Link: Swedelife: Audio Blog
For the past six months Pat Goddard and I have been working on the side (in our spare time) to find a way to promote online the music that is associated with my old record label Quagmire. We have nearly a hundred albums and growing. In retrospect the concept was too big. We were going try to set a precedent for how an online label should work. We were going to put up an album a month, with a podcast version, message boards, ratings and reviews, artist pages, album pages, downloadable album assets, video, images, etc, etc. And all of it would be free for the taking. But life gets complicated when you work more than full time and have a family. We had designs but it was unrealistic to think we could manage this huge undertaking as a hobby.
In 1994 Quagmire put up the first album on the Internet for download. iTunes, Napster, MP3.com, My Space, Rhapsody, etc. etc. were nothing but Hershey bars in someones back pocket at the time. We were first. We kept it up for a couple of years by putting out about seven albums, but then had to concentrate on our careers and building web sites for other people. Ever since that time we've wanted to try it again. As the technology grew, bandwidth, and services, it seemed like a no brainer. We tried a few times with a site called freakshow.com and then swedlife earlier this year, but our eyes were bigger than our stomachs (not easy).
Then yesterday, I was reading Wired magazine and I thought; "why don't we just do an audio blog?" Use blogging software to manage the site and put up a song a day. We can still do a lot of what we wanted but without the hassle. Someone get me a hammer.
The point of this from the very beginning was to release this music for free. We can still do that and more. We've always believed that it was more important to be heard than to make money. There's plenty of ways to make money, but music isn't one of them. Distributing the music through an audio blog is the easiest way to get people to hear this stuff. Minimal work on our end, and the music gets out there to your ears. Win Win.
So every day until we run out of music, we will put up a new song. The first set will be the album by Baby called Pourquoi Liquoi Sisz Boom Bah. We'll do that in order and tell the creepy story about the album along the way. Then we might mix it up a bit. Random songs from random albums from random times. Each song will be podcast every day. Some days might have two songs, you never know.
So hopefully you'll check it out and tell some friends. Leave some comments and share the music in any way you wish. Again it's free for the taking. Enjoy... and let me know what you think.
Go to the Swedelife Audio Blog now.
