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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Walter Tore & The Spontobeat Allstars CD
Walter Tore & The Spontobeat Allstars CD
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waltertore
1482 posts
Sep 10, 2011
4:33 AM
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Hi everyone: I put a session with some of my friends backing me up on cdbaby. Walter
On this session Walter left his 1 man band setup and gathered some of his world class musician friends for an intimate afternoon recording session in Spontobeat. This session was a couple days after Walter's annual Tunnel of Dreams Festival that he puts on in his backyard each summer. The vibes were good and this cd presents it all uncut, so the listener can experience how Spontobeat unfolds. The entire session took less than an hour to master from the raw tracks and only a couple hours to record (including studio set up time). Walter's feels akin to sidewalk art(here today-gone tomorrow). He puts his entire being into each song and when it is finished, it is gone forever. New songs never cease to await him and he doubts he will ever get beyond page one of this endless journey. His art reflects life, thus all the warts and bumps are here. No plastic surgery with Spontobeat! Walter is seeking the right person to market his one of a kind approach to the world. Contact him if you are interested.
Mark Rubinstein is on bass/recording engineer, Sean Carney on guitar(vocals on 1 cut), and Katherine "steady baby" Stevens on drums.
link to cd
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
Last Edited by on Sep 10, 2011 5:48 AM
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arzajac
644 posts
Sep 11, 2011
8:45 AM
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Thanks Walter!
I haven't listened to all the tracks yet, but "Wah wah on me" is my favorite so far. You play guitar like you play harp...
You guys have such a good sound! It's so clean! Virtually uncut - Amazing!
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waltertore
1483 posts
Sep 11, 2011
12:23 PM
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thanks arzajac and lip ripper: It was very painless putting up a digital download cd. What I hate about making hard copy cds is the time involved and by the time it is done I am not much interested in the songs. I am totally into them as I do them, but by the next day they are ancient history interest wise. Mark and I were scheduuled to go back and give them a final mix over but I didn't want to deal with it and put it up with the rough mix. The current songs(the ones I am actually singing and then mixing) always feel like my best thus I have very little inspiration to sell or promote hard copy cds. I have done them both on my own and with a professional cd company. Both were not much fun. With the digital download cd it only takes a couple hours to have the entire thing done. I never have to touch the product and a simple post like this is as much as I am comfortable with on the promoting end. It is like it never existed except for the couple hours it took to get it on cdbaby which is great because it doesn't take up any space in my spirit with " I should be selling this thing, will it go anywhere, and such". For $59 you get a complete downloadable cd on the net. That is cheap and painless. If I make that back, I will put up a 1 man band cd. I learned a lot being around mark while we set up and mixed this one. I have some new gear due anyday that will make my recording a notch better in quality. I love making music, mixing it, and hate selling it. Maybe I found my avenue for putting my music out there? Walter
link to cd
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
my videos
Last Edited by on Sep 11, 2011 12:29 PM
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waltertore
1484 posts
Sep 12, 2011
9:02 AM
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This experience is a trip. I am selling cds already and never had to touch the product! Back when we made records it was similar. A distribution company sent them out. The problems I had was I never seemed to make a dime, you had to get a label to record you, sign with a publisher and BMI or ASCAP. With cdbaby you get detailed statements for every sale and I get to be the entire deal instead of it scattered all over the map (easy way for money to get lost). I made an lp that sold in Europe in the early 80's (approx 5,000 copies) and have yet to see a dime..... The only problem with going the digital download route is there is no publicy hype to get your product in front of peoples eyes. That is ok. I am comfortable with shamelessly posting it on a few forums. I will most likely at least break even and from my experiences so far, that is like getting rich and it is fun not having to depend on sales for income, exposure, gigs. A wise old jazz musician once told me "get a day job that will support your music. That way you don't have to compromise anything". Those words fell on deaf ears for nearly 1/2 a century. Now I realize to be an uncompromising artist, that is pretty much a gospel true statement. I use to think it meant failure to not be playing full time. Now I know it means success. Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
link to cd
Last Edited by on Sep 12, 2011 9:17 AM
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GamblersHand
290 posts
Sep 12, 2011
11:22 AM
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This website was an eye opener to me. Walter - I think I agree with the jazz guy!
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/
Last Edited by on Sep 12, 2011 11:22 AM
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waltertore
1486 posts
Sep 12, 2011
12:04 PM
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gamblershand: Cdbaby pays $7.49 for the $9.99 digital download album. The onetime upfront $59 is the total sum of what they get. I knew lots of well known blues guys that would make a record with a label, get a thousand or so upfront for like $5 each, go on the road, sell them at $10-15 but then the transmission would go out, gigs fell through, etc, and they would come back with lps sold and no where near the $ to pay off the 5 grand they owed the label. So they make another one and the cycle just kept on going. I am glad I got out of the music business for a living. If it calls my name again, it will have to be on a very comfortable lifestyle level. I figure being the only one in the world doing what I do, my odds are a lot higher of something happening like this than if I was doing music the regular way and had millions of competitors. It keeps my dreams alive and it is better to feel things looking good on the horizon vs. having them in the past! Walter
link to cd
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
my videos
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HarpNinja
1675 posts
Sep 12, 2011
12:11 PM
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Congrats on the All-Stars! I will check it out tonight. I think, if you are selling online, that way to go is selling it only in digital format.
You could even have artwork available for download, etc. Way cheaper than hard copies. If you gig, though, I wonder if there is a work around...maybe having a CD with mp3s on it rather than a listenable CD-CD? Maybe a free digital download with purchase of a shirt or something?
I don't know. I am getting to the point where I don't like losing money on recordings/gigging. After 9 years, I'd like to come out ahead on my taxes for a bit, lol.
Best of luck!
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Mike
Quicksilver Custom Harmonicas
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HarpNinja
1676 posts
Sep 12, 2011
12:20 PM
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Walter,
How much do you get from the digital download on CD Baby? If it is $7.50 like Gamblers link suggests (it really suggests the hard copy). It seems like a no brainer for mass distribution.
The problem with selling a hard copy for $10 like the article suggests is the overhead. 143 hard copies sold for a profit of $8 each doesn't factor in the overhead, does it?
Assuming you can get a CD pressed for $1, which is probably low considering the cost of artwork, etc, it would cost $1,000 just to get 1,000 copies. I'd wager selling 1,000 copies is damn near impossible for most, so even if you sell 500...
500x$10=$5,000
5,000-1,000(overhead)=$4,000
That would be sweet, still. Although, I am sure to sell 500 copies, in many instances, the money put into promo would take you back to even...
I dunno. Personally, if I were to do an album, I'd take Walter's approach and hope to break even and have limited overhead. That keeps it fun.
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Mike
Quicksilver Custom Harmonicas
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waltertore
1487 posts
Sep 12, 2011
12:28 PM
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HarpNinja: Yes cdbaby pays $7.49 for each digital download sale. Like you said, the amount of time one has to put in to make a professional looking hard copy cd makes it most times a labor of love. Dealing with getting on a label that has enough clout to get your name out there unto itself can easily be a fulltime multi decade affair. Plus the more people that get involved with a project the more you will have to compromise your ideas both musically and with cover art, band member choices, liner notes, etc. Nobody gives you money for nothing in return. My experience with the music business is they never let you do your thing uninterupted. this goes from little clubs, private parites to major labels. Why? Because musicians allow this to happen. I plan to change all that with my Spontobeat attack on the music world. I own the studio, am the entire band, the songs are all mine, and control every aspect. All I need is the right promoter to get my concept out to the world. Their pay will out of the net and the freedom to let their creativety shine. I really feel like it will all click down the road a piece.
I see the hard copy cd route suited to major touring acts that can buy them for $7 or so off the label and sell them them from $15-20 of the stage. That will get you enough money to making touring possible nowadays if you keep the studio session down to a day and the mastering similar. People often forget the labels charge you off the top for the recording session. If you play only regionally selling a few thousand cds is near impossible unless you are a house band in a famous New Orleans club or a music draw place like that where tourists are constantly streaming through.
When I have gigs lined up I burn some cds at home, put on my funky picture cd covers and sell them for $10 each. I usually sell a dozen or so for every 100 people that come out. I burn wave files because I own the studio masters. I use nero cd maker, that came with my recording computer, to make the cover photo and art insert and a stick on label to the cd. It costs me about a nickel to make a hard copy cd. I buy the 100 spindles when they are on sale and the thin line cd covers when they are on sale.
I really just want to break even. Anything more than that is nice and like I said with recording a cd or more a day, I have no real love affair with my past songs. Dragging around a cd to gigs that is weeks, months, or years, old is not interesting at all. I will release a 1 man band digital downloadable cd soon. That will put all the profits in my pocket and I don't have to organize a recording session. I see you are getting into home recording. Keep it up! Walter
link to cd
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
my videos
Last Edited by on Sep 12, 2011 12:46 PM
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nacoran
4584 posts
Sep 12, 2011
10:10 PM
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There are some ways besides forum posting to promote digital albums. There is something called Tweet for Tracks, where you give away one cut to people in exchange for them Tweeting a link or posting it on Facebook. Reverb Nation has some good tools for promoting yourself too. There are some other sites that do pretty much the same thing. YouTube probably is the other important tool. You can sign up for there Adsense program and every time someone views one of your videos they see an ad and you get a couple fractions of a penny, and you can embed links to sell your stuff. There is a way to get your stuff onto Pandora and some of the other online 'radio' services too, although it's been too long since I read up on them for me to remember what hoops you have to jump through.
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Nate
Facebook
Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
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waltertore
1490 posts
Sep 13, 2011
10:24 AM
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nacaron: thank you for that information. I will look into it all. Walter
walter tore & the spontobeat allstars CD
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
my videos
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rpoe
258 posts
Sep 13, 2011
6:24 PM
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Walter - I just bought your CD. As expected, I love your work. You are unique my friend. Thanks and keep up the great work.
As noted, it is so good to see you back.
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Rob
Rob's Tube
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waltertore
1491 posts
Sep 14, 2011
5:56 AM
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rpoe: Thanks so much for supporting my music! It really touches me that people are willing to step outside the box of how music is traditionally done and give my approach a listen. Walter
walter tore & the spontobeat allstars CD
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
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