Catself is busy working on her album. I talked to her last week to hear how album production is progressing. She tells us who will work with her on the album, about her support of Talentcast team and her further plans …

50K MUSIC: You have reached your target on SellaBand in February this year. Can you please tell us something about what happened since then?
Catself: Aaah… This is difficult to tell because quite a lot has happened. Lately, every day has been bringing something new, new facts and new ideas.

The first month after reaching my target, I concentrated on my shows in Helsinki. I had a number of them in the spring, and I wanted to play at least one very new song at each of them, so I practiced a lot. But all the time I was thinking about the album – both the songs and the practical things. I wanted to make the right decisions because I knew every decision I made would affect my album, and if I made a mistake, there would be no way to fix it.

I wanted to record my latest songs after the shows but I got very sick because of Finnish street dust (from the studded winter tyres that people drive on for half a year in Finland although the soft ones are better!). I had problems breathing, speaking, and recording was impossible. But I could plan and think. So, I thought a lot about the songs, and I still do, but the biggest thing was choosing the right people to work with. Last year I thought I would record in Morocco but I realised it would take too long. I didn’t want to risk a big delay. So I had to make other plans. Deciding who to talk to was a challenge. You know, I have always made music in a particular way – I have sometimes played live with different people but when I composed and recorded, I was always by myself, doing what I wanted in my own way and not talking to anyone. I wanted to find people who I could work with in a comfortable atmosphere and I wanted it to be an interesting project for them too, and I wanted them to enjoy it. I guess it might sound naïve and unprofessional to some people but for me it was very important. When I record my music alone, it is an adventure, discovery. I knew this couldn’t be missing from my project because it would then all go wrong. And apart from all these things, I had to think of the practical things too. I didn’t want to only work with people long distance, and sending files to each other, I actually wanted to be able to work together in the same room.

So… after a lot of thinking, but also some subconscious thought brewing, I thought I would talk to…

50K MUSIC: … don’t keep us in suspense …
Catself: …ah, but it’s so hard because I haven’t told almost anybody yet! OK. There is a band that I really like, a band that has existed for over 20 years, and, accidentally, they happen to be from the city where I grew up. Once I was listening to their CD and I realised that the combination of their sound and my music could create something very special. Once this thought came to me, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before. Everything suddenly clicked. I had to escape from Finland (from the dust) for some time anyway, so I travelled to Lublin, Poland and met the band: Saint Nicholas Orchestra.

Saint Nicholas Orchestra is a busy band – they are the best known folk band in Poland and tour a lot, in Poland and abroad. I was happy when they said they would think about it, and when they said that the most important thing was if it would be musically interesting for them, I had a good feeling about this. Last week they visited Helsinki because they had been invited to play a few shows here – one of them at a well-known Midsummer Bonfires event in Helsinki. In between the shows, they had a few days off so we had our first rehearsals. We even managed to arrange an extra show in Espoo, at Otaniemi Chapel, and we already played a couple of my songs together.

And it went great! It sounded exactly as I had imagined we would. At the end of that week, the band decided they were in. They will record part of the album with me – I don’t want to tell yet on how many songs – but quite many.

50K MUSIC: And who else will be involved into the album production?
Catself: Orchestra recommended a person they had worked with before, and I had already known his name because he had worked on some of their albums, and I had looked him up on the album sleeves because I was impressed with the sound. I don’t want to tell the name yet (sorry, secrets again!) – but I will soon. I will now tell you that he has worked on some beautiful albums, known also outside Poland.

50K MUSIC: You started another project on SellaBand only a few days after you had reached the target of the first one – The Catself Promotion Project. Please tell us what the 20,000 € will be used for.
Catself: If I manage to raise the full sum of 20 000 €, it will be used mainly for touring and some small part of it for other promotion. But touring mainly, especially now that I cooperate with Orkiestra. I would love to play some shows with them after the album’s release, and of course touring with a band costs much more than just by myself. So, I hope I will manage to raise the 20,000. If not, I will lower the target in time before the deadline (I do hope it will reach the SellaBand minimum) but I hope there is a chance for me to raise the whole sum, especially that I offer a completely new album in the incentives – downloads and physical copies… and my red guitar… I have some nice and carefully thought-out incentives and no matter how much I manage to raise, the believers will get them.

I want to advertise the Promotion Project more, and better, but I haven’t been able to do it more intensively so far with all the album-related work. Also, it will sound silly, but it would have been awkward to push it when so many artists on the site are still on their way to their first target with the deadlines getting closer. Of course I guess people don’t think in this way that “if that artist was not fundraising, I would buy parts in another one”, at least I don’t, but I both didn’t feel comfortable about it and felt it would be seen as wrong and greedy if it looked as if I was trying to immediately try to draw attention to myself, and still before my album was even made. So, I have been shy advertising it, but I think it is wrong and a bit stupid, because if I have a project open, I should be fair to myself and advertise it. I will need some funds for promotion immediately after the album is released, so I have to stop being shy. So: please have a look at my Promotion Project! I do have nice incentives! Let me know what you think about them. And yes, that second album is really already written, and I even have plans for the cover and the title!

50K MUSIC: How about your work with the TalentCast team. Do still have time to support them?
Catself: Luckily TalentCast is going on a two-month summer break after next Saturday, otherwise it would be quite difficult. It does take rather a lot of work, especially for Johan, but I also spend some hours every week looking for info on artists so that the newest and most interesting news is included in the programme, or writing texts about the winner of the Song of the Week – two each week, one for TalentCast and one for SellaBand News. They are not copied from somewhere, they are all new original promo texts, and it takes some effort to write it twice each week about the same artist so that it is more or less interesting. Especially when the same artist or band wins a few times and I have to tell the same story in a different way again and again!

50K MUSIC: Do you have plans for gigging this summer … any festivals?
Catself: I was invited to a nice big festival but the sponsor was late with booking the tickets and backed out, which unfortunately messed up my summer plans and not only mine. These things happen. I was also invited to play in Italy in the summer but I couldn’t afford to fly with the instruments, and by car it would have been just as expensive – I wouldn’t like to sleep in the car while travelling by myself. Before I always did everything to get to the gigs, and I think it was the first time I had to say no, but I hope there will be another time. I had plans for more gigs in the Netherlands this summer but then things started speeding up and now I have to mainly concentrate on my album. So I will use almost all the summer for working on the album – there can never be too much time for it. But I do have one gig booked in the Netherlands: on Sunday August 14th in Hoogeveen, at Moonlightstudio! And who knows, maybe something will still come up close to that date.

50K MUSIC: At last: one thing you want your fans and believers to know.
Catself: Once again, I want to take the opportunity to thank all my Believers because without you, all this would not be happening. So – THANK YOU! I am working on my album full time, as well as I can and as wisely as I can. It is the biggest project in my life so far. I hope it will all go well and that you will like it.

And to all my other Fans – thank you for enjoying my music! And please follow me on my sites so that you know when my album is out! And in the meantime, there will be other things: updates, some live videos, a few shows. And don’t be shy to send me a message if you feel like it. It is really nice to hear from you. Meow!

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Follow Catself album updates on SellaBand
Help Catself promote her album
Join Catself on Facebook!
Catself website – welcome to say hi in the Guestbook!

Artists:

Cornershop … start promoting their upcoming album with interviews in The Guardian and on Kiwi Nerdy Frames blog

Julia Marcell, Catself and Oona Kapari … will play a gig together at Club Liberté in Helsinki on March 23rd

Subset and Anne Marie Sunshine … reached their funding goal on SellaBand – read Subset interview

Metibla … “Brand New One” is Song of the Week on TalentCast – and don’t forget to vote for new Song of the Week

Kings of Queens … “Pretending” is Video of the Month on Talentcast

Music Business

Hypebot interview with Tom Silverman on Digital Music and The Long Tail

Music Think Tank provides us with 6 case studies on Successful Online Music Marketing

mashable talks about why music industry has to change strategy to reach digital natives

And if you want to support Catself with her new promotion project please check it out here.

50K MM:

All believers will get get a 50% revenue share from the CDs and downloads sold through SellaBand and the sites and shops SellaBand has a selling partnership with. Additionally, for believers with 50 parts or more, I will sell their CDs at gigs. The revenue from that will be shared yearly between all these believers according to how many parts they have got. My believers get a detailed account of how I am going to do it by email. I have planned it well to make sure that each believer gets the right share at the same time regardless of when and for how much individual CDs are sold.

Apart from the numbered CDs, to show my appreciation for the believers’ faith in my music and for their very generous support and their patience while they wait for me to complete my budget, I have planned a special surprise for each believer. I want to keep it a surprise to the end so I will not what it is but it is something rather special that hasn’t been done before.

Reading believers’ thoughts on SellaBand Forum gave me more insight into what is important for them and gave me an idea for one more thing: at least every month, I am going to post a blog about my progress to keep them updated. For more details, please visit my profile!

50K MM: You have played a gig in Morocco in summer this year, a quite unusual venue for European artists, I guess. How come you played there? Please tell us more about that.
Catself: A lot of really great things come to me completely as a surprise. I got a message on MySpace one day, from someone I didn’t know, so I thought at first it was spam. But it was an invitation to the Sun Festival in Marrakech organised by MarocK’Jeunes Association – the association of Moroccan youths. They were looking for artists to represent Finland at their festival and somehow discovered my music on MySpace. I still don’t know how it happened, my MySpace profile was very small then, with just over 100 friends! Of course I accepted the invitation

This turned into more of an adventure than I had expected. The flights for me and my crew were supposed to be covered by the Finnish Embassy in Morocco, but then it turned out that my Polish passport was a problem. In the end, we travelled to Morocco by car, the car broke down in southern Spain, so we continued by train and bus and on foot… in the heat of inland Spain in July. But then once we got to Morocco, all was arranged and we could relax again. The festival and our whole stay in Marrakech was an awesome experience. We really felt welcome there. The atmosphere of the festival was very positive and relaxing, so although the whole arena was filled, it didn’t feel like that. I felt all the time really close to the audience. I am invited to come back next year and I am hoping to go!

50K MM: You were interviewed by Calle Lindholm for a documentary called “Sköna Människor” (“Beautiful People”) broadcast in Finnish National TV this year. Home come they portrayed you? Please tell us some details.
Catself: Once again, it was one of these things that started from a coincidence. I went to someone else’s gig at a pub one evening. I was very tired and not in the mood at all, but he had just released an album and I thought it would be nice to go and listen to the new songs and do some cheering. A nice man and his wife sat at the same table and somehow we all started talking. He told me he was a music teacher, that he had been to Poland (where I come from), we talked a lot about music and then he asked what I did. I mentioned that I had recently given up my job to concentrate on music. He was very interested in what kind of music I made, so I gave him my self-burnt EP I had with me. He gave me a call a few months later and it turned out that actually he was a TV and radio journalist and would like to make a programme about me.

50K MM: How did you become a member of the TalentCast team? What is your job there?
Catself: Johan Jongerius, the founder of TalentCast, was one of my first believers, he came across my profile on my second day on SellaBand. He invited me to join as an artist, so I uploaded my tracks. We started writing messages and quickly became good friends, and he mentioned once that it was a bit hard to get the artists on SellaBand notice the project and encourage them to sign up. I suggested help in inviting them and also help in editing some texts, and Johan invited me to join the crew. I was happy at first, but then when I thought about it, I started worrying that because I am an artist, it would put me in an uncomfortable situation. I joined anyway, mainly to help a friend, but of course as soon as I started, I enjoyed it a lot. We are all a good team and it’s great to work on this together. My tasks there are creating accounts, communication with artists and other members and answering questions from anyone interested in TalentCast, handling the MySpace TalentCast mail – which swells with hundreds of messages weekly. Also, I try to get us more partnerships – since I joined, we got two new partners: the web-TV magazine diverCity and MarocK-Jeunes organisation.

I was right when I was afraid that being in the crew would bring me problems as an artist. Some people thought that I was doing it for personal exposure, which is very far from the truth – TalentCast sometimes takes up as much time as a full-time job, and of course it takes away the time and energy I could use for my own promotion. It is also a bit awkward to combine two roles. Once I contacted a radio station for TalentCast, asking if they would be interested in our programme. They didn’t answer my three emails, and after a while contacted me on MySpace asking for some of my tracks. I felt too uncomfortable about their not answering to contact them back and send them my music. Such situations can be awkward. Still, I don’t regret I joined. Thanks to that we can now be also on MySpace, get more music and more listeners. I think the programme and the whole project is getting better all the time, and I am happy if I can contribute to that.

50K MM: And how do you balance all these things you do?
Catself: Barely! I spend as much time playing and making new music as possible but quite a lot of time goes into TalentCast, SellaBand also demands everyday activity. I knew it would all take time, and that is why I waited with signing up till the time when I could really concentrate on this – I joined after I had quit my job. During the times when I do get some work (substitute teaching), I sleep three hours a night. It takes time to try to get gigs, find and contact venues, and it’s incredible how much time it all takes when you are all alone, without a band or professionals helping you. So, I appreciate it very much that sometimes I get those lucky surprises and coincidences, and that I get invited to gigs – last year to Morocco, now in January I am going to play a gig with a Polish band RANOC and then in Germany – that last gig was arranged by Wildcat, who is also on SellaBand. I am trying to learn to manage things better and have enough time for everything but there is just a limited number of hours in a day. And to create songs I am happy with, I need some time and freedom to clear my head – hiking, skiing, training in the gym – something I do my best to have time for every day. I always knew everything would take work – but sometimes it seems like I should split into two or three Catselves!

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