#3 The In, The Out

For some reason, I’ve been asked a lot lately to do digital releases for many different label. I’ve politely declined from the honor every time. I don’t have anything against music in digital format, although I still prefer the wax. If I do a release on a label that puts my music out on 12″, then releasing those tracks on digital format is ok with me.

But, digital only releases are a different thing. Think about the expenses for releasing music in digital only format without any media. So, you need some hd on your computer and some money for advertising the product. The product it self costs nothing to these ‘labels’. Still, if you want to buy these digital only releases from established sources, and you want to buy a playable version (not the mp3 shite), you have to pay about the same money as you would have had to pay if the music was on vinyl. This is something that I really don’t get.

If music is released on vinyl, production is about 50% from the final price of the product. Ok then the distributor takes his cut, shop takes their share, taxes.. Label and artist don’t get much money out of this equation. Still, if these tracks are sold in digital format for about the same price as the vinyl, artist don’t see the money either (there is exceptions, but unfortunately this is the default..). Digital sales is still like a Wild West in a way. Greedy people trying to make as much profit as they can out of work done by somebody else. This sucks big time.

All this is made me to come up with a resolution to release my music for free. If somebody wants to donate me something for downloading my tracks for free, that is highly appreciated (sam at samgigi dot com @ PayPal). I’ll be still doing vinyl releases for various labels, but I just want to put out stuff that would otherwise gather dust on the HD. So, I started ‘Digital00500′. Go check it out here.

Have a nice autumn!

#2 – Go with the Flow!

Yes, summer is almost over. That means Flow festival is here! Starting on friday with really amazing lineup. I’m doing a live pa on saturday on the same stage with Robert Hood. Go check flowfestival.com for detailed information and full lineup. Unfortunate for those who haven’t bought tickets yet; the festival is almost sold out. Check my radio show on thursday 14th, I have Kati from Flow in the studio talking about Flow clubs and artists. 102,8 MHz in Helsinki area basso.fi world wide. Show starts at 18.00 (GMT +2).

I’ve been on summer holidays, so haven’t had much time to spend online. Went to London and took the ‘Kraftwerk’ to Paris and stayed in Versailles for some days. Versailles was amazing in full bloom. I took about 800 pictures during the trip, haven’t sorted out them yet, but meanwhile check my pictures from last winter in Versailles at my Flickr account.

I’ve been asked to do a lot guest mixes, so far Random Circuits and Beat Boutique has been served, Mixmag.ru still coming up, hopefully next week after all the Flow shizzle is over. Here’s direct dl links for those 2 sets + a recent live pa from Flow pre-party at Von Krahl, Tallinn:

Samuli Kemppi – Beat Boutique radiomix
Samuli Kemppi – Random Circuits
Samuli Kemppi live @ Von Krahl, Tallinn

Hope you enjoy both, photos and sounds. See you at Flow!

#1 – Richie say, monkey do

This is my first blog writing ever, well, if MySpace blog doesn’t count. That’s more like for posting mixes and stuff. Don’t know yet how this blog will be different. We’ll see. 

I’ve been doing a research of how people behave on the internet forums, specially music related. My focus was to investigate how people with no idea of music are still able to became popular dj’s. There is numerous examples of this in Finland. Dj’s who get their music from digital sources such as Beatport.com and buy what everyone else is buying. You know, you can buy other dj’s top 10 tracks easily from Beatport. Now, if you are truly seeking for fresh new stuff to play out, you don’t buy your music like that; no matter which format you prefer (vinyl, baby, yeah!). Would be funny to see ready made top 10 packets of 12’s side by side in record shops with tags ‘Richie Hawtin top 10 June 2008′. What’s next, top ten of top tens?

So, what does this tell? Is it so that talentless people just want to be dj’s? Exactly so. People just want to get their names written on the flyers. No matter how. 24/7 society is living on a really fast speed. Everybody has to be reachable and online all the time. If you don’t answer to some email within couple hours, you’re considered rude. People are sleeping next to their cell phones power switched on. How sick is that? Lost the track, back to it.. It’s too easy to start doing something that somebody else has already done, you get the blueprints way too easy. But still, you’re not Richie Hawtin or Laurent Garnier if you play the same tracks they do. People ‘don’t have time’ to do it the hard way and slowly learn things on your own by doing mistakes and errors, then finally becoming a master of your art. How can one respect himself if he/she hasn’t done any real choices of his/her own? 

So, I wanted to give this a go. I created a new internet personality to a most popular finnish music and clubbing related forum. I participated to conversation to make the personality look less ‘it’s got troll written all over it’. Then I bought Top 10 electro-house tracks from Beatport, made a perfect mix on Ableton Live and posted it to the forum as ‘my first mix ever’. Then started to wait peoples comments. Since the tracks on the mix were pretty much the same shit that popular names in Finland also play, I expected to receive lots of comments.

Guess what, it was an epic fail. I was kind of surprised. Well, since digital shopping is cheap and easy, I decided to give another go. This time with minimal top 10. Half of the time I was programming the mix with Live, I was talking on the phone with my mother. Finished the mix and posted it to the same forum. Ok, now I’m getting comments. Looks like I had wrong genre on the first mix. People seem to like this one.

Hmh, how easy was that? 
 
Step 1.
Buy tracks other people have tried, tested and played. 

Step 2.
Make a mix.

Step 3.
Profit.

What was my point in doing this? I just wanted to have a good laugh, nothing more. I was a bit disappointed after seeing all the trouble and not getting proper hype, hehe. As my topic says ‘Richie say, monkey do’, same goes with peoples behavior on forums. People just go with the flow and nobody seems to be interested on fresh new things. If majority of people like something, then it has to be good. Pretty sad thing, there’s lots of fresh new talents out there who can’t get their voices heard.