Severed Fifth

Last night I went along to the launch party for Lawrence Lessig’s new book, Remix: Making Art And Commerce Thrive In The Hybrid Economy. This book is the bridge between Lessig moving from his studies in Free Culture to his work on reform in Congress. It was an excellent evening, and it was great to catch up with Lawrence himself, the Creative Commons folks, and other friends.

I find Lessig such an inspiration. He has an incredible ability to understand, reason and articulate complex topics in such a way that not only shares his insight, but inspires the listener or reader of his work to aspire to a similar sense of objective, reasoned approach. Over the years he has written a number of books, and a flurry of essays and blog entries, touching on a wide range of subjects. Most widely known in our world for his contributions to Free Culture, Copyright issues and the Creative Commons, Lessig is now setting his sites on what he considers the more fundamental problem – corruption in government. Last night in his speech, he expressed that the problems that we have faced with Copyright are because government does not make decisions based upon sense and reason, but is instead heavily influenced by significant commercial entities. Money talks. Lessig has deduced that this is a problem that not only affects Copyright, but a wider range of more fundamental issues. With this in mind, he has decided to step back from his work on Free Culture and focus on his Change Congress mission.

In our world we have many celebrities, but what I admire most about Lessig’s work is that he does not seem to let religious ethical zeal for the topic affect his judgement. Lessig feels very strongly about the issues that he studies, but in every one of his works I always take away a calm, reasoned, measured approach, and one that uncovers the nuances in the debate that are articulated and communicated with inspiring precision. I will always hold him in high regard for his incredible contributions to Free Culture. The Free Culture train is really only just starting to roll, and Lessig but the rails down on the ground for us.

Over the last few weeks Lessig and I have been exchanging some emails regarding Severed Fifth, and he is excited about the project, which as you can probably imagine, makes me rather excited too. With Severed Fifth off to a fairly ripping start I am concious to do things the right way and asked for his thoughts and advice , and when he is back from his extensive travelling spree, we are going to meet up for lunch and discuss it. I look forward to having his input on the project.

So in a nutshell, a great evening, and lets not mourn Lessig’s move away from Free Culture issues, and welcome his insight into how we can change congress. As he said last night, we have an opportunity right now for this kind of reform, and I can’t think of anyone better to drive it forward.

A few quick updates going on in Severed Fifth land.

Firstly, thanks to the Linux Outlaws for interviewing me about Severed Fifth (and Ubuntu too) for their latest episode. Its a long interview and covers a lot of ground about the project as well spending a little time on some of the technical details around recording Denied By Reign. Thanks also to Fab from Linux Outlaws for being an active member of the Street Team.

Speaking of which, the legendary James Tait has been out and about in the UK putting up some Severed Fifth posters and speaking to potential Severed Fifth supporters on the street:

James wrote a really nice post describing his experience. One excerpt:

I managed over the last couple of days to take a deep breath, put my confidence issues behind me and talk to complete strangers! I got a couple of people in the Four Seasons centre in Mansfield (thanks dad for looking after the boys while I disappeared for a few minutes!) and a handful more in Mickleover Tesco today (thanks boys for behaving!).

I generally opened the conversation with a polite “Excuse me, do you have a minute? I’m going to make a snap judgement from your clothes/appearance that you’re into rock and/or metal. Have you heard of Severed Fifth?” I then went on to explain that you’d just released your debut album and a little information about the goals of the project, making sure that it clicked that it was totally legal to download and copy the music.

I was totally unprepared for all of this, but managed to play one couple a sample from my phone (Edge of Design), which seemed to go down well. The others I just pointed in the direction of the web site. I was so nervous I was shaking like a leaf, causing one girl to comment that she believed me “cos real salesmen don’t get that nervous!” Here’s hoping at least some of them follow it up — I doubt they’ll forget about the experience as it was all so surreal!

I was really psyched to see this post – not only in terms of the Street Team doing great work, but also James himself just throwing himself onto the street, despite being a touch nervous. Pretty darn cool.

In other news, more work has been going on with Frets On Fire, other Street Team happenings are happening, and I am working on a press kit. Why not come and join us in the Severed Fifth Street Team?

A few quick updates regarding our rampage towards a Free Culture music industry.

Firstly, I just wanted to quickly show off some work done by Street Teamer, Drunky, who has been putting Severed Fifth posters up in Hastings, England:

Like other street teamers, he has been out and about sticking posters up, and I have asked these Street Team rock stars to send over photos of their good work. Great work there, Drunky.

Also, Xoke has been working on some Severed Fifth business cards, and an initial mock-up is over on his Picasa album. Here is one example:

The grandiose outreach campaign has been kicking off in terms of letting people know about Severed Fifth and I have been letting a bunch of people know about the project. Thanks to Cory for putting me in touch with Sparky from Misery Index who wishes us luck with Severed Fifth too! Would be great to catch up with those guys sometime soon.

Finally, there has been a flurry of interest around Frets On Fire songs for Denied By Reign. More on this soon!

Want to come and kick arse, Street Team style? Join us!

Thanks to Brady Merriweather who produced a Severed Fifth promo that went on YouTube:

Would be fun to kick off a bunch of FifthRolls on YouTube (a video that starts of as something different and kicks into Severed Fifth). Anyone want to produce some?

Well, Denied By Reign has released for about a day now, and I want to thank everyone for their kind comments and support behind the project.

I am pretty tickled-pink with the response so far. I have been trying to keep track of write-ups of the project and the album, and so far I have seen the following:

• Creative Commons Weblog
• Creative Commons Features Commoner
• Ars Technica Write-up
• GearDiary
• Stephan Hermann’s Blog
• Linux Outlaws
• Rich Johnson’s blog
• My Science Is Better
• CLibra’s Blog
• Joaquim Rocha’s Blog
• lummie.co.uk
• Mean Machine
• Singpolyma’s Blog
• Alternating.net
• Cesarius
• Locohygynx
• simsus.de
• Nicubunu’s Blog
• Dave Neary’s Blog
• Der-Lehmann
• Mediterranei’s blog
• Linux Today
• Newsvine

I also noticed some good Twitter and identi.ca action going on, and there has been lots of chatter on the Severed Fifth Forums and in the #severedfifth IRC Channel on Freenode.

In terms of downloads, I have been reliably informed by Neuro, king of the BitTorrents, that it is blazing pretty hard with over 500 BitTorrented downloads in the first day. I estimate that in terms of downloads from the Bytemark mirror that there have been about 280 downloads and I need to check with Adam about how well his mirror has done, but I think it is reasonable to suggest 1000 copies of the album have been shifted in its first day. Nice.

As I mentioned in my last post the next step of the project is to spread the word and build exposure. I am pleased to see that the Severed Fifth Street Team is growing and a bunch of street teamers are getting out into the trenches to spread the word. We have heard of people printing out posters to put up at schools/colleges/stores, contacting local radio stations, posting on discussion forums, sending messages on IM and various other activities. If you put up a poster, give out fliers or whatever else, do take a photo of it and send it over – I would love to feature some of these in the Severed Fifth News.

Another key element here us growing exposure of Severed Fifth and Free Culture in social networking websites. This is kicking off in earnest, and check the following:

• Severed Fifth Facebook Group
• Severed Fifth MySpace Page
• Severed Fifth at Last.fm

More coming on MuseAmp (a rocking website by a friend of mine, Dan) and Jamendo. If you know of more which need attention, do let me know.

More later…

Digg The Release

I am proud to announce the final release of the debut Severed Fifth album Denied By Reign. You can go and download it in its entirety here. There are download links for both Ogg and MP3 as well as BitTorrent links. Thanks to Adam and Neuro for providing mirrors. The full album is available under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license – you are free to copy, share, remix and sell the album if you like.

When I started working on Denied By Reign, I intended it to have two primary purposes. Firstly, I wanted it to be a good representation of my own creativity, as any musician would want. With this goal in mind, I have worked to produce a pretty thumping metal album, and I am really proud of it – I hope some necks ache out there. But the second purpose is more important – to explore what is possible when an independent artist releases their work in the new music economy.

Today the next phase of Severed Fifth begins and in this critical time, our focus shifts to exposure. To build success around Severed Fifth, we need to get Denied By Reign in the hands and ears of everyone. The goal here is to spread the word about the album and strongly celebrate it’s free culture foundation. I am hoping Denied By Reign will be an example of how a free culture album can gain critical exposure and success, and how this can open up other opportunities for artists.

With this in mind, we have the Severed Fifth Street Team – a collection of Severed Fifth fans around the world who are going to help with this goal of getting the album oodles of exposure. I have heard of people who are going to print out posters and put them in music shops, burn Denied By Reign to CD and play it in clubs and venues, and one guy even talked about taking a Denied By Reign CD, putting it in a boombox and walking down his town high street.

So now this critical phase kicks off. How can you help? Well a few ideas to start with:

• Download Denied By Reign and review it. Put it on your blog, and talk about the project.
• Join the Street Team and come and join us spread the word about the album. Put up posters, tell your friends, tell local music shops, show it to local bands, post on forums, send it to established artists that you may know and anything else that can help.
• Come and join the Severed Fifth community. Check out our Forums and log onto #severedfifth on irc.freenode.net

With the focus shifting to the Street Team, I will be posting more about this soon. Thanks everyone for all of your support.

Quick FYI, I have registrered #severedfifth on irc.freenode.net for IRC fanatics. Obviously, I will be there for the release of the album tomorrow.

Well, after a weekend off of Sneak Peeks from Denied By Reign I want to give you the final three before I release the album tomorrow:

• Sneak Peek 9 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 10 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 11 – Ogg MP3

If you missed the others, here they are:

• Sneak Peek 1 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 2 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 3 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 4 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 5 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 6 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 7 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 8 – Ogg MP3

So, after months of writing, recording, production, mastering and development, the final album is released tomorrow. I am looking forward to getting Denied By Reign out there, and then the focus moves to the next big step – telling the world about it, and spreading a free culture message around an album. This will be the really large and difficult job – writing, recording and releasing an album is something I have done before both by myself and with Seraphidian, but the new ground being forged here will be in spreading the word around Severed Fifth and not only growing a culture and buzz around the music, but around the mechanics of a free culture album. This is when the real fun begins, and this is going to result in a lot of email, a lot of discussion, and importantly, trying to mobilise a world-wide street team. Fortunately, w already have a great bunch of people already involved, and I will focussing my own efforts on providing everything needed to ensure the street team can kick arse and take names. This includes help, guidance, only materials and whatever else.

I am also really, really keen to grow a community of listeners and fans around Severed Fifth, and you should all go and hang out in the wicked-cool Severed Fifth Forums. Lets get a party going over there.

One more day…one more day…

About Severed Fifth

Denied By Reign is released on Oct 21st from www.severedfifth.com and the entire album will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license with expressed aim of seeing how far an independent musician such as myself can push and promote an album under the new music economy of free culture. My aims are to help answer some of the questions that are unknown about the viability of a free culture music economy. For more details on the aims of the project, see the announcement.

Severed Fifth needs your help to be successful! Go and join our Discussion Forums and join the Street Team. We will need your help when the album is released to push it as far and wide as possible and just see how much juice we can squeeze out of a free culture album. If you have contacts in the music press, or you know established artists who may be interested in hearing it, do get in touch with me. I am preparing a press pack for the album which we can all send out when the album is released. Oh, and for you Facebook fanatics – go and join the Severed Fifth Facebook Group.

I just want to thank everyone for their support of the album and the project. Thanks also to the Creative Commons for their continued support.

Another two sneak peeks from Denied By Reign building on the three previous days:

• Sneak Peek 7 – Ogg MP3
• Sneak Peek 8 – Ogg MP3

Today I want to highlight two rather cool quotes that have come in from some pretty notable people about Severed Fifth. First, I blogged about this yesterday, but Zak Tell from the legendary metal band Clawfinger said:

“Hi Jono, nice idea man & good announcement, it’s probably going to be the only way to do it in the near future unless someone comes up with a genius idea that guarantees artists get paid for the art they create however big or small they may be! You’re definitely on the right track as there’s no stopping the technical evolution, therefore the best thing you can do is use all the available tools to your advantage!”

Second, Mike Linksvayer, VP of the Creative Commons had the following to say about the project:

“The new music economy will be defined by those who push the envelope. Severed Fifth is pushing the envelope and taking names. Thank goodness they’re on our side.”

Thanks Zak and Mike. Also, in related news, Sam Dean from OSTATIC did a write-up of Severed Fifth called More From the Open Source Music Garage. In this he says:

“If Severed Fifth can simply create an enthusiastic community around an album, live performances might attract audiences and grow the community larger, though. It will be interesting to watch this effort”.

In other news, great to see people like earthdragon helping to give away CDs at his/her school and things are kicking off on the Street Team. Go and join the Street Team by clicking here. We certainly need your help – lets make this happen.

About Severed Fifth

Denied By Reign is released on Oct 21st from www.severedfifth.com and the entire album will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license with expressed aim of seeing how far an independent musician such as myself can push and promote an album under the new music economy of free culture. My aims are to help answer some of the questions that are unknown about the viability of a free culture music economy. For more details on the aims of the project, see the announcement.

Severed Fifth needs your help to be successful! Go and join our Discussion Forums and join the Street Team. We will need your help when the album is released to push it as far and wide as possible and just see how much juice we can squeeze out of a free culture album. If you have contacts in the music press, or you know established artists who may be interested in hearing it, do get in touch with me. I am preparing a press pack for the album which we can all send out when the album is released. Oh, and for you Facebook fanatics – go and join the Severed Fifth Facebook Group.

I just want to thank everyone for their support of the album and the project. Thanks also to the Creative Commons for their continued support.

One person who has picked up on the Severed Fifth train is Zak Tell, singer for rap-metal legends Clawfinger. Speaking about the project he said:

“Hi Jono, nice idea man & good announcement, it’s probably going to be the only way to do it in the near future unless someone comes up with a genius idea that guarantees artists get paid for the art they create however big or small they may be! You’re definitely on the right track as there’s no stopping the technical evolution, therefore the best thing you can do is use all the available tools to your advantage!”

Thanks Zak! I can’t tell how cool it is to hear one of my fave singers giving the thumbs up to the project.