Reached the 1000 Download mark!

I am happy to announce that my newest album "I Think It's Gonna Rain" has toped the 1000 download mark. This is easily the most downloads I have had ever, and it all happened in 1 week. to give some context, I recently passed the 100 download mark on my 2006 release, "Getting Massive".

The secret to the increase in downloads? Better music perhaps? Maybe. But what was even more important was first releasing the album as a free download here. My original goal was 100 downloads. I thought I could annoy my facebook fans just enough to get to 100. To my surprise, I woke up after that first day of posting it and had 275 downloads.

It should also be noted that I have over 1000 downloads on the site that I uploaded too. This does not account for the 100's of sites that now offer it as a free download. Unfortunately, I can not get any analytics on those sites. I'd like to think that there are many downloads coming from those sites as well, but I can't be certain.

So total downloads of my album are a bit of mystery. What is not a mystery is the direct correlation allowing my album for free has had on an increase in traffic on all my other various sites. Here, for example, is a snapshot of my youtube views.

Can you guess which day I uploaded my new album? on Soundcloud, I went from having 110 song plays and 8 downloads for the month of August, to having 396 song plays and 58 downloads in September. on Last.fm, I went from having 41 listeners, to 137 listeners in 7 days. "Songs scrobbled", went from 500 to over 1900. Last.fm hasn't updated in a week, so I look forward to seeing if those numbers rise even more.

The point of this entry isn't to gloat. Instead it's to offer a compelling argument that giving away your music for free vs. trying to sell it is a much better way for an independent artist to reach a wider audience. The hope (of course) is that the people who download your free music will like it enough to share it with other people and so on and so forth, to the point where you have a decent sized "fanbase" interested in all of your releases.

Trying to sell music can be very disappointing. It may even make you question whether you are truly any good at music when you see the album sales near zero. Even your friends and family won't buy your music and it's not because they don't love you. It's because music has become something people believe should be free. At one point Itunes had a 97% stake of the paid download market. However, Itunes only makes up 2-3% of all music downloads. That means that close to 98% of all music is downloaded for free or "shared".

Now don't get me wrong. I still released my cd on the main download sites (like itunes). It's just that my expectations of how well it will perform are low. In fact, even if all 1000 of those downloads were from itunes, that would still be considered a disappointment for many bands. My point is simply that, to build a fanbase as a relatively unknown musician you need to offer your craft for free.

Moby once told me (5 years ago at a Q+A) that the future of music would be the live show because "people aren't buying music now and it's only going to get worse". He also predicted that rap would start using elements of techno (maybe he is a prophet?) Needless to say, Moby was right. Bands like NIN, Radiohead, Prince and countless others have given their music away for free, or implemented a "pay what you want" type model. You could literally buy the entire album for 1 cent if you wanted. These big name bands aren't giving away music because they have suddenly become so gracious. They are giving it away free because it has become increasingly difficult to sell music. Physical copies of cd's are nearly extinct. it has gotten to the point now where bands sign exclusive release deals with a store like Walmart, and Walmart becomes the only store you can buy a physical copy from.

Cliff Notes: I gave my album away for free, got 10 times more downloads than I did in the last 5 years, and it happened in one week. Music is hard for big acts to sell, so indie musicians need to give it away for free and try to build their fanbase.

How I got started in video games

My story goes back a few years. I believe it was 2005, and I entered a online competition. The winner of the competition got their song in a video game!

I was obviously very interested in this project. Since the competition was free to enter, I thought "what the heck".

To my surprise, I ended up winning the competition. The nice thing about that, aside from the obvious, is I knew that an unbiased 3rd party picked my song out of the hundreds entered.

Here is that song

My Religion by Redshirt Theory

Aside from winning runner up on a chemical brother remix contest, this was my biggest musical achievement at the time. The game, went on to be released mainly in Russia's PC market, although it was released across Europe. Also, the game company couldn't offer any money due to a tight budget.

I had a decision to make, would I say no to the project because I wasn't going to get paid and it would only be released in Russia? or... would I realize this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, swallow my pride, and accept the terms?

I'm sure the suspense is killing you, I ended up letting them use the song. This was 5 years ago, and I still work with this company today :)

Aside from growing with that game company, something really valuable came out of that first video game experience that I wouldn't realize until this past week. While googling "Redshirt Theory" (come on we all do it :) I came across a music forum that was talking about my music...in Russian! I didn't connect the dots at first, but after using google translator, I saw that most of the posters had heard of me in that very same PC game all those years ago.

They even went as far as making their own "favorites" compilations of my songs and uploading them for everyone. I didn't know how to react when I saw these people distributing my music for free. Surprisingly I wasn't mad at all, in fact I was very flattered. I decided to sign up for their forum and begin offering some of my songs that hadn't been released.

Once I had my new album finished, I decided to contact one of the posters, and give it to him for free on the condition that he help spread the word. He agreed, and next thing I knew he had posted the album on many sites for a free download. The amount of downloads I was getting was blowing my mind! As of typing this blog, I have 567 downloads of the new album. To put that in perspective, selling my "Getting Massive" album on itunes, I have 25 full album purchases in 4 years.

I realized something with all of this. Firstly, Prince gave away his album in a Sunday newspaper. If Prince has to give away albums, Redshirt Theory has to as well. Secondly, if I would have said no all those years ago to the video game company, I may not have any video game releases (as I've used my resume to pursue other games) and I might not have 567 downloads of my latest album either. I would probably be on the same pace as my last album which got a whopping 30 downloads last year. Hopefully of those 567 downloads, I might gain some fans and maybe they will also post the album, and i will get some more fans, and maybe they will post it and ... you get the idea.

You can download the new album free here

I Think It's Gonna Rain - Now available for free?

The new album is finally here and is available for free for a limited time! I know what you are saying... FREE!???... It must be good! Here are the previews of some of the tracks included...

DEMO-I Think Its Gonna Rain by Redshirt Theory

I'm allowing it for free for a few reasons.

• I was lucky enough to license all of these tracks to video games.
• Prince gave away one of his CDs in the local sunday newspaper. If Prince can't sell cds, Redshirt Theory will not sell cds.
• You should be rewarded for landing on this abstract blog. Its like winning the lotto with how hard it is to find! Sorry that your prize is only a zip folder of the album :(

So if you follow this link you will be able to download a zip folder of the new album "I Think It's Gonna Rain" in 320 mp3 format STEREO!

If you want a hard copy, click on the album art at the start of this blog. You can get one for just 4$ plus shipping.

This album will be on itunes in about 3-4 weeks, and at that time all the free downloads will be taken down... So get it while you can!

FlatOut Wii soundtrack . . . New album done :)

FlatOut is a popular video game series that has had some impressive titles to its name. So when I was contacted to possibly write some music for the game, I was extremely humbled.

I began to listen to past Flatout soundtracks for some inspiration. With such huge bands as "Yellowcard", "Audioslave", "Zebrahead", "Motley Crue" and more; I knew I wouldn't be able to compete with the past soundtracks. Surely fans of the series will be expecting another ass-kicking soundtrack. It will be impossible for a relatively unknown artist to meet those expectations, so I knew I just had to write something I was proud of and let the chips fall where they may.

Deciding how to approach the soundtrack was a tough decision. On the one hand, most of the series' past music has been decidedly "rock". I wouldn't describe my music as rock, but instead "rock influenced".

I decided to take those rock influences and exploit them, while keeping true to my electronic big beat roots. Since I enjoyed writing the music for Calvin Tucker's Farm Animal Racing Tournament's soundtrack so much, I decided to call my dad up and request some "rock riffs". Rock riffs are certainly more up his alley than playing the banjo was.

My pops sent over 1 large wav file of over 15 minutes of improvisational rock guitar work. As he put it, "I just hit record and started playing some shit, I hope you like something."

I was impressed with the sound my dad had achieved and quickly was able to write this track...
I Think It's Gonna Rain by Redshirt Theory

Unfortunately, my dad chose not to record to a beat click track. This meant countless hours of editing the rock riffs with a fine tooth comb. Computers are very unforgiving if the guitar is not 100% exactly on the beat. But since the sound my dad achieved was very pleasing to my ear, I battled through the tedious process of micro-sampling.

At first I didn't have any vocals in this track, nor did I think a vocal was necessary. Unexpectedly I was shifting through old samples and came across a vocal that was recorded for one of my older songs "Traveling Man". I never thought the vocal was the right fit for Traveling Man so I never used it. Luckily I didn't delete the vocal file as (like locusts) it sat idle for years. When I heard the vocal sample again I immediately recognized that it would be a great fit for the song. The vocal added a bit of a neo-punk vibe to the track which really spruced it up. One minor vocal pitch correction later, "I Think It's Gonna Rain" had vocals, and a title :)

On a side note, the new album is all done! It will include all of the Flatout
soundtrack titles and a few new mixes of some older songs---Like this new mix of Bring it Down...
Bring it Down 2010 mix by Redshirt Theory

The album will be uploaded as a zip pack and available for a free download to all my facebook followers.

Be sure to follow my blog so that you can get the updates! Or you could always Like Redshirt Theory on facebook

Calvin Tucker's Redneck Racing

Back in January 2010, I was approached with an email that simply said “Aaron, do you perhaps have any redneck style music?”


What the video game company didn’t realize is that they just inadvertently unlocked a fond and nostalgic memory. I remember my dad playing the banjo when I was around 10 years old… I wondered if he still had that banjo.

One call later, my dad was dusting off the banjo that he hadn’t played for years. After about a month of practicing, he was ready to start recording. I bought him an external digital recorder and we were in business.

Up until this point, my dad and I had always been talking about collaborating but we just never seemed to get it done. Now we had a strict deadline and had to finish 8 songs in 8 weeks. Quite the task.
At this point, he didn’t even have an email. Since we lived in different states, this had to change in order for him to send me his recordings in a timely fashion. I set him up his first email and walked him through attaching a file and sending it. Below is the first track we did for the game. My dad came up with this melody and sent it over as an attachment (his first attachment email ever!)
His first reaction after hearing what I did with it, “Well I’ll be damn. How the hell did you get me to sound like that?”

Theres a Long Road by Redshirt Theory

Another challenge is that we had to write redneck music to specific themed levels. For example, there was an Egyptian themed level, a Celtic/Medieval themed level, Calypso themed level, a polar themed level and so on. As I’m sure the reader can believe, mixing Egyptian and calypso themes with “redneck” themes isn’t exactly easy.

Shipwrecked by Redshirt Theory



Sitar Hero video game version by Redshirt Theory


The game went on to become “Calvin Tucker’s Redneck: Farm Animal Racing Tournament”. Yes, the acronym was on purpose. The developer is from the Netherlands, so when I got the first game footage and the file was simply called “FART”, I wondered if there was a language barrier occurring. Nope…this fart was intentional :)

I’ve played the game and I can say that it is very fun. It is a racing kart game in the mold of Mario Kart. Each character can receive certain power ups that they can use on opponents during the race. You race with the Wii remote sideways in a steering position. The controls are nice and responsive. Oh ya, and the music is great ;)

I think because it is associated with the "Calvin Tucker" franchise it might unfairly get dumped on before people even play it. The graphics are excellent, the gameplay is fun and I found myself laughing quite a bit with friends during the split screen races. Here is some gameplay