Live Bands
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 | Music Related Links, Review | 1 Comment
I couldn’t believe that Boo! were getting back together and performing at Ramfest IV. I remember reading the line-up on the event page on Last.fm. back in December 2009 and commented “Boo! ????? Are you sure?”.
So yes, the reunion of Boo! is what interested me in the festival this year and it’s the reason I had SUCH great time. We only trekked through to the festival on the Saturday afternoon, following directions from a mate in Franschhoek. “It’s quicker to come via Franschhoek” (driving from Cape Town). Bullshit! It took us at least two hours to get to the party – a whole hour behind schedule. Nekkies wasn’t on the map to do the distance checking ourselves (for the record) and we went there in geek gear and mapped the entire route.
Never again will another trance head or RAMfest party goer be lost on route to the destination.
I went all prepared and packed in my alcohol in non glass bottles…
For the record, if you throw Smirnoff Storms in to a empty 1.5L Lemon Twist bottle, guess what/. It looks like Lemon Twist. If you throw it in to a Ginger beer bottle looks like ginger beer. Only thing though, NEVER leave the 1.5L empty bottle in the car when the next day is like 30 degrees hot. That shit melted.
Got there just as the sun was setting. Nice! No one got to see my skimpy shorts and shades and I settled for my fisherman’s pants as it got kinda chilly.
So I rock up at the fest, we pay our way and get out arm bands etc. Madam refuses to walk in with her 1.5L Lemon Twist alcohol and opts to buy from the bar inside instead. Moerse big mistake. There went at least 35 minutes of waiting to be looked at. Ramfest removed the lineup so I forget who I saw and in what order… › Continue reading
Sunday, April 12th, 2009 | Education, Entertainment, Music Related Links, Social Media Networking, Tips / Learning, Useful | 9 Comments
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Last Updated 2010-02-08
The South African Music Industry community, is slowly waking up to the powers of internet marketing and starting to utilise the services that Twitter has to offer.
By Following¹ these musicians on Twitter, you can read about their upcoming gigs and last minute cancellations or venue changes, band website updates, their new blog posts, new music releases, studio sessions, new music they are working on, concerts and touring, get their links to free downloads and to the minute news updates.
I can’t think of a simpler way for bands to keep in touch with their fan-base. . .
List of South African music-related Tweeple² on Twitter thus far (including artists and bands that have relocated elsewhere):
- The Rudimentals: Afro-Ska Reggae Band (Cape Town)
- GoldFish: Electronic Duo
- 7th Son: Rock Reggae Band (Cape Town) › Continue reading
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 | Music Related Links, Opinion, Questions, Rants, thoughts | 1 Comment
If you love listening to music, and if you really are quite in touch with the music industry, if you’re an artist or part of a band, even if you just have gigs and gigs of music saved to your hard drive, please take a moment to just read through my thoughts …
Do you :
- support local upcoming artists
- purchase their original releases
- own any of their branded clothing items
- pay the required fee to gain entrance to their gigs
- make illegal copies of artist’s music
- love finding music available for download and its free
So which would you prefer if told to opt for either Paying a Hefty entrance fee just to see a band that you actually just wanna hear and brag to your friends that you saw them/that artist OR staying home, using the entrance fee money, get more bandwidth, download the music free off the internet.
err…
I am curious about your thoughts…
I was reading through this blog post that says “the plan to distribute music from the Big Four major labels — Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music — plus Ioda, Naxos, The Orchard and about 150,000 indie labels and bands, all for free…”.
Prepaid digital music accounts
I have/had an account online, I purchase(d) credits/points, browse through the album lists, chose what I wanted to buy but had the option to preview the songs before I finally decided to purchase the album using my prepaid credits/points. I then download it, save to HD or disc and legally own it?
So yes you will argue about bandwidth costs if you are like me a living in South Africa, the place with crap internet connection. You will probably also be arguing about the quality of the sound? Psshh! Some free tracks online are waaay better than some gigs I have attended with the poorest sound engineering out there! This initiative is a good one. You still get to listen to the artist’s music before purchasing it? That’s a good thing not so? At the same time the artists gain more exposure this way.
Sharing online
How else would I share the artist’s link to ‘a preview / the full track’ with my 300 online friends or share it to my feed; how would I if I am sitting with an original CD and its glossy cover in my hands. No one mass mail’s this info to their friends? No I love my gigs; I love the crowd atmosphere at the gigs; I love the fact that four of the biggest music label companies have decided to distribute new albums by streaming entire tracks, for free, online and actual CDs, and satisfying the needs of both artist, label and listener 
Freedom of choice
I feel almost like my independence has been given back to me? As in, choice to purchase the original CD, steal from a friend better known as making illegal pirate copies of the CD, freely download or minimal online payments for tracks or only recently, just stream the entire album … for free!
The Universal label has just released Kaiser Chiefs‘ album Off with their heads on last.fm . Yes it is only a stream but at least the sound gets out there!
I was thrilled to read that Oasis was also planning to release their latest album for free; I was not so thrilled to read that the CD entitled Dig Out Your Soul was available on their Myspace page.
Last.fm
Are the founders of last.fm fulfilling their mission TRULY to have every track out there available to the listener for free? If you give it for free, there won’t be any piracy statistics to worry about?
What’s the catch?
Exposure to the world and being exposed to advertising … surely you can figure the rest for yourself. The more people know of you, the higher the number of people would take an interest in you, the higher the need would be to see you live, and then thats the catch…for the fan that is…
Catch the fans
Fans (in my opinion) would then pay any amount of money to see you live. So you make your money back by charging ridiculous amounts at the entrance to your gigs?
Reality
A typical example for South Africans:
Most and probably in fact all artists from South Africa has a profile page on Myspace. Most artists and bands in fact only have a profile there! Yes fair enough if you not from here then advise from this site saying “Get your music heard by fans…on a social networking site like Myspace“ would not be in vain.
If viewing this page from South Africa, given the crappy bandwidth we have, I wait no less than a minute to see the entire page. Next time I won’t go view your page cause I know it takes so long to load? No what means does that band or artist now have to inform me as the fan of anything let alone let me hear their latest song produced? None!
The value
The value is not in the amount of money the fan pays for your music, its not how many overseas offers you get or how many record deals come your way, the value is the amount of exposure you can get. The internet should not be used as a medium to sell more albums but rather to attract new fans for live shows… after all, the bands and artists are meant to entertain?
An after thought for the opposer of my thinking above … This link is only for people who think that free music is taken without the artist’s consent and therefore considered illegal. It is for the narrow minded that do not believe in free music because they will not be rewarded for the efforts!!! Have fun!
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Dan Gilreath
malgalin on 
