International Drama Re-release

A few months ago I released an album of 10 songs here on DMusic and made it fully available for free download with album art etc. Despite being available for 4 weeks and advertising on this site and others as well as emailing a lot of people about it, the CD was only fully downloaded a maximum of 22 times in total.
I'm thinking that maybe the effort of having to come to DM and download each song and JPEG individually may have influenced that poor turn out, so I have posted the album in full (.zip file), along with the album art for anyone who wants to burn a CD here...

http://www.mediafire.com/?8jfswdgzxzj

Just one click and it is all yours.. again, completely free. All songs but one are 320kbps - so take that Radiohead!

I hope you enjoy it.

Fra.

"I'm thinking that maybe the effort of having to come to DM and download each song and JPEG individually may have influenced that poor turn out"

Fra, you and myself, (and all of us, the DMusic artists, also all the independent artists in the world) need to realize that it takes a little bit more than "making it available" to get them (the potential fans) to notice.

There is also involved a little thing called "promotion"

UNFORTUNATELY, the RIAA has another little thing called a "monopoly" still operating in its' favor right now.

You want noticed and downloaded? You, me, and we are all gonna have to really really work hard at something called "guerilla promotion"

I know, I know,

...it SUCKS, it makes you feel almost as SLIMEY as a used car salesman (or a spammer)

...but folks, the DMusic site is NOT a place with many "fans" (beyond your fellow musicians - where you are already "preaching to the choir")

FOLKS,

we MUST expand our efforts of promotion as artists BEYOND just DMusic.

GET THE HELL OUT THERE IN THE REAL WORLD AND AT OTHER SITES AND SPAM SPAM SPAM YOUR NAME!

Most of us are here are ALL guilty of gazing at our navels.

(For goodness sake! Spend $10 at Kinko's and print up 1000 black and white business cards with your band's DMusic URL and then go down to the local mall and pass every single one of those cards out to the shoppers who pass-by. Do just THAT simple act and observe how quickly your "hits" add up.)

Well actually, now that all the songs are under the one link I submitted a press release and my local paper has agreed to follow up on the story.

I do think if you do too much promotion in the wrong places - you will end up annoying people and alienating them from your music. You'd become the human form of a pop up ad.

"Overkill" is something VERY FEW of us here at DMusic need worry about.

I promise you Fra, as long as you BACK UP your "advertisements" with the GOODS (which we here at DMusic already KNOW you are able to deliver)

You are NOT gonna feel any "backlash" from self-promotional efforts in your local arena.

It is the FAKE artists who suffer ridicule from being over-exposed.

(Hint: think of the Beatles. SUPERHUGE HYPE - but did they EVER "loose cred"?

Compare to Brittney Spears or some other over-rated SUPERHUGELY HYPED artist who DIDN'T deserve.)

------------

Folks, do NOT be afraid to TOOT your horn if you actually CAN toot your horn.

...correction to the original article.

I stated "All songs but one are 320kbps"... that is in fact not true. There are two songs encoded at less than 320kbps. I only discovered this a few minutes ago.

Apologies!

It would be... I don't know...

Wrong, somehow... to write about the songs in this release, in detail.

So I'll write about what isn't included.

There's no speed riffing. No agonized screaming. No ten minute drum solo. No hallucinatory synth vistas. In brief, there's nothing included here, that screams "Look at me".

International Drama isn't a vanity piece. As a matter of fact, it's a bit on the shy side. The vocals are even a little bit reluctant to demand that they be the full center of attention. They give way to the songwriting more often than not, and the writing gives way to the emotions that are expressed.

In other words, the focus appears to be making the songs as capable as possible, in their ability to reach the very best in each of us... and remind us that we are decent, and kind, and gentle, and human.

On that level, there's a temptation to say it succeds admirably. But that would be an understatement.

When a collection of songs provokes a truly rewarding emotional response, it's best for one not to toot their own horn, but to let those whose hearts have been touched do it for them.

I'm hard pressed to offer logical, well-phrased arguments in the interest of persuading anybody who's reading this article to go and download the album.

I'll just say that I love it, and I really, really hope that there are others out there, who will feel the same. Fra's music is personal. Something you listen to for yourself. You don't get material like this because you think that it will impress your friends or coworkers. You get it because you're hungry for it, and because it makes you feel good.

Isn't that what songs are really supposed to be for, anyway?

Wow. My first review. Thanks Michael. You are the man! I'm really glad you enjoy the album.

Shmoo, it depends what you want to achieve with the music. I recently released a CD on CDBaby, I produced, mixed and mastered a CD myself and got a short run duplication of 100 cds. And when they're gone, I am not going to reprint, I am happy for a small pool of people to enjoy my music. And then it's available at the INternet Archive, Jamendo and Dmusic.

I am 36 years old, overweight, going grey, riddled with psoriatic arthritis, diabetes and high blood pressure. I am not going to be 'discovered' and nor do I want to be. I work full time in education and love my job. Now 15 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago I might have been ready to take on the world in a promotional storm.

And you know, as much as I support the anti-riaa initiatives, I don;t have the time or the energy to want to compete with that. There are plenty of websites where you can get your music played online and there are more initiatives coming out such as canada's national radio station CBC, having a slot for canadian independent artists on CBC radio 3, on which i have enjoyed being played a couple of times on their internet podcast.

And Fra, I recently made my album available for free download for a limited time (1 week) and to my knowledge only 6 people downloaded it. It's amazing how apathetic people can be, you make something available for free and it's too much effort to click on a button and wait a wee while for the 60 mb file to come through. Although in my case, as I have sold 18 physical copies of my CD through Dmusic, that maybe negated the free download to some extent and maybe I should have left it up for more than a week.