Well, the month of free buttons for digital downloads is over and I thank you all for participating. My digital store seems to work fine and I hope you all like your buttons. (You can still get them by donating.)

For all you entrepreneurs out there, here's something I learned: if you take an envelope with a button in it into the post office to find out how much it will cost to mail, they'll feel the envelope and say "hey is there a button in here?" and charge you several dollars. But if you put the stamps on yourself and drop them in the mailbox, they get there just fine and it only costs a dollar or so.

Also several people reported that their envelopes had been opened by the time they got there. I guess making sure I wasn't mailing you a button and a note commanding you to stab yourself to death.

Because I'm lonely I'm going to try posting mixes of my new album tracks in my forums for feedback, commentary, crushing of my spirit & motivation, etc. You can check out a new mix of Bad Sign if you're so inclined.

I may make the forum private in the future, I haven't decided.

I've got some new forums, go check 'em out. I'm running bbPress. It's not as sexy looking as Vanilla but it has tagging, better RSS feeds and integrates with WordPress nicely. I like the layout more as well.

The integration with WordPress is the main reason I switched. I want to offer "bonus" stuff on the main site for users who are logged in and this seemed like the best way to do it.

Importing the old forums was a nightmare of course and I'm still cleaning things up. Your old accounts should work. Let me know if you run into any problems.

For the next month if you buy anything from my digital download store I'll send you out a free shiny Brad Sucks button. Check it out:

(Fingers not included.)

If you've already bought something just email me your mailing address and I'll get one out to you.

I'm releasing the Brad Sucks Digital Download Store.

It's a tidied up version of the DRM-free digital download store I use in my store. I made it for myself but realized this was something most artists could use so I give it to you internet.

Please post feedback/bug reports/troubles here or in my forums. 

Hooray, I have a digital music store now! You can buy DRM-free Brad Sucks tracks in high quality 192k MP3, OGG or FLAC formats. You can also buy my entire album in whichever format you like with the album art and lyrics included. Buy buy buy! I still feel strongly that people sharing my songs is vital to me as a musician, so I have no plans to stop giving my music away for free. But it's clear that many people want to pay for high quality versions of my songs and I'd like to avoid the middle-man and DRM and offer that directly if I can.

formats

Do people really care about audio file quality? I'm skeptical. But maybe digital purchases will act as a donation "with benefits".

I'm also not sure if anyone really cares about OGG or FLAC formats. I get emails asking for them, but we'll see. I could add other formats as well (WAV?) if there's any demand. I'll give it some time and see what's what.

the nerdy stuff

I wrote the store myself. It runs off Amazon S3 (for cheap and healthy bandwidth) and the Paypal shopping cart. A bunch of PHP and MySQL later and kapow. I stole the play button layout from Scott Andrew's store because everything he makes is pretty.

There are probably bugs, so please forgive me. I will fix them as soon as I hear about them.

I'm also considering packaging this whole sucker up so other artists can use it to inexpensively host and manage their own digital stores. Any kind of file would fit in there, not just music.

If you've got any feedback or ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Last show with Rob on guitar! He will be missed! But not by you if you show up!

It was a fun show last night, thanks to The Coggs for having us and everyone for coming out. (A few pictures are here.)

In the crowd were multiple CBC Radio 3 Podcast listeners who heard my stuff the other day as well as a fellow from the open-source Jokosher project, which was sweet.

It was Jacquie in the Kitchen's farewell show and they put on a great one.

Our next (and final one before Rob leaves and we become a three-piece) show is on February 10th. We'll be playing every damn song we know and I'm still looking for an opening band.

Hey all right, the CBC Radio 3 podcast played one of my songs. Sweet!

Rob Cosh, friend and guitarist of Brad Sucks Live is leaving the band. There's no drama -- Rob's helping me produce my next album so we still tight. He's got his own music to do and a family and business to tend to. He was the motivational force behind me getting my ass in gear and doing the live stuff, so I owe him a huge thanks.

Rob will still be playing our two remaining dates (on January 27th and February 10th) so be sure to come out for the rock!

As for the future, he says peering into his crystal ball, I had been thinking about toning back the heavy rock and getting things to sound a bit more like my recorded stuff with the synths and the effects and the so on. Brad Sucks fans that came out tended to be a little put off by how guitary the show was and while it's been huge fun it's probably not where my heart lies. So I think I'm going to dial it back to a three piece augmented by a lot of laptop use and see how that goes.

After a year and a half of performing I'm also interested in trying out playing solo again. I love the sound and energy of a live band, but I've been watching some Ableton Live performance videos (1, 2, 3) and am inspired to try it. I ran out and bought an FCB1010, which I'll be blogging about later.

Happy holidays everyone. I've had a busy but basically sweet year. Lots of live shows, the band unit really came together to a level of tightness I'm shocked to be a part of. I quit sulking and got my ass back in gear about making music again, I turned 30, I discovered a love for sushi and ultimately a dislike for paying high prices for sushi.

Thanks to everyone who helped out and was supportive of the whole Brad Sucks thang this year. All you podcasters, listeners, emailers and most especially all the people who gave me money. Man I love you guys.

Also of course a huge thanks to Brad Sucks band members Bruce, Rob, departing bassist Richard and newly-hazed bassist Matthew. I'm not a sentimental guy so I'll just say: hey what's up.

2007 looks like it'll be fun. I've got a lot of projects I've been working on that should be ready this year as well as more playing live with the hard-earned confidence and so on.

Now I have to go drink.

I went through Youtube looking for videos that used my songs and also uploaded a couple. There's a video player at the bottom in my the gallery now.

If you have or know of any others out there, send them in.

Jukka Forsten did this cool video for my song Fixing My Brain:

I like it, it's got a nice surreal feel to it.

I guess I missed the announcement or something, but the Metafilter Compilation Album is shipping. My song Dirtbag's on it and there are lots of other lovely songs. All proceeds go to The Mockingbird Foundation, a non-profit that funds music education programs for kids.

Hey, I'm a judge in Jonathan Coulton's Code Monkey remix contest. Grab the source, remix it, be judged by me, potentially win prizes, etc.

But the most exciting thing (for me) is that Dana Snyder, the voice of Aqua Teen Hunger Force's Master Shake is on there. That's right. Master Shake and I are basically buds now. We hang.

MC Frontalot and I attempted to kick out something approximating the jams this week for Songfight. Go check it out:

I think it turned out decent for like a two day thang.

Tomorrow (the 14th) I turn 30 years old. I must be slowing down in my old age because I was totally tricked by a surprise party on Friday night. My cat-like reflexes failed me and I'm just lucky I didn't break a hip.

We've also got a Halloween show coming up on the 29th where I am totally dressing up.

Any show that's preceded by me locking my keys in my car (while it's running, even) is dead to me. The locksmith showed up in about ten minutes though so that was all right. $53 later and half an hour later I made it there in time for sound check. Other than that, we had a pretty good show last night, though I was in a bad mood about my dumbness.

Hey there's a Brad Sucks show tonight at the Rainbow starting at 9:30. Jacquie in the Kitchen are opening for us and they're totally sweet.

I put up ceiling drywall in our rehearsal space (aka my parents' garage) all weekend so I think I might just lie down on the floor real still with for the whole show. Requests will be honored for any massage therapists or acupuncturists in the audience.