Catching Up

So, let’s catch up.

Almost exactly two years ago, Mary and I moved from Atlanta to Burlington, Vermont.  After moving to Vermont, there was this global economic meltdown and the job market dried up.  I tried to get teaching jobs, and there are way more teachers than jobs here in Burlington, so there are tons of applicants for every position.  And I haven’t had much luck.  Actually, I’ve been very unlucky regarding the acquisition of money.

So, I had some time on my hands, and decided to finally use all of those music making devices I’ve been collecting for the last twenty years.  So made an album.  It turned into “Babies Don’t Have Hands”.  I’ve listened to it recently, and it stands up.  Well, at least the first nine songs stand up.  The album is much more than a demo, and a little less than a commercial release.  It’s a good record of where I was at musically in 2008.  I printed a hundred copies of the album, and mostly gave them all away.  I sold a couple, and felt a bit guilty about it.  It was on iTunes for a year, and it sold three copies, which I assume were from family and friends.

About the title of the album, it’s become apparent since the album’s release, that older people really don’t like it, and younger people think it’s cool.  People seem to take it literally, like it’s about amputating children’s arms or something.  Actually, it’s a stupid punchline from a stupid joke from years ago.  Basically, I had a picture of a baby that had been cut out of a magazine, and whoever cut the picture out had accidentally cut off the baby’s hands.  So, one day someone asked why the baby in the picture didn’t have any hands, and I said, “babies don’t have hands.”

Later in 2008, I decided to make an electrop Christmas album.  I have a couple of reasons for doing this, and none of them were very strong.  First, I never really liked Christmas music, so I wanted to make an album of Christmas music that even I would like.  Second, I wanted to do something that didn’t require vocals.  Third, I’m married to a minister, so it sort of felt appropriate.

It took six months to make my second album, “Christmas and Glowsticks”.  This album has been really popular among immediate friends and family.  I finished it a bit too late to shop the album around to labels, so I decided to release it on my own, and do as much promotion as I could through Facebook and Myspace.  It did very well for a local release.  As an experiment I posted the album up as a pay-what-you-want download, and some people actually paid a bit for it, which was nice.

Then, I joined this online A&R company called Taxi.  Basically, they post listings of TV and movie music supervisor’s needs, and ask their members to write music to fill those needs.  It costs $300 a year to be a member, and it costs $5 for every song you upload.  Then, after you submit, they either “forward” your song or “reject” your song.  If you’re forwarded, then your music might reach the music supervisor who initially requested music for the listing, and might actually be used on their show or movie.

I have submitted twenty-five or so songs and have had more than 50% of them “forwarded”.  This is apparently a really good ratio, as I’ve read that the average is 7%.  Of these forwards, I had one song picked up by a large music library: Crucial Music.  That song is now available on their website waiting to be used in some context.  But you don’t get paid until it gets played.  So out of the $425 investment in www.taxi.com, I have made zero money.  Actually, Taxi feels more like a lottery than anything else.  It’s an imperfect analogy, but essentially, you keep buying lottery tickets, and hope that one of them hits.

I don’t seem to have the key to taxi, and my submissions have dropped off in recent months.