Even though the winter is far from over we figured it was a good time to freshen things up here and get ready for a new chapter in the story of 5th Estate Music.  As you can see, the site now looks a bit better...cleaner and sleeker. 

As for the next chapter, that is the one with Paul E. Phonics as the main character.  The weather has been awful here which has served as a bit of a blessing as far as creativity goes.  With basically nothing to distract or lure anyone outside it has been the perfect time to hunker down in the studio and finally get some Paul E. Phonics tracks finished.  A few preview tracks are ready to be revealed and to go along with all that there is a new website for the project  www.paul-e-phonics.com  It could work out that Paul E. Phonics takes the lead role for the rest of this year but we'll see how things go.  A debut album is in the works and will definitely be released this year, it's just a question of earlier or later at this point.  Work has also begun on a follow-up Fine Print Pariah album so that will be an important priority later on in 2010.

Speaking of Fine Print Pariah, there has been a lot of interest from podcasters recently and there will be updates in the news here when songs are played of course.    Efforts will be made to keep this ball rolling but chances are there won't be that much news for a while. We will try to keep things updated on what is going on behind the scenes though.

All in all, exciting times here.  Until next time!

We're well into the new year now and it's been business as usual here trying to maintain a bit of momentum for Fine Print Pariah and getting things planned for the grand entrance of Paul E. Phonics.

As far as the latter is concerned, it should be much easier now that an infrastructure has been developed and tweaked by the release of the FPP debut.  But as far as the former, there is still lots to do (actually it should be a constant and ongoing effort but we'll see how that works out as the year goes on) and there are always things to do to keep Fine Print Pariah relevant - at least in an underground/below-the-radar kind of way.

One of the main focuses lately has been to get the music into "on-demand" streaming services such as Spotify, Pandora, Grooveshark, Jango etc.  This has already been set up with Jango and has shown some good results so far so obviously getting the music on these other services became a bit of a priority.  But despite the fact that these are all internet services, it does not automatically mean that they are "international".  As it appears, the internet has borders after all - just like the real world!

I found this out yesterday when I tried to get things set up with Pandora which is based in the U.S.A. and is not available for "users" in Germany.  The irony was that it was still ok to submit music to them except for the fact that they require that the CD of the album be available for purchase through "Amazon".  Now, the Fine Print Pariah debut album is available through "Amazon"... Amazon.de that is!!!  For one reason or another (and probably one I will never understand)  items registered on Amazon.de are not automatically registerd on Amazon.com even though the items are available for purchase internationally!  So after a bit of cursing while reading the final consoling email from the support team at Pandora I decided to sleep on it and over coffee this morning I read through the submission process one more time only to discover something of a loophole.  As it turns out, a CD can be available through the "Disc-On-Demand" service at Amazon.com and still qualify for Pandora!  It then occured to me that I had opted out of this service when setting up the distribution with Tunecore because I already had CDs made and wanted to keep the physical product consistent.  In the end I decided that the exposure and the affordable availability of the CD in North America were more important than some dogmatic adherence to form and style and registered for the service.  In a couple of weeks the CD should be available in North America "on demand" and I will be able to get the songs submitted to Pandora...hopefully!

But that is only one aspect of the geography game that has been going on lately.  Spotify is a European service that is new to the U.S. and does not have things set up with all aggregators and definitely not with Tunecore...yet.  The irony here is that the service is orginally from Europe - where 5th Estate Music is located - but requires aggregators to submit music.  5th Estate Music has a U.S. based aggregator that doesn't yet have a deal with Spotify!   And after all that, both Spotify and Pandora are not available to users in Germany - probably because of the insane licensing fees demanded by the record companies and the ridiculous royalties demanded by GEMA (the equivalent of PRS or ASCAP here in Germany). 

I have also noticed the effects of this last problem on a more personal level when I have tried to access certain old TV programs or music videos on Youtube or similar services only to be greeted by a message like "we regret to inform you that due to licensing restrictions this service is not available in your region" or some other such line.  Even though Berlin is a really cool city and has become something of a second home, it still makes me wonder why I remain in a country that is so damn stubborn on issues that are crucial to my business.

Just had to get that off my chest!  All for now...hopefully the next entry will be a bit more positive...