Top Four Practices To Optimize Your Spotify Profile

2020.  A year. 

All years are recapped, but putting words to this particular turn around the sun is not the job for us.  While times continue to rock the boat, artists are doing more staying at home than touring, and there absolutely is some opportunity to explore the digital side of that thing we love so fucking much, the music. 

If you’ve poked your nose into the digital world lately, you already know that digital music services are stronger than ever. All the major platforms, (YouTube, Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music) have found new ways to engage subscribers, and allow better insights for the creators. 

Essentially, the way we tune in is developing quickly, and we want to keep you up to speed.

To start, here are the Top Four practices to optimize your Spotify profile. 

Step 1: Create a profile.
Already have music live on Spotify? Great! Then you should have a profile all ready to claim or set up. Head here to begin the claiming process and click ‘Get Access’ in the top right corner to begin setting up your account. This will require you to create a standard Spotify account or link an older one. Doing so will allow you to create playlists of your own which is essential to maximize engagement.

Don’t have music live yet? Once your first song is live, repeat the above to make sure you claim your profile to create playlists of your own, pin content to your page, upload canvases and more. 

Step 2: Create playlists.
Creating a playlist is a great way to showcase what you are listening to, what inspires you or what music from your project you want to highlight. Regularly updating this playlist, posting on socials when you have new tracks added, is always best practice. You want to make sure your fans are seeing your curation efforts. Always be sure to prompt them with a follow. The more followers, the more chances to repeat engagement and grow the playlist from 0 to 100 to 100,000 followers, in turn growing some of your music in the process! Some great examples of artists who do this well are Bonobo and Childish Gambino.

In order to create a playlist, you will have to log into your Spotify account that you created or linked with your Artist profile outlined in step 1. 

Step 3: Pin content to your artist page. 
Once logged into your profile on SFA (Spotify for Artists), you can begin to engage with your fans with the pin feature. Choose a song, album or playlist to appear first on your profile. We think you should create a playlist to showcase here containing some of your own music to highlight what fans should check out first. 

Step 4: Upload a Canvas to Pair with Your Music.
Have an album live on Spotify? Time to get opted into canvas. Canvas is Spotify’s proprietary name for video art loops associated with individual releases to provide fans with a fun way of experiencing the visuals of your work in an alternative way. 

Reach out to (insert reapandsow email we will create here) to have your account opted into canvas. 

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Be sure to keep an eye for top notch links and best practices for some of the highest performing music services that reapandsow delivers your music to.  While you study up, here’s a little end of year playlist we put together for ya’.

Big Light's Animals in Bloom: 10 Years of Growin' Up, Feelin' Heavy and Smokin' Em Down.

Where does the time go?

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of the seminal record Animals in Bloom, by San Francisco rock band Big Light. It’s fair to say that we’ve been all-in on Big Light since their inception, hell, they’re all crucial members of the reapandsow family - shoutout Bradly on original reap logo design! But we don’t celebrate this record and this anniversary on this day because we’re friends.

We celebrate this record because truly, it fucking rocks. It’s a total gem of the reapandsow catalog that has beyond stood the test of time.

Honestly? Every song on this album hits in its own way. Frontman Fred Torphy’s songwriting was really starting to take shape and form with this release and the result is a hard-rocking, whimsical, sonically defying debut that continues to deliver, time and time again.

Take a gander at what Dennis Cook from JamBase had to say about the release, 10 years ago! As always, Cookie has fingers on the prose and is able to articulate exactly why it’s always a good time of the year to come home to this album.

There’s a lot of talented young bands out there but few realize their potential with such succulent success as Big Light’s full-length debut, Animals In Bloom (arriving March 2). The opening cut “Good Time of the Year” refers to a fine moment to get back home, but in a way it’s prophetic about what’s to come. Animals might just be THE good time rock slab of 2010, and if not, the competition has their work cut out for them. Serious music geeks, the quartet – Fred Torphy (lead vocals, guitar, songwriting), Bradly Bifuclo (drums), Steve Adams (bass, vocals) and Jeremy Korpas (lead guitar, vocals) – have crafted something that holds its own against the great bands that have inspired them – Dr. Dog, The Slip, Wilco – while maintaining a well-defined sense of themselves, which one picks up on right from the album’s title – a curious mixture of plant life and furred things, a giraffe growing from a stamen perhaps, or maybe just humans thriving despite the great seething, stupid ontological bog the planet finds itself in today. If you don’t feel a touch uplifted after just the opening trio of “Good Time,” “Monster” (a hit single waiting to happen) and the curiously angled, handclap tinged “Triceratops” then I might question whether you actually like rock ‘n’ roll. And if those don’t nail you then “Superfuzz Fine,” “Heavy” or “Rainbow Eyes” should do the trick. One senses that a listener’s fave song will change with each spin and the circumstances of their lives – a sign of any truly great album. The vibrancy and unforced hopefulness of Big Light shimmers on every saccharine-free track, and the combination of talents produces a sound that’s easy to love but also resonates on a deeper frequency (a feat ably aided by Apollo Sunshine’s Jeremy Black, who co-produced with the band). The rhythm team sways with roughhewn charm, carrying the whole enterprise from garage to stadium-ready and back again. Big Light has all the makings of a classic guitar band akin to simpatico pals the Mother Hips. The interplay, attack and keep-you-guessing creativity of Korpas and Torphy are swift catalysts to air guitar frenzy and closed-eye contemplation. The reach of this band is significant. Fully adept at poppy groovers AND cosmically charged heftiness, this band embraces stuff of larger magnitude and intimacy & introspection with equal vigor, and if the primordial seas get churned up in their wake, so be it – they winningly like things a little rough. Animals In Bloom is a phenomenal debut, easily one of the best in the past decade, which reveals a band fully loaded for a bright, bright future. (Dennis Cook)

We’ve got some exciting Big Light news coming down the pipe in 2020, so buckle up. We’ll turn you on.

Delicate Steve releases Three Live Ones on reapandsow

Our boy and yours Delicate Steve has just released a new LIVE ep on reapandsow. Check out the press release below, and do be sure to support Steve, always. The man is a positive force!

With no signs of slowing down in 2020, Delicate Steve has announced new March tour dates this week – including a performance at Boise, ID’s Treefort Music Fest – and released a new EP titled Three Live Ones.

2019 proved to be a busy year for Delicate Steve’s creator, guitarist Steve Marion. Shortly after releasing the full-length album Till I Burn Up, Marion was tapped to join arena rockers The Black Keys for their worldwide ‘Let’s Rock’ tour, performing on any given night for 10,000 fans. In between legs of the Keys tour, Marion played a Delicate Steve show in a small club in New York’s East Village. It was "one of the most visceral and electrifying experiences I’ve had: in between playing large sports arenas, to get the opportunity to perform for a hungry audience inside of a sold-out club with a line out the door, with people basically falling onto the stage,” Marion explained. “To be able to see everyone’s face and feel the body heat in the room and to watch the crowd get rowdy, scream for more, and be moved in the mellower moments. It felt soulful and real. This is where I got the idea for Three Live Ones and Delicate Steve’s Tiny Arena Tour.”

Recorded live during one sweat-filled summer night at Brooklyn’s Alphaville, the three-song EP features signature guitar work from Marion paired with the intricate drum stylings of Rosie Slater.

Happy New Year! Forget hindsight, 2020 vision is future tense

Friends!

We just wanted to wish you good tidings in this new decade. We’re excited to turn the volume back up on reapandsow in 2020.

We’ve got two releases on the docket from some of our favorite musicians and a revived focus to harness what we’ve built over the last 15 (!!!!) years and continue to plant music in your mind.

All the best, to you and yours, from us and ours.

Apollo Sunshine : Timeless Rock and Roll

Way back during the first decade of the new millennium, did you ever experience the magic of Apollo Sunshine?

Oh man, I loved this band... and I still do.  Their first two records were listened to repeatedly, on CD, then mp3.  Something just flipped, and I was on the other side of the world now.

But as we moved into a on-demand streaming world, I would go look for the albums on streaming services, but neither of these gems would be there.  Understanding the overmedia’d world we live in today, everything is out there somewhere.  So I tracked down Jeremy, Jesse, and Sam, and asked them if I could put these albums out... and they said yes.   So please give ‘em a spin on your favorite modern music service (Katonah / Apollo Sunshine).

Katonah captures the raw, young energy of the guys, plus the dynamic between quiet and explosive. Simple melodies, on vibes or piano, juxtaposed by bass thunder and searing guitar, with insane noises from another galaxy, interspersed at a level just enough to make you think you're hearing things.  On some drum fills (“Happening" “The Egg”, “Flip”), Jeremy Black sounds like he is literally destroying his kit.

“I was on the Moon” combines a sweet ode to a little brother mixed with swirling guitars, it's pure two-toned Apollo Sunshine, the gorgeousness and the grease, all gobbed together.  The guitars are noteworthy, such as the “Conscious Pilot” solo.  The guitar sounds of Texas-born Sam Cohen were born and raised through Apollo Sunshine, and he has grown to be one of the axemen of our generation.

Apollo is Sunshine-y pop music, it's psychedelic rock music, and it should have been universally huge. Although we talk about Apollo in the past, the least I can do is keep breathing, it's all I can do….  I also can recommend two trip down memory lane by these two fantastic albums from 2003 and 2006.

The band continues to make music, here's an update on the guys:
Jesse “Nightime” Gallagher released an EP in this tradition of these Apollo Sunshine re-releases, have a listen to the Nighttime Sunshine EP now (listen link) and check out his video for “Time” on YouTube.  For the last 10 years, the root of Jesse has been his hermitage above the Lilypad Jazz Club in Cambridge, MA.  He books the club full time and lives a continuous musical collaboration & creation that has been archived in thousands of hours of amorphous unreleased “Mythological Records” featuring endless co-conspiritors (Biff Rose, EDAN, Sunburned Hand of The Man, Kurt Heasley (Lilys), Willy Mason, Gary War, CAN’s Malcolm Mooney, Drug Rug, Bong Wish).

Sam Cohen has put our fantastic records (both with Yellowbirds and his latest solo album, Cool It, on 30th Century Records.  Sam has also produced amazing records, like this Kevin Morby gem Singing Saw (Sam Full Credits).  Sam will be performing on the “Alone and Together” tour in late February 2017 (LA March 3, SF on March 5).

Jeremy Black is been busy, on the drums (playing with Matthew Logan Vasquez, Sandy's, Apollo Sunshine, and Marco Benevento) as well as producing records.  Currently, he is working with Justin Vernon on Jeremy’s solo record, and Jerry has produced and/or drummed on records by Langhorne Slim, Geographer, Du Blonde, Cellar Doors, Con Brio, Spooky Mansions, Kacey Johansing, Farallons, Sandys, Go By Ocean, Fred Torphy, and FJAAK.  At the Mitchelberger Music Festival in Berlin last year, he played drums in performances with the Dessner Brothers (National), Lisa Hannigan, Hauschka and Justin Vernon.

Apollo Sunshine - Katonah [Listen]
Apollo Sunshine - Apollo Sunshine [Listen]

reapandsow 2016 reviewed

Perhaps this year in music was a landmark year. One can argue a statement like that can be made about any business in any given year but reapandsow maintains that 2016 ushered in a change that many people outside the music sphere may have neglected to notice. Streaming is on the precipice of overtaking download revenue and people are getting woke to streaming!  The exponential rise of streaming versus download consumption has lit a fire at the heart the music industry and artists are benefitting more from fans streaming their music now than ever before.

We have always made sure digital distribution solutions were provided to our clients here at reapandsow but because of this sharp upward trend in streaming, our artists, old and new, have come to us during this crazy year to open up the flood gates for new records, re-issues and new projects. Bands like Boston based psych outfit Apollo Sunshine released two of their seminal releases for the first time on digital music services with frontman Jesse Gallagher releasing his new Nightime Sunshine project alongside these two psychedelic gems. Greg Loiacono of the Bay Area’s fabled The Mother Hips released a stellar whirlwind of a solo record Songs From a Golden Dream with us this past fall getting favorable reviews in Relix, Jambase and more.  Check back on our post from September to learn more about the release of Greg’s record!

reapandsow has also started to sign new talent to its new distribution platform, spearheaded by CFO and General Manager, Dylan Lewis. With this new initiative, the aptly named Dollar Slice Records, plans to interface with younger artist’s and their teams directly to provide retail marketing and digital distribution support. As labels slowly start to take a less centralized role in the day to day of the artist, Dollar Slice aims to act as a valuable sales & marketing resource for artists while allowing them to maintain as much creative and executive control over their work in the early growth stages of their careers.

Dollar Slice’s first signee is Boston based psych rock band, Plastic Waves, fronted by Andre Bellido who brings all of the recordings to life with the help of a live band. He studied music at the esteemed Berklee College of Music and has played showcases at SXSW, toured several east coast strongholds and released one EP with DSR with plans to release his second EP later in 2017. so keep your ears on the ground for a slice of what we will have rolling out from Plastic Waves and a handful of other promising new signees in the New Year. Dollar Slice Records is based in Bushwick, Brooklyn. 

-Dylan Lewis