting and sound and all sorts! Good job I have random old staging and spotlights lying around! The videos are also on the website on the 'Listen & Watch' page. Let me know what you think.

Oh, and that all important web address is www.midlandsweddingmusician.co.uk. I know, check me out with my search engine optimisation!



New website aside, I've also been planning and searching for new music nights to run. After I lost both The Albion and The Hartley Arms at the end of last year, it was a necessary process. A few months on, and I've started a new monthly open mic at The Pied Piper in Cannock, re-signed up to host The Fox & Anchor gigs this summer that I ran all through last summer, and started negotiations with a few other places to put music nights and open mic nights on there.

On top of that, I played in Worcester on Friday at a gig that also featured my good friend Brains For Breakfast on his first UK tour. It sounds like he is have a great time, and has inspired me to attempt something similar at some point. Keep your eyes peeled for that, and any suggestions on where to play would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway, until next time (and hopefully I won't leave it so long!) have a look at the site and it's new content and tell me what you think, and keep enjoying the music

Speak soon,

Sam.

Hard Work.

Those of you who are on Facebook may have seen some of the uproar surrounding the PRS's decision to name the boy band JLS as the 'UK's hardest working band of 2012', even though they only played 34 gigs. If not, you can find out about it here - http://www.nme.com/news/jls/68255

You may also have seen, should you follow my own posts, that that got me to thinking about how many gigs I had played last year. So I got up my calendar and I started counting...

Including gigs with my function band 'The Replicas' (www.facebook.com/thereplicaslive) the total came to 141. That works out on average at one gig every 2 and half days (approximately). I was quite surprised at this, seeing as although I've been called hard working by other people, I didn't feel like last year was a particularly busy year for me. Also, I only had one week in the whole year where I didn't play a gig.

I guess that just goes to show how much I love what I do. That I didn't think a year where I played 141 gigs (booking other acts for and promoting most of them), recorded and released an album, planned and executed my first tour and put on a festival was busy! It's also shown by how much I'm missing it this month, having had a couple of my regular nights postponed through January, including the first Sam Draisey sessions of the year tonight, which has fallen foul of the weather.

I just wanted to share that with you. Not because I'm being smug or implying that JLS don't work hard, but more because, frankly, I'm pretty proud of it.

In other news, I've been recording guitar tracks for some new recordings of cover songs I'm working on today. I'll wait a while before I record the vocals, only because I'm getting over a cold, but I hope to have them down soon. I'll be putting them up online to hear and download and I'll be using them to try and get myself some more gigs and private bookings in the future. Fingers crossed!

See you on the road. I wonder how many times that will be in 2013...

Sam.

Update for the festive period

Hi guys,

First of all, I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. For my own part, my very generous parents bought me a bouzouki, so you can expect to hear that on some upcoming recordings and maybe event some live performances! Also, my wonderful fiancée paid for us to go to Dublin for 3 nights, which was fantastic. We saw some great live music and had a fantastic time. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Irish and Folk music. You won't be disappointed.

However, it seems upon my return that the January pinch has hit home. This has culminated in one of my open mic nights, the weekly gig at The Albion in Wednesfield, cancelling the remaining dates in January. With The Hartley Arms already out until at least February as well, that cuts down on my gigging time significantly this month. I do however have a nice gig at Tattoo Freeze this Sunday to shout about!



I'm looking forward to that one! I'm also on the hunt for some more gigs, with the idea being that I look to travel further afield than my last tour. I'll still play on my doorstep though, if requested :)

As a new years resolution (one of many!) I've promised myself I'll find a new venue in a different city AT LEAST once a month. I don;t think that this is a big commitment really, but if anyone has any suggestions or requests then please don't hesitate to get in touch. I'm already booked to play in Worcester in April, and promised Jamie Perry I'd play in Leicester, so I'll look for a venue there too :)

Finally, you will be glad to hear that I start back at The Robin 2 with 'The Sam Draisey Sessions' this month. The session gigs are some of my favourite nights, and I'm really looking forward to getting back involved in running, booking and playing them.

That's about it for now. Please do keep in touch, I love to hear from you :)

Sam.

The 10 Mile Radius Tour ~ Review

Well, I played the last show on my tour tonight, so I thought I would give you a run down on how I felt the whole thing went. I'm prepared to be completely honest, so I'd love to hear what you make of this. Get in touch in the comments below, on Facebook or by any other way you know how :)

So has the tour been a success? Sort of. Before I started I set myself a list of goals I wanted to achieve by the end of the tour, and some of them have been met. For example, due to a great showing at Coven Beer Festival on Friday night the tour has ended up in the black financially, as a lot of people bought CDs and merchandise. This is a goal that frankly I didn't expect to achieve, so I'm really happy about that. I know it's not all about money, but as a quantifiable way to gauge how the whole thing has gone, it's great to be able to tot-up my total ins and outs and come out with a positive number.

I also discovered two great new places to play that I can definitely visit in the future in Pelsall Folk Club and Bloxwich Bookmark open mic. There is even a chance of me returning to Pelsall as a featured host for an evening in the new year, which would be really nice.

There were, however, some failings to this tour. Firstly and least significantly I wasn't really able to attract people to come to watch me perform in gigs I had included in the tour. I say that this is least significant because getting people to shows was not one of the goals of this tour, it was more about getting me exposed to new audiences rather than trying to attract people who already know about my music. That said, a number of people at Coven Beer Festival on Friday night did say that they had come specifically to see me perform, having either been recommended by the brewery running the night, or seen the posters advertising my performance around the village.

More importantly in terms of my own goals, I did not achieve the increase in exposure to new fans online that I had targeted. I had set myself what I thought were achievable goals for increase in online activity and mailing list sign-ups for the duration of the tour, but these were not met. I have considered that this may be due to the following factors, but if you have other ideas, you know how and where to get in touch;

• Cancelled Shows - Unfortunately for a variety of reasons I had to cancel four of the gigs I had planned for the tour, three of which were venues I had not visited before and therefore would likely have contained people who have not heard my music. 
• Open Mic Nights - another potential reason why I might not have met certain goals was due to only really playing at open mic nights. I host open mic nights on a regular basis and have been to great number of them in my time, so I know how it feels to attend one. It's not really somewhere where a lot of people go to discover new music (in my experience). It's often more about musicians having somewhere to try out new things and the players there, while listening and being respectful, are usually busy planning their own set and 'sizing up' the competition. As great and necessary a tool as they are, they are therefore not really suited to a tour where the main goal is to increase exposure.
• Online Goals - I think (or at least part of me hopes) that one of the problems with the goals I set was that I based the fanbase related ones around online services like Facebook, Twitter and my mailing list. It's safe to say that not all fans of musicians interact with them online. There are hundreds of bands that I love, but I don't subscribe to all of their mailing lists, tweets and Facebook updates, for example. I know that the reason I did this was so that I could easily quantify them, but it gives something of a singular view on my exposure during the tour, especially when you consider that one of the most successful tour gigs was at a folk club, where the demographic was slightly older and possibly less prone to using social media, at least in that way. The fact is I cannot begin to put a number or word to the level of exposure I gained throughout the tour or the number of 'fans' I gained. But then, who can?
• Proximity - Yes, the final possible reason why the 10 mile radius tour was not as successful as it could have been could in fact be because it all happened within 10 miles! There is a reason why acts on a UK tour only play one show in each city or region, because the more gigs in close proximity they do, the more they spread out their fanbase. I put this one last because although it's potentially a valid reason as to why some shows were not too well supported, it doesn't effect the goals relating to exposure to new audiences.

So to conclude, the tour succeeded where I expected it to fail and failed where I had hoped it might succeed. So what do you call it overall? Considering that the visiting gigs I played were all very well received and a number of musicians expressed an interest in attending some of my open mic nights, I would call it a tentative success. If I were to do it again, I would look to book more gigs rather than just visiting open mic nights and set myself separate goals for the differing types of shows, concentrating on promoting my own nights while at open mic nights, and myself while at booked gigs. I'd also like to try and create more content to go up online, such as videos, photos and recordings, to try and bridge the gap between real life tour and virtual tour.

So that's it. Brutally honest maybe, but those are my thoughts. I'd like to hear yours on the subject, should you choose to share them. The 10 miles radius tour is over, but let's be honest with ourselves. The tour never really stops, does it? ;)

See you soon!

Sam.

Spotify ~ Hero or Villain?

There have been a lot of blogs, articles and the like flying around recently about streaming services such as Spotify and whether they are dangerous to musicians due to their low royalty payouts. I read a lot of arguments from both sides of the fence, and thought I would share my views with you guys. Leave a comment with your thoughts at the bottom of this post, I'd love to hear what you think about the whole thing.

As an independent musician, I don't think Spotify is ever going to make me any money. That doesn't mean, however, that I think it is a bad model. The idea of the royalty payouts by Spotify is that you get paid a tiny amount of money every time one person listens to one of your songs. For me as an independent musician without ties to a record label who has a deal in place to collect 100% of my royalties, I get about a third of a penny per track play, so if someone listens to 'The List' from start to finish (12 tracks), I'd make about one and a third pence!

It sounds like nothing, but I'll put it another way. Imagine how many times around the world in different people's personal stereos, car radios and MP3 players 'Dark Side of the Moon' has been played. Millions? Hundreds of millions? More? Now imagine if all of those plays had been on Spotify, which in the future will be possible as they branch their service out to mobile devices so you can take it with you wherever you go. You are looking at millions and millions of plays, each being paid a third of a penny or more as the music is so popular. At a third of a penny per play you would need just 334 million plays of individual songs to make a million pounds. For 'Dark Side of the Moon' as a whole, it would be under 33.5 million plays. Considering sales of that album are estimated at 50 million worldwide and not many people listen to an album just once, you can see how it mounts up. And it would be growing all the time.

So Spotify is just another service that's good for the guys at the top and rubbish for the guys at the bottom?

Well, sort of. I use Spotify's player to play the music on my Facebook page and on this blog. I don't think of it as a way to make money, but rather a way to advertise my music to anyone and everyone that wants to hear it, for free, through a trusted medium. And if they like it, they might just go and buy it. Or at least it might get them interested in my music enough to come and watch me play.

So that's my view on Spotify. If you write a great song or album that people keep going back to, it will pay you in the long run. However, if someone decided to listen to my album 'The List' solely on Spotify rather than buying it, they would have to listen to the whole thing over 385 times before I got the £5 for the CD!

That is why I don't use it for financial gain, but rather treat it as an advertising expense. What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know :)

The journey so far.

I thought that after completing my first week on tour, I would write a little update for you about how things are going so far.

The warm up gig at Katie Fitzgerald's on Wednesday was good fun. It was quite quiet, but the people who were there seemed to enjoy my set, and the other musicians (Luke Turner and Rhiannon) were both very good. I really like playing in the venue. For those who haven't been before, it's a little Irish themed music pub with a venue downstairs, though I've only ever played at the acoustic nights in the bar. Add to that the fact that this was the night that Celtic beat Barcelona! I good night to be in an Irish pub!

Thursday the tour really kicked off as I visited Pelsall Folk Club. I'd never been to a folk club before, having always been rebuffed or put off by the attitude towards my enquiries with members in the past. I've always been given the impression that 'I'm not 'Folk' enough', or even just plain not good enough. I've let this get to me in the past, but I thought for this tour, I'd give it one more go. I'm really glad I did.

I doubt I could have picked a more accommodating club for my first time. The room was quiet during performances but not intimidating, and the music from other performers in the first half was varied enough to settle me into thinking that I might be ok. I did, however, still have to decided what cover I was going to play.

I decided to open with 'Where We Came From', my protest song that comes as close to traditional 'Folk' as I think any of my songs do. But what cover to choose? A number of options floated through my mind as they drew the raffle in the interval and ate sandwiches (I know, they laid on food at half time! Something I could think about for my open nights?!) Eventually I decided upon 'The Boxer' by Paul Simon, a crowd favourite and someone who even devoted 'Folkies' seem to admire.

My set went down really well. The audience even joined in for 'The Boxer'. My worries about militant folk fans were eased, and the congratulations I received from fellow players and members of the audience helped even more. I have been invited back, and I will be returning when I have a free Thursday night. I advise anyone who likes a relaxed atmosphere and good acoustic music to do the same.

Then on Friday I went down to Bloxwich Bookmark Theatre for open mic night. I had no idea what to expect, especially after I arrived and saw that it was also a library, but after bypassing the man on the front desk, I was directed to a small theatre room complete with stage where a few guitarists and poets were sitting. I went on first, played 20 minutes of my tunes and again was very well received. I then sat and was entertained by an eclectic mix of poetry, instrumental and comedy music, with some pop songs thrown in for good measure. The whole night was really good fun, and again, I'm glad I went. I was asked to go back up at the end and play a couple, so I did 'The Sound of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel and 'The Blower's Daughter' by Damien Rice. Once again, these were really well received, and I would definitely like to go back there should I get stuck for something to do on a Friday.

With Saturday my night off, I headed out again on Sunday night for open mic at The Albion. I usually don't get to play many of my own songs here, it's just not that sort of gig. I'm not getting many performers there at the moment, and the people who come to watch would rather listen to music they know. That said, my friend and fellow singer/songwriter David Young (https://twitter.com/DYOfficial) decided to join me, so I had at least a small section of the audience who might enjoy my tunes. I decided that as this was a tour show, I would do my own songs for my first set, and I thought they actually went down pretty well. Something to think about in the future! I went back up after David's brilliant set and a cameo from Bill the local harmonica player to play some covers to finish the night off.

So that's the update for now, I'll do another one after this week's escapades. My next stop is Sandpiper Folk Club at The Pigot Arms in Pattingham on Wednesday. It's a local one for me, so I hope you can come and say hi.

Sam.