Opener Released – First Song Off Make Music By A Rising Force Is Now Available On iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, And More!

On Thursday 8/9/2012, Opener was submitted through TuneCore to a wide variety of music distribution platforms.  I’m pleased to say today that Opener has been released globally and is available now on iTunes, Amazon MP3, Rhapsody, and slew of other music outlets.  The links for the song on iTunes and Amazon are below:

Opener on iTunes

Opener on iTunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/opener-single/id552396679

Opener on iTunes - http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/opener-single/id552396679

Opener on Amazon MP3

Opener on Amazon MP3 – http://www.amazon.com/Opener/dp/B008W9ERMI/ref=sr_shvl_album_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1344820682&sr=301-3

Opener on Amazon MP3 - http://www.amazon.com/Opener/dp/B008W9ERMI/ref=sr_shvl_album_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1344820682&sr=301-3

The song is also available for streaming directly on the A Rising Force – SoundCloud band page and the new TuneCore artist info page.  Please share links with everyone and anyone you think might be interested!  The exposure helps greatly and we appreciate all the support that our fans give us by telling their friends about the band.

With Opener released, the focus is now back to finishing the rest of the tracks on the album and readying them for a late 2012 release.  Over the next week, I will be submitting the next four tracks for mastering and working on preparing the following four to be mastered.

In addition to the release of Opener, there has been an Internet Radio campaign through Jango running for the band.  This campaign is a test of the platform to see how well it works to reach new fans.  So far, the results have been very positive and the band has been able to connect with new people from all over the world.

Finally, the website for the label of the band – Make Music Productions – has finally launched.  Make Music Productions is where you’ll find not only the latest music from A Rising Force, but also eclectic releases from other new artists that are still in development.  There will be more information about the future artists on the blog on the label site.  Check it out for the latest information.

Final Mastered Copy Of Opener Has Been Received – Next Up iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody Using TuneCore

Today I checked my email to find a link to the final mastered copy of Opener, the first track on the upcoming album Make Music.  I can say that I’m very pleased with the job that was done – it is way better than anything I could do.  I used TuneCore mastering services which are handled by Universal Music Group.

The whole process of submitting the track was very cool because it uses the same interface that they use internally for processing their tracks.  Despite my initial delay in getting them the instructions for mastering the track, they were able to get it done even faster than I expected.  I plan on using them to finish up the mastering on the remaining twelve tracks once I finish producing them.

Now that the track is complete, I have to finish up some album art and get it submitted to iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, and all the other digital music distribution outlets.  TuneCore makes it easy to submit to all of them at once and provides a single credit for $14.99.  Assuming you think you can sell at least 20 copies – you should be able to make back your money.  The next post will be when the track is finally ready!

Over 100 Followers for A Rising Force on SoundCloud

A Rising Force reached a milestone a little while back – there are now over one hundred followers (103 at the time of this writing) of A Rising Force on SoundCloud.  In just under three months, with only the demo tracks, we’ve been able to raise awareness of the band to more people than we could possibly reach in any other way.  Thank you to all of the supporters!  We look forward to releasing more music and reaching even more people – if you’re a fan, please help spread the word to your friends.

There was a slight delay in the mastering process for Opener due to some poor instruction following, but the track is finally in progress and should be completed sometime next week.  Once the band signs off on the final approval, the track will be submitted to iTunes, ideally in time for an early September release.  When there is a more concrete date for the release, it will be posted here.

Make Music Video Track Reviews For First Five Tracks

Lots to talk about tonight!  I’ve posted the first batch of content for the video section, adding track reviews for Opener, Tour, Bright Eyed, Anyway…, and Pickmeup.  With the videos comes the launch of the A Rising Force YouTube channel.  The first five videos have been posted to the Make Music – Track Reviews playlist.

The other thing I’ve done is launch the Facebook and Twitter accounts for the band.  You can follow our tweets @ARisingForce or look us up on the A Rising Force page.  There are also buttons at the top right side of the home page to follow our twitter feed or like our page.  Please share them with your friends!

Finally, I’ve finished up the links in the gear section – so you can check out all the pieces of equipment that were used in the production of the album.  There are also a new set of links on the righthand side of the page to companies that make cool and useful things like computers, music/video editing software, blogging tools, music/video sharing, etc.  I hope you find them helpful.

Next post will be an update to add more demos from the album to our SoundCloud.  Speaking of SoundCloud, I’ve updated the account recently so you can now download any of the tracks that are on the band page.  More to come this weekend…

Opener Production Notes and Demo Recordings

I’ve posted the first of many updates to the production notes section of the site. Tonight, I added the recording history for Opener – which includes two demo tracks.

In choosing the best way to share the music, I researched a couple different options: SoundCloud and Mixcloud.  I decided to go with SoundCloud because it had upfront pricing and gave me a free plan to build off.  It also had a great plugin for WordPress that let me integrate it very easily into the existing pages on the site.

Now that I’ve picked a platform for sharing my music, I can start updating the recording history section on the production notes pages that are already online (Opener, Tour, Bright Eyed, Anyway, Pickmeup).  I also plan on posting a track review video where I discuss the songwriting and recording process for each song on the album Make Music.