Producing and composing the music is one thing, but marketing can be harder in many ways. In the new world of digital music, there are still no standards as to what are the best ways of getting the message out there. And if you want to do all the aspects of marketing professionally, meaning paying people to do it, it will set you back a lot of money that is very hard to get back in the form of income. At Rabiang Records we are lucky. We have an artist (Bonnie Ashmore-Davis) who contributes original paintings for little return . It creates a cohesive graphic concept that's hard to beat. In the design we want focus on the paintings, so the design is simple in other regards. But simple doesn't mean easy. We are definitely improving in how we communicate our product, and that's largely due to Jamie O'Rourke. He is the singer on the new album. But he is also the manager of Wave Entertainment Phuket. While running this business, he has learned a lot about marketing and design, knowledge we are trying to make use of in the promotion of this second album from Peter's Sunrise. The selection of fonts is better, the sites more clearly communicates what we want etc.
So, what do we want? We think that the music shouldn't always take the easiest road to "convenient listening". You will be challenged when you listen to our music, but maybe not in the way you thought. We won't try to surprise you with pure noise, but by twisting things in a unfamiliar way. By not having huge budgets, we are able to do exactly what we want, the way we want it. And here technology helps bringing the sounds to fruition. With the new sample libraries we can create choirs, cello ensembles etc. But we don't follow a modernistic goal here, we don't try to make the instruments sound realistic in any way. In this way our music is futuristic. We don't try to make the celli sound like celli. We try to make them sound good, according to the current goal. And that is sometimes like celli, sometimes not. We mix the celli with synths and strange chords that sometimes doesnt even follow a key. In this sense we are inspired by 12-tone music. We also love imperfections. We don't auto-tune anything. We fix when we need to fix. We also make sounds OUT of tune sometimes, to achieve certain goals. The age of realistic music is over. We think that the concert experience, symphonic or not, is no longer a reference for music. We can create our own references. They can be nature, movies, childhood or car racing. If a live violin is run through 3 effects and flows in the stereo field like a synth-line made by The Future Sound of London, does that make it wrong? If a vocal sample is chopped up and new melodies are created with the pieces and then mixed with another vocal, does that make it wrong? Call it postmodern or futuristic, it doesnt matter. What matters is that music can be created without rules, and thats what we try to do. Our marketing will build on this. We will try to create a lasting base for this kind of music. Slowly, but surely, we will reach out to the people who wants this kind of music. Sure, we will market our music, but we wont use all the fancy new tools. We don't want to "personalize the experience" or "think about what the consumer gets from you". We want to create cool music over a long time, this will be our main campaign.
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Soundcloud.com is a great place to find new music. But its easy to overlook the group function they have there. By using this function you can access thousands of groups that often work as sub genres. Its a really good way to explore cross-genre music that doesnt fit a general category, for example Techno Jazz. You will also find all the normal genres with twists, like Electronic Orchestral. Users seem to browse groups more than they browse members. That certainly makes sense, because its so much faster and easier to find things you like! If you are using soundcloud, make sure to follow Rabiang Records or one of the groups we share in. We have a different selection of songs on soundcloud, compared to reverbnation. The reason is that we can fit some of our experimental songs into the cross-genre groups.
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Sometimes it can be hard to categorize music. What genre is Peter's Sunrise? In this project we mix elements of Jazz, Orchestral, House, Techno, Ambient, World music and Electronica. When the song Selasi was nominated for HMMA in 2011, it was in the category World. On Reverbnation.com we were categorized as Other. On allaboutjazz.com, we are labeled jazz. So, what genre does Peter's Sunrise belong in? We have decided that Electronica is the most appropriate. The reason is that within this genre using elements of other genre is ok. In jazz, its much harder to get acceptance for the fact that some of our songs are more towards house or orchestral. In this sense, Electronica is a more tolerant genre than jazz or orchestral. One reason for this is that Electronica is defined partly by the way the music is made. But Electronica is more than that. Usually it signifies an interest in experimentation and new ways of making and mixing music. Thats what Peter's Sunrise tries to do. So from now on, we will use this genre to describe our music.
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Arturia has just released all their softsynths in 64-bit. I picked up the minimoog, really a good emulation of the original! They also have the jupiter and the prophet 5, really good synths too.
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I was browsing the endless menus and options on reverbnation (and the 4 other sites i need to manage) when I realized I hadnt activated the ALL-IMPORTANT STREET TEAM.
i sat down like a general making a plan for his guerrilla attack force and wrote the first mission for the ALL-STAR STREET FAN TEAM.
Mission Details
Total N/A Generated: Mission Type: Offline
Mission Title: Stay alive while being socially networked
From 2011-06-28 to 2011-07-04
Description:
Your mission this week is to survive the social network onslaught. This week you will get especially entangled in social nets, while trying to figure out what a twit in the widget in the embedded frame is doing to your mind. Are we just knots in social nets where all that has meaning is the net and not the art? Is art becoming useless or is useless becoming...yes, you guessed it...art? Or are we truly seeing what always was the function of culture, creating relations? If you survive this week you will truly be ready for... next week.
Reward if you complete the mission:: Continued nets and knots with weird background music from Rabiang Records
I hit complete...but got the dreaded message that i had no ALL-STAR GUERRILLA TEAM ready to engage the social nets. Oh well, I guess I will write a blog instead, i thought.
Reply
Rabiang Records / Blog
Defining our music and marketing an album
Producing and composing the music is one thing, but marketing can be harder in many ways. In the new world of digital music, there are still no standards as to what are the best ways of getting the message out there. And if you want to do all the aspects of marketing professionally, meaning paying people to do it, it will set you back a lot of money that is very hard to get back in the form of income. At Rabiang Records we are lucky. We have an artist (Bonnie Ashmore-Davis) who contributes original paintings for little return . It creates a cohesive graphic concept that's hard to beat. In the design we want focus on the paintings, so the design is simple in other regards. But simple doesn't mean easy. We are definitely improving in how we communicate our product, and that's largely due to Jamie O'Rourke. He is the singer on the new album. But he is also the manager of Wave Entertainment Phuket. While running this business, he has learned a lot about marketing and design, knowledge we are trying to make use of in the promotion of this second album from Peter's Sunrise. The selection of fonts is better, the sites more clearly communicates what we want etc. So, what do we want? We think that the music shouldn't always take the easiest road to "convenient listening". You will be challenged when you listen to our music, but maybe not in the way you thought. We won't try to surprise you with pure noise, but by twisting things in a unfamiliar way. By not having huge budgets, we are able to do exactly what we want, the way we want it. And here technology helps bringing the sounds to fruition. With the new sample libraries we can create choirs, cello ensembles etc. But we don't follow a modernistic goal here, we don't try to make the instruments sound realistic in any way. In this way our music is futuristic. We don't try to make the celli sound like celli. We try to make them sound good, according to the current goal. And that is sometimes like celli, sometimes not. We mix the celli with synths and strange chords that sometimes doesnt even follow a key. In this sense we are inspired by 12-tone music. We also love imperfections. We don't auto-tune anything. We fix when we need to fix. We also make sounds OUT of tune sometimes, to achieve certain goals. The age of realistic music is over. We think that the concert experience, symphonic or not, is no longer a reference for music. We can create our own references. They can be nature, movies, childhood or car racing. If a live violin is run through 3 effects and flows in the stereo field like a synth-line made by The Future Sound of London, does that make it wrong? If a vocal sample is chopped up and new melodies are created with the pieces and then mixed with another vocal, does that make it wrong? Call it postmodern or futuristic, it doesnt matter. What matters is that music can be created without rules, and thats what we try to do. Our marketing will build on this. We will try to create a lasting base for this kind of music. Slowly, but surely, we will reach out to the people who wants this kind of music. Sure, we will market our music, but we wont use all the fancy new tools. We don't want to "personalize the experience" or "think about what the consumer gets from you". We want to create cool music over a long time, this will be our main campaign.
Reply
Groups are the way to go on Soundcloud!
Soundcloud.com is a great place to find new music. But its easy to overlook the group function they have there. By using this function you can access thousands of groups that often work as sub genres. Its a really good way to explore cross-genre music that doesnt fit a general category, for example Techno Jazz. You will also find all the normal genres with twists, like Electronic Orchestral. Users seem to browse groups more than they browse members. That certainly makes sense, because its so much faster and easier to find things you like! If you are using soundcloud, make sure to follow Rabiang Records or one of the groups we share in. We have a different selection of songs on soundcloud, compared to reverbnation. The reason is that we can fit some of our experimental songs into the cross-genre groups.
Reply
Peter's Sunrise is now listed as Electronica
Sometimes it can be hard to categorize music. What genre is Peter's Sunrise? In this project we mix elements of Jazz, Orchestral, House, Techno, Ambient, World music and Electronica. When the song Selasi was nominated for HMMA in 2011, it was in the category World. On Reverbnation.com we were categorized as Other. On allaboutjazz.com, we are labeled jazz. So, what genre does Peter's Sunrise belong in? We have decided that Electronica is the most appropriate. The reason is that within this genre using elements of other genre is ok. In jazz, its much harder to get acceptance for the fact that some of our songs are more towards house or orchestral. In this sense, Electronica is a more tolerant genre than jazz or orchestral. One reason for this is that Electronica is defined partly by the way the music is made. But Electronica is more than that. Usually it signifies an interest in experimentation and new ways of making and mixing music. Thats what Peter's Sunrise tries to do. So from now on, we will use this genre to describe our music.
Reply
Arturia softsynths
Arturia has just released all their softsynths in 64-bit. I picked up the minimoog, really a good emulation of the original! They also have the jupiter and the prophet 5, really good synths too.
Reply
Lost in social networks
I was browsing the endless menus and options on reverbnation (and the 4 other sites i need to manage) when I realized I hadnt activated the ALL-IMPORTANT STREET TEAM. i sat down like a general making a plan for his guerrilla attack force and wrote the first mission for the ALL-STAR STREET FAN TEAM. Mission Details Total N/A Generated: Mission Type: Offline Mission Title: Stay alive while being socially networked From 2011-06-28 to 2011-07-04 Description: Your mission this week is to survive the social network onslaught. This week you will get especially entangled in social nets, while trying to figure out what a twit in the widget in the embedded frame is doing to your mind. Are we just knots in social nets where all that has meaning is the net and not the art? Is art becoming useless or is useless becoming...yes, you guessed it...art? Or are we truly seeing what always was the function of culture, creating relations? If you survive this week you will truly be ready for... next week. Reward if you complete the mission:: Continued nets and knots with weird background music from Rabiang Records I hit complete...but got the dreaded message that i had no ALL-STAR GUERRILLA TEAM ready to engage the social nets. Oh well, I guess I will write a blog instead, i thought.
Reply