Linescratchers-Friendly Album Compilation Project Announced
Driftwood Tide Music has recently announced intentions to produce a 2 album set of music written and/or performed by LDS artists. One album will focus exclusively on gospel themes, while the other album will focus on secular music. Basically, the goal is to showcase LDS artists in two settings, which are being loosely described as “Saturday Night” and “Sunday Morning”. Linescratcher artists may find the “Saturday Night” album to be a great fit, and a great opportunity to showcase their talents.
Many artists lack the funds to do a full album, or even an EP, and produce it at a professional level – thus preventing them from having a decent product to sell, and material to promote themselves with. This compilation will hopefully help mitigate this problem, while showcasing talent, and providing opportunities. These opportunities include being introduced to new fans, networking with other artists, improving your professional image, having merchandise to sell, and more.
All writers and performers need not be LDS to participate. A song written by an LDS artist but performed by a non-LDS artist is fine, and vice-versa. Bands need not be all LDS, but should have a significant LDS presence in the band. These situations will be looked at on a case-by-case basis to see if it makes sense.
Ideally, this album will be mostly upbeat and energetic, but a solid ballad could be a welcome addition. Even though this is considered secular music, the lyrics, music, and performance should still be LDS friendly.. In other words, no off-color lyrics or themes, and no music that would be considered dark or chaotic. Style wise, a fairly broad and diverse sound is desired, while still managing to have some cohesiveness by presenting a marketable sound that the Teen to Thirties crowd could enjoy. Popular music in many variations is encouraged – rock, electronic, folk, dance, indie, singer-songwriter, indie-flavored rock, and even modern pop-country are all ok, so long as they can at least loosely fit in with or be associated with popular music. In selecting the songs, extremes will likely be avoided in order to create an enjoyable collection that can garner wide appeal, while still attempting to create a diverse collection of music that will expose listeners to new sounds and styles.
This is a pay-to-participate opportunity, meaning that the cost of the CD manufacturing will be split among the artists. The exact fee is yet to be determined but will be reasonable – an amount that could be easily met by simply selling a small portion of the merchandise that the artist will receive. Driftwood Tide Music will handle the mastering at no additional charge to the artists. For their participation fee, artists will get a stack of CDs and Download cards that can be sold directly by the artist for any amount they desire, with the full proceeds going straight to their pockets. Artists will also get online sales through iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, Spotify, etc. Proceeds from online album sales will be managed by Driftwood Tide Music and will be divided among the participants. Artists are responsible to provide a high quality recording of their song(s) for the album(s). These can be produced in a personal or commercial studio as the artist deems appropriate.
If you’ve been holding off on putting out a professional release, or if you just need something to keep your fans engaged in between full album projects, this is a great way to get a professional product to promote and sell, and most importantly, to help keep your fans engaged while opening doors to a whole new potential fan base.
Production does NOT need to be done through Driftwood Tide Music in order to be on the album. In fact, they stand ready to provide referrals to other producers, studios, engineers, songwriters, etc, who can assist you with your project. Additionally though, they are ready and willing to provide recording, mixing, producing, or other services as needed. It doesn’t matter if you record your project at home or in a big studio, so long as the quality is at a high level. You are welcome to use an existing recording already (please just be sure to provide the UN-Mastered original mix so that it can be remastered).
Hopefully, this will be an appealing opportunity that can help expand awareness of Linescratchers artists, and provide opportunities to create new fans, and have a high quality product to sell. We hope to get at least one independent artist who is more well known and established to participate in the album project, in order to help increase the exposure and distribution of the albums.
While the “secular” album from the set is a pretty obvious opportunity, please don’t discount the “spiritual” album as a non-opportunity, as the hope is that this album will be pushing the limits of the “typical” LDS spiritual album sound & style a little as well, and may still be a good outlet for some slightly non-traditional LDS spiritual music.
To be clear – this is not an official linescratchers sponsored project, even though we hope it will create opportunities for feature articles and music reviews on the site for those who participate, and more importantly – we hope it will help generate some great new music, and garner more attention for the site and for our collective efforts in showcasing some of the great LDS talent lurking in the shadows. All questions should be routed to Matt Mylroie / Driftwood Tide Music, either through the contact information on Linescratchers.com, or through the “contact” page at www.driftwoodtidemusic.com.
Matt Mylroie is a producer/engineer/musician/songwriter based in Florida, and a semi-regular contributor to linescratchers.
