The album Within and Without is finally launched!!!! It is a weight off my mind – I thought it would be finished for Oct 2010 you see so I am only about 6 yrs behind where I should be.
However this is not the end of the project – the project itself is somewhat larger and even for this single album there are more videos to be created and more visual arts. Though they will be included in the next album download and not this one.
But we are talking years and years of work and things that I will share with you along the way as I did with this lot!
For now I will give the lo down on how things went with the launch incase you want to do the same – well I should have given myself more time but I always think that with projects – I was still finishing off some of the bits on the eve before the launch. But the thing is that those thing might actually never have gotten done if I was not doing the launch!
I struggled with Facebook to be honest – the first launch party I did for the Spoogy Book a few years ago went really well and people in the US, India and Australia all took part. The one I ran for Love: A Stranger Dream I paid a small amount for advertising – it didn’t really take off but that was fine as the Google Plus one had people responding etc…
This time… Facebook would not let me have the Internets as a location but rather than tell me that it just kept removing my location setting so those who actually received and saw their invites thought it was a physical event. My friends and fan bases are spread out globally so a physical event is always going to be a no go for most of them!
It also complains if you try and invite more than about 50 people to your event, some invites get lost, lots don’t get seen because we are all busy people and lets face it everyone is having events. Oh and due to some Facebook wisedom of it’s very own it also decided to change the end date making my weekend launch a week long one!!! Not really a problem as I tend to post for about that long after the events anyway.
Having moaned though, I still had a little interaction on there – interestingly lots of people thought they did not have the option to attend and only “interested” which they duly clicked. Even I had to faff to be attending my own event!
But between the event page and my artistandwriters page we got there and people interacted and so on. Still not many as when I did the first launch so maybe everyone hates me now or just prefers my kids stuff or something!
Google Plus… so for Love: A Stranger Dream the Google Plus Event was brilliant but this time for this launch party… well I couldn’t find how to make one!
So I made a collection instead – I’d sort of been considering doing that anyway because it’s kind of nice to have a consolidation of a project or a sort of living archive. And I think that is exactly what I’ve gotten – It looks AMAZING though I did not get much interaction but the numbers of followers of it has been creeping up.
I like it so much that I am still posting stuff in there and will continue to do so until I run out of things to say/share about the project!
Twitter – now twitter was interesting – I had little interaction during the launch party again something that contrasted heavily with the first launch I did. But the days following I’ve had lots and lots of new followers and people interacting with the tweets which have come up as highlights etc… and I did have the most takers for the give away badges on there.
On twitter my main accounts are Saffy and TheMonsterBlogs.
I still need to try out the twitter advertising platform which I signed up for to promote A Stranger Dream: Love
but never actually got around to it. Also this was the first time I used a scheduler – I think I should have used it more and sent out more posts but I always fear I am boring/spamming people which is why I did also make several announcements on the run up that people should mute me if they weren’t interested – I have a diverse range of things I tweet about and not everyone finds everything interesting.
Other things I did was post one offs about it on Ello, LinkedIn and the blogs plus various other boards and forums. I forget to write my news letter and the blogs could have done with more posts leading upto event. I forgot about live journal and myspace completely along with a few other art and music specific platforms.
I created a pinterest board and actually got around to adding the merch on Bandcamp. I should have done more on Patreon but I am still getting used to having the account – new stuff will probably be going up there first in future.
More needs to be done with the visuals to the album including expanding the merch – I added select items to the actual bandcamp page but also have etsy and cafepress. I am considering looking at Redbubble and Zazzle once again, and I forgot about Deviant Art. And this forgetting is one of the issues – this is not really about having the head injury but more about the fact that everyone forgets because there are so many different platforms for everything and that is another issue with the virtual launch parties – everything is spread out and defused.
But that’s ok – now I’ve workout that it’s fine to cross post as they do tend to be different communities. Next step involves creating some sort of booklet and physical CD for those who like to have the physical in their hand.
Sound wise the project has limited appeal – the most common reaction to people listening is one of bafflement but every now and then someone is over the moon with it – they get it they are tuned into it – they understand – I need to find these people and there are not that many of them and they are spread globally and that is fine – I am not looking at getting gold records here – I am not even sure it really counts as music – I think of it more as hyper-poetry, with tones and sounds and visuals and over arching narratives and themes and chaos linked threads.
In conclusion – yeah I would have liked more people – I don’t think that even many of my actual friends knew it was happening due to the nature of Facebook etc… but hey friends are not fans and you can tell when someone is just supporting you because they feel they have to and I don’t want that! And this is where the success of the event lies – I had people I have never interacted with appear and comment on the art work or theme or enter to win the badges because they liked them so much.
And the other thing with this part of the project everything has been publicly available as and when it was finished and the launch meant I fine tuned and finished off a few things. The launch was the drive to do this so from that point of view it was instant success!
