Curt Siffert

Looks like Damn My Eyes is Track Of The Day today in Alterative Pop, over at garageband.com. Check it out.

I recently signed up for "pay-to-play" promotions for Last.fm and Jango.

Last.fm and Jango are both systems that will recommend your music to others based off of similar tastes. Users of the sites listen to music through their online players, and they get a mix of artists that are their favorites, and new artists the system believes they will like based off of analyses of "similar artists".

The question for independent artists is how to break into that and get your music recommended to new ears. On the one hand, the whole point is for listeners to find new artists - that's you! On the other hand, the system needs to know about you, which requires many listens from many people. It's a catch-22.

So the way around that is to buy plays from these services. There are of course a variety of opinions on whether a good artist should even need to do this, but listeners need to hear about music somehow.

I decided to test Last.fm against Jango. I used two of my songs, She Believes and Damn My Eyes, and I picked the smallest play package for each. Here are the results:

• First, I signed my last.fm copy of Damn My Eyes up for a promotion of 100 plays for $20. I chose similar artists of Ben Folds, Jamie Cullum, Harry Connick, Jr., Randy Newman, and Marc Cohn.
  • Full Listens: 71
  • Skips: 27
  • Loves: 3
  • Bans: 1

  In addition, another last.fm user recommended it to a friend of theirs.

• Then, I signed my last.fm copy of She Believes up for the same promotion - 100 plays for $20. I chose similar artists of Billy Joel, Ben Folds, Jamie Cullum, and Harry Connick, Jr.
  • Full Listens: 75
  • Skips: 23
  • Loves: 0
  • Bans: 0

  In addition, two people outside of the campaign "loved" the track during this time.

• Then, I signed myself up for Jango - on my artist page you can see the rough results. I ran two separate promotions. The first one was for Damn My Eyes. The minimum was $30 for 1000 plays. You need 50 "likes" for a song to get into general rotation. After 1000 plays, I had somewhere around 200 likes, and 10-12 fans.
• After that, I signed up again for She Believes, for another 1000 plays. I got another 150 likes and another 6-8 fans I believe. It's hard to tell which stats are for which songs because their stats page doesn't list a complete history, but that seems to be the rough breakdown.

To judge these results you can go listen to my songs to get a relative sense compared to other music you like. But when judged against each other, my rough conclusions are that Damn My Eyes is slightly more likeable (in a broad sense) than She Believes - however I find that She Believes tends to make a stronger impression on the people that like it.

But regarding the services themselves, while it was fun getting the extra listens, I'm still not sure of the benefit of either of these services, for a variety of reasons.

1. Last.fm does not give you a sense of where that critical mass point is. How many listens does it take for them to start recommending you after a paid promotion? After the conclusion of my promotion, I haven't noticed any additional plays of my tunes through last.fm. Having no sense of how many listens it takes, I don't find it worth the money to pay for additional promotions.
2. It's too early to tell with Jango since my promotion just ended, but I think I am getting at least a couple of plays a day out of Jango now, after the conclusion of the promotions. That's not a lot. I'll report back here if that jumps up at all.
3. Response rate sucks. I tried writing my last.fm listeners to say thank you, and I got some new last.fm "friends" out of it, but out of more than 100 messages that I sent, only two wrote back, and I only got one new signup to my mailing list. I am sure this is because many of the plays had to have been to passive listeners.
4. It's the same with Jango. I've tried writing all of my 18 fans independently and I got one signup - a guy that joined my facebook group. This is better than last.fm, but Jango is still confusing here - I can see on my page who has "liked" me and who has signed up as a "fan". In terms of functionality, there is absolutely no difference. I can't write all my fans at once.

My whole strategy at this phase of my career is to build my mailing list and write songs. I don't yet have a cd or a product to sell, so I use my music to build my mailing list so I have as many likely buyers as possible when I eventually do have something to sell. So from my perspective anyway - and factor in your own opinions of my music quality - it doesn't look like these services are worth the results. I basically paid $50 per lead. (Update: Jango response rate is getting better - their listeners might be more active.)

Now, there are several things that could moderate these conclusions:

1. Continued future plays could yield more mailing list signups, which could make the services feel "worth it". I'm noticing Jango plays, but not Last.fm plays.
2. Since my two tracks are well-mixed but one-off rehearsal takes, better produced studio versions of the same songs might yield better results
3. Flat-out better music might yield better results, but that would always be true even if you're Mozart.
4. I'm sure I could design a website that would better designed for increasing mailing list signups.

But overall I think it's important to note that both of these services appear geared to the listeners, not the musicians. It does a good job of introducing new music to listeners, but neither do anything towards encouraging the listeners to become active supporters of the musicians behind the music. There is a lot of music out there, and you're really just sort of being anonymously presented to people. This creates a low likelihood of building an actual relationship.

Update: I'm informed that Jango is only a few weeks old. My impressions of Jango overall are positive, and it's clear they're actively working on functionality. After getting another 3-4 mailing list signups I'm more optimistic that Jango's promotions might be worth it.

One of those occasional GarageBand awards came my way today... Damn My Eyes won "Best Mood in Alternative Pop, week of 9Mar2009" today. Here's the song page, where you can also check out a few of the reviews.

I dug up one of my old songs from my back catalog. This song isn't particularly representative of my current direction (for one thing, there are no instruments), but I'm fond of the memory. College a cappella goodness, and much more difficult a song than those guys had any business being subjected to. Kudos to them for getting through it. Vagabond Blues.

I got an email from Dan Lowe that tonight was the final songwriters showcase at Mississippi Pizza - I haven't been for a while and decided to attend. I went with Pete, with whom I'm co-hosting Acoustic Conversations (more on that later).

Turns out it's not really the final songwriters showcase in Portland, it's just happening at a new location now. It was a fun night, though. It was a sparsely attended open mic night (I still haven't figured out where the busy open mics are), so the people who attended got to play multiple songs. There were a few people there also that weren't there to play, so it was a nice audience of 15-20 people.

I didn't have any intention of playing; didn't bring my keyboard or anything. But after they got through the first round, Dan good-naturedly heckled me from the stage a bit and I agreed to go up and play a couple of songs using the upright piano.

I chose to do My Favorite Clown and She Believes. This was technically my third gig. It's fun how in these early stages, there are all these firsts. This is the first time I've performed live on a real piano, and I prefer it. Sound-wise I prefer even an upright to a keyboard, I think.

The audience was great and I was pleased at how comfortable I felt up there. I think I could get used to this!

I'll be doing a 25-minute songwriter showcase tomorrow, Tuesday, January 6th at the Thirsty Lion pub on 2nd and Ash. My slot is somewhere between 8:30 and 10:30. One of the songs is new enough that it's not on this site yet, it's called Damn My Eyes. I'll be playing with bassist Chris Gustafson.

I uploaded a new version of She Believes over in Songs. This one has Steve Morgan on bass.

I uploaded a new version of Balancing Above The Air over in Songs. This is one with my trio. I'm hoping that new recordings will come soon as I come up with better versions of what I already have up here. I also have three other songs roughly completed, but not quite ready to upload yet.

One thing I am told from time to time about my songs is, "It sounds like it could be in a musical!"

I often feel bad for the people saying it, because many times people mean it as a compliment. But the reason it puts me in a foul mood is because of all the other people that say it dismissively.

"Music Theater" is often code for "not marketable". There's a real snobbishness about it too - I've seen it come up in comments from Garageband reviewers, and it always has a dismissive air to it. And recently I got it from a songwriting judge, too.

There are a whole ton of elements to this.

First, there's people being down on music theater in general. You try to pin down what they mean by it, and it will usually lead to some stammering and "it's just... music theatery". Second, there's a lack of understanding on what music theater even is. Sondheim is not in the same universe as Andrew Lloyd Weber. But third, there's the apparent wisdom out there that it's not good for a song to sound too music theatery... whatever that means, and with no real explanation of why.

Me... I started in classical. And I loved Billy Joel and Harry Connick, Jr. I arranged Top 40 tunes for a cappella singers. I music directed two Sondheim musicals. I am quite involved with jazz. I love piano. I studied film scoring and classical composition. I love Ben Folds, Jamie Cullum, Bruce Hornsby, James Taylor. I like pulling from a lot of different areas, I like the synthesis. I really like the idea of finding a way to combine pop structures, folk/country storytelling, jazz harmonies, and classical technique. But I think to some even that is basically a formula that adds up to music theater.

Honestly I don't really understand this apparent bias against music theater to begin with. Cole Porter? Gershwin? They're not exactly lightweights. But here's the other thing - by now, I actually know a bit about music theater. Music theater pieces serve a grander plot. They don't tend to tell a complete story by themselves. They don't tend to have concise song form structures because they often pull in interludes and recitatives and quotes from other pieces. They're driven by conventional accompaniment patterns, like triadic quarter notes over and over again that don't challenge the melody singer - background music that stays out of the way.

And that description has nothing to do with She Believes. She Believes is not a freaking musical theater piece. It's in 5/4, for christ's sake. You're not going to hire a music theater actor to sing and dance in 5/4! The train wrecks that would ensue. Not pretty.

But I got that comment from a judge - in the form of listing a bunch of compliments, separated by commas, but concluding with "but it sounds like a song from a musical." No other comments. There was nothing constructive about that comment - no examination of what is actually bad about something being music theatery, what was meant by it, and why it would nullify the other compliments.

Rather frustrating, and I'm sure I'll be getting that style of comment many times in the future, because being a piano-driven songwriter is enough for some people to sum the music up as music-theatery. I'll try to remember to take it as a compliment from those that mean well by it, but for those times when I have to swallow hard after hearing it... hopefully this explains why.

Update: Busted! Apparently "Everything's All Right" from Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Jesus Christ Superstar" is in 5/4. Dammit!

Tonight I had my first gig of my originals.

Well, sort of. It was a songwriting competition - eighteen songwriters, each performing two songs. I decided not to advertise this particular gig just because I felt like it was something of an experiment, but I had a couple of good friends in the audience - people who have been subjected to practically every little revision and roughdraft of my various songs over the months (including a few that are still too rough to post on this site - but fear not, they'll be coming soon).

So this was a real first for me. My first gig of singing/performing my own stuff. I've done classical piano recitals, gigs with my college a cappella singing group, gigs with my jazz band (both of which I've sung lead for on a couple of rare occasions), but I've never sung/performed my own songs.

I was 15th in the lineup, so fairly late in the evening. The event drew some pretty good songwriters in, so it was an entertaining night. It's interesting listening to raw songs - there isn't much people can do production-wise when you're limited to one or two instruments.

I was curious how nervous I'd be, because while I tend to be pretty comfortable on stage, I hadn't done my own songs before. But aside from an elevated pulse, I was all right.

I chose to perform Balancing Above The Air and She Believes. Balancing, because it's easy to play and because most of my friends recommended it as being the most artsy and singer/songwriter-ish... even though it's not one of my personal favorites - I like it musically, but it's just not really about anything. She Believes, because it's definitely my favorite. With the right production I still believe it will sound amazing.

I'm so used to a real piano though. The gig was playing a Kurzweil PC-88 through a sound system, when most people are used to keyboards being a supplementary instrument. It was quiet and without much dynamic range - wasn't able to get the musicality out of it that I needed.

But the performance went well I thought. I was surprised at how relaxed and focused I felt up there. Apparently I'm pretty comfortable performing. I had one memory slip in She Believes in the left hand, but no one noticed because I had my man Chris Gustafson playing the upright bass at the same time.

Afterward is when I got jittery, I seriously needed to shake some things out. Later in the night I was pleased to get good comments on my singing voice, of all things - after earlier in the day remarking about how I thought that was my weak point. And I met some other good players that I'm hoping to see playing out again - Chris Kokesh, Lupe, Paola Maya. Also some other players I've met before that did very well - Dan Lowe, Ron Shaffer, Dan Weber. Some other newer names that I haven't met before but I'll have to catch them at the next gig.

The next gig! Ulp!