So far, of all the music I have on YouTube, the most popular is the Habitable Moons album on the curated site Psy-Fi Music. I've been meaning to release it to the stores, but I've been busy working on Astrologicus. It's coming along nicely - if I could get Pigments to behave with Cubase. (They don't seem to get along).
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I haven't written anything here in a while. Most of my time I occupied with music - promotions and creations. I did proof a poem that will be appearing in Agapanthus soon. When it does, I'll post the link on the writing page. I've been streamlining my album Astrologicus. All twelve songs will be around five minutes long, so if I put it on a CD it'll fit, as the album will be about 65 minutes long.
Music promotion, like book promotion, is a daunting and expensive feat. I joined MusoSoup, a promotion site similar to SubmitHub, and the reality of promotion is a strong slap in the face. So far, I received four offers for either paid or free write-ups/articles from online magazines. The free version means my album, The Dream Merchant, gets put on a playlist somewhere, like Spotify. The paid offer guarantees me an article of perhaps 100 to 500 words. I opted for the free playlists because paying for all four would set me back about $40. That's actually not bad. I mean, that's just the nature of the beast. Is that kind of like payola? I suppose. There's no guarantee that coverage will get you sales, though, especially for ambient music. Probably, only Steve Roach and Brian Eno makes money from album sales. No wonder Martin Sturtzer technically releases a free album every week. I consider his Stay At Home concerts as albums which, for all intents and purposes, they are.
I was scouring the internet looking for ambient radio stations to submit some tracks to. The most popular one, according to internet-radio.com, is Sleep Radio Stream based in New Zealand. I send them a few tracks and they approved two of them. I'm glad. If anything, it says I'm actually able to create ambient music and not just a pretender. (Yes, I crave validation from time to time, including of my writing).
Without a doubt, one of the more crippling disabilities someone can have is PTSD. When you suffer from it, you don't plan for tomorrow. Long-term goals are an illusion. 401(k) plan? Hah! You're surprised you even wake up the next day. With the specter of death always hanging over you, you hurry to accomplish anything you've set your sights on. And so it is with me. In my quest to get my poems, short stories, novels, novellas, and music done, I hurry, often leaving errors and incompleteness behind. I'm aware of this dilemma, and in the past, what kept me glued to my task was drinking. With a bottle in my left hand and remote in my right, I was able to plant myself in front of a TV and watch movie after movie. I no longer drink, so my TV watching days are over. How I'm able to complete anything these days is a mystery, but yeah, it's tough as hell. What helps is I'm desperately trying to change my living situation, and if I can somehow acquire the funds to relocate to a secluded cabin in the woods, preferably in Lasqueti Island, I'd be a happy man. Maybe.
Visual Atelier 8 is a European, award-winning media arts & technology magazine. They accepted Aquarius today provided I release it commercially. So, I did, with CDBaby. It should be in stores in a month or so.
Yay! RouteNote delivered on their promise and dropped The Dream Merchant on Amazon, Spotify, and YouTube. I haven't checked other sites but I'm sure it's there as well. Previously, Spotify wouldn't let me access their Artist page because they weren't 100% convinced that I'm Robinicus. Through RouteNote, I was able to access my page where I put up some new pictures, a short bio, etc. I'll do some promotion for The Dream Merchant and contact RouteNote in about a month about releasing something else, maybe Ambient Abstractions or Habitable Moons.
Typical of folks with PTSD, I also have frequent nightmares. some disturbing enough to jar me awake. I had another one today, and like any self-respecting ambient composer, I created a soothing, dream-like track to pacify my nerves. It's called The Quest for Peace and I uploaded it to Bandcamp just now. Other than that, I've been busy rewriting Aquarius. Because I slowed it down from 116 bpm to 94 bpm, I'd forgotten the length of the song now clocked in at 8 minutes instead of 6. I sent it off to curators on SubmitHub anyway. DJ's cut from track to track when they're mixing and sometimes don't use the entire song anyway. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
So, I've been busy shopping my psychill/downtempo track Aquarius around. A curator from SubmitHub wrote me and said my track's not psychill or downtempo and maybe it's synthwave? I looked for synthwave curators and, as it turned out, there weren't any on SubmitHub. In other words, I failed. I was aiming for something chill, like Carbon Based Lifeforms or Auratech. I'm trying to save the track now. I slowed it down from 116 bpm to 94 in Cubase. Unfortunately, some of the sounds sound corrupted, especially the bass and sampled drums. I just replaced the bass; I'll work on the samples tomorrow.
In the mood for promotion, I thought I'd give internet radio stations a looksee. The first one I ran into, AccuRadio, allows you to upload music if it was commercially released. First, though, you have to register with SoundExchange. I did that, and man, it took forever! I then emailed Accuradio for their upload link. If they approve my request, I'll submit Celestial Hopes even though I'm not the record company. If that's an issue, I'll limit AccuRadio to the ambient music I release through RouteNote. Either way, the promotion train keeps chugging along.
For the better part of thirty years, on and off, I've performed live on stage with my guitar strung around my neck. There were a few instances where I played keyboards, but by and large, it was always a strat. Now, the possibility of performing live with turntables, like a lot of ambient artists do, seems weird. If I want to get with the program, I suppose I have to do the same thing - shlep out there with digital turntables like a DJ. To be fair, some of the artists I admire (Martin Sturtzer, Steve Roach, Tangerine Dream, etc) do drag thousands of dollars' worth of synths out on stage. Since I'm as poor as a church mouse, I guess I'll do the Carbon Based Lifeforms thing and go out there with a Pioneer deck, my laptop, a mixer, and maybe my Nektar controller. That should work, I hope.
I suppose I can't complain. Not much to report. My work on Astrologicus continues. I've been thinking about buying a digital mixer and a desktop synth like a Roland SH-32 to prepare myself for live shows - if I go that route, that is. But am I ready to end my reclusive life? Something to ponder.
So, yeah, that's something to celebrate. Too bad I don't drink anymore otherwise it'd call for a toast or two of champagne. The album is Habitable Moons. In case you're curious, scientists have outlined several moons in our galaxy where human life has a possibility of survival. I suppose these trials are expected. The many hats I wear include songwriter, musician, engineer, producer, mixer, and promoter. The promotion stuff, I must admit, is easier now than it was 20/30 years ago. back then, you had to shlep your behind to the post office with stacks of packaged demos. Or, if you were in a big city, go knock on several doors till one of them opened. Thanks to the digital age, you can go online and promote to your heart's content. Of course, free promotion only gets you so much. Paid promotion, however, is where the magic happens. I don't have the funds for that kind of enterprise at the moment, but should I hit the lottery, I'll start promoting my works big time. The first single out the gate is Aquarius.
i registered with Digital DJ Pool earlier this week and just uploaded my first track, Aquarius. It's the first song from my upcoming psychill/uptempo/chillgressive album Astrologicus. I have to hit up the food bank later. When I come back, I'll either work on my writing, music, or watch football replays on the internet.
I joined Jamendo today, but I must admit, music licensing is a new avenue for me. There's so much to learn. Music licensing sites allow you non-exclusive rights, meaning you can place your music in several different platforms. Seizing the opportunity, I registered five tracks, some of which already appear on Jamendo, to PremiumBeat, Shutterstock's music licensing arm. Now, I just found out I can make more money at Jamendo if I give them exclusive rights to my songs. I'm waiting to hear back from PremiumBeat if they accepted the five tracks I'd sent in. I'm leaning towards PremiumBeat because Shutterstock's a popular licensing site. Interestingly, PremiumBeat only wanted five tracks and MP3's to boot. Jamendo seems to be unlimited and requires WAV files. All food for thought.
Jamendo is a music licensing site. I wasn't aware of music licensing till I got a tip today. I'll utilize it for my ambient singles. So far, I've put five songs there. Eventually, I'd like to get the rest of my singles there as well. Hopefully, it all works out. (Isn't the music biz a fickle industry?!)
Music distributor RouteNote approved my album, The Dream Merchant, and will be releasing it to stores in two weeks. That's good news. There's some weirdness attached to it, though. RouteNote can't place it on YouTube Music, Facebook Music, TikTok, and Instagram because Content ID was blocked for release. According to their criteria, they don't accept ambient in those stores. Why? I don't have a clue. I'd like to drop one album/month, so next month I'll try to get distribution for Habitable Moons and, in December, Ambient Abstractions. By then, I should be finished with the album I'm currently working on.
I promised myself I'd compose a Berlin School-type track, so that's exactly what I did this week. I put on Bandcamp a few minutes ago. I've been negligent, though. I started working on a short story called Little Hammer last week, but I took a detour to work on my upcoming chillgressive/psychill/downtempo album, Astrologicus. I've also been toying with calling it Celestial Dances, or something like that, since it's basically a downtempo dance album. We'll see.
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Robinicus/Robin RayIs a musician, poet, and author from the Pacific Northwest of the US. Archives
February 2023
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