Album Art, Creative Process, and Spotify versus Apple and Amazon
So first thank you to those of you who went and ranked the 3 songs that are set for release. So far Couldn’t Get the Girl and Long Way Home are tied for first place.
This is helpful because when you have been working on a song for literally years, there comes a point where you start to feel like you have no objective sense anymore of whether it is any good. You remember intensely loving it at one point - because that is what got the song this far - but eventually you have heard it so many times that it doesn't really move you. In my experience life comes back into the song when you perform it live but I usually hit a moment in the process where I pretty much hate a song, and recently I have been there with all 3 of these.
If you still want to rank them, join our mailing list here and you’ll automatically get it in your inbox!
https://www.thejanzenboys.com/optin
It is kind of like this: have you ever seen that meme that floats around about the creative process? It goes something like this:
The Creative Process
This is awesome
Hmmm, is this awesome?
This is garbage
I am garbage
I don't know why I fool myself into thinking I can make nice things
******* leave and come back later *******
Maybe this is ok
*****people start enjoying what you made *****
I KNEW this was awesome
How am I going to top this?
So currently we are probably somewhere between 5 and 7. Hopefully, on the way to 8. I guess we shall see.
We continually progressing toward everything required for releasing these singles and this week we uploaded the songs to the distributor that will eventually get the songs on Spotify and Apple and pretty much every other service that lets you stream music.
So that meant we had to figure out some album art because every single release requires an icon, and then eventually the final full album will need one too. We thought it would be interesting if the entire series of singles and the full album were connected, so we begged an artist friend of ours, Christian Worthington, to let us use one of his abstract pieces as album art. We weren’t exactly sure about the response as Christian’s pieces often go for tens of thousands of dollars, so we wondered if letting one of his pieces be used to rep folk/roots music would be desirable. But he was totally into it, and sent us a high-res version of a recent abstract that we thought represented the music well (more about that later).
Ultimately the full album will incorporate the entire painting, and the singles will represent parts of that whole. That was Mick’s idea. But we quite liked it.
You can check out Christian’s work here, and if you are in need of some top-level artwork, I would be glad to connect you.
https://instagram.com/christian_worthington
Interesting fact we learned this week: Spotify is still bigger in terms of listeners than its next two biggest rivals, Apple and Amazon Music.
Sad fact that we’ve known for a while: artists make very little money off of any streaming services.
That just means that the whole industry has had to shift in the direction of live performances, because that is where smaller artists can still make “the music life” work. In our case, that means we are seeking out live shows wherever we can find them. We’ve got a couple of summer festivals booked, but the gigs coming up soon are:
March 27, 28 (Monday and Tuesday), Brandon, MB - The Royal Manitoba Winter Fair
May 27, Winnipeg, MB - The Rec Room (near IKEA)
If you are holding corporate events, or even personal ones where you need entertainment, we are happy to come out and do house concerts or whatever might fit what you need.
Oh and we are hoping to expand this email list so if there is someone who you think might enjoy these weekly updates, do not hesitate to forward this email so they can sign up too. You do that here: https://www.thejanzenboys.com/newsletter
I hope everyone has a great week – I know I will because I am going on a road trip to Nashville! That’s a whole thing that emerged out of nowhere that I will tell you about next week. More then!
JJ (the largest Janzen Boy)
PS: Check out this massive QR code stencil we made out of chicken wire and masking tape so we can make banners for the Winter Fair. So many aspects to this DIY musician thing
