Phonocratic Records

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.

I recently came across this article. Seems to be an interesting album. Judging from the sound of the songs, it’s not just an interesting idea, but also a great record. Too bad it comes without the record. Anyway, it is nice to see that there are more people around fighting the stubborn part of the industry. Might this be the distribution form of the future?

Link to full story

The new Lost Shadow single, Pirate Bay, has been released today. The single consists of five tracks (of which four can be downloaded from last.fm). As b-side I have chosen to include my cover of Rob Dougans “Drinking Song”, but as this is a cover it won’t be available for download from last.fm. This will (probably) be the last single taken from Juniper and Cinnamon, paving way for new material to be released later this year. If you have questions on the content and meaning of the song, feel free to comment to this post. Also, you are definitely allowed to share this song via torrent sites, e.g. The Pirate Bay.

The single is available from here:
http://www.last.fm/music/Lost+Shadow/Pirate+Bay