🎧 Playlist: Complete Belle Mt. 🎶
AWAKE, our newest track, has been out for just over two weeks now, and we’ve been loving all of the positivity you've showered upon it. 🖤☀️
I've been performing the song all over the place, from Twitter Spaces to Instagram Live, and alone during some quiet moments. It's like I've stumbled upon one of my favourite things that I absentmindedly stashed away in the attic sometime last year. The song was born out of a gloomy winter and my battle with seasonal depression, but now as I play it at the piano with the sun blazing outside, it's taken on an entirely new vibe. The “she” in the song has always been summer and I guess that now she’s back all is forgiven, I just have to work out how to make her stick around this time.
I apologise for the previous lack of weekly musings over the past month. My mind has largely been occupied with admin tasks, preparing for the Awake release, setting up the Discord chat group, managing Bandcamp, and revamping our website. The reality of being "Indie band, self-managed" in 2023 = so much creative control, not so much creative time. Once all this is set up then we can get back to the music so the temporary monotony and YouTube problem solving will all be worth it.
I’ve noticed that my mind operates in switching modes, when I'm in creative mode there’s no room for admin and vice versa. In some ways it can be a real blessing, like a burst pipe of inspiration, great for output of new things, but which refuses to shut off even when I'm trying to sleep or hold a conversation with friends. I become fixated on perfecting every line of a song I penned the day before, lost in my own obsession with it. Most of our songs are born during these manic periods of intense productivity that tend to last for a couple of weeks up to a month. Each day unhealthily long and filled with anxiety provokingly strong coffee and writing sessions. It really does consist of draining the tank in every possible way as writing sessions can be like therapy sessions, particularly cowrites.
When the frenzy subsides I find myself in a burnt-out haze, surrounded by 10-20 new songs. Some of them will never see the light of day, but a few will nag at me until we’ve recorded them, often right up until we’ve released and handed them over to you actually. Once they’re out there I can enjoy them in a new way like I have been doing with Awake. Lately I added digital art for our song covers and then writing for this newsletter to those creativity fuelled periods, but that just results in more intensity followed by weeks of having to catch up on the admin I inevitably neglected. I’m starting to realise that what I really need is at least some structure and not just to extract yet more creations out of the inspiration storm when it comes. With the help of Mr organised/king of the spreadsheet/the calendar kid Ben Worsley we’ll be working on that structure, in as rock and roll a way as will be non-disruptive to the schedule of course 😅. Speak again next Sunday?
Updates on Belle Mt. happenings below 👇
Discord - Last week we launched a chat group for our Patrons and MusicNFT holders and it’s already mega wholesome and feeling like the start of the community we’ve always wanted; with Belle Mt. fans sharing their own art & poetry as well as discussing our music in the chat. We held a poll in there to see which song from the first EP we should recap on socials next week…
Hollow won fair and square so back we go to the beginning of it all; September 2017.
Some of you were asking for the best way to buy the music digitally so we made a Bandcamp page and put the highest quality versions of our new songs up there, available to download and stream;
*Life Support // Hold Me, Love // Life Song // The Road // Awake*
We’re new to Bandcamp but what’s great about it is that 85% of the money you spend on there goes directly to the artists, so in a world of atrocious streaming rates it’s a great way to listen and support new music if downloads are what you’re into.
Sidenote - Check out this fun diagram below 😳 it shows how many streams an artist needs to get on each platform in order to make a single dollar. I’d love to at least see 100 streams make a dollar across the board someday soon, but 314 streams to the dollar from the most popular streaming platform with the most paid users just doesn’t seem good enough right? It’s even worse for songwriters who are paid less than 25% of these rates per stream.
Ultimately, we want you to listen to us in the most convenient way for you, so don’t be deterred from using streaming at all if that’s your bag. It’s so incredibly user friendly to have every song in history in your pocket and the technology itself isn’t the problem. However, the way that streaming agreements were drawn up in shady major label backrooms is not at all fair for the people that create the music, those deals need to be reworked to be fairer for artists in order to sustain the creation of music.
In the meantime we’re exploring many other avenues to create deeper connections and find a sustainable model that allows us to create and we appreciate all of your support! Much love.
Why PATREON? Because it’s fun to know our fans, because social media gets in-between us all and because making music is expensive and we’d love your help to make way more*** ✨
We launched a Patreon page earlier this year and just crossed the 21 patron mark. Along with our MusicNFT community It’s been one of the best things we’ve ever done for connecting with fans and fostering actual connection among our fanbase. We host monthly Zoom hangs where we play songs, hang out and are open books for an hour (Ask us anything!). We also have the new discord chat group and we share behind the scenes and first previews of new things. If this sounds like something you’d enjoy then click the picture below to read more 👇
***If everyone on this mailing list were to join the lowest tier of our Patreon you’d be collectively backing us to the level of an indie record label 🤯🤘
Is there someone that you think would really connect with Belle Mt.? Share this email and let’s welcome them in! 🖤
I can totally relate to the intensity of the creativity period and how it drains you...in the sense that it reminds me of triathlon training and racing. The long runs and rides especially can be incredibly draining, yet that’s where the magic happens. Getting to that empty space and having to dig deeper than you ever have before...and then the insights and wisdom downloads just happen. You can’t make them appear, you just have to keep going. Like...going through winter...