Synthtopia: Is it tough being an electronica artist in Cedar Rapids, Iowa?
Mark Rushton: Creativity-wise, I have no problem being inspired. When it comes to things like live appearances or promotion, it is very difficult. Last year I bought a very nice sound system for live appearances, the Bose PAS, and started sending out promo CDs and requests to play my music in coffee houses and such but I got zero response back. I sent out my CD to practically every public/college radio station in Iowa and only one of them has played me. Luckily it was the coolest DJ in Iowa, Bob Dorr on KUNI-FM, so I was thrilled.
It doesn’t matter all that much if I’m not accepted where I live. I realize that I work in a specific niche, and that niche has fans of the kind of music I produce worldwide thanks to the Internet. I’m sure there is a market in my area for unobtrusive and upscale hybrid instrumental music while people chat, sip their lattes, and surf the Internet, but they just don’t know it yet. This may sound strange to those living in larger cities or college towns, but Cedar Rapids only got a couple of decent coffee shops in the past year or two.
There is a thriving DJ culture in the region, and it sort of shocked me when I discovered it. Radio certainly doesn’t play that kind of music at all. Commercial radio stations here are extremely parochial, like they are in most of the United States these days. How does somebody discover techno and chillout when the local radio stations force feed corporate schlock? It’s a mystery to me.
Synthtopia: How did you find out about podcasting?
Mark Rushton: It was an article on Wired’s web site, I think. Once I understood the concept I Googled around to find out more and it sort of snowballed rather quickly.
Synthtopia: Do you have any favorite podcasts?
Mark Rushton: Other than my own? Not so far.
I’ve downloaded a few things here and there. A lot of the shows are still in their infancy. Mine included. Things will mature over time.
Synthtopia: What are you trying to do with the Hooray for Vouvray! podcast?
Mark Rushton: When I was in college and working at the radio station we’d play a weekly show that was sent to us by a record company. It would feature music by different bands, along with an interview featuring the artists or some factoids by the announcer. That’s sort of what I’m trying to do with my podcast, but on a single artist scale.
Having a musician talk about their own work is difficult, but it’s probably a good discipline. I never know where listeners are coming from as a frame of reference, so I try to be colloquial about it, although I do write my thoughts out before I read them so that I’m not doing 10 takes. It’s really acting as a “musician as curator” which has a lot of possibilities.
As far as the podcast angle, most radio stations these days are computer-controlled, so it doesn’t take that big of a stretch of the imagination to realize that eventually community/public/college stations will soon be gathering and playing syndicated content from the web. NPR has already played a podcast. There’s bound to be more.
Synthtopia: What sort of response have you been getting from your program?
Mark Rushton: The first podcast, which I put out at the end of December, had nearly 1000 downloads in the first 3 weeks with minimal promotion. It was a long program – almost 30 minutes and 30MB in size. I’ve since cut the length of the program back to the 12-15 minute range and limit the choices of music to 3 pieces. The emails I’ve received have been very positive. It’s also fun to look at the stats and discover that people from other countries around the world have been downloading the podcasts.
Synthtopia: Is podcasting something that you think other musicians should check out?
Mark Rushton: Sure! But there’s a lot of things to think about before doing a podcast.
How long of a show do you want? How often would you do it? Do you have the space to host the file? Where will you produce it? How will it be structured? Can you stand the sound of your own voice? Do you tend to ramble on? There’s a lot of factors to consider.
Synthtopia: If readers want to try your podcast, what do they need to do?
Mark Rushton: Go to http://podcast.hoorayforvouvray.com From there, listeners can either download the MP3s of the podcasts directly or they can add the RSS file to their aggregator so they can syndicate my programming and be notified when new shows arrive.
If any readers have friends in the music publishing or record industry, please invite them along to have a look and listen!
Synthtopia: Where can people find out more about you and your music?
Mark Rushton: http://www.hoorayforvouvray.com is the entry point. I have a couple of self-released albums available for sale and a portion of my music is on all the major download services like iTunes. There’s also at least 40 free MP3s for downloading and listening.
