When some months ago Thomas gave me a sneak preview of Audiovoltaics and we had a long Skype chat about it, I was thrilled about, not only the concept, but that Thomas was being innovative in the way we experience music reviews on the web. If this sounds like an exaggeration it isn’t. Thomas is one of the most respected voices of the growing Creative Commons/Netlabel community and he is very well respected journalist (he is the former editor of German Beat Magazine). If that isn’t enough, Thomas knows how to write great reviews (if this sounds like a pleonasm–being a journalist and knowing how to write well–please, go to any news website and judge for yourself the writing quality of most of its contributors) and he is also a very talented musician and DJ. In a nutshell, Thomas knows and loves the industry in which he works and that passion shows in every detail of his past and present work.

Audiovoltaics Website

Audiovoltaics sets an incredibly high standard for what an online music magazine should be. It is beautifully designed, the interface could not be simpler, allowing the visitor to focus on content and, when speaking of content, the seamless integration of text, audio and video allows you to stay on the site while being able to know, in one single spot, all the useful information there is to know about a certain artist or release.

Content

Thomas knows about every aspect of music so his articles are extremely informative and detailed. In this issue of Audiovoltaics you already get a glimpse that Thomas will not stay on his comfort zone and will aim to cover all kinds of creative arts.

Highlights

The netlabel portrait section, the interview with “To Rococo Rot” and the interview with Sven Kacirek deserve a highlight but all of Audiovoltaics is filled with pleasant surprises.

The “Peepin’ Music” section is a very welcome idea applied to Creative Commons music (based on the a very well known section from Wire magazine), where a known producer listens to music tracks and describes what he/she feels about them without knowing who the artists are.

Conclusion

If you are a music lover, want to get a peek of what the future of online music magazines might be like, have access to great and well-written content, you can’t miss Audiovoltaics.

…and I am not saying this because Thomas is my friend; I am saying this because I can’t wait for the October issue to be online.

As you might know, I recently started to write for Bit Rebels and one of the things I have started to make is the “Rebel Music” series that comes out every Monday. It is a way of celebrating #MusicMonday on Twitter and also a way to bring music from several netlabels to a wider audience.

I thought this was going to be something that would take me, maximum, 3h a week to complete. I counted on Thomas Raukamp‘s tweets during the week to set my targets,  on Moritz Sauer‘s Netblabels.org to discover new things for myself and I also on a tweetgrid search to track #ccmusic, #music, #creativecommons and #netlabels tweets.

What I never thought was that, most of the netlabels, make it really difficult for those who want to promote their music. What I didn’t count on was that it is taking me 8h to complete every Bit Rebels’ compilation because of the total incompetence of people that I have no idea why they are running a netlabel.

In my attempt to make a 10 track compilation I have run into obstacles that usually led to frustration and that usually led to giving up including a artist on the compilation. So I have decided to voice the frustration that is inside of me and how revolted I am about what I have experienced in the last 3 weeks.

1. If you don’t know how to edit a wiki learn how to: Moritz gives all of us a space to promote our content at netlabels.org. The least you can do is to properly insert the information. Is not that difficult. Just copy the entry before yours and change the content but not the code.

2. Be professional about what you do even if you are not making any money out of it: To describe a release with two words (“Heavy shit”) tells me absolutely nothing and feels like you really don’t care about what you’re doing. How I am supposed to differentiate between your downtempo heavy shit and your techno heavy shit? See what the common word is? That is what it looks like to me: shit!

3. GET A PLAYER ON YOUR WEBSITE: If you are expecting me to go to your website, where you only have a small image of the release and a link to a zip file at the archive.org,  and expect that I go the artist’s last.fm or myspace page to listen to the songs for that release only to go back to your website (ufffff…. deep breathing) to download your 70MB zip file just to be able to use a track… FOR-GET-IT!!! Come on! Are you kidding me? Do you really think that I am going to download a zip file without listening to the material? And do you really think I am going to download a zip file of a whole release just for one track? If you do you do not understand how this works you shouldn’t have a netlabel.

4. Be consistent in the way you name your releases. Get a catalog reference (PublicSpaces Lab uses [PSXXX] for example) and stick with it. Again this is about being professional. If you name one release XX009 and another XX666 just because you think is “cool” you will have people looking for the missing 567.

5. Most of the netlabels are uploading their releases to the Internet Archive. So WHY do you keep releasing stuff at 192 Kbps? Don’t your artists deserve better? It’s not like you’re paying for the download traffic. Come on, get your act straight!

6. If you don’t know what MP3 ID tags  are,  close down your netlabel. Implement a naming convention for your files, tag all files properly. Yes it takes time! But if you don’t have the time to do this I also don’t have the time to do your work.

7. Answer your mails: I know this might sound totally ridiculous but its not. From my 3 weeks experience only 4 of the 28 mails I sent to netlabels were answered. Is this how you are helping your artists?

8. Get your head out of your ass! If you think you are really important and cool because you have a netlabel you are doing it ALL WRONG. Your focus must be on your artists, on promoting them, on giving them the best of you. This is about music and not about you upgrading your cool status with the girls. If you are on this for the girls get in a fucking boys band.

9. Engage with your artists, support them, get to know them, challenge them: This is the only way you can promote your artists.

10. Don’t be a music spitting machine: Focus on quality not on quantity. Take care of the way you present each release, understand what the artists want to express, take your time to communicate it effectively. Be professional!

| Image Credits: Bill Campbell via Flickr |

Expanding09 Highlights

Edu Commeles: Walking Compositions

This is an amazing site specific project.The project aims to generate a sound based experience between the listener and the environment where the walk is done. Moreover this project aims to explore the concept of soundscape composition and its posibilities of distribution and displaying. I strongly advise everyone to read the full MSc dissertation about this project that you can download here [PDF Link]. Also a visit to the website to explore the whole project is a  must. This is one of those projects that tell us that the future is already here.

Daniel Rojas and Carles Gutiérrez: “Sociograma interactivo” (Interactive Sociogram)

Daniel and Carlos came to Expanding09 with this project of social tracking to ask for ideas: “We have developed this, how would YOU use it?“  After explaining the project, the questions and possible applications were discussed with the audience and I would expect some of the ideas discussed to be taken further. I have proposed that this system could be used as a loop triggering control, where the “DJ” would connect people (literally) to launch sound clips. Users could choose what element of a certain composition they wanted to be (bass, drum, synth, etc.). The potential for it to be a game also crossed my mind.

Salvador ‘Sr. Aye” and Adolfo “Decolora”: MIGA Create and Learn

Miga started as a netlabel and is now a cultural association that is very active. They are also a role model of commitment and the living example of what a netlabel can become. Adolfo “Declora” explained in detail how their organization works, what are they plans and how they see the scene, as a whole, in Spain. The following discussion that ensued (specially about how to monetize a netlabel that seems to be a recurrent discussion these days) made me decide, on the spot, that PublicSpaces Lab should try and do something with Miga: we only have to learn from them and the following discussion I had with Salvador and Adolfo only confirmed what I thought: There are synergies that we can put to work and, guess what, we already did. More about this on the PublicSpaces Lab website really soon.

Conclusions

There is much to be done: Like someone said during, the discussion period,  the scene in Spain is made of small scenes that don’t talk to each other. Bridges are hard to build, and it has to start by those responsible but,  the potential exists. One of the ideas that was praised was to to setup a wiki for the scene where netlabel’s could post projects that needed a certain resource to see if anyone could help. This is, in my opinion, something easy to setup and should be done a.s.a.p so that the momentum is not lost. Also more work on the promotion of the event would have helped to bring more  audience to it. I am not going to make a rant about this since it happens in lots of events but, please: if you are attending something where the whole purpose is to network please bring your business cards.

Overall this edition of  Expanding09 brought important issues to the discussion table, issues that are very important to the evolution of the netlabel scene in Spain. The projects that were presented show the creative and technological maturity of those present and to loose the opportunity to develop and help those projects reach the next stage would be, in my opinion, a waste.

Finally I would like to thank the whole Netaudio.es team, specially David Domingo for putting this together and for inviting me to participate.