Hladowski Sings O'Sullivan: 3 Godfathers...
It is more than a year now since we launched the 'album', Hladowski Sings O'Sullivan... The songs are visible, and selling, throughout the world...
And I can do a little presentation...
Working Title: An album in a time of crisis.
Sub-title: How a lyricist accidentally became a
record producer, when the virus lockdown intervened.
Alternative Title: Learn from my mistakes.
1.
The presentation allows me to acknowledge the 3 Godfathers of the project...
They rescued the baby...
Danny Yates, City Sound Studios, Clayton...
http://www.citysoundstudios.com
Peter Smith - Pete Dublab (Inspirational Sound), Shipley
https://www.facebook.com/InspirationalSound
Gene Dunford, Ravenswood Sounds, Bristol
https://www.facebook.com/ravenswoodsounds
https://soundcloud.com/ravenswood-sounds
Without Danny, Peter and Gene... there would have been nothing to rescue...
Gene has already been thanked a number of times on this blog...
See for example...
https://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2012/07/love-death-and-whiskey-hollywood-movie.html
2.
If you are looking for a starting point, I have made this web site...
https://hladowskisingsosullivan.hearnow.com/
It is a service called Hearnow, linked to CD Baby, the distributor...
From there you can see our songs, and our distinctive cover designs, visible on the major platforms...
This is Spotify...
https://open.spotify.com/album/2dfJV4cTKjiTs0rcpv9nbC
This is Apple...
https://music.apple.com/gb/album/hladowski-sings-osullivan/1527689437
On Apple - scrowl down - you can see more clearly the coming together of the 'incremental album'...
Visibility varies from platform to platform.
There are oddities. For example, if you click on the Pandora link, and you are outside the USA, Pandora will not let you through. But we did negotiate access to Pandora - a curated service - and do quite well there...
There are many, many other platforms - and CD Baby puts us on all of them...
We have just had out first sale on Tidal...
...which shows, I think, that the work we put into delivering our good quality audio files to CD Baby paid off.
So, thanks again to the 3 Godfathers...
3.
The 'Learn from my mistakes' bit? So many, so many...
For example CD Baby sends out marketing emails encouraging the creation of an 'incremental album' - build to an album by releasing singles one by one. Hladowski Sings O'Sullivan is a model. It is an expensive way of doing things - but this was a rescue in a time of crisis.
As I carefully placed our files within the CD Baby platform, and let our team see the tracks accumulate and spread... It just never occurred to me that I would not be able to go click click click inside the CD Baby platform, transfer the tracks across, and create the album there. Nah. The explanation from CD Baby amounted to the usual gookspeak meaning: No one thought of that when we were designing the software...
But that is software now... You have to work with the software to find out how the software works. And it has worked.
In another part of my life, in my work for my trade union, the Writers' Guld of Great Britain, we have been looking again at the self-publishing of books - there are obvious connections with the self-publishing of music. Oddly, the self-publishing of text took off before the self-publishing of audio - when the technology of audio ought to make it easier. We would have to explore further the nature of the industries... Which is what CD Baby - bless them - have been doing...
Patrick O'Sullivan
July 2021
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