It’s the shortest podcast I’ve ever done, but does that mean it’s rubbish? DOES IT HECKERS LIKE! It’s about quality, not quantity after all and May’s edition contains 10 lovely nuggets of audio delight to listen to whilst you’re avoiding the Jubilee celebrations. This month we have…
Death At Sea
Stills
Gabby Young & Other Animals
Picture Book
Liam Dullaghan
MinionTV
Catfish & The Bottlemen
Benjamin James Smith AKA Movedrill
Gunning For Tamar
Pariso
If you have an iPhone, iPad, iTunes or iWhatever then you can subscribe via iTunes here.
Spring has sprung and with it comes April’s Pursehouse’s Sentric Music podcast which, as ever, contains ten tracks by some of the best emerging artists this fine country has to offer. Tell your friends! Play it to your mother! Tweet your local Vicar about it! This month…
Jethro Fox
Thomas J Speight
Professor Penguin
The Moons
Spring Offensive
The Lake Poets
Cruel Love
Soulmates Never Die
The Sea
Fitz
If you’re ‘reet modern’ then you can subscribe via iTunes hither.
Here is a fact which no one might want to openly admit to due to the “Oh FFS, really?!” response it usually generates, but I’m not here to sugarcoat the harsh realities of this shallow, aesthetically obsessed world in which we find ourselves so here you go…
You will be judged on your email address.
Now this said judgment may not hold any meaningful severity of course, but it’s definitely something that you can avoid by sorting yourself out a ‘proper’ one. And what do I mean by ‘proper’? An email address which is
[name/word]@[bandname/recordlabel/managementcompany/etc].com
Receiving an email from [info]@[bandname].com appears far more professional than [bandnamewhichisslightlydifferentfromtheoriginal]@hotmail.co.uk. I think this is something we can all agree on?
Someone recently emailed me from a [name]@fsnet.co.uk address the other day. I thought I’d woken up on the wrong side of 2004 when that popped up in my inbox.
So before we start a couple of things to note…
.com is preferential to .co.uk despite the latter being cheaper
The geek side of me enjoys the new fad of utilising foreign URLs in order to create a ‘word’, but beware that this could confuse people so consider that before you commit. (for example; I own the URL ‘pursehou.se’ so my email address is [name]@pursehou.se which I’d argue is the greatest thing that’s happened to me in the past decade, but trying to explain to less tech-savvy people over the phone what my email address is can be a bit frustrating at times)
If you have a very generic band name then your URL may already be taken, or worse, cost a lot of money to purchase. If so it might be worth considering changing it a bit. If you do this though I’d recommend changing your social media addresses so they match across the board. For example if you can’t get [bandname].com, go for [wearebandname].com and change your twitter username to @WeAreBandName and have your Facebook page as facebook.com/[wearebandname]
So let’s begin…
1) Buy your URL
I’ve previously bought my URL’s from GoDaddy.com, but have since discovered that there is quite a bit of animosity towards that company due to suspect customer service and the fact that the CEO likes to shoot elephants during his holidays. Far from me to judge, ahem, a quick straw poll of my Twitter followers informs me that 123-reg.co.uk appears to be the site of choice (although there are LOADS of places online where you can buy your domain name).
So I’m going to start a band called LIKElistenUNLIKE (which is a running joke between myself and @GentlemansUnion regarding bands who make you ‘Like’ their Facebook pages in order to listen to their music, only for you to ‘UnLike’ them seconds later when you discover their music is rubbish – artists, please never make me ‘Like’ your page to listen, thank you).
To my upmost joy, my new band name is available!
Yes - I'm only buying this for a year, I am from Yorkshire after all.
If you’re certain you’re going to take over the world and become the biggest artist since Justin Bieber (he’s big yeah?) then it might be worth also buying [bandname].co.uk as well if you’re feeling flush.
Wherever you buy your domain from will then no doubt try and flog you loads of extra stuff and add ons before you get to the check out. Obviously, feel free to have a gander at these and buy them if you want, but you really don’t need anything other than the URL for the time being as we’re going to go and use the good folk of Google for the rest of the bells and whistles.
Before we move onto the email part, it’d now be a good idea to make [bandname].com link to wherever you want people to go to when they type it in. To do this go to your control panel:
(insert humorous caption here)
Hit ‘Web Forwarding’:
This is where Spiderman sends his email... HA HA HA (sorry).
Hit ‘Add’:
Would you 'add-er' look at that! (sorry)
And input where you’d like your shiny new URL to redirect to:
Any suggestions with what I should actually do with LIKElistenUNLIKE.com are more than welcome.
So now, if you click on www.likelistenunlike.com then you should be taken straight to Sentric Music’s Facebook page. Go on, try it, it’s like magic.
Now you’re going to be chuffed to know that we’re going to use Google Apps to link your URL to in order to use their Gmail interface. This means that to use your new email address(es) it’ll be near enough identical to using Gmail, which is pretty much accepted to be the best webmail service going. This also means that you’ll be able to very easily link up your email to your iPhone/Blackberry/Android etc and also any external mail clients you might use such as Outlook or Mac Mail.
Firstly head over to www.google.com/a (and bookmark that page as that’s how you’ll be accessing your emails from now on) and click on the big old ‘Begin Free Trial’ (after the free trial it will cost you £33 a year, but you get so much more than just email so it’s very much worth it) button:
I really should stop adding captions for captions sake
Knock in the details it’s asking for. The screenshot below means I’ll end up having an email address of ‘pursehouse@likelistenunlike.com’. If there are a number of you in a band, your best option would be to do a generic one to begin with such as ‘info@[bandname].com’ or ‘hello@[bandname].com:
I like my passwords like I like my puns...
Google will then give you the option of either an ‘Express’ set up or a ‘Custom’ set up. As your needs are going to be on the basic side (to begin with) then select ‘Express’:
You are a small organisation, don't let your ego tell you otherwise
Next you need to ‘verify’ your domain. Click on ‘Alternate Methods’ and select ‘Add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration’:
This is not as complicated as it looks. I promise. This is coming from a man who once took an entire weekend to build an Ikea futon.
And I’m going to cheat here by linking to a post that the guys at 123-reg did themselves that explains it a lot better than I ever could. Now don’t be too put off when you initially open this link as it may look a bit confusing, but if you follow it step by step and do at it says it’ll take you 15 minutes tops and you’ll be laughing, and that’s a Pursehouse promise.
Be sure to do as the guide above says, before you click ‘Verify’ on Google.
Next it will ask you if anyone else will be using your new URL, if there are several members all wanting [theirname]@[bandname].com then you’ll want to come back to this and select ‘yes’, for now though select ‘Set Up Your Apps’ so we can get your email up and running:
Doing this will make you 'App-y'! (sorry)
Now it’s time to fire you over again to the chaps at Reg 123 who’ve done another blog which talks you through this process in a rather concise way:
Once you’ve done that you’re done! Send a cheeky test email to yourself to make sure it’s working and voila:
15 minutes later I received an email telling me I'd won the Nigerian lottery!
If you then want to set up more email addresses for other members of your band/your manager/your pets then head over to the ‘Users & Groups’ section, follow the steps for the ‘add users one-by-one’ option and be sure to select the ‘Show Me’ option that Google handily offers you:
It's 'Show(me)time'! (sorry)
Once you’ve followed those very easy instructions a nice little list of members should now have access to your shiny new email account.
And that, my dear friends is how you do that!
A couple of notes:
Google Apps offers SO MUCH MORE than just a webmail service, use this as a kick up the arse to create a shared calendar between yourself and other members/managers so you know when rehearsals/gigs/releases are in the future. Also use Google Docs for shared spreadsheets (band expenses etc) & word documents (bios, press releases etc).
The cost of Google Apps is either £3.30 per email address per month or £33 per email address for the year
On your Google Apps dashboard you’ll find all the information you need to access your email via your mobile phone devices
Utilise Gmail to it’s full potential! Be sure to sort out your signature to include links and contact details (in fact; I’ll probably do the next blog about email etiquette)
I hope this was helpful. Feel free to praise me/slag me off via the usual methods.
Have you given up new music for Lent? If you have you’re a fool. A GOD DAMN FOOL. If you haven’t then come and join Pursehouse as he plays ten tracks by ten rather brilliant and exciting emerging artists. This month featuring…
Tall Ships
Jethro Fox
Song Of Return
Padraig Whelan
Three Trapped Tigers
Evelyn Burke
Munroe Effect
Ian Britt
Nine Tails
The Chapman Family
February, the month of love – so why not fall in love with some new music? After all; it’ll never cheat on you or forget your birthday (granted, it won’t remember it either). 10 more ace tracks from some of the UK’s best emerging bands including:
Labyrinth Ear
Juan Zelada
Air Cav
Pariis Opera House
Dems
Married To The Sea
Arthur Rigby
Sun Drums
Battleships
Lighthouses
If you have one of those fancy iPhone things you can subscribe via iTunes as well here.
Also – a bit chuffed to announce that the podcast has been featured by the good folk of iTunes!
The iPhone recently turned five years old which means it’s the same age as my niece and despite Emily being cuter, more adorable and full of innocent wonder, when it comes to giving me directions to find The Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, or telling me how many league goals Des Walker scored in his career (one), the iPhone definitely has the edge.
The lovely people at Music Week posed this question over on Twitter, you can see my reply below…
@MusicWeekNews - Stoking the fire of debate as ever
I kept one eye on the debate throughout the afternoon and I was rather surprised to see there were quite a lot of naysayers out there, saying the iPhone and iTunes have had a negative impact on the industry. Now I may have been told my incessant optimism resembles that of puppies sliding down rainbows whilst singing S Club 7’s ‘Reach’ over and over again, but I believe these people are wrong, so I thought I’d do a little blog on why I think so…
Come with me on a journey back to 1999 and imagine a young man with awful hair, a bulging waistline and questionable musical tastes – ladies and gentleman, you’re currently picturing me as a fourteen year old adolescent. Being a December baby I did the classic ‘Christmas + Birthday- present combined’ trick to bag myself a Sony Minidisc Walkman. This beauty in fact:
All technology is better when it comes as an equilateral square. Fact.
At the time this was an utter revelation; it allowed me to create mixes just like a cassette does, but at CD quality?! “THIS IS THE FUTURE” I exclaimed to my parents and peers before locking myself in my room to record a mixtape *in real time*. Baring in mind this is a good few years before broadband made it’s way into the Pursehouse household and at the time only one kid in my entire year at school had the ability to burn CD’s (I used to pay that said kid £10 a go to make me a mix CD of the 15 tracks I was currently enjoying on KerrangTV/MTV2 which he pirated over dial up Internet – halcyon days).
Fast forward five years and after saving up my wages from working in a call centre selling catalogue insurance to pensioners with more money than sense (they had very little of both it would appear) I purchased myself a Creative MP3 player (I couldn’t even find a picture on the internet of the first one I owned it, so here is the second, a ‘Zen’. Flash eh?) :
I adored this. With hindsight it was rubbish and crashed a lot.
If the Minidisc Walkman was a revelation, the Creative Zen was life changing. I had my *entire* music collection in my pocket. Every single song I had acquired (either legally, or illegally) was in my hand, ready for me to listen to whenever the mood took me. On the bus to town and fancy listening to a bit of JJ72 Simon? Don’t mind if I do thank you very much. Follow that up with a Seahorses B-side? Oh go on then.
Then the iPhone came along and with it the ability to listen to pretty much any song ever released whenever you want.
Any song ever released. Whenever you want. Wherever you are.
That, my friends, is awesome. And I mean “awesome”. It inspires awe within me.
I was in the car with a friend the other day and he was playing something that caught my attention.
“What’s this?”
“Erm, DJ Format I think”
I got out my trusty iPhone, Shazam informed me it was Ill Culinary Behaviour by DJ Format, I pressed ‘Purchase on iTunes’ and I then owned it.
Before the record had even finished on his stereo, I had discovered what it was and bought it. If you can tell me that scenario is bad for the music industry then I’ll eat all the hats in Western Europe.
My inkling on why the naysayers were naysaying is because the rise of iTunes and the iPhone paralleled the rise of piracy. As internet connections become cheaper, quicker and more accessible so has the ability to pirate music, but, least we forget, also the ability to legally purchase and consume media in all forms.
What Music Week asked was what effect the *iPhone* has had on the industry, not what effect the continuing improvement of technology has had. Using iTunes and owning an iPhone have caused me to purchase more music than ever before, and I’m not just talking a bit more, I mean a lot more. I buy more albums because the Spotify App on my iPhone allows me ‘test run’ them first, and I would have never previously spontaneously bought singles à la carte like I did in the DJ Format example above.
This post may very well just be going over old ground and you may have agreed with everything I have said, if so I apologise for wasting your time. I was just genuinely surprised to see some of the discussion happening online around the impact iTunes and the iPhone has had on the music industry in the past five years.
So the next time you’re iPhone battery dies on you, don’t swear at it, just remember what your life was like when you had a Nokia 3210 in one hand and a CD Walkman with two dead AA batteries in it in the other.
Anyhow, feel free to make your feelings known via the usual methods.
If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to ‘discover more new music’ then you’ve come to the right place. New year, same old nonsense sprouting from Pursehouse’s mouth as he introduces ten tracks by ten rather brilliant emerging UK artists. This month featuring…
Kankouran
Vinyl Jacket
I Dream In Colour
Mammal Club
The Nice Sharp Pencils
Young Liar
Auction For The Promise Club
Pandas And People
Deafen The Creatures
The Day I Snapped
You can also subscribe via iTunes if you’re really modern and all that here: http://senmusi.cc/a0Ljzs
Subscribe
