realfakesockpuppet - Tumblr blog

[realfakesockpuppet]

Unfortunately my neighborhood doesn't have a cool Halloween block party with beer, candy and musical guests. The announcer here is the woman who runs the corner store were Modest buys her Chocodiles. We first saw her in Season 4.

The musical guest is Sockpuppet, my friend Fluffy's band. She's performing her song Night Terrors. The joke here is that the song isn't actually scary at all ( its more obvious if you actually listen to the song).

You can get this song (and the whole album) here. You can also follow Sockpuppet on Bandcamp.

[realfakesockpuppet]

So, hey, Bandcamp is a great service that a lot of musicians and fans rely upon for fair distribution and sales of music. It is a really great thing.

Unfortunately, Bandcamp's owners decided that having a sustainably profitable business wasn't Enough for them and sold it to Epic Games a year ago, with the idea that it'd become a money-printing factory that does All The Licensing.

And that didn't pan out, so a week ago Epic re-sold Bandcamp to Songtradr, which is basically an A&R pay-for-play scam with the trappings of respectability (Benn Jordan talks about the scam here, focusing on a site called Taxi but Songtradr is the same basic thing).

Now Songtradr is blocking the Bandcamp union from actually being, y'know, a union. They aren't honoring the union terms, have locked workers out of critical systems, are completely ignoring the collective bargaining power of Bandcamp as a company and are doing all sorts of heinous shit.

However! This is not a time to boycott Bandcamp! All that does is make Bandcamp less valuable and gives Songtradr more sway over them, while disproportionately impacting the musicians who rely on it. Please look to see what the union is requesting in terms of support and solidarity. There's a lot you can do to show your support.

Independent musicians thank you.

[realfakesockpuppet]

Bandcamp is good for artists. It is good for listeners. It is also a union shop that has pushed back against their corporate parent (Epic Games) on a whole bunch of stuff. Support Bandcamp.

If you want to know just how much better Bandcamp is for musicians: Spotify pays per listen of a song, at a ridiculously low rate. I don't know what major label musicians get, but I get about $0.0017 per stream, regardless of how long the song is. I make maybe $5/year on Spotify (and it costs me $25/year to have it on there, so really I'm losing money, but I keep my music there with the hope that one song maybe goes viral or something).

Meanwhile, Bandcamp pays me 85% of the purchase price, minus credit card processing fees. I make several hundred dollars a year on my music there. And they don't charge me money to have it listed!

And it's not just better for musicians, but for listeners. You can listen to the "web preview" version of the album as much as you want for free (although artists can ask that after you listen three times it kindly asks that you consider paying for it). Once you do buy it, it shows up in your library and you can listen to it anywhere, forever, via the mobile app or your own local collection, or from the webpage. And you can redownload it as many times as you want in whatever format you want.

And the music on Bandcamp is just better, because you know it's being made by people who care, instead of major labels who are cranking out product, and the money you spend there goes to supporting the artists who make it. Yeah, a lot of it isn't as polished or overengineered as major-label music. But it's made by people.

you’re hearing it more and more

[realfakesockpuppet]

It is Bandcamp Friday

For the next 23.25 hours, Bandcamp is waiving their cut of music purchases made on their platform, which makes it an amazing time to buy independent music there.

As always, I have plenty of stuff you can get there (including a recently-released 80-minute meditation album and an hour-long musical journey inspired by a variety of coffee grinders), and you can get a pretty decent discount on my music if you just buy it all at once as a discography.

I also like to keep a checklist of albums to buy on this day, and this month the two albums I bought are a recent release by my friend Sam and the discography of ratwyfe mostly because I heard someone do a cover of his song cryptid and I knew right away that I’d totally dig all of his music.

Anyway. Support independent musicians, both by buying the music that you like, but also spreading the word of mouth of the music that you like, too. You might not think you have much of a voice but every little bit helps way more than you think; every flood begins with a handful of raindrops.

[realfakesockpuppet]

Happy Bandcamp Friday, all you beauties and gentlebeauties out there! As we have done every year since 2016, we've participated in Novembeat, a write-a-song-a-day-in-November challenge. Today is a good day to acquire a copy of it from Bandcamp, when their cut of the proceeds is given directly to artists.

While you're there, perhaps you'd consider acquiring our entire discography? It's currently $43.25 and contains dozens of albums released over the past 22 years, with music from quite a few different genres. Much of it is also incredibly personal and covers topics such as:

Mental health (especially burnout, depression, dissociation, and ADHD)

Non-mainstream sexuality

Weird furry stuff

Gender dysphoria

Survival in a world of political antagonism

Kissing ghosts

Plus there's a LOT of music I've written for video games.

In any case, today is a great day to support independent musicians.

[realfakesockpuppet]

So for what it's worth this track of mine was inspired by the rhythmic thumping and grinding noise of a failing ventilation fan in a coffee shop bathroom. No reason not to actually embrace the noise.

[realfakesockpuppet]

Song Fight! Live-ish is a go for 2022. Please join us tomorrow at 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern/check YouTube's schedule for other time zones.

[realfakesockpuppet]

On the notes I'm seeing folks who like the music but lament they don't have a record player. That's totally understandable! If you want to get the music in a non-physical, downloadable form, all of my music is available over on my bandcamp, and I'm also (slowly) putting it on itch and resonate.

And of course you can watch the hour-long music video version on YouTube:

Thanks for listening!

Just putting this out there again. I'd love it if this project could find some success.

[realfakesockpuppet]

Great news: we were able to secure much lower pricing thanks to the team at Qrates! Now it's only $29.50 before shipping, which is pretty amazing for a short-run double-LP set.

Because of how Qrates' system is set up, all existing preorders had to be canceled, but hopefully the new pricing makes it much easier for everyone who was interested.

We're trying to get our latest album pressed as a double-length LP. If you like lo-fi music, electronic music, and/or coffee and the grinding thereof, please consider giving us your support!

XOXO