Thursday 15 October 2009

Jack is not well

Tomorrow I head to Leicester where I have an appointment at the Apple Store so they can take a look at Jack who is not well at all. I fear the cost of fixing him may turn out to be more than he's worth (economically... He will always have a place in my heart as my first ever mac!) Which means buying a new iMac. On the plus side I was planning on this purchase so it's not come out of nowhere and it needed to happen anyway, but I don't really have the money for it yet. However I have decided that I want to get the best that I can even if it means being poor for a while, because the iMac is the centre of my studio and over time I want to build the best studio that I can, which means buying the best equipment, even if I can't afford to get it all at once.

So I need money, and I've been thinking of ways to get it. People have suggested setting up a 'chipin' which basically means people donate money to you... I don't love this idea because people are giving you something for nothing. So what I think I'm going to do it release some of my songs that so far have been unavailable to buy on this new site I've found. It's called bandcamp and you can set it up so people can download songs or albums for any price. So I'll put together some tracks, put it up there and people can enter the amount they want to pay for it, which will basically be their donation towards my new iMac.

What I'm not sure of is which songs to use. I was thinking of using all of the instrumental tunes I have, there are four so far and I could do another one to put in a promotional video, but I wonder whether people would pay much for instrumentals. I do have a few full songs recorded - Alaska, Don't Go, Dance On, Burn Forever, When I See You Again... I was planning to release these properly at some point but I could use them for this? Do you think more people would go for that? I could do both separately, or I could put all of them together. I actually have a video for Alaska ready to go... If I can get it off Jack.

Right. I think I'll start with the instrumentals, I'll do one more - obviously I can't record properly, they will all be just camera recordings, but the mic is pretty good. Then I'll have five instrumental tracks, I'll put them together as an EP and people can buy it for any amount. Then later I still have the option of doing the same with the full songs, if someone donated a load for the instrumentals they can always get the songs for 1p so in effect they have made the same donation and have all 10 tracks.

Sound like a plan?

If anyone has any thoughts on this, or has any other ideas for me to make some iMac money (inb4 get a pc instead... Get out of my life) then feel free to comment or email me.

xxx

5 comments:

Dale said...

"Get a job lolololol get a pc instead lolololol"
I imagine thats what dougs comment will go like. =p

I like the pay what you like EP idea, up to you what you want to release. I think people would be more inclined to donate more for full songs, although I'd like to hear instrumentals too.

Dave said...

Hmm I'm already changing my mind about which ones... I'm ripping my own songs from youtube as I type!

I don't think they'd work all together that's all, think they'd make more sense as 2 separate EPs.

Tom Inc said...

Instrumentals are good ^^ I like hearing them sometimes...throw some of them in xD

Nat said...

you could always do another "sunshine sessions" style thing, then put each song up individually, I think that way more people would be inclined to purchase them individually as opposed to one big chunk, you might make some extra dollars off it as well :)

Dave said...

@Nat trouble is there's a fee for each transaction, so if someone bought all 9 tracks separately I'd have to pay the fee 9 times!