Two new tracks I've made for music library licensing

Hello friends,

By the time you read this, I will probably be on my way for an 11-days trip to USA, where I will be staying in the New York / New Jersey area until August 6th. The trip is a combination of a little bit of work, a little bit of vacation / tourist time, and a little bit horse related, because my wife is really big-time into horses, and next weekend is the weekend for the big horse trotting race, "Hambletonian". Believe it or not, we own a 1/120th stake in one of the favorite horses to win it -- Donato Hanover.

Anyway, enough of that. Before I leave, I wanted all you guys to know that I haven't been lazying around here, but have in fact been working on two new "pop" like tracks which are not meant for release on any Bjorn Lynne CD, but have been composed and produced purely for licensing through music libraries (including my own royalty-free music library site, Shockwave-Sound.com.

The two tracks were created and produced right here in my room (in fact, on the same PC as I'm typing on now) :-). The saxophone in "Jazzy Chill" was played by my friend Steinar Borvik.

Here are the two tracks in reduced sound quality (should be good enough to hear what they're like). I hope you'll enjoy them. If anybody should be interested in licensing these tracks for use in any kind of media (TV, web site, multimedia, slideshow, anything), then you can buy a license for that at www.shockwave-sound.com

Okay, I'm off "stateside" for the next 11 days and will write again when I return. :-)

All the best,
- Bjorn

Bjorn Lynne music for Flintstones & Home Alone

Just a quick note, people, to say that you can now hear my music in the two new PlayStation 2 games, "The Flintstones: Bedrock Racing" and "Home Alone".

So if you get a chance to play one of these, crank up the volume. ;-)

Letter from Dave Lundy - Music Purchasing

Hey Bjorn,

Longtime fan here. I've gotten every one of your albums since Hobbits, way back when. I actually still have my old MOD music files from back in the day. Brings back memories...

Anyhow, I'm wanting to purchase "Undercover" and future albums, but I want to help you out as much as I can. While I love having physical CDs to listen to, I understand that you've got a high overhead on making them. What would be the most beneficial (for you) way to purchase your music? I want to keep you in business, bro. You're a great talent and I'd hate to see that go away.

Thanks again for the great tunes! Take care...

Dave

---

Answer from Bjorn:

Hi David,

Thank you so much for your email and for your support. I appreciate it -- not only that you want to buy my music, but also for thinking about me and how much I get out of each type of sale.

My answer is that really, the amounts I get from different types of sales, don't really differ that much from each other.

If you buy my physical CD at CDBaby.com I get $12.99 (CDbaby takes $4), minus the approx. $2 it cost me to have the CD made, and about $0.50 it cost me to send the CD to CDBaby. So I guess a profit of about $10.

If you buy it as a download from iTunes, then iTunes pays CDBaby about $6.30 or so, and CDBaby only takes 9% of this, so after Paypal fees (when CDBaby pays me by Paypal) I'm left with about $5.50 or so.

If you buy it as a physical CD from my own personal CD-shop www.lynnemusic.com/cdshop.html , you pay $16.99 for the CD and $7.90 for postage. Some feel that the $7.90 I take in postage is a little bit too much, but postage out of Norway is very expensive, and in actual fact, the true postage cost for me to send one CD from Norway to USA is about $11. So I actually lose a little bit over $3 in postage, even when I take $7.90 in postage from the customer. So in this case, I take $16.99 for the CD, out of which Paypal takes about 4%, minus the $3 I lose on shipping, minus the approx. $2 it cost me to have the CD made, minus the $1 approx it cost me to have the CD shipped to me from the place where it was made -- leaving me perhaps with a profit of about $10 or so.

If you buy the CD as a downloadable CD from my own personal download-shop (www.lynnemusic.com/downloadshop.html) then you pay $11.99 and you pay through 2checkout.com who takes 5.5% plus they "skim" about 2% on the currency exchange rate when they pay the monthly payment to me -- so I'm left with a profit of around $11.

So, as you can see from all this, really there are several ways to buy my CD's that more or less work out at just about the same profit for me. Frankly, if it's a matter of a dollar or two, I'd rather my customers actually have the physical CD if that is what they prefer. :-)

The bottom line is, whatever way you choose to buy my music, I very much appreciate it, and for me it's more important that you buy it in the way that gives you the most pleasure, even if I should make a couple of dollars or less, one way or the other. :-)

Thanks again!

- Bjorn

Voyager: New Surround Music track for free download

Dear friends,

Today I have uploaded a new free surround music track to my web site, which can be downloaded in WMA (Windows Media Audio v10) and in AC3 (Dolby Digital) 5.1 surround format. The track is a 14-minute "typical Bjorn Lynne style" :-) spacey synth-rock thing with added guitars. I hope you'll enjoy it.

The track also features a guest guitar solo towards the end, by my friend Marc Pattison . Everything else was played by me.

You need a 5.1 surround setup to play the WMA or AC3 versions. You'll get the best listening experience by downloading the WMA file (it sounds better than the AC3), downloading Windows Media Player v10 or higher, and sitting in the center of the surround speaker setup while listening.

The AC3 file can be downloaded and burned to DVD for use in regular home DVD-players, using a DVD authoring program such as Sony Media DVD Architect or another similar program. That way, you can listen from your DVD-player.

To download the Surround Music version of Voyager, go to my free surround music page.

I also created a 5.1 surround setup test file, because I have a feeling that a lot of people have 5.1 surround speaker setups, but haven't connected it correctly or set up the software correctly to play it. So you can download the test file which will play a voice in each speaker, saying "front left", "front right" and so on -- so you can check that you have your speakers connected and setup correctly. This is also available in WMA and AC3 format from my free surround music page.

I already know that I'll probably get some complaints from those of you who don't have a surround speaker setup :-), so I've also created a normal stereo version and made it playable from the below Flash player. No surround setup needed for that.

I hope you'll enjoy this track! It will be featured on my next Bjorn Lynne synth-rock style CD release, hopefully sometime this year or early next year.

If you have comments etc., please use the "comment" feature in this blog. Thank you!

- Bjorn Lynne