First and foremost, if you haven’t already checked out “Dreams Like These,” aka the first track off my upcoming second album An Unseen Sky and brand new music video, check it out now!
Great. How’d you like it? Did you give it a thumbs up and comment on it and share it? Good. Now onto the blog post.
I was really excited to get feedback on this because it’s the first taste of the new album, so I’ve been going all out to get it seen and heard. Facebook and Twitter are great and all, but you don’t always get traction, especially with the way Facebook hides page posts from the majority of your followers, so I posted the video in numerous music forums around the internet as well as on two pay for feedback services which I’ll get into in further detail below.
First off, on social media and the forums, honestly the feedback has just been ridiculously great. For both the song itself and the video. It really makes me happy to hear such great feedback. I’m happy with negative feedback too, especially since I still have time to perfect things before the album version of the song (although I’m pretty sure this is gonna be IT). My friends and family all seem to really like it, as well as people like you who have always been there to check out my new music. To be honest, “Dreams Like These” isn’t even my favorite track on An Unseen Sky, so I think you’re all gonna be really loving this new album.
Second up is Fluence.io, an awesome service that connects you with music bloggers and professionals to get feedback. Bloggers can set a cost per minute to listen to your music and write a review. It’s up to them then if they’d like to share it. You can also just end up getting free feedback if your music is fed to the right writer. I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on “Dreams Like These” and my last video, “If Only Tonight I Could Sleep” on Fluence, some of which was positive some negative. Mostly positive though. My favorite note I received so far was from Leks Maltby of the blog Aside/Beside: A Planet of Sound, “Slow burning and ever-evolving, this song is a three-and-a-half minute climax in slow motion.” Now honestly… What friend or family member is gonna give me a quote that awesome about my music? Haha. I love it. Fluence also did an amazing feature on me a couple weeks ago. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can read it here: http://blog.fluence.io/emerging-artist-spotlight-david-rosen/
The final place I’ve been getting feedback is a service called Audiokite.com. This is one of those services where you submit a piece of music, and a bunch of anonymous people listen to it and have to give feedback. I did this once before on Reverbnation’s version and got some truly useless feedback from people who clearly only listen to Jay-Z and Black Eyed Peas and didn’t understand that there are other genres of music out there. Half the comments I got on that one asked why there wasn’t any lyrics or rapping. Wonderful. But Audiokite’s version gave me a great, well rounded report which you can actually see for yourself here.
You can see above some of the words used to describe the music. Sure there’s some negative ones like disinterested or bored…. But for the most part, it’s some really great stuff and most importantly, really interesting to read. If you click thru to the full report you can also see demographics info (it seems older people like my stuff the most), how long people listened, where they’re from, some licensing uses they think my music would be best for (sci-fi seemed to be the top) and more. It’s all really interesting and really useful stuff. Best of all of course are the reviews themselves. Some are negative… You can’t please everybody. But some are just great and detailed. One great example: “I wish the drum had a fuller sound, like the large drums used in orchestras, to really make the drum the musical instrument and not just the beat. otherwise awesome, great beat, great counter melody, intense yet relaxing.” These are all anonymous so I can’t respond or anything, but that’s some great feedback. The person loved the track, but gave some unique feedback on what they thought could make it even better.
So overall, as you can see, I got some really killer feedback on “Dreams Like These.” I can’t wait to start sharing more of An Unseen Sky with you all. The album should be finished in the next month or two and possibly out in March. I’m also starting to work on another new video with the same people who did my “If Only Tonight I Could Sleep” music video. So expect a ton of new music soon. In the meantime, be sure to go click on the video and leave feedback for me on Youtube! I want to hear what YOU have to say. As always, I look forward to hearing all of your feedback.
– David