The Doctor's Band

[Aurongroove]

Hands up who remembers my disastrous "finding the right label for hard to define music"?

Anyways.
To finish the ongoing fairlytale; we ended up doing it ourselves.
We recorded it
Mixed it
Scraped up money for an exceptionally good mastering engineer
Found a crew to make a video.
Designed our websites and PR.
Designed our album Artwork
and we're self releasing.

Work, work, work, money and work. It took four grown men (who are to all intents-and-purposes career-less and depressed), every waking moment to do, and we're still not finished.
It's just one massive task after another; I don't think we've even picked up our instruments in 6 months.

But I wanted to share some of the 'Good' with you guys.

Below is the video we put up on Youtube a week ago, and the 600+ views and counting, felt like, the world taking a small-but-extremely-important modicum of notice of our efforts and a 'Bic-lighter at the end of the tunnel'.

Anyways for those who are curious here's our site
www.drmindflip.com

and here's our Video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p26Vb5OyCVY

Love.
James a.k.a Dollhead.

P.S. we're still open to suggestions on "what our sound is"

[Drew Stephenson]

I like it, it's a very polished and complete package IMO.
I still have no idea what genre it is though

[Aurongroove]

I like it, it's a very polished and complete package IMO.
I still have no idea what genre it is though

You can see how it's a pain in the neck, especially when dealing with people that you only have a '7 second pitch' before it crosses the threshold of you just bothering something.

At least now we can just say, "we'll mate, here's the video, you decide what it is"

[CS70]

Hands up who remembers my disastrous "finding the right label for hard to define music"?

Anyways.
To finish the ongoing fairlytale; we ended up doing it ourselves.
We recorded it
Mixed it
Scraped up money for an exceptionally good mastering engineer
Found a crew to make a video.
Designed our websites and PR.
Designed our album Artwork
and we're self releasing.

Work, work, work, money and work. It took four grown men (who are to all intents-and-purposes career-less and depressed), every waking moment to do, and we're still not finished.

Well done and welcome to the club! Just be aware, that wasn't work: that was fun. Now it's when the actual work starts: you got to market your thing, and that's way less pleasurable than making it. Been collecting newspaper addresses ("music editor attention") for the last week. For half of them I'm not even sure if they have one!

Give a damn about the genre, how and how much you market your product is what matters if you have commercial ambitions.

[Aurongroove]

that wasn't work: that was fun. Now it's when the actual work starts: you got to market your thing, and that's way less pleasurable than making it

Oh stop it yes, that's what we're doing these past weeks and it's HELL.
I can say right now, that I never want to do it again, next album, (if we're still together) we're not going to touch it without either a label behind us or a manager or both.

We haven't picked up our instruments in about 6 months. we've had to learn how to make spreadsheets and cost projections, and plan launch gigs, deal with Independent record store owners (who are the NICEST people I've ever talked too, BTW).
and that's just about 30% of it!

[CS70]

that wasn't work: that was fun. Now it's when the actual work starts: you got to market your thing, and that's way less pleasurable than making it

Oh stop it yes, that's what we're doing these past weeks and it's HELL.
I can say right now, that I never want to do it again, next album, (if we're still together) we're not going to touch it without either a label behind us or a manager or both.

We haven't picked up our instruments in about 6 months. we've had to learn how to make spreadsheets and cost projections, and plan launch gigs, deal with Independent record store owners (who are the NICEST people I've ever talked too, BTW).
and that's just about 30% of it!

Best of luck!

[awjoe]

Hands up who remembers my disastrous "finding the right label for hard to define music"?

Anyways.
To finish the ongoing fairlytale; we ended up doing it ourselves.
We recorded it
Mixed it
Scraped up money for an exceptionally good mastering engineer
Found a crew to make a video.
Designed our websites and PR.
Designed our album Artwork
and we're self releasing.

Work, work, work, money and work. It took four grown men (who are to all intents-and-purposes career-less and depressed), every waking moment to do, and we're still not finished.

Well done and welcome to the club! Just be aware, that wasn't work: that was fun. Now it's when the actual work starts: you got to market your thing, and that's way less pleasurable than making it.

Ha ha. You gotta market yo thang.

[awjoe]

that wasn't work: that was fun. Now it's when the actual work starts: you got to market your thing, and that's way less pleasurable than making it

Oh stop it yes, that's what we're doing these past weeks and it's HELL.

Butchoo gotta market yo thang.

I can say right now, that I never want to do it again, next album, (if we're still together) we're not going to touch it without either a label behind us or a manager or both.

I show off sometimes. It's usually when I'm playing.

We haven't picked up our instruments in about 6 months.

Dude. I mean, please. Six months? What's the point?

... we've had to learn how to make spreadsheets and cost projections, and plan launch gigs, deal with Independent record store owners (who are the NICEST people I've ever talked too, BTW).
and that's just about 30% of it!

Yeah, yeah. Life's so busy in the fast lane. What do you need to slow down?

[awjoe]

One more thing to do: the ad.

These clever young people, very talented, have learned the art of the ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0fyBWTHfUo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojRj2JK5oCI

[petev3.1]

I hear all sorts of connections, mostly to Brit artists oddly. The genre is obviously idiosyncratical postmodernist commentarial popdubrockpunkfunkstep. I like it anyway.

It surprises me that there are not more otherwise out-of-work professionals offering all-in-one management/label service for a fee. It's truly horrible to have to make the music and also do all the other stuff, and usually artists don't have the expertise and have to learn lots of stuff they don't even want in their heads. How cool would Pink Floyd have been if they'd had to do all their own marketing? It;s like the biz. has not quite got itself organised yet in this new world of miniscule budgets.

[Martin Walker]

Lovely musical work James, and great video

Of course I love the steampunk aspects of the video (as you'd expect), and in my mind's eye heard snatches of both Thomas Dolby and Sparks, but this is a unique and wonderfully idiosyncratic sound overall.

Bravo!

Martin

[awjoe]

It surprises me that there are not more otherwise out-of-work professionals offering all-in-one management/label service for a fee. It's truly horrible to have to make the music and also do all the other stuff, and usually artists don't have the expertise and have to learn lots of stuff they don't even want in their heads. How cool would Pink Floyd have been if they'd had to do all their own marketing? It;s like the biz. has not quite got itself organised yet in this new world of miniscule budgets.

Exactly. The closest one-stop shop I've found is Distrokid. But they deal with distribution only, and not the full marketing package. These days, you need videos and a website and Twitter and FB and somebody working the network. I just get bored, plus I don't have the time, let alone the stomach for it.

[Aurongroove]

It surprises me that there are not more otherwise out-of-work professionals offering all-in-one management/label service for a fee. It's truly horrible to have to make the music and also do all the other stuff, and usually artists don't have the expertise and have to learn lots of stuff they don't even want in their heads. How cool would Pink Floyd have been if they'd had to do all their own marketing? It;s like the biz. has not quite got itself organised yet in this new world of miniscule budgets.

I would bite the entire arm off of someone offering this. We don't really know anyone (in network terms) and we're also trying to learn to swim as we do it!!
We have to send cold emails to people hoping their actual eyes find the messages (festivals and journalists are particularly problematic), but probably 90% of these probably meet a spam filter or a busy secretary who's job it is to filter out 'randomers' .

We were approached by a fairly highly regarded venue in Dublin (one of the best actually) asking if we had a place to do a launch gig, and this bowled us over. It was the first time someone 'came to us' so to speak.

[Drew Stephenson]

As The Red Bladder has said on other threads, people knocking on your door means you have the potential for a business model...

[petev3.1]

Going back a bit...

Why is nobody offering bands an expert advice, release and promotion service for a reasonable fee? Why do competent labels not offer to release anything they feel is good for a fee? It worked for Taylor Swift, albeit that was a big money deal. It's almost a no-risk situation for the consultant/label, and with the right contract could occasionally bring in a lot more than the initial fees.

Given the membership here this question should be answerable. The self-publishing market in books is a model, where the publisher does all the stuff the author cannot do and advises them etc. Is this not a potential earner for any out of work ex-A&R exec. or manager?

[Guest271017]

Everything today is one-hit-wonder based. With youtube and other means of scouring for talent, the old way of taking chances on acts before proofing their popularity on a wider scale than regional, has become extinct. A quick look at view count and diversity of the people commenting have the old way beat. It's the shortest payout for the longest dollar that rules, just like anything else these days. How many pop stars got their break on the talent shows of today as opposed to touring a club circuit for years, building up a support base.

I don't think you can compare literature to music, unless it's spoken books. The activities are different on a lot of levels.

[James Perrett]

Why is nobody offering bands an expert advice, release and promotion service for a reasonable fee? Why do competent labels not offer to release anything they feel is good for a fee?

A few thoughts...

That's exactly what publicists and pluggers do. The problem is finding the good ones if you aren't already part of the industry.

And labels do release things that they feel is good - there's a whole independent label industry who are mainly in it for the music. If you ignore the majors and go with the independents that specialise in your genre you may be more successful in the long term.

As with all music related stuff - it is about making contacts and knowing who's who and what's what. You never know who you might meet when playing gigs or going to gigs - as an example; the bass player in a band we played with in a local pub went on to run one of the most successful indie labels in the last 10 years.

[Drew Stephenson]

The self-publishing market in books is a model, where the publisher does all the stuff the author cannot do and advises them etc. Is this not a potential earner for any out of work ex-A&R exec. or manager?

Not sure that's such a good example anymore. Basically all a publisher does nowadays is gets books on shelves. Everything else is pretty much down to the author (especially for your first work). There are the usual lucky few exceptions of course, but for most you have to have written it, edited it, found your agent, already built your publicity machine, have a string of short-story publications (or similar) plus a few awards and generally established your credentials.
The value that a publishing house adds is now considerably smaller than it was. Hence so many people are just self-publishing direct online.

[shufflebeat]

Punk Freud

[Aurongroove]

Some great responses.

And here, back in the warzone, it does seem like we had to "do it first then bring it to them" anyways.
It;s just a shame one has to start without knowing the "them" the "what to do", or, the how to do it or fund it.
you gotta go on bling guessing and judgment.

You can't so very well 'network first', like go around saying "well, we're only networking in theory, so we know what kind of situation we're dealing with, before we spend two years making an album"

you gotta "do it blind" and then hope, with all the little decisions you had to make, it winds up being what it needed to be in that moment someone watches it, reads it, hears it, or hovers over a like button or a subscribe button, or a pledge button.

And the momentum tax is quite harsh as well. Last September I was guessing a January release, now I'm guessing May. the milestones have all needed "effort overdraughts" drawn out against the next milestone. I'm worries that by the time a regular 'Joe-Soap' can buy the album in a shop or in iTunes, it'll be the 6th time we've popped the Aldi's Fizzy wine cork-or-plastic-lid and said "Right OK this time we've finally done it"

Still though, life's for learning.

[Aurongroove]

Punk Freud

Keeping

[petev3.1]

Hmm. Perhaps book publishing was a poor example. But it's not a question of taking chances on artists. This is self-publishing. The idea would be to charge them up-front. Their success or failure would make no difference to the main fee. It might only be an advisory role or it might be comprehensive management, but it would be a professional service and not a punt on the artist for a percentage.

It may be impractical for various reasons, but as the OP indicates there's a demand.

[Drew Stephenson]

On that we agree, a more straightforward, transaction-based approach. Not dissimilar to the way you approach studio time.

[Aurongroove]

Or like we paid the layer guy (our album is a parody of a film), we just paid him his fee and he offered his experience and knowledge.

[gridsleep]

I read the title and thought it was an article about Peter Capaldi and Craig Ferguson getting the band back together.