Pedro Costa
|
Hi Brad,
Been a fan of what you do for a while and as a singer/songwriter/producer myself I wish I could implement some of the things that you have.
Some questions I had:
1. Do you have a band that performs with you when you do live gigs? Or do you have a one man band type setup?
2. On the topic of music distro: Do you find that by giving away music you end up with more donations and loyal fans wanting to purchase the tracks?
3. Love the functionality of your website. Do you use it as you main platform to keep your fans in the loop?
Got lots more questions but don’t want to overwhelm.
Looking forward to chatting with you.
Cheers,
Pedro Costa
http://www.pedrocosta.com
|
Brad
|
Hey Pedro, thanks for the questions. What are the things you’d want to implement? Maybe I can point you in a direction.
1. I had a full band. Then I tried playing solo with a laptop. Now I have the laptop and a guitarist and drummer. Next will be to try and make it modular so I can play even if I don’t have a drummer or a guitarist whatever night.
2. I don’t have any metrics for that, I only know what I’ve done so I can’t compare. My sense is that it has definitely helped. The idea of not giving away the music is crazy to me these days.
3. These days I have four ways I try to reach fans. This website, Facebook, Twitter and emails (rare).
Fire away with the questions, no sweat.
|
Pedro Costa
|
Hey Brad,
That’s what I’m thinking as well just focusing on my site and using a few social nets to help stay in touch.
I’m guessing your site is WP powered. Did you design the theme from scratch, or did you have a base one you started from?
Would love to achieve a similar functionality to yours: listing tracks, remixes of those tracks, etc.
Wouldn’t mind trying your store app as well. Bandcamp did me ok for years but I’d like more control now. I had focused on offering my music as name your price or $0 (with email address) But I think most people would rather not have to even give an email these days. Plus like you I don’t use the mailing list as much as I use my FB page and such.
Sorry if I’m rambling, just trying to bounce thoughts off of you.
Oh BTW has Magnatune been a good deal for you? I was contemplating submitting once I release an “official” album.
Thanks again :)
Pedro
|
Brad
|
I can’t remember which theme I started with. Probably a pretty basic one. It’s WordPress powered and there’s been a lot of custom work done. It’s really kind of a mess on the inside, though better than it used to be.
Magnatune’s been good, though it’s a very small fraction of my sales these days. It’s non-exclusive so I’m happy to keep it going. They don’t really promote my stuff other than having it in their catalog, but I’ve got no complaints.
|
Pedro Costa
|
Hey,
I noticed the free downloads on your page are 128k mp3s.
When someone buys the mp3 do they get a higher quality version?
|
Brad
|
Yes. Actually, I should update those. I only kept them at 128 for “bandwidth reasons” which no longer matter.
|
