Basilisk @ All Stars 2010

BeginnerDJ Interviews Basilisk

Recently I was interviewed for BeginnerDJ, a great resource for aspiring DJs and newcomers to electronic music. Most of the focus is on DJing but I also share a few words about my work with Ektoplazm. What made you become a DJ? It all started by accident. Back in my teenage years most of my friends were swept up in…

Free Music Toolkit 2010

I rely on many different applications and utilities to keep my web sites running and the free music flowing. Here I have compiled a list of some of the more important software that I use to publish music and maintain Ektoplazm. This list is for my reference as much as yours; I might need to refer back to this post…

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Auxiliary Magazine Interview

Auxiliary Magazine is an alternative fashion, music, and lifestyle publication based in the United States. Back in March both Ekoplex and I were interviewed by Digitalgeist (Alex Kourelis) for an article entitled “My Label is the Internet,” a feature on netlabels. You can find the finished article on page 27 of the April 2009 issue. Additionally, Auxiliary…

Free by Itself Is Not Enough

In a recent article entitled Too Much Free, marketing guru Seth Godin suggests that “free by itself is no longer enough to guarantee much of anything”. Godin distinguishes between “breakthrough free”, which is interesting precisely because it hasn’t been done before, and “sample-this free”, which leads to diminishing returns for content providers as people are increasingly inundated with free…

In Defense of the Free Music Model

The future of the music industry is a hotly debated subject, as just about anyone knows. Fingertips weighs in with a critical commentary of some of the more popular alternatives regularly lauded in the blogosphere, taking the time to skewer the “free music” model (not having to pay for recorded music), the “access” model (free or paid…

Rethinking Conventional Promo Strategies

Andrew Dubber has an interesting new post on who to send promos to, an issue that many labels and artists struggle with these days. Dubber likens the traditional model to a lottery, whereby promos are sent out to prominent gatekeepers of taste (reviewers, radio hosts, and so on) in the hopes that someone will actually crack the cellophane and…

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Memories of a Dying Medium

Recently I retrieved the metal stamper plates used to press the first and likely the only vinyl record I will ever have a hand in making: the Liquid Neon Sky EP. Until recently, these stamper plates were stored in a warehouse somewhere in Toronto, set aside after the production run in November of 2002. For whatever reason the plant held…

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In Focus: Planet B.E.N. – Ant Invasion

Planet B.E.N. (Ben Wierzoch) composed Ant Invasion in 1993, years before the widespread popularization of Goa trance. This enduring masterpiece of psychedelic electronics predates the vast majority of classics we commonly associate with the genre. Unfortunately, its place in history is often overlooked as it wasn’t formally released until 1996, when the movement was already in full swing. With…

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Reconsidering DJ Charts and Top Tens

DJ charts have long been a fixture of the electronic music movement. Charts serve a simple purpose: to recommend music. I haven’t seen it mentioned before, but I suspect that the widespread popularity of top tens is at least partially rooted in the fact that they transcend language. Absolutely anyone can figure out what a top ten is all about…

The Future of Copyright

Cato Unbound published an interesting issue entitled The Future of Copyright back in June of 2008. The lead essay, written by Piratbyrån co-founder Rasmus Fleischer, offers insight into the consequences of increasingly severe copyright legislation: Every broken regulation brings a cry for at least one new regulation even more sweepingly worded than the last. Copyright…