Kickstarter / Bandcamp / etc - C or D?

Apparently he has done shit, just hasn't finished shit

I sorta feel like Zelig when I come across someone in the NYT who sold me his James Brown box set

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/yancey-strickler.html

Kickstarter - D
Bandcamp - C

Just my two cents

So i just saw a Kickstarter for someone who is buying every copy of Speed and then wants to change his van and I drive around the country giving tours of his collection (because that's a good plan?). I'm not posting a link cos I don't want to give this guy any more publicity than he is already getting from me mentioning it. Is this what we've reduced ourselves to? Is this the bottom of the barrel? People that have no marketable skills beyond consuming? Privileged idiots relying on public charity to fuel their consumer addiction?

"Is this the bottom of the barrel?"

probably not

and then wants to change his van and I drive around the country giving tours of his collection

Nope, you've lost me there. You're driving around the country with this Speed guy?

No, he does that was a typo.

If he did the tours while always keeping his speed above 50, I'd deem this a worthwhile project

So I really like Bandcamp but my problem is I just write and record songs every now and then and don't have a pre-planned album, hence every time I add a track I have to add artwork and it's more or less posted as a digital single. Can you set up and in-the-works album, like there will be a page with this album and every time I come up w a new song I can put it in, maybe tweak the set listing, etc. Does anyone here use bandcamp and has done this? Seems like it would work.

Well there's the pre-order approach...also, Dominique did the song-a-day thing last year, organized into overall monthly albums.

I'm probably going to have it at $0 (with option to pay if they want) until it's complete. You can change that sort of thing after the fact?

i guess you could create a square band logo image to plug in where the image goes? or take the album cover (or a placeholder mockup image with the album title) and throw 'coming soon' or 'from the forthcoming album...' over the image? xp

you can change anything you want after the fact (songs, price, art, etc)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/garth-brooks-to-launch-digital-download-service-ghosttunes-1.2830131

GhostTunes, a name that grew out of Brooks’s nickname "G," launches Tuesday.

Memo to "G" - Unless you're Oprah, hubris is a lousy basis for corporate branding. And GhostTunes is a terrible name.

The site encourages artists to offer discounts to boost their sales and returns 80 per cent of sales to musicians, labels and publishers, compared with 70 per cent allotted by iTunes and Amazon.

Or uh, the 85-90 per cent allotted by Bandcamp, who don't encourage their artists to devalue their work.

The GhostTunes CEO is Randy Bernard, who formerly ran the Professional Bull Riders Inc. organization, as well as the IndyCar auto-racing sanctioning body.

Awesome.

Do you realise that from the 1st of January there are new EU VAT rules for digital services coming in which mean that VAT will now be payable in the buyer's country rather than that of the seller.

This also means that EU residents will need to be VAT registered to sell any amount to other EU countries as the local VAT-free thresholds won't apply. There is a "one-stop" scheme to help with VAT registration in all 28 countries(!) but you will still need to do quarterly returns ans deal with collecting information on customers and complying with Data Protection rules and so on.

Why do I mention this here? Because among many kinds of "services" it applies to selling music through Bandcamp. BC are doing as much as they can to help with this but until they can change to a system where they process the payments and pay the tax directly this is the situation. It also of course means that downloads will cost that much more.

The new rules were ostensibly designed to discourage large companies putting their services through countries with low VAT (i.e. Luxembourg) rates and allow for a more equal playing field for smaller business. In practice it's going to be next to impossile for many small businesses to realistically trade under those rules. Oh incidentally Luxembourg is getting 1.1 billion euros in compo over this and upping its VAT rate anyway.

Basically it's a massive fuckup. I should emphasise that BC are being characteristically sound as about this and should have a new system in place shortly. In the meantime if you think it affects you as a musician / label / music buyer or in other areas of digital stuff please look into it.

Please excuse typos - on a tiny phone screen here.

The reason music downloads come under e-services is the definition is along the lines of "primarily automated systems". The rules were drawn up in 2008 and obviously the nature of online music has changed since then.

Unfortunately for these beaurocrats they have also incurred the collective wrath of the downloadable felt craft designs massive so I don't see it ending well for them.

Wow this sounds a mess. Now this would affect purchasers of Bandcamp stuff based/released in Europe even if they're here in the States, say?

No it shouldn't affect prices for US buyers as far as I know. Some other non-EU countries are part of the scheme though I think

It's pretty confusing and most of the relevant bodies seem to be under/misinformed and offering poor information.

I know a lot of small UK ebook publishers are freaking out/giving up because of the rules.

This is a good article about Kickstarter: www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/zpm-espresso-and-the-rage-of-the-jilted-crowdfunder.html

Also my sister's husband has a Kickstarter going right now for a prospective business and it's stressing me out. They've raised a lot of money but still have a big chunk to go in the next couple of days.

I'm seeing something weird in my Bandcamp stats. I haven't really been very active (I put up an EP a week or two ago but didn't really promote it much) but this is my "Buzz" chart for the past two months:
http://imgur.com/I8RSsLY
The spikes around June 22 are when I put up the EP. But the other spikes all have either 65 or 66 direct visits, and they're exactly two weeks apart. They don't correspond to any actual listens to my music.

bandcamp question -- how to delete a tag on a track? a friend was trying to help me get my shit together on bc and she put a nonsense word there (no idea why) and now i can't get rid of it

Edit > Tags in the lower right

Thaaaank u

i still can't find the spot to delete tag -- i can add them in the edit screen but i can't get to this one nonsense tag to get rid of it
everything else has made sense and been more or less easy, but this is driving me nuts!

oh i guess you can set tags at artist, album, and track level. so try editing at each of those.

i did! i still can't get rid of it.
so irritating.

i got rid of it!

urgent question for bandcamp users: i know that i can upload as .wav, .flac, or .aif but the files i have are .aiff

1) i think i can convert via audacity but i don't know which one to convert to, if any
2) is there a format that people like better where the cover image is attached to the songs and everything is tagged correctly?

i have never done this before, excuse my noob questions

.aif and .aiff are the same.

ok
is that the one i should upload as then? is that a file type that people will not complain about?

I do FLAC cause it is smaller than WAV size-wise (and so loads faster plus I do looooonnng tracks and if they go over a certain size they won't load at all). That is all I have figured out though, i.e., FLACs make sense for me cause of the file size.

I have never had anyone complain, and I think they can request an MP3 if they want one too (i.e., don't want a large file on their hard drive or whatever).

there are a couple of long ones (8 and 12 min) so maybe i should try those first and then see
i don't have the pro account either so this may take a while?

Well, for me long means like 30 minutes or more (I post a number of live sets), so you should be A-OK with most formats, but the smaller the file the faster it loads of course.

ok that's good! i'll just leave them as is then

i forget, isn't there a track length limit for bandcamp?

Honestly, in terms of which one you use as source for bandcamp doesn't really matter, unless you have super high quality recordings, as people can choose what format they want to download, and the on-site player is independent of that.

http://amazon.bandcamp.com/

what the fuck?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1793481042/star-wars-open-world-rpg/description

already up to $15,000, unsurprisingly.

Pre Intro: This whole project was created solely by me, Devin Tripp. I do not have permission from Disney to create this game as of now. Disney has no part of this as of now. I have received a reply from Disney telling me to ask Lucas Films.

Like many of us when we were kids, we wanted to be like Luke Skywalker or obi juan Kinobi, but like all of us, we do not live in a galaxy far far away. There might be another way though. With all the open world RPGs out there how is there not a good one for Star Wars? I have decided to take matters into my own hands and write a story in the star wars universe that will fit inside a RPG video game that I have not created. I am currently looking into talking with Disney if I am able to do this. If not then there might have to be a compromise on the name or some other parts. I need your help. I am not a very good programmer, and I'm an even worst artist. I want to put this project into the hands of professionals, but in order to do that I need money to hire them. This was my dream as a kid I hope you can share my same compassion, thank you.

There are many people out there that have the wrong image when they think about this game so I will go into deep detail as much as i can to get people more excited about this. As I know there are other "very good" games over Star Wars, but within the bounds of good taste, I believe that these RPG's over Star Wars have not reached their full potential. I do not feel immersed in these games. I am not talking about a 1995/2005 game that could be created in a month or two. I am talking about a Star Wars RPG that will completely blow people away; like "Fallout 4", or "The Witcher 3" did. These RPG's set the benchmark of how the future of RPG's should look, and they are a good blueprint to go on. I want to make something that is like this in some respects, but goes even further. It will have the graphics of "Battlefront" or better with the feel of "The Witcher 3".

The game and story will also have a lot of choice. You will be able to choose which side you would like to be on. You can be evil and reside on the Darkside and rule the galaxy as you wish, or you could also bring peace about the galaxy. Both in their own respects have their perks. Speaking of perks: Like "Fallout 4" there might or might not be perks in the game. At least not the same as they are in "Fallout". I do not want to give away much about the story, but I will give away that you do not start out as a Jedi, but later become one. As you progress your skills get better as your ability to use the force. It is very exciting that I have already gotten backers. I will be providing updates every couple of days, and answering any questions that you might have. I am still answering others so please be patient.

- Thank you, Devin Tripp

there is no video, no interview, and no art past a poorly cropped Star Wars logo

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/292521457/i-want-to-put-punk-stuff-on-pogs-and-maybe-bart-si?ref=home_recs

Stupid.

still only at 1% funding :-/

http://i.imgur.com/ayWvFM3.png

http://www.rockfeed.net/2016/11/03/people-pissed-allegaeon/

something very insignificant i've noticed about bandcamp and what happens if you hit << while you're in the middle of a song: a lot of online services replicate what would happen if you were in the middle of a song and hit << on a CD player, i.e., they return to the beginning of the song you are currently listening to. bandcamp, instead, jumps to the song prior to the one you're currently listening to.

Pricing peeves:

1) Asking less for all tracks individually than for the album as a whole. Why u do that? Are we paying a premium for a neater looking collection and easier streaming or is it just sloppy arithmetic.

2) Asking more for the DL only than for a cassette (+DL). I've come across this quite a bit. It's nice for local buyers (while stocks last), but why ask overseas fans to pay more if they don't want to stump up the postage or care about physical? In addition there's VAT (~20%) on digital only for EU customers but NOT if it comes with a physical copy!

Do us a favour!

based on my experience as someone familiar with the pricing process, the answer to #1 is sloppy arithmetic -- they ask you to set an album price first, then they give you the option of selling the tracks individually. It would probably help with many people's arithmetic if they reversed the steps