Zoë Keating

Every piece of music starts with some strong feeling that I get...

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:06:23 -0700

Every piece of music starts with some strong feeling that I get swept up in (I’m sure it’s the same for most artists). To put this feeling into music I have to lock myself in the studio, immerse myself in that feeling and go explore the bleeding edges of it. It’s messy: I cry, laugh, dance, go a little crazy. When I appear every now and then to go to the bathroom or make tea (I tend not to eat when I’m in this state) I probably look a little wild eyed and disturbed. This state is precious and fleeting, so I try to avoid email or talking to anyone so as not to break my bubble and lose it.

Before our son was born it was relatively easy. I could turn off email without my world falling apart too much and my husband would leave me alone, knowing that I’d be fun again in a couple days. But nowadays emails increasingly demand to be answered and how can I ignore my son when he sees me, yells “Mama!” and runs into my arms?! So I have to do my best to efficiently work through whatever I’m experiencing in order to be normal again in time for the family dinner.

Anyway, on Wednesday I had the feeling and I acted on it. This one is vaguely about standing on the top of a mountain and being irresistibly drawn towards the edge. What if I leap? Will I fly? Will I fall? Will someone catch me?

It’s not done, but I want to share it anyway. I don’t normally like to play music for people before it’s finished because to me those tiny endless details that take weeks to polish are what take a piece of music from ordinary to special. That said, there is always something compelling about my rough first pass, when I’m just feeling it and not worrying about technique or sound mix or how it will be perceived. I think that’s one of the reasons why I love performing so much, because I get to feel each piece of music anew every night. So before I flesh this one out, polish it, turn it into something album-worthy and give it a proper title, here is the last 48 hrs in musical form.

I still do puffy heart the cello. (Photo of a young me, on...

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:12:15 -0700

I still do puffy heart the cello. (Photo of a young me, on Dartmoor with my cousin Anna).

"Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:42:30 -0700

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which
to shape it.”

- Bertolt Brecht

How time flies

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:02:00 -0700

10 years ago yesterday, Steve Jobs launched the iTunes store with 200,000 songs at 99 cents each.

Back then, I didn’t have a solo project yet. I was playing in a cello-rock band called Rasputina and working as an information architect at the Research Libraries Group. I had an iPod though. I listened to it on tour, lying in the back seat of the van as we hurtled across America.

iTunes opened it’s doors to unaffiliated artists in 2004 and as soon as I had a recording of my own layered cello thing ready in 2005, I put it up there through CDBaby. It was not an auspicious beginning. My music didn’t actually appear in the iTunes store until several months later in early 2006. Multiple emails went nowhere, but a trip to the CDBaby headquarters in Portland eventually revealed that my iTunes submission was getting rejected every day: spit out of a daily upload process because of an illegal character…..the dotted “e” in my first name.

It’s hard to remember what an amazing thing iTunes was at the time. My music…. recorded in my house, on my laptop with a single microphone….could appear in the same store alongside albums from major label artists.

Later that year I got some press coverage, sales spiked, iTunes made me a banner and my album went to #1 on Classical (a few times). That year, my husband and I bought a house. I’ve been paying my mortgage with that monthly iTunes check ever since.

iTunes has been more than just money though, it’s helped expand my horizons. In 2008 I was invited to perform my music with the Ballet de la Generalitat in Valencia, Spain. How did they find me? The choreographer had searched for “cello” in iTunes, fell in love with my music and created a ballet called “Llebeig”. I’ve met so many interesting people this way.

I’ve been incredibly lucky and honestly never expected this to last so long. I still believe it will all end tomorrow and now a lot of people think the same. That monthly check from iTunes will eventually dry up, either because everyone has moved to streaming or because my run is over ;-) But it’s ok, I’ll roll with it. The people who love music will always be out there, I’ll just have to reach them differently. And when my run really is over, I’ll get a real job.

Happy Birthday iTunes and thank YOU listeners for buying all those downloads.

I know, you’re thinking….why is Zoë posting a...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:07:00 -0700

I know, you’re thinking….why is Zoë posting a recording of the Star Spangled Banner???

Let me explain. It’s a long story. Sorry.

Two years ago I got a call from Chris Wiltsee of Bandpage. He was on the board of the SF Chapter of the Recording Academy (you know, the GRAMMY folks) and said, “Hey, there’s an opening on the board in the next election. You should apply!”. I never paid much attention to the GRAMMYs honestly except for the years that Imogen Heap was nominated (I was on tour with her in Europe when she got the news in 2007, and onstage with her again when she got the news for 2010), but my post-production friend Count was already on the board. So was Minna Choi from the Magik Magik Orchestra and some other music folks I vaguely knew. I live far from the city in the forest and often my only interaction with other artists is through the interwebs. I said yes.

Since then, separately from the Academy, I’ve unwittingly become involved in larger ongoing discussions on topics like statutory royalties, streaming payouts, DIY careers, etc. I don’t think my position on issues, when I have one (usually I’m just figuring things out for myself), lines up with that of any organization, as far as I can tell. It’s hard to say what I am: an advocate for the little guy? a gadfly? a naif? It is certainly true that it is easy for me to be a ‘renegade’ when I’m not dependent on anyone (other than my fans) and very few people are dependent on me. But I like it that way.

Anyway, I am curious about how sausages are made, and of course I have opinions, so when the opportunity came up to go to Congress for the Academy’s annual Grammys on the Hill event, I signed up. Yeah, I want to meet my elected representatives! I planned to blend in with the rest of the SF Chapter and get a glimpse of what lobbying looks like. I don’t blend in very well apparently, because shortly after I signed up to go, Daryl Friedman, the Academy’s advocacy chief in DC, asked me if I would play the national anthem at the awards ceremony the day before.

I think I’ve talked about this before, but fancy galas and I are not a good fit. Put me in a meeting room or a beanbag lounge where we can talk big ideas, but to stand awkwardly in a party with a cocktail in my hand making polite smalltalk? Let’s just say that I’ve been known to hide in the bathroom. Luckily, I have this thing I do with the cello and I totally use it as a crutch. Playing the cello at an event is like getting magic fairy dust sprinkled on my head. Suddenly, I have confidence! I can go and talk to anyone! I said yes.

But now I had to learn the national anthem. I have a difficult relationship with patriotic songs. Maybe it started when my family moved to America when I was 10 and I didn’t want to go, but in high school I stubbornly refused to sing the anthem and opted out of the Pledge of Allegiance. So first, I tried playing it straight, in a variety of key signatures. This was unsatisfying. The music just didn’t mean anything to me and I couldn’t muster up the necessary amount of cheese and bombast to pull it off. It’s that kind of piece: major key, essentially a hymn. Maybe I wasn’t patriotic enough to play this thing? Then there are the words. Boy, did I pore over those words. How to match the music with the meaning of the words? Eventually I tired of playing the melody (everyone in the house was tired of it too) and I started improvising. But when I focused on rendering those words into notes, I ended up with horror movie music. I decided to give it a rest for a week and work on my own damn music, which arguably is what I should be doing anyway.

Over the weekend I thought maybe I should educate myself in how other people had rendered this vexing song. I fired up Youtube and watched Jimmy Hendrix, Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys, Nirvana (theirs was my favorite actually…a staggering Kurt Cobain plays the anthem while the rest of the band trashes all their gear). Watching the endless variations I came to the realization that the most patriotic way to play the Star Spangled Banner is to make up your own damn version. Only in America can you remake the national anthem to fit YOU. That was the permission I needed. I spent a day (the horrible day after the horrible Boston Marathon) working out a looped and layered version of the Star Spangled Banner.

The result is rough around the edges, has moments of hopeful exuberance, doubt and a little bit cheese in the middle. Just like me. Just like America.

We have our issues, but this is a great place to be.

(p.s. this is essentially a live recording and isn’t mastered or anything proper like that, so listen at your own risk.)

Next post, my day in Congress…..

An experiment in crowdfunding a concert

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:44:00 -0700

Dear Londoners,

I am coming to Europe this summer to visit my old school in Italy (I spent my junior year abroad in Florence). While I’m all the way over there on that side of the pond I would like to play a concert or two.

Where should I play? I usually travel to a distant place because a venue or organization has invited me, often for a private event, and the fee is enough to cover my travel. This is wonderful and I love it…but I rarely manage to arrange other concerts in the area. Sometimes I feel like a ping pong ball, ricocheting around the world with no plan. Plus, there are a lot of places where I know I have listeners, that get left out.

Digging through my accumulated data (Nielsen Soundscan, zip codes from iTunes and Bandcamp, my mailing list, Facebook insights, Google analytics, etc) I’ve discovered that my listeners are spread all over the globe….but I’m not in direct contact with the vast majority of you. And because I operate outside the standard music industry, even when my research tells me there are many of you in a particular city, it’s not always easy to for me to convince concert promoters I will have an audience.

Songkick is trying to help artists solve these problems with their new service, Detour. You might have heard of Detour. They got some press recently when Andrew Bird and his fans used it to bring him to play in Latin America.

Songkick and I have discovered that I have more than a few listeners in London so we’ve decided to try a little experiment and use Detour to crowdfund a concert in London.

Here is how it works…..you pledge to buy a ticket to my hypothetical London show (and you set the price). Once enough people have signed up, Detour works with concert promoters to make the concert happen.

Shall we try it?

If you’d come to my London show, go to this URL

Click where is says “I have an invitation”

and enter this invitation code: 75TQMRY8

(You’ll need to sign up with Songkick Detour if you haven’t already. You can use your Facebook login or sign up for a new Detour account.)

How to tour intelligently is a problem I’ve been trying to solve for a long time. Maybe technology can help?

Musicians and nerds working together

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:27:00 -0800

If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, join me at SF Music Tech on Feb 19 to discuss the path towards creating a public database for music credits, rights, and licensing.

The panel is with David King, formerly Head of Content ID and Licensing at YouTube, Rob Kaye from MusicBrainz, Kevin Lewandowski from Discogs and moderated by Brian Behlendorf, the primary developer of Apache and a champion of open-source software.

You don’t have to be there in person. The entire conference will be live streamed and I believe you can ask questions and contribute to the discussion. Tune in at SFMusictech.com.

Our panel “Towards a Credits, Rights and Terms of Licensing Database” is at 3:30pm PST and there cool things happening all day, like “How We Will Experience Music in the Future?” and “DIY Musical Devices Using Arduino and Other Prototyping Platforms”.

Without fanfare

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 13:52:00 -0800

I wasn’t paying attention to the internets over the weekend. While I was doing laundry and enjoying a low-key birthday, one of my favorite bands quietly released a new album. My Bloody Valentine put out their first recording in 22 bloody years….which of course makes me feel bloody old both because so much time has gone by and because I wasn’t the first to know ;-)

You can download it directly from them in 24bit 96K WAV files.

I love that they put it out without fanfare, just like Godspeed You! Black Emperor did in October and David Bowie did in January. When it’s ready, send an email. That’s what I’ve always done, against the advice of nearly everyone I know in the music industry. It feels real, natural, and uncontrived. If people like what you’ve made, they will tell others.

I suppose cynics will say that this is now an accepted marketing strategy and we’ll see more albums released this way. But I think you’ll always be able to tell when an artist has something real that they want to share with you.

Warren Ellis wrote about it on Vice, My Bloody Valentine, Bowie, and the URL of Things to Come

I’ll repost part of his article here, but you should follow the link to read the whole thing:

The future of the arts has been here for a while, but I suspect it required the return of an old hand at the occult mechanics of marketing like David Bowie to drive it home for a lot of people. Imagine if he’d presented the piece like a record of old, or like the way movies are marketed now. The long build-up, the teasers, the chatter. Some people miss that slow process of creating anticipation, and, yes, that was a thrill that is largely gone today. But also lost, with the end of that method, is a really poisonous strain of disappointment, a thing that gave a lethal bite to artists on, for example, their third album or their second book. What we have now, with all its inherent difficulties and issues, is, I would argue, a far more life-enhancing, generous, and magical thing.

What Bowie did—what artists all over the world do now—is create a gift. Turning on the net first thing in the morning can be a real grind. Everyone knows that feeling: time to open the door to the Shit Room to find out what went wrong while you were asleep.

People forget—or perhaps didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago—that the internet is also the greatest delivery system for new art ever created. And now we live in an age where we switch on and find we’ve been given a new favorite song for the day.

Talk about the music you love. Support and embrace the musicians you know or follow, big or (especially) small. Because in these early years of global network culture, they make the world a lovelier place to live in than it has ever in history been.

Where does the filthy lucre come from?

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:06:00 -0800

Many people wrote to me after the NYTimes article with advice. Most of you had some great ideas and I do thank you for taking the time to think about me and write. Several people advised me to consider touring as a revenue stream since “that is where artists make most of their money”.

I do keep hearing that statement and reading it in the press. Is it really true?

The Future of Music coalition has been surveying artists revenue streams and came out with an article challenging the idea that artists make most of their income from touring.

“So, do musicians make all of their money from touring? According to our qualitative and quantitative data, income from live performance/touring is a significant revenue stream for musicians who perform, accounting for 28% of the aggregate gross income of survey respondents. But, it is rarely their only source of music-related income. Indeed, less than 13% of respondents rely exclusively on income from live performance and/or salaried work.”

As for me, I have to finish my taxes before my next tour so today I tallied all my revenue for 2012. In the interest of providing data on how “under the radar” artists make a living, I posted it below. You’ll notice that touring was 26.38% last year. Pretty close to the Future of Music Coalition survey average. While that is significant, I haven’t finished tallying the hefty expenses yet. Live performance is usually my revenue stream with the highest expense ratio: flights, hotel rooms, commissions, crew, advertising, etc…

45.55% Music sales
26.38% Live Performance
23.90% Sync/Master Licensing
2.69% ASCAP
0.89% Soundexchange (i.e. Pandora)
0.38% Spotify
0.21% Google Adsense

Anyway, I know I put myself into this position by highlighting my own numbers but I feel like I’m harping on about the economics of music too much….especially given how little I am motivated by money and how swimingly everything has been going the last few years. Of course I care about making a living, but just so I can live and make MORE MUSIC. Please tell me if I sound like I’m whining (Again, I appreciate them and I have a thick skin, but those were the advice emails that stung), because I certainly don’t mean to. I’m trying to present an alternate path for artists …the kind you make for yourself through the forest with a machete.

I’m really, really looking forward to being on Jonathan Coulton’s cruise next week and I’d like to leave you with this hilarious animated video made by one of his fans. It’s quick but keep an eye out for my cello spaceship ;-)

A blog about an email about a blog about a news article about music streaming

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:16:00 -0800

My son is still very sick and I haven’t slept much, or I would write about this a bit more…but here is an email I wrote to Bob Lefsetz in reply to his post about a NYTimes story I was quoted in the other day.

From: Zoe Keating
Subject: Re: New York Times On Streaming

I’m totally asking for it by replying, but how can I resist? Plus my toddler is throwing up every hour, so there is no sleep tonight.

As the artist featured in this NYTimes article, I feel horribly misrepresented and I have to straighten out a few things.

I got into the commenting-on-Spotify business last year when it seemed that no one was questioning all their marvelous marketing materials. I felt like it was my civic duty to point out that:

1) the streaming payouts are stacked against unlabeled artists (ie. majors have a stake and get a share of the ad revenue)

2) Psy-style uber-popularity is not the only model out there. The millions and millions of streams needed to makeup for sales are not ever going to be a reality for non-mainstream music, but that does not mean anyone should throw in the towel.

I decided to go the unlabeled route when my brand of cello music didn’t spark much excitement in the people I appealed to (unless I added vocals to it, said one exec). The first year or so without my tech-job-cushion was rocky, but I’ve found the economics of no-middlemen to be good. I’m not mega direct-to-fan like my friend Amanda Palmer but I’m not struggling by any definition. It takes a lot of work but I can support my family on music, take them with me on tour and don’t worry much about money. I don’t feel a need to be any larger. Actually, I don’t see how I can be much larger…. when I’m not sleeping or being with my son, every second is spent on making and performing music or doing music biz. But I’m truthfully, extremely happy and thankful, exactly where I am right now. (The MUSIC I’m never satisfied with that though….always iterating, tweaking, expanding, iterating, iterating, iterating).

I don’t want to be an anomaly. I want others to get into this place too. If you’re fringe, do it yourself! I started posting my earnings online not to whine but because I realized that few people, even artists themselves, seem to have any facts about how the money actually works.

Without the internet my unlabeled career would not be possible and I’m very bullish on the future. I’m not against streaming by any means. I’ve put my music wherever someone might hear it….including onto filesharing sites (gasp). That said, companies do not have our (artists) best interests built into their business plans. Perhaps not maliciously…. they just might not know what our interests are. I feel it my responsibility to educate these companies as to what we need…in order to make the music industry work for everyone, high, mid and low.

If we don’t like the world we live in, it’s up to us to either change it… or change our perception of it. Beyond contributing music, I feel like can’t do much about pointless wars, or climate change, or mass shootings, or all the other huge issues in the news every day, but I feel like I might be able to do something about this tiny little streaming thing. I’ve been engaging with these issues with the goal of encouraging digital music services to incorporate the needs of artists, not just record labels. What are those needs? Linking of avid listeners with artists for concert tickets, merch, music purchases, etc; crowdsourcing tours; providing listener stats and location data, maybe even emails; your idea here, etc, etc. Lift all the little boats. If this quixotic strategy doesn’t work, then I guess I’ll have to change my perception instead.

I was disappointed in the NYTimes article….like I’m often disappointed in the press. A 30 minute interview full of nuance squashed down to one sentence taken out of context and used to prove some other point. I know, I know, I’m naive. I’ll keep trying.

Thanks much, Zoe

In the NYTimes (eek!)

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:36:52 -0800

There’s a picture of my cello cave in the NYTimes today. Now all the secrets of my elaborate recording process are revealed….two mics in a spare bedroom.

;-)

(photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

That’s not what the article is about of course, it’s about streaming and money again. Since many people are visiting my blog from that article, here are the google docs it refers to:

Zoe Keating - Online Sales & Streaming - (first 6 months of 2012)

Zoe Keating - Internet Radio Royalties - (2011/2012)

More later, but I’ve got to get back to work in the cello cave.

Don't just mourn, act.

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:18:39 -0800

Don't just mourn, act. :

The Aaron Swartz Memorial JSTOR Liberator

Where am I going next?

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:49:00 -0800

I have concerts all over the world in the next few months…Washington state, a cruise ship in the Bahamas, Australia and the Midwest.

Buy tickets here or just click on the links below (p.s. if you buy tickets early, there is more likelihood I can schedule more dates, hint hint….)

I will have more concerts this year, and I also have a new album in the works, but I have no idea when it will be ready ;-)

THANK YOU for listening,

Zoë

Double cello trouble with the Portland Cello Project

Fri, Jan 25 Rialto Theater Tacoma, WA

Sat, Jan 26 Edmonds Center for the Arts Edmonds, WA

Cellos on a Boat!!

Feb 10 - 17 Bahamas JoCo Cruise Crazy

Australian tour

Thurs, Feb 28 The Bakery Perth, WA

Sat, Mar 2 Nannup Music Festival Nannup, WA

Sun, Mar 3 Nannup Music Festival Nannup, WA

Wed, Mar 6 Spiegeltent Melbourne, Vic

Thurs, Mar 7 The Palais Hepburn Springs, Vic

Sun, Mar 10 Womadelaide Adelaide, SA

Mon, Mar 11 Womadelaide Adelaide, SA

Wed, Mar 13 Lizottes Newcastle, NSW

Thurs, Mar 14 Lizottes Kincumber, NSW

Fri, Mar 15 Basement Sydney, NSW

Sat, Mar 16 Blue Mountains Folk Festival Katoomba, NSW

Sun, Mar 17 Blue Mountains Folk Festival Katoomba, NSW

Mon, Mar 18 Powerhouse Brisbane, Qld

Wed, Mar 20 Byron Bay Community Centre Byron Bay, Qld

Midwest tour

Sat, May 04 Wisconsin Union Theater Madison, WI

Sun, May 05 Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago, IL

Wed, May 08 Englert Theatre Iowa City, IA

The Travels of Cellofamily in 2012

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:46:00 -0800

Another incredible year has gone by! Thank you for buying my albums, coming to my concerts, putting my music in your projects, reading my blog, writing me emails and letters, sending me gifts, and being encouraging and generally just the very best audience I could have ever asked for.

Here are photos of some of the places we visited in 2012…America, England, Scotland, Holland, Germany, Ecuador, Australia.

(Click on the image below and a Flickr set will launch)

A belated Happy New Year to you and yours!

See you in 2013

lotsa luv,

Zoë

Merry Christmas from our forest to yours

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 13:54:26 -0800

Merry Christmas from our forest to yours

Interview with Create Digital Music

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 09:43:51 -0800

Interview with Create Digital Music:

During the SF MusicTech conference in October I found a quiet corner in which to talk with Mat Earp from Create DIgital Music.

She shocked the music business by revealing she wasn’t making money on Spotify – then shocked them again by revealing she was making money on our own. Now, CDM’s Matt Earp talks to cellist Zoe Keating about surviving as a creative musician, and keeping the music coming. Hint: “exposure” is not necessarily the key to survival. -Ed.

Mushroom Hunting My extremely interesting and talented...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:50:06 -0800

Mushroom Hunting

My extremely interesting and talented neighbour Loreta is from Lithuania and knows a lot about mushrooms. She invited me on one of her hunts. What a nice way to spent a misty morning.

Gazing at shoes

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:27:00 -0800

In between tours and mothering, I’ve been working on a new album. Sorry I don’t have anything to play for you yet but that’s just the nature of how I work. I tend to compose, record and refine all the songs/pieces/doodads on an album simultaneously. For a depressingly long period it’s a mess while all those hundreds of cello snippets gradually coalesce into a larger whole. Then at some point, the shape of things starts to emerge and I continue hacking and polishing until the album is revealed. But not until the end is any of it ready to be heard, and I’m not at the end yet.

I do have something else to share with you though, a 2-song collaboration I recorded with my friend Jane Woodman.

Jane and I first met in 1996 when I answered a listing in the San Francisco Bay Guardian for “moody, darkwave band seeking strings”.

A few months before, my dreams of a music career (I wanted to be an orchestral cellist) had been crushed at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. After a couple post-college years playing cello at weddings and struggling to make ends meet in foodservice jobs, I had decided it was time to go to grad school. I put in an application to the conservatory, spent several months practicing and hauled my cello on the bus over to the audition. But when I sat down to play, my old nemesis, Mr Performance Anxiety, appeared. I seized up, like the proverbial deer frozen in the headlights. I could barely play any notes and the few I squeaked out sounded like the inexperienced scratchings of a beginner.

I know this happened, but I hardly remember it. All I remember is waiting for the bus afterwards, in the freezing cold San Francisco fog, and at that moment vowing never to play classical music again.

So that was that. I got an entry-level job at a software startup and thought maybe I could handle playing in a rock band. I started looking for other musicians who shared my love of the Cocteau Twins and English shoegaze. That’s how I found myself playing the cello through an amplifier in the living room of an Italian ballet dancer-turned-bassist named Gianfranco Pescetti and his friend, guitarist Jane Woodman, who was already well known as the founder of a hard-hitting, two-guitar, all-girl rock band called “Van Gogh’s Daughter”.

We hit it off. I roped in my college friend Tony Cross to play violin and Jane brought in Kat Zumbach to play drums. After calling ourselves a variety of (possibly) pretentious names, we landed on “Alfred”…for very important reasons that I can’t remember.

We quickly zeroed in on our sound, which consisted of long and intricate arrangements of dark, distorted guitars, dramatic strings, and harmonized vocals between Jane and I. We were invited to perform our very first show in 1997 at a warehouse/art space at 964 Natoma. Things seemed to be going well but with four songwriters in the band, the inevitable happened and just as we were gaining momentum, we broke up.

“Alfred” didn’t last, but my relationship with 964 Natoma did. I fell in love with the guy who invited us to play in his warehome (which apparently was his plan all along), moved in with him, married him, built a studio there, developed my sound and recorded my first album. We’re still together, and now we have Alex, a.k.a. #cellotoddler.

Anyway, fast forward into this millenium. Jane and I have meant to collaborate again for ages, but you know how life gets in the way. Over the summer she asked if I’d like to play on a cover of Sister Europe. We did that and in addition, decided to complete an unfinished song from our Alfred days called “Tango”.

It was fun to take a break from my solo project and do something different…to sing, and to make little bleepy electronic beats on my headphones while #cellotoddler took his nap. Here it is, on Bandcamp or iTunes, or just listen below:

<a href=”http://music.zoekeating.com/album/sister-europe-tango-ep” data-mce-href=”http://music.zoekeating.com/album/sister-europe-tango-ep”>Sister Europe / Tango EP by Jane Woodman &amp; Zoë Keating</a>

Thank you

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 07:18:31 -0800

Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m grateful for you, my listeners. So today I’d like to give thanks by making all my music free & physical albums $5

http://music.zoekeating.com

Thank you!

celloly yours, Zoë

More about data vs royalties

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:27:00 -0800

Since I blogged about the concept of artist data vs royalties last week the topic has been written about in a few places:

Billboard: Value of Music Streaming is Data, Says Artist

MusicTechPolicy: Should Digital Retailers Own the Artist’s Fan Data

Radio & Internet Newsletter: Artist Says Data About Her Streaming Song Plays Would be as Valuable as Royalty Money

IT World: Data, the Ultimate Music Royalty

and then, I was Slashdotted:

Slashdot: One Musician’s Demand from Pandora: Mandatory Analytics

I probably deserve any flaming for putting forward a vague nascent idea but I do want to respond to the Slashdot commentators, because I think they misunderstood me (not that they will read my blog). It could be interpreted that I’m demanding everyone’s email addresses… but I’m not. I have as many privacy concerns as the next person.

Of course I would *like* your email address. I can tell you I would be ethical about it (those of you on my mailing list know that I only write about once every 2 or 3 months) but you’d have to take my word for it and I know others might not be so scrupulous.

I would love it for services to allow listeners to opt in and pass on their email address to me (Bandcamp does this nicely I think), but I’m not even asking for that. In the case of a service like Pandora, when someone has taken the time to create a station around my music or given my songs a “thumbs up”… I’d rather know where in the world those particular listeners are than be paid the $0.0011 per play that is currently required by law. That was my point.

To ask for listener stats in lieu of statutory royalties doesn’t seem that extreme but I understand that in some circles it is considered too much for artists to ask for anything other than they be listened to….and even that might be too much. However, I do believe my music is worth something, if only because I’ve been supporting my family with music sales for 6 years. I never take that for granted and I’m lucky and profoundly grateful that convincing listeners to buy my music has not been hard. What has been hard is finding out where those purchasers are.

The majority of my music sales are on iTunes. Until August 2010, when I managed to get a direct label account with them, the only info I received from my distributor was what songs were purchased and in what country. Now that I have a label account, for every iTunes purchase since August 2010 I’ve been able to correlate each transaction with a customer ID# and a postal code (I’ve since heard that CDBaby now offers some version of this). It’s not a total picture of my audience, since I know not everyone purchases music, but it does help me plan tours more efficiently (i.e. so the tours don’t lose money).

Again, my blog was in reference to compulsory licensing, where in exchange for playing my music without a direct agreement with me, certain types of services pay me per-play at a rate determined by law. I’m saying that listener data is more valuable to me than those tiny royalties. What kinds of data? A bunch, but let’s start with the same kind of listener data I get from iTunes: randomized customer IDs attached to postal codes for avid listeners (i.e. ones who choose to listen more than a certain number of times). I’d also like this for on-demand services like Spotify, which is not internet radio, but the financial result for my purposes is roughly the same.

Here’s what I’m concerned about: as we move into a world where music consumers will supposedly not own any music and will stream it rather than purchase it, musicians will supposedly be making a living by touring. How can we help them figure out where to perform? Google analytics can only help you when a listener comes to find you on your website, and every service does everything it can to make sure listeners never leave their playground.

(Dear developers, it seems like there is a big wide-open opportunity at the intersection of streaming and crowdsourced touring?)

Royalties from all these music services (internet radio and on-demand streaming) are never going to amount to much for a non-mainstream artist like me. So rather than get hung up on the payments, lets figure out what would make them work for all of us in the music ecosystem. I was encouraged at the Billboard FutureSound conference last week that in this discussion there might be some agreement between artists, labels, music services and listeners. That was a nice change of pace.

(P.S. I’m glad we’re talking about this!)