i need your advice about the new faux pas album.
but first – here are two things i probably shouldn’t show you, but i’m too excited *not* to show you! and no, i’m not referring to my balls!
they are productions from the house de faux pas this week. i love them! works in progress. names have been changed to protect the innocent. streams only for the moment… both these tracks will be released in some shape or form next year – just like my album, right? ha ha ha ha!.. ha ha… oh. sadness.
Listen: Danish Grannies – Granny’s Danish (Faux Pas Monster Dub instrumental mix)
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Listen: Lothar’s Singing Science – Space Opera (Faux Pas instrumental mix)
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update: just so we’re clear – because its been pointed out to me that it is anything but clear – these aren’t tracks from the new faux pas album. they are 2 remixes i’m working on at the moment.. like i said, names changed to protect the innocent.
now, to get your opinion on something. press play on one of those above tracks, and then read on.
its occurred to me the last few days that its really only me thats delaying the release of my album. i mean, the music is finished. its ready to go. i’m just putting off releasing it because of a) some kind of conventional music biz wisdom about not doing anything in the lead-up to christmas, because, you know, important people are distracted and also b) some kind of conventional music biz wisdom about how a release should be co-ordinated so everything happens at once, digital & physical distribution coincide all at once with targeted promotion across all media platforms and all that toss. like thats the ‘right’ way to do it, right? Professional.
but i’ve got all the tools at my disposal to do it right now, if i wanted. i mean, i could upload and sell the mp3s on bandcamp – literally, i could get that shit uploading and it’d be ready to go by the morning. then tomorrow, i could go down to one of my friendly local cd manufacturers, put in an order for 500 CDs or so. i’ll get them back in about 10 days time, but in the meantime i can start selling them pre-order style via paypal, right here on this site. i can email people and tell them its out. no worries. send some free mp3s around for people to, fingers crossed, play on the radio or on their blogs. as for itunes & amazon – and selling it at the ‘real’ record stores, the ones that sell the shiny discs in the shelves – maybe i can figure that out later, next year.
its all kind of silly, you know? like, i have the record here, in a folder on my computer. its labelled “FAUX PAS – ALBUM 2009.” i could put it in a zipfile and rapidshare/mediafire/yousendit to you if you wanted. i’m only waiting because at some point i convinced myself that there was a ‘right’ way of releasing a record, which involves a lot of planning, and more waiting. like “you’ve waited this long, wait a little longer and do it right.” what does that even mean?
so… in what is probably only the latest in what i’m convinced is a growing list of incredibly poorly judged decisions – i’m thinking about putting my album out in 10 days time. i reckon i can pull it together. why wait?
i mean, you do want to hear it, right? hmmm. there may be a large flaw in my logic.
can someone please either talk me in to doing it, or talk me out of doing it? please leave your opinion in the comment box. thanks!
36 comments:
Go for it. These days, good stuff always gets around to the right people no matter how it’s released and marketed anyway.
Just do it. We (the people of the southern hemisphere) need new music for the summer. You (the artist) need to provide it. Now, everybody open the door, get on the floor, walk the dinosaur and so on.
If you’ve got the album ready, why not? As Bek says, we need new music. Having said that, there’s nothing like having an actual hard-copy album. But that can come later. If people like your music they’re going to buy it in any form they can (whether it’s Christmas or not), and if they really like your music, they’re going to buy the hard-copy album at some point. They don’t have to be coordinated. And who knows, maybe by the time the hard album comes out you’ll want to add stuff to it anyway? Love the songs by the way.
Yeah just do it.
Maybe you can release that Christmas single I know you have stashed somewhere to help promote the album.
Sounds great by the way.
Drop it like it’s hot.
I suppose I’ll play devil’s advocate. On an old Beats in Space episode with Tim Sweeney, his guest, Ewan Pearson, urged a period of relaxation in a music scene he called ‘rushed and inundated with too much stuff’. He claimed that he’d felt compelled to slow down a few of his projects because the scene, aka amateurs with macbook pros, were saturating the market. That being said, i’m sure Ewan can afford to wait, he’s got great distribution and enough promotional support. The point is, if you feel an itch to delay your next album, follow it. Who says the whole operation shouldn’t feel slow cooked, calculated etc? If you do release the album in ‘10 days time’ you’ve nothing to lose, but there may be more to gain by waiting just a little longer…
Also, why wait until the close of 2009 to release the album? Instead Faux Pas could have one of the first great albums of 2010….
Absolutely do it! Those tracks and awesome, and I agree with what Matt Raw said entirely.
I reckon you should start with one song at a time over a period. Say one new track every three weeks, for half of the tracks, then do the whole album. Cos so much stuff comes out all the time people have short attention spans.
This is an old-school (singles, then album) method, but I think it makes even more sense now we’re in media hypersaturation mode.
Well, as much as I’ve been itching to hear this album for, like, forever, I suggest you hold off. I mean, let’s face it, you probably only want to release it now to bask in the hyperbole and year-end-list glory of bloggers like myself but that shit is fleeting, sir, and no reason to rush out something you’ve been slaving over for probably decades. It’s like virginity, Tim! Wait ’til the moment’s exactly right before you get your fuck awn!
I think I’d have to agree with Geoff and Michael – there’s something to be said for the slow burn method. I think it would be in danger of getting ‘lost’ if you release it end of November-ish. People have so much other stuff going on over Dec/Jan.
Why not release some kind of limited-run special edition track and remix-thingie in time for Xmas to keep us all happy (and limited edition of a physical run is fun, yes?) and then release the whole album once next year is underway and things have quietened down?
um, why are you all saying different things? didn’t you get the memo? you were all meant to advocate a single course of action, one way or the other.
y’all makin it real hard for me to absolve myself from the responsibility of making this decision, the Most Important decision in my Very Promising career
but no seriously, keep talking… i’m not convinced yet either way!
What would Michael McDonald do, Tim?
Think about it.
Polly’s right. Limited edish 7″ pls!
i know its probably just coincidental timing, but i released EPs at about this time of year in both 2007 and 2008 – was really hoping that the next thing i ‘released’ would be a bit longer and have a bit more substance than a 7″ or a digital EP or whatever… also perhaps worth noting that releasing those EPs at that ’silly season’ time didn’t seem to have a huge detrimental effect on how they went, although in both cases people seemed to switch on to it after xmas just as much as before…
also, the sooner i put this album out, the sooner i can put the next album out. and the next album. and the remix album. and other collaborations and projects and stuff that all for some reason is waiting until the album comes out.
re: it possibly being ‘rushed’, well the album is done so in terms of the music, i’ve taken my time with it over a few years and its well and truly cooked. i won’t be laying a finger on it now.
the only thing that runs the risk of being rushed is my own promotional efforts, co-ordinating some kind of plan for getting my music out there and to the right people. but who’s to say that the ‘plan’ i come up with in the next 10 days – which surely won’t be much more complex than emailing some dudes, and sending some CDs to some other dudes – will be that different to any ‘plan’ i concoct over a few months time? i mean, either way, i’m just a dude with an email account and some mp3s…
wow i am SO trying to talk myself into this!
Look, if you’re comfortable with going HEAD-TO-HEAD with Foo Fighters’ Greatest Hits then you should go forth. I doubt they’ll think of emailing some dudes anyway!
Tim, you know I love you, but please stop procrastinating and just release this album… maybe not in 10 days if you need a little longer to line things up promotion-wise, but at least sometime before Christmas.
I think that everyone has contributed a valid point to this issue of “wait” or “do it now”, but in my opinion, you’ve kind of whipped everyone up with your “I’m teasing you” bit & you now OWE IT TO US to be able to get our greasy little hungry mits on a hard copy of your glorious tunes…
Because your music is great, man – and it needs to get out there in the world of people’s stereos & headphones soon!
So that you can not only ride the coattails of success, but so that you can unclog your musical bowels to get started on the next project with a clean slate…
Mind you, listen to me prattling – I still haven’t sent you those raw files of Gokiburi Nightmares… haha…
i love you man.
if you were here with me now, i’d give you a hug and a beer, but this will have to do. this one’s for joh-un!
I say just put it out and then you don’t ever have to think about it again. If all the promotion isn’t co-ordinated and stuff then you’ve got something convenient to blame if the record doesn’t sell a million copies. Works for us.
There’s nothing to stop you releasing it now and then doing further promo and stuff for the album later on, and wait for people to pick it up and really get into if need be. Plus I WANT IT NOW!
I just consulted Naboo’s magic 8 ball…not much help but he did mention a brewing pain-storm. Joh-un’s previous comment re unclogging your musical bowels springs to mind..?
I say, do whatever will make you happy. Those that love your music will be buying it either way.
And it sounds like you already know what will make you happy…
Yeah, i say go for it if you feel it’s what you want/need to do. Don’t let ‘the proper way of doing things’ hold you back.
There have been plenty of great albums out there that have had a kinda slow-burn release, months later everyone finally catches on.
Plus that’ll give us the opportunity to feel smug because we knew about it before all of the bandwagon jumpers ;)
I say ignore convention and release it now, yourself, and send it everywhere you possibly can. The music is done, and I’m sure you’re excited about everyone hearing it. (For what it’s worth, I’m certainly excited about hearing it.) Like you said, it’s the conventional idea of a ‘release event’ after Christmas that you’re tied to, but consider this: not much else about your music is conventional. You’re not chasing trends promotionally, artistically, or otherwise, so I say go with what you’ve got, which is a dedicated internet fanbase that wants to hear what you’ve created. People on the internet want everything RIGHT NOW, so they stand to gain by getting it now and, like you also said, you get to start working on and releasing other material.
That said, let me say this: I think you should formulate a plan for the next few months. If you release the album now, you can stretch its release in a number of ways. Email now, Facebook-promote in two weeks, tweet about it in three. Get some of your fans to street-team up and prove they’ve handed out five CD-R copies to friend-fans in exchange for a secret track or a Twitter shout-out. Release outtakes and extras through March. Remix album in April. Videos showing production processes, share limited Ableton sets, et cetera et cetera.
Whatever you decide, I can’t wait to hear it! Good luck, man.
sorry this isn’t going to be very helpful (or at least, decisive) because i’m about 75% pro-waiting because yes, i think there is a chance of it getting lost if you don’t get it out at least by early december. the radio shows, blogs and other publications are already wrapping up by this time, and they may not revisit a 2009 “release” next year.
but that said, if you’re itching to do get it out there already, then just do it. soft release now, hard copy in the new year. the problem with waiting til the new year is that putting stuff out in january is not much better than december. i think it’s still holiday mode and the business end doesn’t really pick up til feb at the earliest.
thanks one and all for your advice.
i’ve been reading over all of your comments the last 24 hours, hoping that somewhere in there an answer would emerge, like in a magic eye book. its been hard to get the gist of what you’ve all been saying with my eyes crossed, but at one point i think i saw a bear wandering through the woods.
i think i’m actually leaning towards the, how should i put this politely, “don’t-blow-your-load rhetoric” which is being espoused by some of the cooler heads. thats also been the advice i’ve gotten from a few of my friends in community radio, which i think (and perhaps this point is debatable) is equally as important as the internet as an outlet for music like mine. that is a whole other debate in itself i think.
but gosh, the breathless enthusiasm of some of y’all – and joh-un’s particularly stirring metaphor of ‘clearing the musical bowels’ – well, i haven’t made a final decision yet but will soon.
there will be (cross fingers) a release of some kind before the end of the year, hopefully quite soon… i hope this kind of transparent discussion of the process hasn’t completely taken the fun out of it for anyone.
thanks again all
Very clever, Tim; very clever! This whole thing is part of your marketing campaign, isn’t it?
i had it all planned back in 2005! and you all fell for it!
not really – i am genuinely confused. i’m also terrible at picking what to eat at a restaurant or ordering pizzas.
anyone reading this who has had personal dealings with me will attest to the fact that i will go to great lengths to avoid taking personal responsibility for important decisions in my life. at least thats what gabriel byrne said to me in that dream i had.
I guess what I was saying is release something now, but not the album. And make it part of the overall fiendish scheme for promoting the album. Hence the single-every-few-weeks proposal. I understand you want to release something more substantial, but I reckon see a series of smaller releases as part of a larger release and promotional effort, not as a disappointing alternative to it.
(The words ’something’, ‘part’ and ‘alternative’ above would have been italicised if I knew how. I figure you’ll get the idea though.)
Anyway: you’re in radio: tell me if I’m wrong. I just assume guys like you get a slew of new releases each week, and your attention drifts to at least some of the shiny new things when that happens. If this is true, use it to your advantage by releasing often, rather than to your disadvantage by putting the whole thing out there in one hit. The music-appreciating public is like a very long digestive tract, and the tastebuds are only at the front bit.
hmmm are you SURE you’re not the next MGMT? signed to a major already but drumming up a grass roots grown swell?
@michael:
from the radio point-of-view, and i would think bloggers might feel the same way about it, ideally you want to be eased into a record and not just have all 45 minutes of it front up in your pigeonhole one day. this is largely because of the volume of stuff you get sent. you get sent so much stuff… its rare that you are going to give more than one or two tracks from any release your attention, even if a whole album is sent to you, not enough hours in the day. unless of course you really love it (even then sometimes its hard to find time to really appreciate it, when you’re trying to stay on top of other stuff…)
that said, dave and i try and give whatever gets sent to us as good a listen as we can. for our radio show we are generally playing stuff we have found independently. only a handful of things that make it on air during our show are things sent to us out of the blue – usually local unsigned stuff and demos that we wouldn’t find out about any other way. aside from those very limited/homemade type of releases, when we get sent releases that we like, we’ve usually known about it/downloaded it/bought it many days or weeks previously!
most would argue that its better to give radio & blogs one or two songs at a time than give them your whole record, at least to begin with. ideally, if people actually start featuring your music, there’s some kind of cohesion to it. so, yeah.
the single-every-few-weeks idea is cool, but you can definitely alienate people in radio by assaulting them with simply too much stuff. just yesterday someone at rrr was telling me a story about getting letters from bands saying “hi, i’m from such-and-such band. in two weeks time, you’re going to be getting the first single from my new record, keep an eye out for it.” two weeks later, a cd-r with one song on it arrives with a letter attached “ok, here it is. in two weeks time, we’ll be sending you the second single from our killer new album, keep your eyes peeled.” a few cd-rs later… well it doesn’t matter how great your music is, that is going to give people the shits.
and then all the radio presenters are going to sit around and make fun of how desperate you are. i’d love to say this doesn’t happen, but it does! radio presenters are jerks! also, most of us are very dumb, so if you give us one track at a time, it saves our brain power for the difficult tasks of pressing play on the cd player or saying what time it is.
@james:
yep. pretty sure. the only thing i’ve signed is my soul to satan, in exchange for some d&d miniatures
Tim! I sense a contradiction in your reply above! Or I am just dumb!
Let’s pretend I’m the one with an album I want to release, not you. If I wanted you (in your To & Fro identity) to give it the best attention possible, what should I do? Should I send you a track at a time or the whole thing, or some other alternative?
i’d be pleasantly surprised if anything i wrote above actually made sense.
re-reading it, i think i’m definitely making some generalisations – i can think of a lot of radio presenters who would surely prefer to hear the whole record upfront so that they can judge the whole thing on its merits. like, you wouldn’t ask the necks only to send you 3 mins of their record and save the rest til later.
i guess what i am largely talking about – aside from my own pitifully short attention span – is the idea of a single release. if you are lucky enough to get some attention from radio and/or blogs, it can be helpful if its focused around one song. even if i’d ‘released’ the FP album here on the blog next week (now looking unlikely)- i think i still would have only sent 1 or 2 songs to radio/blogs initially.
as for you personally michael – you should send me battlesnake albums, or anything else you’re working on, IN FULL, AS SOON AS THEY ARE COMPLETED!
Ha!
I think what linked the generalisations you made about Wrong Ways Of Doing It (whole album too soon, or too many songs too often) is the scarcity of Other People’s Attention, or OPA. And so the mission is to find a way to promote your stuff as though OPA was scarce. Which seems to lead inexorably to the two tools for increasing attention: mystification and publicity stunts. So you should release the album however you want, but dress only in capes, refuse to explain why, and organise to be on reality television.
As for Battlesnake: you’d make us blush if we weren’t covered in scales.
Hi Tim
I just wanted to ask to to pretty please with sugar on top enter this competition my company is in the midst of creating for Tooheys Extra Dry! It’s kind of a talent comp for Australian artists with the amazing prize of popping over to New York to create a track with Mark Ronson, Santigold, Nick Hodgson from Kaiser Chiefs, Sean Lennon, John Tayor of Duran Duran and members of The Dap-Kings.
We have an ad campaign running for recruiting talent but I just wanted to shoot this over to you because in my humble opinion you’re by far the most interesting and promising Australian artist out there at the moment.
And you wanted to figure out a good way of releasing your new album… Well here it is :)
The catch is that the last day of registration is TOMORROW, November 18th… So if you’re interested, you need to act now.
Sign up at: http://www.tedthelab.com
Here’s a clip of Mark Ronson introducing the comp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bkuX9w5eyw
/Andreas
Yes, I agree with Michael.
You should dress only in capes.
But.
The capes should be covered in sequins.
Furthermore, each sequin should actually be a miniscule Compact Disc emblazoned with the artwork on top of the CD of each of your previous releases and of photos of you.
The sequins should also be arranged in an impressionist fashion, so that, standing from a distance, people can behold the image of the artwork for your next album.
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