I would imagine that many towns with enough musicians has open mic events.  Our does.  Some of them are truly open... arrive, jump on a sign up list, play.  Some of them are curated... anyone can play, but you must sign up in advance of the show date. You'll see all sorts of musicians at these events. You'll see seasoned musicians working out new material.  You'll see people performing their own music in public for the first time.  You'll sometimes see a musician build an ad-hoc band right there in the venue, and perform a few songs with no rehearsal. I tend to enjoy these events, as seeing live music always tends to give me the good endorphins.

I am sure there are more open mic events in the Greater Dayton area than I know of.  I am very familiar with the one at Peach's Grill in Yellow Springs.  It is hosted by the effervescent Kyleen Downes, who you might recognize from a previous blog post here.  (Sign up for that one is right here.) In addition to delicious pizza, South Park Tavern has an open mic even on Wednesdays. (Sign up for that one is right here.)  My favorite of these events in the area is Showcase Thursday over at Yellow Cab Tavern. I can't share a sign up for that one, you need to do it in person.

Although I always enjoy these sorts of events, I prefer the ones where everyone is playing original music. Foremost among these types of events are Songwriter-in-the-Round type occasions.  For these, each songwriter plays one original song in turn, and round and round we go.  I've attended countless of these events, but had never had the opportunity to play in one until last week, Sunday March 27th.  Rich Reuter hosted the Songwriter-in-the-Round at Devil Wind Brewing in my hometown of Xenia, Ohio, and invited me to be part of the lineup.

This is going to become a photo blog now.

That right up there is my hometown.  Specifically, it is the view toward the courthouse from Detroit Street, just south of Main Street.

This next picture right here is Khrys Blank arriving.  She played during the same Round as me, and she is exactly as cool as she looks in this photograph.  Dennis Geehan also played in that Round, but since I was next to him during the time we played, I didn't get any pictures of him.

The second Round of the evening consisted of Nicolas Johnson, Jenna Gomes, and the host, Rich Reuter.

The last Round was Kevin Milner, Rachel Litteral, and Anna Marie.

It's always somewhat emotional playing songs in front of people, but that was cranked up for me, as this was my first time playing in my hometown.  Also, it was a bit nerve-wracking to be surrounded by so much talent. We all survived it though, and then I got the post-show endorphins.  

I'll keep on trying to play as many events like this as I can.  I'll also keep trying to attend even when I'm NOT playing, as a way to show support for people who are brave enough to share a piece of their art with the public when they don't know how it will be received. These open mic events are customarily free to attend.  I encourage you, no matter where you are, to try to find similar events in your area and try one of them out.  You never know, you might discover some music that you love.

This song started as a voice memo, a brief line of lyrics and the slightest suggestion of melody sung to my phone. The line in question was this one:

tell your teacher I got some bright ideas

Admittedly, that's not much to build a song around. The concept of "bright ideas" stayed with me.  I live in the Greater Dayton area, and this is a place that has seen many inventors and creatives. I decided to build the song into a love letter of sorts to the Gem City and to the thinkers who called this place home. I also decided to try to write a Guided By Voices song.

The second thing I wrote was the riff for the outro. I did the writing on piano, but I knew from the beginning that I would want that hook played on guitar and also sung. I knew from the beginning that I didn't want to include a traditional "chorus" with the song, and that I wanted it to be short and punchy.

This is what it sounds like.

My thanks go out to Dr J at WUDR and Juliet Fromholt at WYSO for playing this song on the radio.

I am also thankful to the personnel who played on this single. Here are the credits:

released March 31, 2020 
Music & Lyrics by Mike Bankhead 

Bass, Vocals: Mike Bankhead 
Guitar, Vocals: Eric Cassidy 
Drums: Brian Hoeflich 
Vocals: Patrick Himes 

Produced by Patrick Himes & Mike Bankhead 

Engineered and Mixed by Patrick Himes at Reel Love Recording Company, Dayton, Ohio 

Mastered by Alex McCollough at True East Mastering, Nashville, Tennessee 

Art by Ashka RA 

©℗2020 You Could Be My Aramis Music (BMI)

***

"Bright Ideas" was taken down from global streaming services when I changed distributors, but it will be back TOMORROW, Tuesday 22nd March, 2022.

Almost a year ago, on Sunday March 28th, 2021, I went to Reel Love Recording Company and recorded this single. Brian Hoeflich played drums, Jeremy Raucci played guitar, and Patrick Himes sang some vocals and made it all sound good. "Hold the Wick" was recorded and mixed in one day. That's not the end of its story.

Those of you of a certain age might remember buying CD singles. In addition to just the single, there would be additional songs on the disc. That is the listening experience that I wanted to create here. In order to do this, I recruited a variety of musicians and asked them to remix "Hold the Wick" in any way they chose to do so. You can already listen to all of the song versions right here on my official website by heading to the Music page. 

Here are the musicians who provided remixes:

Rich Reuter
Baby Molly
No $ Savant
Nina Pelligra
Bonsai Superstar
Rizo
T.H.O.E.M.

Tomorrow, on Tuesday March 15th, all versions of "Hold the Wick" will be streaming everywhere.  I encourage you to please listen repeatedly on the streaming platform of your choice.

Oh, and each version of "Hold the Wick" comes with a music video.  The first of these is also out tomorrow.  I think the director did a very good job. I hope that you do, too.

I have mentioned before that I took a trip to France in 2002, and only took five compact discs with me for the duration of the trip.  As you might imagine, I listened to these albums over and over and over again. I knew them forward and backward, every lyric, every chord change, every nuance.  There is something about deep and repeated listens to a work of art that builds a bond between the musicians and the listener, even though that bond might only work in one direction. When I listen to any of those five albums, I am assaulted by old sights, sounds, smells, feelings, thoughts, places, situations, and people. The debut album from Starsailor is one of those.

I never saw this band live.  I've never even watched a live performance of theirs on the Internet, though I'm about to change that as soon as I'm done writing this blog post.  My only relationship with Starsailor is through their compact discs that happen to be in my collection.  Love Is Here is the first, arriving in fall 2001.

At that point in my youth, I generally leaned toward louder rock records.  This wasn't the case all of the time - after all, I loved that first Elbow album and anything Radiohead wanted to throw at us - but mostly, yeah. This album occupied a space in my collection that didn't have a lot of company.  Most of the guitars on this album are acoustic, and there are a TON of keyboards... piano, synth, organ. All of that kind of makes the bass stand out more than on many of the music I was listening to at the time, and that might be something that attracted me to this band.  All I know for sure is that I loved this album from the opening notes of the opening song all the way to the closer.  It pulled at the emotions then, and today the sad songs sound just as poignant to me, but with the added gravitas of 20 years worth of additional life experience filtering who I was and where I went when I was spinning this disc six times a day.

In some ways, listening to this album today feels very different.  I know a great deal more about how to make music than I did in 2002. I find myself dissecting the songs technically more when I listen now... oh, there's some electric guitar arpeggio added for atmosphere and there's reverb on it... oh, that's a B3 organ... oh that sounds like a slide guitar...  oh, I wonder if that's a pump organ or an accordion in that section... you know, those types of thoughts. All of that aside, if I listen with my eyes closed, I remember exactly what it felt like to step off the téléphérique du Brévent with a bunch of skiers and snowboarders and then stroll away a bit and be all alone at what felt like the top of the world.  

I need to be alone while I suffer. 

A lyric that I still think was written just for me.

I'm not a journalist or professional writer, but I like to write, so my blog is a way to scratch that particular itch. To some extent, my Twitter feed also serves this purpose. I learned this year of a music writing exercise that is conveniently called "Music Writing Exercise", and is represented by the #MWE hashtag on Twitter. The idea is to listen to one album every day that you have never listened to before, then write some thoughts on it... but the thoughts need to be the length of exactly one tweet.  Now, I started the challenge a few days late, which required listening to multiple albums on some days this month, but I just now finished the Music Writing Exercise. I'd like to share with you the albums I listened to, and my thoughts on them, as written on Twitter.  Who knows, you might find something you like.

I'd link to all of these albums, but it would take me FOREVER to look up all of the appropriate links to websites and such, and besides, you know how to use Google, right? 

• #MWE1. Yep, late getting started. Ben Decca's 2021 album Dévotion is my first exposure to Makossa music. The songs in Ben's native language (I assume Douala), well, I don't understand, but dig the music. Some latin-sounding flavors, great vocals & harmonies, grooving bass.

• #MWE2. Carolyn Shulman's Grenadine & Kerosene, which came out in 2021. The title track is excellent. There are a couple of songs that lean a little close to country for my tastes, but overall, solid lyrics & well performed musically. Go get this one.
• #MWE3. Yes, still behind. California outfit The Sometimes Island has a new EP out called Beverly & Barbara. It's got a creative take an a 70s song, along with some tasty indie pop. Not too saccharine for me, care paid to songcraft and instrumental choices to properly deliver melody.

• #MWE4. Willie Nelson's ...And Then I Wrote. Well, it's noticeably derivative, with blues & gospel/soul music filtered through his vocal approach. Simple lyrics, going for obvious rhymes. Piano sprinkles are lovely, background singers lovely, album reminiscent of elevator music.
• #MWE5. Melissa Carper gives us a live tracked album with Daddy's Country Gold. A unique voice, & an interesting take on a mix of some very old types of music. Yes, the word "country" is in the title, but there are other sounds here, notably strong jazz influence. I think I dig.
• #MWE6. The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. "Great" is doing heavy lifting, as I disagree. My favorite song is "Snow Don't Fall", followed by "Poncho & Lefty", but there isn't much going on musically and the songs here don't speak to me. The strings are nice when they show up.
• #MWE7. Music City USA, by Charlie Crockett. I don't like this one. I think I liked three songs, maybe. I'm beginning to think that this genre might not be my thing.
• #MWE8. Still way behind schedule. I never heard anything from Betty Davis, and her recent death caused me to go check out her work. Her self-titled debut is funky, sultry, and will make you want to get up and dance.

• #MWE9. This is the first Zola Jesus album, The Spoils. Vocals mixed low & ALSO sound like they have a ton of reverb, which makes them sound distant & mostly unintelligible. There are some catchy instrumental hooks, & tasty shoegaze sounds, but I won't come back to this one.
• #MWE10. Back to Betty Davis for this one, her second album. It's just as funky and sultry and full of attitude as the first one.
• #MWE11. Shame on me for taking so long to get around to listening to a Bad Brains album front to back. This is their debut & it is chaotic & fast & loud, except for when they branch off into reggae, & then right back in to furious punk. As good as advertised.
• #MWE12. Adria Kain, When Flowers Bloom. An R&B album featuring what sounds like mostly in-the-box production, which really isn't my thing. I like "Melt Into You" best here, and the album is not bad, just not all that memorable. Really good vocals though.
• #MWE13. Jay Wheeler's latest El Amor y Yo. Good vocals. Heavy use of pitch correction for artistic reasons. I'm old, it's not my thing. Interesting variety of Spanish language urban music. Plenty of nice grooves, and one can dance to most of it.
• #MWE14. Wiki tells me that this Ricky Nelson album is rock and roll. It sounds like the kind of thing you would hear on an oldies station, the songs are quite slow, and use rudimentary chord progressions. The perfect soundtrack to a movie set in the 50s, but not for much else.

• #MWE15. More Betty Davis, more funk on Nasty Gal. Interesting how this sounds like the era it is from, but still somehow fresh. It's good. A song called "F.U.N.K." on it has Betty name dropping a bunch of her musical contemporaries, and I wonder if she was the first to do that.
• #MWE16. Introduced to Nija here on Twitter by @djboothEIC.  Lots of emotion carried in the lyrics on these tracks, notably for me "Rare" & "You Don't Love Her". That said, I think modern R&B with in-the-box production & heavily pitch shifted vocals isn't for me. That's ok.
• #MWE17. Revival, Rissi Palmer. I've followed @RissiPalmer #onhere for awhile, & finally got around to listening. This is as soulful as you'd expect given the album name, also meanders around country & americana sounds. Excellent album. Hello Hammond B3 on stompin' title track!

• #MWE18. Hard Won by Lizzie No has lovely songs. Lizzie plays harp. HARP!!! Lizzie also plays guitar. Folk music here, well recorded. I dig it.
• #MWE19. I listened to this because Paul Monnin told me to. Other than the bass on "Do Right Woman", including a couple of sweet fills, I don't like it. Sorry, Paul. (Ok, I guess I dig the way the different vocals are panned as well.)

• #MWE20. Fellow Midwesterners Urge Overkill are back. Say "oui" to this album. If you remember and like this band, you'll like this album. If not, you might still like it, I certainly do. I dig Nash Kato's voice. The songwriting is good.

• #MWE21. I discovered Joslyn & The Sweet Compression because they are stopping by Dayton on tour. I have a ticket. Solid album here. Funky, with some characteristics of that classic 70s Dayton sound. Soulful. Dig it very much.
• #MWE22. Bubblegum, by Mark Lanegan. I really should have gotten to this earlier. Great songs. Having PJ Harvey on a couple of them certainly doesn't hurt. Mark's voice sounds broken in and familiar like old leather. Solid rock and roll album.
• #MWE23. Spoon's latest album is Lucifer on the Sofa, and is the first Spoon album I have listened to in its entirety. What took me so long? This is a rather solid rock album. I think my favorite song is "Satellite", but that may change with future listens.
• #MWE24. Built To Spill's album Keep It Like A Secret came out in 1999. I like all of this. Some of the guitar work is a bit more meandering than most of what I listen to, but the hooks are good, and there is some big rock and roll sound when there needs to be.
• #MWE25. Kären McCormick's EP Retro. It's pop country, not my thing at all. Well produced and executed, sure. Here's hoping more artists/songwriters of color bust through that glass ceiling in the Nashville part of the industry though.

• #MWE26. heard Momma's new single, which sounds exactly like Veruca Salt to me, so I went to check out their older work. That's not quite the feeling you get on Two Of Me, their 2020 album, it's much more subdued. That said, it's perfectly fine, but I'm ready for the next one.
• #MWE27. Eddie Vedder's latest solo album, Earthling, is much better than I expected, containing a variety of styles, sonic textures, and approaches to song construction. I need a few more listens before I throw too many superlatives at it, but my first take is it's quite solid.
• #MWE28. Pollen, the 2021 album from Superbloom, is my favorite album out of all the ones I listened to this month. It sounds like 90s rock, and I mean that as a compliment. I will probably be listening to this over and over and over again.

*****************************************************************************

This was an enjoyable exercise. I listened to several albums that I otherwise might not have listened to at all, or might have taken awhile to get around to. There ended up being a reasonably diverse group of genres represented, though it could be argued that I need more hip hop or pop music in this February collection.  Maybe I'll concentrate a bit harder on those areas next year.  (Though it could be said that discovering a new-to-me genre in Makossa more than makes up for that.) Yes, I definitely plan to do this exercise again.

You might remember that I have a song about a particularly unpleasant experience with the police, and that TINO had the kindness to feature on it. The story behind writing "Anecdote" is right over here, on a previous blog entry.

This is one of my five singles that have been removed from the world's most popular streaming services. It makes its triumphant return tomorrow, February 22nd.  Would you be so kind as to give it a listen tomorrow wherever you stream music?

Carolyn Shulman is currently from Colorado. She had a lot to say, which I strongly encourage, so we'll skip the preamble and get around to amplifying her voice after the picture.

Photo by Jessie Matteson

1.  Let's hear the elevator pitch for your skill set and genre. 

I’m a folk / Americana singer-songwriter. I have played guitar since I was 9 years old and focus on acoustic guitar. I especially love intricate fingerpicking, but I also enjoy a good, old fashioned strummy song! I am also working on building my electric guitar skills. I would love to be able to improvise and play solid lead guitar, which would open up more possibilities for collaboration with other artists. I’m not there yet, but I’m having such a blast learning and working on developing that new skill set.  

When I perform live, I mostly play solo with my acoustic guitar. However, the album I released in May 2021, Grenadine & Kerosene, is a fully produced album with a band. It contains some songs that are solidly folk, some that are more folk-rock or Americana, and one that is straight up country.  

2.  I have gathered from your social media feeds that you are both culturally and religiously Jewish.  How does your faith and your culture influence the music you make? 

That’s such a nice question! Being Jewish factors into my songwriting indirectly in terms of how I view the world and my role in it. As Jews, we are taught that we should always work to make the world a better place than we found it (this is the concept of tikkun olam - repairing the world). I think also being part of a group that is targeted by violent extremists and hate groups has given me a heightened sense of empathy for the struggles of other marginalized groups. All of these ideas find their way into my songs.  

Being Jewish has also factored into at least one of my songs very directly. My song “Across the Borderline” is about a refugee mother and her two daughters making the perilous journey through the desert to what they hope will be safety in America, only to be separated when they finally make it. Writing it, I was thinking about the similarities with the Exodus story, when Moses led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt, across the desert, to safety and freedom in the promised land.  

Then, fast forward to more modern times, the line in the chorus that says “every footstep is a prayer” was inspired by something that Rabbi Abraham Heschel said after marching in Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Some other rabbis (who had not gone to Selma) were giving him a hard time afterwards. Calling his level of religious observance into question, they asked him whether he prayed while he was in Alabama. He replied, “Yes. I prayed with my feet.” I really love that idea of praying with our feet - that taking action, either for ourselves or to help others, can be just as holy and important as praying in a more traditional way. 

3.  What was the first album you can remember buying with your own money? 

Michael Jackson’s Bad! I bought it on cassette tape at Peaches Music (which is sadly no more) in my hometown of Mobile, Alabama. That was how we rolled in the 80s!  

4.  Tell me about the last concert you saw. 

The last in-person concert I saw was Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn, and Sara Watkins on December 1, 2021 at the beautiful Paramount Theater in Denver, Colorado. It was my first indoor, in-person show to attend since before the pandemic began. They were fantastic. Mary Chapin-Carpenter was supposed to be part of that tour, but she had to cancel due to I think a shoulder injury, and so Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek, Watkins Family Hour) subbed in, and she was an amazing addition to the show. They all sat onstage and played in the round, and it was a beautiful night. I cried when the music started, it had been so long. 

5.  You didn't get a chance to play a bunch of support shows for Grenadine & Kerosene, thanks to the pandemic. Are there plans of taking that album out on the road in the future? 

I hope so, pandemic allowing! I’m planning on booking some shows around Colorado for the spring and summer.  

6. You're a lawyer.  I've never met a lawyer who turned into an indie musician. Is there anything from your former career that you bring forward into this one?  

Definitely. I am sort of a geek about doing things by the book and treating my music like a business (because it is!). I copyright my songs. I set up an LLC through which I handle my music business. I know the value of seeking out the help of experts when I don’t know how to do something myself or when I realize I don’t know all of the subtleties. I would never sign a contract that could affect my rights to control or earn income from my music or my publishing without thoroughly reviewing it and would probably have another lawyer review it, too.  

I think in general, my background as a lawyer has taught me a lot about how the world works and has taught me that the devil is in the details, so to speak. 

7. If you could change anything about the music industry, what would it be?   

I would have the streaming platforms such as Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, etc. compensate artists more fairly for the use of our creations. Right now, it takes approximately 5,000 Spotify streams in the United States to earn the same income we’d get from one album sale. That is insulting to artists and has resulted in a mind-boggling amount of profit for these streaming companies.  

Meanwhile, music has become devalued to the average listener. Maybe they don’t know that we only receive about $0.003 per stream (on Spotify), or maybe they don’t care because streaming is so convenient. I mean, I stream music, too! I love being able to do so. But, when I find something I enjoy, I go to iTunes or to that artist’s website, and I purchase a digital download of the album in order to support that artist. Most people, however, aren’t doing that. We have been conditioned in the last 15 years to expect instant, on-demand access to just about any song we want for very low cost. In the past, people had to buy an album if they wanted to listen to it on demand.  

8.  Making Grenadine & Kerosene was a lifelong dream for you.  Mission accomplished.  What do you do next? 

I am focusing right now on learning how to work within the world of sync licensing. Sync licensing is when a song gets licensed for use in television, movies, advertisements, and video games. As I explained in the previous question, music streaming platforms have sort of destroyed musicians’ ability to earn much income from recorded music. However, sync licensing is a great way to do just that. Music supervisors need music in order to enhance the emotional impact of their shows, movies, ads, and games, and they are required to pay artists to use it. More shows and movies are being created and released than ever before right now (thanks to streaming services! ha!), and I believe indie musicians can really benefit by working on getting their songs into this arena.  

In addition to working on that, I am also looking forward to connecting with fans in person and growing my audience through live shows this year! Fingers crossed for a better year in terms of the pandemic. I really want to play out more in 2022. 

***********************

Grenadine & Kerosene is not only a brilliant album title full of imagery, it's also the name of the album's title track. It's very good.  You should listen to it. Feel free to listen to it for free on the streaming service of your choice, but if you like it, well, you should probably head on over to Carolyn's Bandcamp page and buy it.

In addition to her official website, you can connect with Carolyn Shulman on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

If your restaurant is called Mofongos, it would be reasonable to expect a Puerto Rican restaurant with mofongo prominently featured among the culinary offerings. This spot in North Hollywood fulfilled and surpassed both of those expectations on my recent visit. I don't have a Puerto Rican restaurant near me, so when I saw Mofongos was within easy walking distance of my hotel during my recent trip to the Los Angeles area, I knew I had to drop by for a visit.  Mofongo, after all, is delicious.

The restaurant is small, and has the feel of a family-run establishment. The kitchen wasn't visible, so I don't know how many people were back there cooking, but when I arrived, one of the employees was heading out, and the remaining person seemed to be the only one responsible for the front of the house the rest of the evening.  If memory serves, his name is Ángel, and he kindly put up with my insistence on speaking in Spanish.  (It's a Puerto Rican restaurant, we should speak in Spanish, you know?) I knew better than to try out my imitation of a Puerto Rican accent... I'm not good enough to pull that off with a native speaker.

Let's start with the namesake dish. Have a look at this picture right here:

Isn't that a thing of beauty?  I opted for the Mofongo de Carne Frita, which means that those are delightfully crunchy morsels of fried pork on top. Tostones came on the side, because more platano is never a bad thing, right?  This was delicious.  The broth was perfect, the mofongo was perfect, the pork was perfect, the tostones were perfect.  Now, a sensible person wouldn't have gotten anything else to eat, but not only am I not remotely sensible, I have some nostalgia for arroz con gandules.

See, a very grandmotherly grandmother who I know in my area is Puerto Rican. In the before times, when there would be a gathering, she always brought arroz con gandules. She even personally taught me how to make it once. Of course, I have never at any point been able to make mine taste like hers, even though I am certain I followed her instructions perfectly... but yeah, I don't try anymore. It's been awhile since I ran into arroz con gandules, so I got some of that on the side. 

Did I finish this?  No, not close.  I did, however, eat enough of it to find the olive that was hiding in there.  (Just like Milta's!) The flavor was spot on.  This leads me to believe that Mofongos has a Puerto Rican grandmother in the kitchen doing the cooking.

As a history nerd, eating food like this always makes me think of where delicious things might come from. Does mofongo bear a resemblance to fufu?  Yes, yes it does. Now, the reasons for that are, of course, horrific. Same reason that you don't meet anyone who speaks Taíno anymore. That said and acknowledged, one small nice thing that comes out of cultural collision is delicious food.  Mofongo is one of those things. If you happen to have access to North Hollywood, I strongly recommend you swing by Mofongos and try theirs.

To begin, I'd like to make it clear right up front that Audiomack is not sponsoring me in any way, and I am not being paid to talk about them. All of the experiences I am going to relay to you in this post are one hundred percent true, although the empirical sabermetrician in me freely acknowledges that the sample size is small. Your results may vary, though I strongly doubt it. Hey, maybe try out some of these things on your own and talk about your experience?

One of the more popular music streaming services has been in the news lately, as a couple of well-known Canadian artists have had their music removed from the platform in the last week. In the musician social media circles I tend to read, there are individuals canceling their paid accounts with the popular platform in question. This particular blog post is not intended to discuss the controversy. This particular blog post is intended to offer an alternative to the most well-known streaming services, an alternative that is certainly a better choice for artists, and one that may also be a better choice for listeners. How did I arrive at that viewpoint?  Let me tell you a story.

Remember Greg Owens? This gentleman wrote a song with me. He's an Americana artist. He had a song out called "Love in the Rain". My wife listened to that particular song on the popular music streaming service that I have been clearly avoiding mentioning by name. That service followed up "Love in the Rain" with "WAP" by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. This didn't make sense to us. Shouldn't the algorithm for this service take note of the song's genre and style, and then follow up the selection with something similar?  Why would it default to what was, at the time, the most streamed song in the United States? Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, and Atlantic Records really didn't need another stream of that hit to go with the millions of streams they already had, but an indie artist like Greg surely could have used a stream for one of his other songs. This did not sit right with me.  Interestingly, I later had an opportunity to ask an industry expert about it.

This industry insider has specific expertise in the streaming platform in question. I listened carefully as he described how their music algorithm works. I took away two main points from listening to him speak. The algorithm on this platform leans heavily toward genre. The algorithm looks at locations of listeners and likes to categorize by location. Based on those two criteria, "Love in the Rain" should have been followed by a song from an Ohio-based Americana artist. We have a few of those. "WAP", popular though it was, does not fit here in any way. When it came time for a question-and-answer session with the gentleman, I explained the situation above in detail, and asked how we can reconcile the platform's behavior with the explanation we were just given of how the platform is supposed to behave. The response that I got was telling.

At first, the gentleman used humor to deflect my question, stating that the platform was messing with me, then deadpanning that "WAP" is a great American classic that deserves to be heard over and over. Finally he said quite seriously that the component that I am leaving out of the equation is time.  In other words, since this was my wife's first visit to Spotify, the algorithm couldn't possibly look at her location or the genre she selected, and instead was obligated to serve the most streamed song on the platform until she had enough listens in order for it to make a better choice.  This, dear reader, is nonsense, and frankly, I found it insulting.  Does it sound true to you?

Do you remember Pandora? That's one of the older music streaming services. Do you know what the follow-up song is when you play an Americana song on Pandora? I leave you to try it if you wish, but let's just say that you won't get a chart-topping hip hop song next. Pandora somehow manages to figure out the genre you want to hear right from your first listen. This is how I knew that the explanation I was being given was absolutely untrue, I have experience with other platforms that don't behave like this.  Maybe the real answer was "I don't know".  More likely the real answer is "this platform has a vested interest in serving whatever major label artist is at the top of the charts right now, and that will always be the default behavior"... at any rate, the lack of a real answer kind of bummed me out.  

All told though, streaming music sure is convenient.  Even for people who still love listening to music on CD (like me) or vinyl, sometimes the convenience is difficult to pass up. And, for full disclosure, I host my podcast on a free platform that is very easy to use, and that platform happens to be owned by the very same service I am discussing above.

Audiomack is an option that I enjoy.  Here are my reasons:

Listener Experience

I tend to do most of my music streaming from the same location I am typing this blog... on a desktop PC. The website has a simple interface to use. It does not require installation of an app, but if you stream via a mobile device, that is absolutely an option. For you audiophiles out there, a subscription to their premium service gets you higher quality streams, along with equalizer controls, a lack of ads or banners, and the ability to download playlists. Like other popular platforms, Audiomack brings me a personalized feed of music that they think will suit my interests. The ability to playlist is here as well, of course, as I alluded to briefly. The Audiomack World page reminds me of the music journalism over on Bandcamp, it's a good place to discover new artists. In order to find what songs are most recently added, well, they have a Recently Added page that you can sort by genre.

Of course, does any streaming service actually CARE about their listeners? Aren't we all just numbers to them, a way to collect those advertising dollars? Well, I reached out to Brian Zisook, co-founder and Senior Vice President of Operations for Audiomack, to ask about what kind of experience they are hoping for listeners to take away from their platform. Brian says: "We want Audiomack users to find pleasure in leaning into artist discovery, rather than sitting back and letting an algorithm tell them what is popular. If you use Audiomack and frequent our Trending sections, by genre, or Audiomack World, our editorial arm, it's nearly impossible to not find your next favorite artist." 

What if you enjoy streaming music, but you know that musicians are getting paid mere fractions of a cent for those streams? Oh, sure, there are plenty of listeners who just don't care, but let's say you're not one of them.  Let's say that you recognize the amount of hard work that goes into writing music and getting it professionally recorded and produced in order to bring you quality art. Let's say you want to stream, but you also want to compensate the artists. Well, the Supporters feature on Audiomack is perfect for you!

My wife and I repeated the "Love in the Rain" experiment. Here's where that song lives on Audiomack. The next suggested song was by a completely different artist named Greg Owens. That is not the ideal result, but I can understand why that happened. I would like to have seen a recommendation in the same genre, but this brings me around to one drawback: rock and rock-adjacent genres are underrepresented on Audiomack. The platform is strong in hip hop, pop, EDM, rap, and afrobeats. This brings me to the part where I talk to other artists.

Artist Experience

Hey there, fellow artists and musicians. We all want people to find our work and listen to us. The emphasis here is on people... actual real human beings with emotions and soul, not bots. I think that Audiomack has the potential to be the best platform for us, but it won't be if it doesn't grow its listener base, and it won't grow its listener base unless more artists put their music over there. Do you see the dilemma?  Let me tell you about what I like about Audiomack from the perspective of an artist.

You can upload your music there on your own, without the need for a distributor. For the majority of the other streaming services, we have to go through a distribution company to get our music onto their platform.  This is not the case with Audiomack.  Sure, you can use a distributor to get your music to Audiomack if you wish, they work with a few of them.  However, this is not a requirement.  You can absolutely build your profile and upload your songs all on your own without a distributor.

The process to get music to an official Audiomack playlist is transparent.  There isn't a great deal of mystery about it.  In fact, there are specific places on Audiomack where you can submit your newly uploaded songs directly to the curators of the "trending" lists, and if they like your song, it goes up there.  This, of course, gets you a bump in the amount of plays you get. I know this can be done, because I have done it. If you're an artist who makes music in a rock-adjacent genre, well, there is less competition for listeners than other genres on Audiomack at the moment, there's an opportunity here.

They believe in artist education at Audiomack.  There is a specific section of Audiomack World that is for artists. This section contains simple explanations of the inner workings of the music industry... glancing at that page right now, I see articles explaining the role of a booking agent, what a manager is supposed to do, how publishing works, how to protect oneself as an artist, how to deal with the MLC, and all sorts of other useful business advice. This page is free, but the advice here is useful. 

Despite there being fewer users of this platform than other platforms, I tend to get more listens on Audiomack than I do elsewhere.  I also have FAR more monthly listeners on Audiomack than elsewhere, and again, this is in spite of the fact that their subscriber base is lower than a certain other service that I have touched on before. Growth in listens on this platform feels organic. I come away with the feeling that when I get a stream on Audiomack, there is an actual person on the other end listening, and I don't always get that feeling on some other services. Ok, I'll admit it... I can't quantify that in any way.  That's a feeling.  You need something tangible.  You need some evidence that Audiomack is trying to support artists.  Well, here comes your evidence.

Audiomack recently launched a Supporters feature.  Insider dot com wrote about it here. Simply put, this feature gives an opportunity to artists that I haven't seen anywhere else. A listener who truly loves one of our songs or one of our albums can monetarily support that piece of art via this feature, and that money goes directly to us. Money from the listener to the artist for streaming our music.  Other services are not doing that.  Our listeners may be paying for subscriptions to one or more services, but as artists, we know that we are never seeing any of those funds.  This is different. It has the potential to be a game-changer. If you want to know what Audiomack says about it, I recommend reading this article here.

I asked Brian Zisook what this new feature would bring to artists.  This is what he said: "Supporters not only provides Audiomack creators with the opportunity to generate more revenue for their songs and albums, which in the current streaming ecosystem is of vast importance, but it also allows them to earmark and filter through their superfans. We bolstered this direct connection by giving creators the ability to send thank you messaging and offer their fans perks or freebies, strengthening the fan-artist union and removing the feeling of it being purely transactional."

Did you get that?  If a listener loves our music enough to support us financially, we'll be able to thank them personally.  We'll be able to offer them perks for being there for us.  We'll be able to bring them into our world. That's a pretty great idea.

Summary

I am just one songwriter who plays bass. I don't have "clout".  I'm probably not going to change many minds. That said, I've noticed a shift in the direction of the streaming winds so to speak, and if that ends up being an actual thing, well, here is a streaming platform that I think deserves more attention. How many users will Audiomack really be able to take away from the established giants in this space? That remains to be seen. From the standpoint of an artist, this is definitely a service worth investigating. If you see the same potential there that I do, why not give your listeners a gentle nudge in this direction? 

My page on Audiomack is here.

I invite you to have a look.  I invite you to listen.  I invite you to click around and listen to some other artists on this platform.  If perchance you wish to support me, well, I would be most pleased if you would make use of the new Supporters feature. Really though, what I am looking for - and what musicians in general are looking for - is a person to listen to us with whom we can make a connection. That is a challenge on streaming services in general.  Audiomack makes that a little easier for us, and simply put, that's the key takeaway.

What's your favorite music streaming service?  There are many to choose from.  The most popular ones are Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Napster, Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music, depending on where you might be from.  There are dozens of other streaming services. 

Have you ever wondered how a musician gets their music onto these streaming services?

Well, we can't upload our songs to these services on our own. We must use a distribution company to do so.  There are several different companies that do this.  They all charge us money of course, which is rather disappointing, as the amount of money that we pay to send our music to streaming services doesn't exactly come back to us because streaming services make a habit of not paying artists.  Let's table that for a moment, and come back to the distribution companies.  They all kind of do the same job, but how they do so is slightly different, and they have different types of services and customer support experiences, and that sort of thing.  

I have recently decided to change distributors for five of my singles.  The five singles are as follows:

"Anecdote (featuring TINO)"
"Baile Conmigo"
"Bright Ideas"
"Little Light"
"Won't Love You Anymore" 

Since I am changing distributors, these five songs are not currently available on global streaming services.  Now, I'm not a popular enough artist that anyone would have noticed this, but it's true.  Feel free to have a look.  You can't stream them right now.  Of course, these songs are still available right here on my official website, over on my Bandcamp page, and on my Audiomack page, as they do not require a distributor in order to add music.  However, since there are plenty of folks out there who prefer to listen to music on Apple or Pandora or Spotify, I will once again distribute the above five singles to streaming services.  Which single should be re-released first?

I posed that question to the wonderful people on my mailing list, and let them choose via a poll.  (I would very much like it if you joined my mailing list.) They selected "Won't Love You Anymore".

As an artist who very much wishes to please, "Won't Love You Anymore" will return to streaming services tomorrow, Tuesday 25th January. If you really miss this song, and would like to hear it now, you can find it on my website at the link above, at this Bandcamp link, or at this Audiomack link.

Do you have any thoughts on which song I should re-release next?  Feel free to comment on this blog post with your suggestions.