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When you release a single, you often have to choose one or more genres. This request can come from a variety of sources including your performing rights and performance organisations, your distributor, and the platforms streaming or selling your music. If you are on platforms like Bandcamp and SoundCloud, as well as the standard streaming platforms like Spotify and Amazon Music, this can involve doing this several times.

There are several problems with these lists. For one, they are extensive and involve a great deal of scrolling, which means that your preferred choice is easy to miss. They are also pretty inconsistent. What you choose on one list is often unavailable on the others. There are also many genres that you have never heard of previously, e.g. Antideutsche, Atmospheric Doom, Arunachal Indie. Some of the lists suggest that you choose multiple genres which adds to the confusion. There are also genres that you feel you should avoid such as “Easy Listening”. Surely, your latest release is better than that.

I am old enough to remember when there was classical, pop, rock, folk, country, R&B, gospel, jazz and show music – and little else. Then, subgenres such as ska, glam rock, and disco started to appear before the start of the explosion somewhere around the late seventies and early eighties. This explosion continued through the intervening years until now, when you have to be aware of at least some of the new genres that keep appearing. Electronic music, for example, gave us subgenres such as EDM, which in turn had subgenres such as Trance, which again had subgenres such as Uplifting Trance. I am sure that Uplifting Trance, itself, has many subgenres, although I am not aware of any.

The burning question is how important is your choice of genre on these platforms. I imagine that Spotify wouldn’t put your track anywhere near an EDM playlist if you answered “Easy Listening” as your choice, but how much more it matters is not exactly clear. As such, you might spend two minutes or an entire morning deciding without realising that you should have spent more or less time on it.

Which brings us to the next question. Given that there appears to be a near-infinite number of choices, should you start a genre of your own? It certainly won’t help you answer the question, but it might give you a new-found credibility. Unfortunately, “Other – please specify” is not usually a category.

Oh well, for our new release on this particular platform let’s just choose, say, these three genres, as they are roughly appropriate, and just hope that at least one of them will appear on the list of the next platform.

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Following the release of my CD, “Aestas”, I suspect that most people expected me to continue churning out EDM tracks. While I haven’t excluded the possibility of future EDM singles – in fact it’s more of a probability – I have taken a wee break to do other stuff. That began with my Christmas single “Rainbow’s End” which was geared towards children. On Friday my latest release “Jukebox In My Head” sees me venture into the world of novelty music.

Where this track is concerned, I have to give a shout out to my wife, Roberta, who not only came up with the concept, but also wrote the original lyric and designed the art for the cover. Initially I only wrote the music but, as the track developed, the lyric changed quite a bit. It also gave me the opportunity to sing. I’m no Frank Sinatra but I reckon I can match Joe Dolce, Sheb Woolley and Napoleon XIV for vocal ability. “Who?”, you might ask; then check out their novelty hits “Shaddap You Face”, “The Purple People Eater” and “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa” and you will see what I mean.

The great thing about being an indie artist, whose life doesn’t depend on musical success, is that you can choose whichever direction you wish to take. I am currently working on a Bowie-style song about outer space, an orchestral piece which flirts with EDM, a show song which could be from a children’s musical, and a traditional Scottish melody which currently sounds like loads of others. We’ll see where these songs take me.

What actually excites me most is the creation of new sounds and the use of synthesizers. I particularly like the use of MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) and have a ROLI Seaboard RISE 2 keyboard and a ROLI Lightpad Block and my synths include ROLI Equator 2, Native Instruments’ MASSIVE X (as part of Kontakt 8), and Arturia’s CS-80. I’m hoping that 2025 is the year when I stumble on an entirely new sound but guess that I am far from alone in this quest.

We shall see.

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Well, that’s the visuals done. I’ve just completed the promotional short videos or reels for each of the tracks on the “Aestas” album. While they are called reels on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, they are called shorts on YouTube and canvases on Spotify. I’m not doing much on Twitter/X these days as I am not so keen on it as a promotional tool and all I seem to be getting are tweets from Elon Musk that annoy me. Anyway, the visuals on the other social media platforms took a long time and I feel that the main promotional drive for the album is finished and it is time to move on.

My single release in time for Christmas will be “Rainbow’s End”, a children’s song in complete contrast to the album which was predominantly EDM. It should be on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and the other music platforms by the end of November. Our AV sequence “Rainbow’s End”, which featured the song, won an award in 2018, so we already have a video for the song and creating reels from the video should be relatively easy.

I also need to get back to playing the piano and my MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) keyboard (ROLI Seaboard RISE 2). Playing the MPE keyboard is quite a learning curve but it is great for composing using the associated software (Equator 2). That’s the fun part of all of this and something that I haven’t had time to do while creating and promoting the album. I am really looking forward to getting back to it.

So what does 2025 hold for me. I have three songs which I hope to release: “Jukebox in My Head” (written with Roberta), “Through the Darkness” and “Tempora Mutantur”. I just need to work a bit more to improve the production on these. Also, composing is an unpredictable skill, so who knows what can be achieved when I get back to it.

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Well, it’s two months since the release of my “Aestas” album and the time has flown. I’ve had a two-page spread in the Alloa Advertiser, had a track, “Rebirth of Venus”, played on Forth Valley Radio and been a guest on one of their shows.

One thing that I have discovered in promoting the album is the need for visuals to accompany the music if you want to promote it properly. Spotify want what they call canvases, which are short looping videos (3-8 seconds), to accompany the tracks; Meta (Facebook/Instagram) likes reels, which can be up to 90 seconds; while YouTube is best served with full videos or AVs (audio-visual sequences).

In order to supply the needs of social media, I have gone back to my AV days with PTE (Pictures-To-Exe) and am currently relearning animation with CTA (Crazy Talk Animator). In addition, Roberta’s camera club, Stirling and District Camera Club, for which we once chaired the AV group, have redeveloped an interest in AV and our sequence, “The Iconoclast”, went down very well when shown there last week. This AV uses “Titanium” by David Guetta featuring Sia as the musical background rather than one of my own compositions. For those who are interested, the copyright for using such music in a non-profit making AV is covered by joining and purchasing the appropriate licences from the IAC (Institute of Amateur Cinematographers). We are both members of Leeds AV group which, since it now operates purely using Zoom, has extended its membership well outside Leeds.

I already have several videos to accompany my music on YouTube and a couple of reels on Facebook. Look out in the near future for more of the same plus a few canvases on Spotify.

On the music front, I am slowly getting back into composing and looking at improving and releasing a couple of older songs. “Through the Darkness” and “Rainbow’s End” are already on YouTube and SoundCloud and the latter, being primarily a children’s song, might be suitable for a release just before Christmas. I’m also working on a song called “Jukebox in My Head” for which Roberta wrote the lyrics. Watch this space!

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What a time it has been since the release of the “Aestas” album exactly one month ago. A two-page write-up in the Alloa Advertiser was followed by my first UK radio play on Forth Valley Radio and a guest appearance on a show on that station. Not to mention the streams on the various platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music and the sales of the CDs on the website and on Bandcamp.

Thanks are due to Rajmund Bakonyi at the Alloa Advertiser for a very accurate report based on a phone interview that lasted for almost half-an-hour. The article appeared on pages 12-13 of the newspaper on Wednesday 21st August. This was followed by a text from Bovs (Brian Ovens) at Forth Valley Radio who wanted to play one of the album tracks on his “Millennium Music Show” which can be heard every second Friday from 4pm until 6pm. “Rebirth of Venus” was duly played on Friday 6th September. My first radio play had been “The Alchemist” on the Japanese station, Sound Street Radio, in 2023, but this was the first time that I actually heard my track being played on the radio.

Bovs followed this up by inviting me to be a guest on his other show “”Old Records Never Die with Bovs” from 8pm until 10 pm on Wednesday 11th September. I had to choose five songs from the 60s, 70s, and 80s which I liked or had influenced me. I chose: “So Sad” – Everly Brothers; “Waterloo Sunset” – Kinks; “Reflections of My Life” – Marmalade; “The Hungry Years” – Neil Sedaka; “West End Girls” – Pet Shop Boys. I had to explain why I chose these particular records and we also chatted about the other records that he played. It was a brilliant experience which I won’t forget.

The sales of the CD are moving along nicely and are now well into double figures. With a limited edition of 100, I am pleased with the progress. Thank you to Roberta for handling the dispatch of the CDs. Streams on the various platforms are well into three figures and, on Spotify alone, are over 300 and on their way to the 1000 plays you need to get paid these days. It fascinates me that I am getting streams in places like Fukuoka and Tokyo in Japan and Stone Mountain and Grand Rapids in the USA.

I now feel that it’s time to move away from promotion, publicity and social media and get back to performing and creating music and audio-visuals. You can find out more about that in my next blog.

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I have been fortunate enough to have a few singles on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube, TikTok, Deezer and Tidal, have had relative success in the UK Songwriting Contest and have even had a track played on radio. I have never previously considered releasing an album; but with a number of tracks already out there and one or two ready to go, I thought it was about time.

Since my latest track is called “Aestas” (Latin for summer) and since we are in the middle of our so-called summer, I thought that “Aestas” should be the album title. Provided you have a distributor for releasing your music, putting together an album for digital release seems fairly simple on paper. Also, you might feel the need to release a physical product such as a CD. This is what I decided to do and it turned into a major commitment.

If you ever need to follow in my footsteps, I highly recommend that you first read “The Guidebook to Self-Releasing Your Music” by Matthew Whiteside. At first I thought that it might be more relevant to the USA than the UK; however, Matthew lives in Glasgow and the book was highly relevant to everything I wanted to do. Since I wanted to release a CD, I found the website of CD Unity, also based in Glasgow, and this has loads of advice on getting your music out there especially in a physical format.

The story is not a simple one. As I was visiting Glasgow with my wife, Roberta, I tried to contact CD Unity saying that we would come to their office. As they were not answering the phone, I had to send an email. Despite not receiving a reply in time, we went to their address to find a labyrinth of floors, pathways and offices belonging to different companies. Eventually, I tracked down their office, only to find it closed. At around the same time, I received a reply from CD Unity saying that its staff were working remotely that day and to get in touch again. Eventually, I spoke with the company boss on the phone and he answered my questions. I decided to proceed and, apart from a problem with Roberta’s cover artwork, which was our fault, things seem to be progressing.

The next problem was with licensing. Apparently, making a physical product like a CD is more problematic than releasing a digital download. You have to get it licensed even if you own the composition and master rights for the entire album. It should not cost anything but there is a certain amount of administration involved and this has now commenced.

The third problem was with my distributor, Songtradr, where maintenance of some of their facilities is currently in progress. This made it difficult to alter the afore-mentioned artwork and may even delay the release date of the digital download.

Maybe I have just been unlucky but the release of an album does not appear to be a straightforward process. I will let you know how I get on.