Thursday, September 25, 2014

we need new cults.

so, i'd like to announce my new cult-based subscription business model.

200 subscribers

deathtokoalas
i don't really get this subscribers thing, but the number seems to be increasing steadily.


Faust Skelter Noize 
You post really musically informative comments on videos. Lol. I was listening to la dispute and deadMau5's new record. You had the top comment on both vids.

deathtokoalas
i've been aware for a while that people seem to be subscribing to the wrong feed. putting a like up on this page or subscribing to me on youtube indicates you're interested in the music - and i've certainly had a few people interested in the music, but not nearly that many, from what i can tell. my channel is an artist channel. if you want to follow my comments, you should be following me on google+, because that's where they get sent from.

so, what i think is happening is that people are liking my comments and subscribing to my artist feed, then interacting with the "wrong" content.

the reason it can be a tad offsetting for me is that it builds up false expectations. i'd like to think that uploading a video with 200 subscribers might mean at least 50 will watch it. but that number seems to be more like 10. i'm getting far more hits from random surfing...

so, i said i don't "get it". i do "get it". i perhaps should have said "i don't see the use of this subscribers thing, but...".

from my perspective, i'd probably argue they should consolidate the feed so that "subscribing" to deathtokoalas is a one-click operation that sends both comments and uploads to the feed. the user should then have the option to subscribe to comments, uploads or both - and i should get the metrics, so i can measure how much interest is tied into what.

as it is right now, i don't really have a clear understanding of how many of the 200 people are interested in reading my comments, are interested in listening to my music or are just subbing out of a sense of solidarity.

i do realize that it's weighted very heavily towards the comments, though, and that the result in most cases is just a dead feed, creating a dead sub.

it's especially confusing, considering that i comment on a lot of social issues. i'm not really that close to either, but i'm closer to deadmau5 than la dispute; most of my stuff is instrumental, so deadmau5 is a better comparison just on that basis alone. there's some possibility that a deadmau5 fan may get something in the feed and dig it. but, there's really little reason to think that the subs that come out of solidarity for a feminist statement or a geo-political analysis or an anarchist rant are going to translate into any kind of interest in the music - that solidarity could be coming from the world's biggest folk fan, or a hip-hop purist, or an older person that listens exclusively to "classical" music. having that all mixed up into a confused user base that doesn't seem to know what they want to subscribe to just creates a number that doesn't really have much meaning, in the context of what i'm creating and what i'm doing to promote it.
i have a new top track...

'boogeyman' and 'mom' have been bouncing back and forth for a few months, but it's actually balancing off two aspects connected to usability of the site rather than an implication of popularity. i've stated this before: youtube hits measure marketing reach, not audience size. i mean, i'm a hair under 200 subscribers and it seems like less than ten of them have bothered checking out the song i uploaded yesterday morning. i've been through this before and it's just a function of the site: i don't read my feed often, either. it's just daunting to get twenty minute videos thrown at you every few seconds. you want to sit down and watch youtube content; it's not a feed that you can really check on the bus, like facebook.

'mom' has in truth generated far more interest, but that's because it's placed second in sequence and has an outlandish name, causing people to jump over the first track to it. boogeyman is fourth in sequence, meaning it's rarely the first point of engagement.

but, this file has three tracks in it - 9,10,11 - so it's been up on the front of the page for the longest. that's why it has the most hits.

it'll cycle out on monday morning, and 'mom' will no doubt catch up within a few weeks. the first demo cycles out at the end of october. i'd have to guess that 'mom' will catch up before then and will be most likely to hit 2000 first, depending on any spikes or lack of spikes i get as i'm entering the promotion cycle for the second demo. i would expect that a newer track will be the first to hit 3000 and start climbing higher.

i'll have a better statistical breakdown of my first demo promotion period at the end of october.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gTfycvt1VU&list=PL3JSjmqp0cbslW9qCBKT_nEcwUt1DY0aN

after inri029 is inri030, which i uploaded a few weeks ago.

that is indeed a different person singing, and that voice will define a handful of things in the next couple of inri-numbered releases. the 'rabit is wolf' material includes the vocals of this other person.

what i'm actually going to be focusing on for a bit tonight is trying to reconstruct the bass part in this track. it's actually a very simple tune - there's really only 6 parts in it. but, i initially recorded the vocals and bass to a single file. basement recording in 2001 didn't include fancy things like mixer interfaces and digital audio workstations; i had one 1/4 inch jack in, and at most two tracks to record in with, by splitting the single into left and right with a 4-track tape recorder. so, the initial file had the bass on the left and the vocals on the right (or vice versa). unfortunately, the only thing i have to work with at this point is a single stereo file with the bass and vocals together.

i can't really redo this. the synthesizer parts are mostly improvised, around a melodic theme. further, everything is just a little bit out of time - which i fully realized and exploited fully to make it sound unusual.

the vocals and bass are mostly separated, though, enough that i may be able to salvage most of the bass part with a wave editor and very carefully overdub what i can't. the key thing is making sure the timing is identical to what exists in the recording.

i'm not going to kill myself over this, though. if i run into problems, i'm likely to quickly abort. if not, expect a mix up in the next day or two.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/me-myself-and-the-time-i-thought-this-was-a-good-idea