Phonocratic Records

It is time to vote for your favourite Laurie Anderson remixes over at Indaba. I, of course, would like as many as possible to vote for Lost Shadow’s remix, but I cannot force you, and there are many good entries. You can see them all here, or vote for Lost Shadow’s submission here. Voting is open until the 27th of May. All help is appreciated.

I have submitted a very alternative remix of Laurie Anderson’s “Only An Expert” to her remix contest run at Ibdaba Music. If you’re into really alternative, arty, electronic music, please listen to it (and the rest of Laurie’s production also of course). She is an extremely talented artist, both musically and lyrically. I comment on it over at Indaba:

As usual when you want to investigate a system, you tear it down to its smallest parts and then reconstruct it to create a representative model, which will, if you’re in luck, tell you what you need to know about the system…

The remix was created using a technique I will use and describe more in detail later, in a coming art project (probably not under the Lost Shadow name, though).

We’re celebrating one year with the new site at www.phonocratic.com! Sadly, there is not much other news. Lost Shadow is currently working in the studio on songs for the new album, hopefully to be released later this year. Stay tuned!

Please note that orders placed between March 25 and April 9 will not be shipped until April 12 because of the Easter holidays. If you want to receive your order before April 12, make your purchases BEFORE March 25. Orders can be placed at our Bandcamp Store.

As observant visitors might have noticed, it is no longer possible to download all Lost Shadow songs for free at Last.fm. This is an intentional move from Phonocratic Records, where we instead hope to redirect our listeners to either Last.fm’s streaming services, or our new Lost Shadow music and store site at Bandcamp. Through our Bandcamp Store (and Last.fm) streaming of all Lost Shadow songs will still be available for free. Additionally, all Lost Shadow albums since 2006 will be available for free or cheap download from Bandcamp, where physical CDs also can be bought.

Why not free downloads?
Why are we making these changes? Well, it turns out that our experiment with free downloads and donations did not yield the effect we had hoped. Last year Phonocratic Records was run at personal economical loss, and we have no reason to expect that this will change in the near future without taking any action. Still, we believe that there is value in the music we make available, so we will try another marketing model, using downloads and micropayments. Last.fm does not serve this purpose very well, while Bandcamp turns out to be a great place to securely sell music downloads (and physical albums). It will still be possible to donate to Lost Shadow through the Store, but we suggest that our listeners instead download the high-quality music files from Bandcamp, and make the small micropayments there. Hey, 3 euros for a 12 song album is about as cheap as a cup of coffee! And it’s even cheaper than a beer!

Remaining free
A number of tracks will remain free. These are:

• Songs from albums released before 2006. These albums will not be made available through Bandcamp, and will therefore remain downloadable from Last.fm for free (still at only 128kps, though).
• All Lost Shadow singles, previous ones, and coming ones. However, only the lead tracks might be made available for free download in some instances. The singles will be downloadable as 128kps mp3 from Last.fm, or in a variety of  high-quality formats from Bandcamp. Regardless of format, the files will be free.
• Selected albums and songs, such as the “Age and Time” album released last year.

Also, free steaming of all songs is available from both Last.fm and Bandcamp.

No more physical singles
As mentioned at the release of the A Nuance of Future single, we will not continue to release singles in physical format. This is also part of the new strategy for Phonocratic Records. We feel both sad and excited about this decision. The good thing is that we can now focus on bringing you the best possible digital experience for the singles. Also, it should be noted that our albums will still be available in physical CD format, as well as in digital download form, and we do not plan to change that.

We hope that our listeners will be positive about these changes and that we’re putting the value back behind the music.