Phronemophobia 2017-06-06 11:32:34

If you don't want people to freely download your music, then tell'em to kindly fuck off. While it's true many will pay to support content that is continuously given away for free (OverClocked Remix is a strong example of this), that sort of thing doesn't work for everyone, especially if your music is something people want on GD. Several fans of that game are total assholes, towards Newgrounds and its musicians. Quite a few will zero bomb those who don't openly support their thieving, disrespectful attitude, along with making false reports of abuse, while others do it because they remain bitter about the changes that occurred a while back to limit the musicians allowed to be used in the game. People are petty creatures.

I'm under the belief that a musician should occasionally offer a free download once a while, but if they need the added bit of money, or if they simply want to turn their hobby into a career, most of their music should be bought, though I very much hate it when a great song is held hostage behind a "must purchase the full album" paywall.

Making oneself known on as many sites as possible helps tremendously, even if it's only a small amount on each one, so I wouldn't believe it would be a good idea to leave any place that has even the slightest possibility of finding you a new fan and potential consumer for your talent. Even now, I just spotted this news post and am planning to check out your discography. Hopefully, I'll find a handful of fast, upbeat tracks. I'm a sucker for happy music. :D

BECAUSEMETOO 2017-06-06 12:21:22

First, i gotta express all the respect i have for your dedication to make music and years of worl but i gotta be honest. You asked for it so i'll say it.

No one wants to say what any musician is doing wrong, because most people on this site aren't musicians and they won't be able to express what they think is missing, and as for people who are musicians - they have the same problem plus they often don't know much about fixing music to get it to sound better and musicians who are successful probably won't be looking around newgrounds to give advices to young cats like us.

Now i'm not good at music by any means but i have to say it, music of both you and mr Fireball isn't anything special or good, not because you're "bad" at it or something but probably due to the lack of proper training. I've found out that for a musician it's super important to get a great ear first before even thinking about writing music. Not because it's necessary or a law but because your music will be sooo much easier and faster to write that you will do it more and get better at it many times faster. Plus i've noticed that nobody really cares about little musicians so until they get attention there's no way to get a big viewership

the way around these problems is to first get a good ear, play an instrument, use that ear to write good memorable tunes , make some covers to get noted, then i'd go to some label to release music there and only there can you expect anybody to care about your existance

as for people downloading and pirating stuff - there's no way of controlling it, more you try, bigger it gets. Just roll with it, it can help in the long run simply because your music will spread around the web faster and you get noted easier.

but i cant stress enough that it's critical to get training in MUSIC, i could be wrong but you and your friend are great with sound design and production but music itself is kinda stiff and lacking expressivity, simply because you aren't really free with it as some trained pianist would be.

I could be wrong about everything and i'm not saying any of this to hurt you, really i'm in the same situation as you guys and i'd love to help you find out what's wrong and why you aren't crazy popular and rich and stuff as i'm pretty interested in that kind of thing too.

Main reason for this might be just that neither of us writes anything that's actually great and worthy of more attention, and this happens not because we suck or something, just because we can't use our music more freely, and this happens due to the lack of training.

Personally i'm right now training my ears to get perfect and relative pitch - there's programs for this - i use TonePitch (free) for perfect pitch and EarMaster (not free, but there are free alternatives) for relative pitch.

It would be cool if we would join forces on this wild adventure on getting better at our craft. :3

also you need a better name, that's for sure, not saying mine is super good but maxxpump ... i can't imagine a big flyer with this name, and fireball is probably already taken by some big corporation.

so... pleeeeeease don't get mad at me, i'm trying to help , i really do. I can really relate.
I hope this helped. Took a super long time to write too, but you guys need to know , you're definetely not alone in this. We will figure this one out too. Not the biggest problem in the world that's for sure.

AliceMako 2017-06-08 18:05:31

Right off the bat i really empathise with most all the points you're making, as terrific as the web can be for getting your material out to your audience by the same token it can infamously outright mistreat you as a producer. I personally attribute this, for better or worse, to both the very nature of the web and whatever disposition your target audience happens to have.

Before i end up digressing or going on a tangent with that train of thought ; the only thing i am not getting out of your story here is what exactly do you want from your music or where would you have it take you that is currently not happening? It is my sincere belief that this, and this alone, is far more important then any of the frustrations you're citing however perfectly understandeable they may be.

Now moving right along...

Traffic is generally a fickle thing, desire to download/pay for/pirate/steal are equally capricious matters and unless you are paying out of pocket to get your work promoted or have some service or another agressively push and market your work these things will stay entirely mercurial. ( a record deal with a venerable label is not going to change this overnight either, you may be in for some very confrontational and potentialy costly dissapointments in that regard )

Now briefly speaking as a profesional sound engineer myself of a couple years now with no formal education in my field whatsoever, if your mixes don't agree with your audience/clients they are the final word on the matter as you are in the business of servicing them, not the other way around. ( bit baffled here honestly how you spent time in a studio yourself and nobody saw fit to firmly impress this, um, what i'd call rather key element of the entire enterprise on you )

If you can not or will not have your masters adjusted for whatever their typical playback devices happen to be ( mobile for example typically means heavy handed bass cuts and what amounts to pure mono optimisation ) then it falls squarely on you to seriously consider seeking out a different audience, which more often then not entails producing different material which depending on your own disposition is either a bitter pill to swallow or something to merely take in stride. Perhaps both, what do i know.

Anyhoo, all of this said i do hope you continue to release material you personally find appealing though you'll have to be the judge whether or not that's worth your time i.e. audience reception vs artistic integrity/expression/merit.

All the best.