I update this blog only when I have something to say and also when I have time, and today it happens to be twice! As I mentioned briefly in my previous post I’ve simply released a track once it’s finished without saying anything ahead of time and also saying very little once it’s been released. Unfortunately Imphenzia is basically 99% productivity and 1% promotion which is not how it should be if you want to reach out to a wide array of listeners.
My first step towards making Imphenzia more interesting is to announce the release of tracks ahead of time. What I am trying out is first of all compiling a YouTube video clip of the track with some simple yet colourful graphics. By embedding this on my web site and also announcing it to channel subscribers on YouTube and though Imphenzia on Twitter it raises awareness and hopefully the anticipation of a coming Imphenzia track.
My second step is through the new Next Release page. Here I announce the track that is queued up to be released next and I also give visitors an opportunity to request this track to be released totally free to the public. The idea with this is that promotion and word-of-mouth is extremely valuable and by relying on a larger number of people requesting the track to be released for free it would encourage fans to spread the word further in order to reach the goal of requests before the release date. The reward of this is a free track in exchange for promoting Imphenzia through social networks, messaging, twitter, blogs, etc. I set the goal to 300 requests for the first release although some serious WoM will have to take place in the next 3 days to get there, but I am still hopeful!
By the time you read this the release date of October 31 2009 may already have passed for the Tranquil Edit of Duplicate My Soul, but there might be another track queued for release so please have a look at this page http://www.imphenzia.com/release – request the free release if available and make sure to tell everyone about it!
My third step is to offer competitions where everyone who participates will at least get something (generally in the shape of free music) with the potential to win something bigger. The first competition is a task to write a short review of Duplicate My Soul and post it again on social networks, blogs, and music forums. You can see the competition page here to get the idea: http://www.imphenzia.com/music/competitions.php
So whether these steps are the right ones or if they are effective means of promoting my music remains to be seen but again, I am hopeful!
It’s been over 12 years since my first album, Sector, was released and back then physical CDs was how music was distributed. I know many listeners still prefer to own a physical copy of the music they purchase, but for me that train has passed a long time ago. The money wasted in pressing, printing, storing and delivering physical discs, both for the artist and for the listener, along with the environmental effects of this process, is to put it simple: unecessary.
Making quality MP3 albums was a focal feature when I redesigned the Imphenzia.com web site and an important factor was to make sure that the album would be instantly accessible upon purchase ready for transfer to your MP3-player. The cover and disc artwork is also available for those of you who wish to make a physical copy for your car stereo (although your car most likely plays mp3s by now as well so even that is becoming a redundant requirement). If you purchase an Imphenzia album today, you will always have access to download the music from wherever you are. Have a look at the screenshot to see how the tracks, zip-archive of the entire album, and artwork is presented.
For a long time, however, I’ve actually thought that the entire concept of albums is quite out of fashion as well. Why should you need to purchase a collection of tracks that may contain tracks you don’t particularly like just to get the ones you do want. Again, it comes down to the extra sense of value found in the packaging and concept of an album. The obvious solution to solve this would be to purchase singles, but then it becomes a tedious work to add the ones you want to a shopping cart…
What is the music worth to you?
So what is the solution? The most recent feature developed on Imphenzia.com, available from 8th July 2009, is that instead of purchasing a single or an album, you make a donation representing what the music is worth to you – and you’ll get instant access to ALL the imphenzia tracks. I’ve been thinking about this concept for some time and it is the time to take this step. If you feel 6 hours of trance music is worth $10 – that is what you donate to get access to the music in high quality. If you want to show extra support and appreciation and feel that the music is worth $30, then that is what you donate. I believe that the consumer is mature enough to make this decision and I think it is a way forward for the music industry to combat piracy. In all the debates I’ve seen about piracy, it’s all been about “It costs too much”, or “It’s not simple enough”, or “I don’t want DRM” – this is a solution to solve those issues.
In order to boost the probability of people finding my new sound effects page I have created a script that automatically generats static HTML-files for every sound effect in the library. The script also creates a simple main index page for containing links to all the individual HTML-files so that the engine crawlers can find the individual pages correctly. It will be interesintg to see if this generates any additional traffic.
I have registered a new account at YouTube and THIS is the new Imphenzia Music Secion. I am creating 30-second previews of most of my tracks and using the “video response” feature to other popular trance videos. By creating two “channels” at YouTube, I release full length videos and these preview clips and I plan to keep adding to these channels whenever time allows me to. I use “Animoto” to create what could be classed as something between a video and a slide show and I’m quite impressed by their engine to quickly produce quite cool clips.
This is also part of my promotional drive to get Imphenzia more established in the trance world.
Admittedly I’ve not been too good at promoting music. I spend most of my time either making music or on my other projects (game development, site development, photography). Being an artist for over 10 years the music has slowly been promoting it self but I have come to realize that it is time to put more effort into finally promoting Imphenzia more.
So what have I done about this the past few days? Well, first of all I created the new track named Mind Machine in order to make my music a bit more desirable on the dance floors hopefully catching the ears of DJs out there.
Then I’ve started to register on more sites such as LAST.FM, AMIESTREET.COM (where my albums were released FREE today so hurry up and grab them before the price starts to climb).
I’ve also started to become more visible in places like MySpace.com - so if you are a MySpace user, please add me as a friend
On my site, I link to each section where I’ve registered to encourage my listeners and fans (yes, including you) to visit and rate / comment / listen to the music in order to climb the charts and draw a bigger audience.
Then I found a site called ANIMOTO.COM where you could sync music and video together. I used this to create some very short YouTube clips to hopefully draw an audience. Here’s an example of what it looks like:
I will create fullength videos of my free tracks and post them on youtube later, they only charge $30 for a one year unlimited pass to create these video audio syncs.
I’m hoping to create a guide for others to follow if my attempt is successful, which I hope it is of course…
Many many hours of hard work finally resulted in the launch of the new 2009-look for Imphenzia.com. All previous sections (music, games and soundtrack) have been united and also a new addition is the section textures which is a searchable database of textures for game makers and modellers.
The new site has cross functionality between the sites and it was developed in PHP with a MySQL backend. The sections now share a common user account feature which will enable anyone who has previously purchased a track, mp3-album or registered a game to access this content at all times.
Another feature is that it was designed with the ability to skin the site so it can be customized, maybe becuase you want a different look or because you want a bigger font or narrower page size etc. There is only the default skin available at the moment but now that the site is launched I may find some time to create some skins.
I hope you like this new site and please feel free to give me feedback or comments. You can also discuss it in the Imphenzia forums
Just an update to say I’ve been working extremely hard on the new Imphenzia site structure the past week, probably put a good 40+ hours of development into the sites the past week and I hope to be able to make the results visible over the coming week
I’ve also added the blog to
Nynäshamn bloggkartan.se
I’ve changed the terms and drastically reduced the licensing fees for non-exclusive tracks along with some cosmetic changes to the site. I received some really great feedback from the people at the Blitz community and it may take a few days getting the site just right – so all the comments and feedback is very welcome.
One comment was that I may have covered the site in a few too many google-ads, but this is my backup plan should nobody every license any of the tracks for their commercial projects If the section is successful I’ll be able to reduce the ads on it.
I have launched a new section of Imphenzia called ‘Imphenzia Soundtrack’. Creators of games, movies, videos, multimedia projects, films, commercials – or whatever(!) – will be able to find music for their projects here. There is both exclusive and non-exclusive tracks available for both commercial and free projects.
Have a look at the new section at http://soundtrack.imphenzia.com – it features the new ‘2008′ look of the Imphenzia sites. Hope you liket it.
Continued my efforts on the ‘Imphenzia Soundtrack’ section of the site. It’s coming along nicely and it will be possible to inquire about custom made exclusive tracks and also download non-exclusive tracks in high quality etc.
