Tag Archives: music

simple ways to idolize me

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UPDATE: This post is getting a lot of attention!  If you’re here from some website or re-Tweet, I hope you stay and check out my site, and download my free Christmas CD!

I also have a permanent continuation of this page here.

I’m sure at some point in your lifetime, you’ve thought, “Gee, I really like Josh Belville’s music, and I really want to help him become rich and famous, but I do not understand these Internets.  What can I, a simple beggar, do?”

It’s easy!

First and foremost!

last.fm!

last.fm!

Let me know that you’re listening!  One easy way to do this is to get the last.fm scrobbler.  I could explain to you why it’s called a “scrobbler” but that would be boring and nerdy, so I won’t.  I’m not sure if you have to sign up for an account, but even if you do, it’s worth it (for me, at least :) .

All you do is download the software and install it.  Then when you’re listening to music, it puts what you’re listening to on last.fm.  This may freak you out if you listen to Britney Spears every day on repeat forever, but don’t worry, chances are there’s another dude in Germany who does the same thing.  You guys can be friends!

They also have software downloads for your iPod and iPhone, so there’s no excuse to say, “I can’t scrobble you cause I have an iPod!” Plus almost every song I’ve ever recorded is available for listening there. For free! So if you wonder, “Should I buy such and such album?” well, just go to last.fm and listen to the whole thing!

What This Does for Me:  Two things.  First, it lets me know how many listeners I have, and how many times my tracks have been played, either through the last.fm radio, or through scrobbling.  Second, I get a very teeny royalty for each track that is played.  So the more tracks that are played, the more money I get!  It’s not gonna pay the bills or anything, but it could buy me some new strings for my guitar, something I desperately need!

Second, and slightly more obviously!

BUY MY MUSIC!  

I had a discussion with my friend Rhett about getting an audience, and my thoughts basically boiled down into one sentence, which was: 

do i offer my albums for free for anyone to download, and by doing that, feel like my stuff isn’t good enough to be bought, or do i sell my albums and risk losing listeners because they can’t get it for free?

(I type in lowercase in chats and IMs because I am ultra 1337)

songs for autumn! yeah!

songs for autumn! yeah!

The truth is, if I could, I would offer everything for free, but then I couldn’t have a website, because I would go over my bandwidth every month, which would require me to get more bandwidth, which would require the cost to get bumped up, which I can’t do.  Plus the psychology of the whole thing does get to me.  By giving away things for free, I feel like I’m lessening the value of my work, which is kind of ridiculous, because it’s art, but unfortunately these days value is measured in money, which we all need to survive.  So if you have a couple of bucks and can spare those bucks for some good music, then I encourage you to do so.  That way I can keep making more music!

What This Does for Me: Pays for my website, future pressed CDs, future uber-digital distribution (iTunes, AmazonMP3, etc, instead of Snocap),  gives me more time to tour and make new songs!

UPDATE: After giving it a lot of thought, I’ve decided to scrap Snocap.  Or as I shall now call them, Snocrap.  Ingenious, I know.  I’ve had too much trouble with their system.  I’m currently looking for an e-commerce site specifically on my website.  So DON’T BUY FROM SNOCAP, er, SNOCRAP.

 

Thirdly!

 Twitter — Facebook — Myspace!  Use them!  Add me to them!  Pay attention to updates!  Ultimately, this may sound stupid and hokey, but I want to be your friend.  (Okay, it does sound stupid and hokey.)  I would much rather talk to you through social networking sites than write a long blog here about how you can listen to me on last.fm.  It’s more fun and I get to meet a lot of very cool people.

There are a lot of cool new sites out there too, that offer a lot more for fans than those three do.  Sites like ReverbNation, iSound, The Next Big Sound, they’re all out to help listeners like yourself find new and exciting music.  So do yourself a favor and check them out!  I can’t guarantee that you’ll enjoy every one of those sites, but if you do, I heartily recommend you establish yourself on those sites.  If you like ReverbNation, then join a street team!  Sign up for a mailing list!  Make yourself known, because if you do, the artist (i.e., me) will pay attention and appreciate that.

What This Does for Me: Keeps me in touch with YOU, the listener.  The age of untouchable celebrity is waning.  The future is connected.

There are all sorts of other things you can do, like giving my music to your friends (burn CDs!  trade MP3s!  I don’t care), coming to a show of mine, putting up flyers for shows, etc, but in the end you will only do those things if you like my music (and, by extension, like me, I guess).  So before you go crazy, take a listen.  If you like it, follow through, please.  If you don’t, no harm done!

And that is the end of that.

new fun music site: the next big sound

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There’s all sorts of websites out there dedicated to allowing artists to get a fan base.

But there aren’t a lot of sites out there allowing listeners to act as music moguls.

Check this out: The Next Big Sound.  It’s a site where listeners get to choose which bands to put on their “record label”.  A pretty ingenious idea, if I do say so myself.  For some reason it makes me think of, and miss, Muxtape a whole bunch (the old Muxtape, I mean, obviously).

I, of course, have set up an account on TNBS.  Put me on your label!

a little bit more about the college music network

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I don’t really have anything to blog about lately.  The only super cool thing that’s happened is that my blog port about college piracy was posted on the Artists House Music blog.  Those guys are very nice.  I met them on Twitter, of all places.  I didn’t think you could meet people on Twitter.  It seems pretty extreme, as in, either you’re very insular and don’t add anyone ever, or you’re constantly adding people all of the time.  I can’t even imagine what the middleman is.  And how do you find people to add?  Do you just pore through other people’s Twitter friends?  I guess websites help.  It’s all very foreign to me.

My post on AHM didn’t really augment the visits to my own site, which is fine, but it adds to  my theory that people generally don’t check links back to something.  I could be wrong.  I’m not expecting Slashdot levels of hits, of course, but it’s always interesting to see how many people become interested in this site through other sites.  So if you found this site because of the Artists House Blog or some site relating to the article I wrote: hello and welcome.  I hope you enjoy yourself.

I was thinking about whether or not I should write a second part to that article, a “how to” piece about what would be needed to successfully create a music service superprogram for college and universities, but then I remembered that I don’t know anything about computer programming.  I’m just the idea man.  Still, it would be fairly simple.  You’d just need the students to login with their student ID number or e-mail address, thereby confirming that they are who they claim to be.

The College Music Network, as I’ve been calling it in my head (or CoMN for short, pronouned “Common”), could possibly be a humongous multiversal social networking site if launched correctly.  Think of all the fun things you could do with it.  First there would be “hubs” for specific colleged.  Boise State, for example, would have its own homepage and specialized music centers (and would, in my world, have info on new and established bands from Idaho, major or indie label).  Then you could have statistics from all the universities regarding what’s popular.  This would be available for all students to look at, but would obviously benefit music labels as well, since they would have concrete evidence of what is popular in what section of the country, to the most egocentric and money-spending demographic in the country.

This is essentially a thing that Facebook could’ve easily integrated into their social networking site back when it was a college-only site.  I applaud them for taking it in an obvious direction and making it into a global networking site, but now, because of Facebook, we have a solid architecture that we can study and build upon for our own goal of creating a secure music sharing website/program.

I’m still wrapping my head around the logistics of the entire thing, but I think it’s more than possible.  If anything, it’s probable.  And if anything more, some smart programmer somewhere out there has read this or already come up with a similar idea, and will make it happen and I will receive no acknowledgement whatsoever.  It’s okay, I can deal with it!

I guess you have to patent intellectual property, don’t you?  Or copyright it?  Stupid law stuff.

cracking down on illegal music downloading in colleges

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The fine fine people at Artists House Music Tweeted this article and it immediately caught my attention.  I wanted to reply to them but 140 characters is not enough for what I want to say.  Then I thought, I have a blog!  Yay!  I’ll just write something there.

AND THE REST WAS HISTORY.

So I’ll just reprint what the article says, since it’s pretty short and some people (like me) don’t like to click on a bunch of links sometimes.  It reads:  

A few legislative notes:

Yesterday (the very day the CMA Awards were hosted in Nashville) Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen signed into law SB 3794, a bill that requires all public and private universities and colleges in the state to take proper steps to assure that their networks are not being used to illegally trade copyrighted material. It also requires each school to develop and enforce a policy for computer usage, network usage and ethics. The House IP subcommittee was abolished and will be bumped up to a full Judiciary committee.

My immediate thought upon reading this was: they’re gonna screw it up and get a bunch of college students pissed off at them.

Continue reading →

my fingers hurt from doing this. seriously.

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Some of you may be thinking that I spend countless hours crouched over my guitar, thinking hard about the next lyric, the next melody, how to go into the chorus, etc etc etc.  This is partially true.  I do spend a lot of time thinking about that.

But sometimes I just try desperately to figure out how to play the Bubble Bobble theme song.

I still can’t quite get it.

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(apologies for the loud whistling)