At long last an update, with new album release

Hi all,

Wow, I can't believe it's been that long since I last posted anything on this blog. I'm sorry about that. I'm still alive, and well. I haven't been hiding in a cave either. :-)

Over the last couple of years I have been very busy with main two things... (1) Running my music company, Lynne Publishing, and the stock music label Shockwave-Sound.com, and (2) Playing tennis and being active in my local tennis club as both the team captain of the veteran's tennis players team, a member of the board of directors of the club, an assistant coach and an arranger/organizer of events, tournaments, series etc. The photo on the right shows me on the tennis court earlier this year.


Those are the two things that take up nearly all of my time these days, and I'm really enjoying it. The music company is going well; I have about 350 composers from all over the world who have their music sold and licensed via my company.

I released a new album of my own personal music also, a couple of months ago. The album is called "Traveller", and it was my first digital only release, meaning that the album is released only as a downloadable album, and no actual physical CD's were made.
For this album I tried not to make it very "epic" or difficult. It has been a problem for me in the past that I've made some very big projects, and the next time I sat down to write music, I felt there was a huge mountain in front of me because I had to "surpass" my previous release, to make it even bigger, even more epic, even more impressive. So I decided to try to drop that feeling, and instead go back to basics and just create some nice, chilled-out tunes with an ethnic / world / fantasy kind of feel. I also deliberately wanted to make it a fairly short album, not one of those huge 79-minute epics. :-). Anyway, I hope you like how it turned out.

I will try to write another blog post already tomorrow, about some new releases of old music that I composed on the Commodore Amiga computer already back in 1988-1995. More about that tomorrow.

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

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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

PayPlay.fm - a good place to buy my music - for US customers

(Update January 2008: In the text below it says that PayPlay is only available to people in the USA, but I've been told that Payplay has since also set up so that Non-US customers can use them too).

All of my CD's are now available for U.S. customers to buy through a new digital music shop called PayPlay.fm

At PayPlay.fm U.S. customers can choose to buy the music as unsecured, regular MP3 files for $.088 per track or $8.88 per whole CD, or a little bit cheaper ($0.77 / $7.77) for secured WMA (Windows Media Audio) files. Either way, I get about $0.58 per track sold, or $5.80 per whole CD. This is actually a very good artist payment. (For example, it's a lot - LOT more than I got when my CD's were released by a real record company and sold in the shops).

PayPlay.fm is a no-nonsense place, with no software to install, and they have a very attractive web site, with extra options such as cover printing and more. In short, I feel it's exactly what a music download shop should be. No nonsense, great for the customer, and very fair payments to the musicians. Well done, PayPlay.fm! The only drawback is that they only sell to customers in the U.S. (for now, anyway), which is a pity. [Thanks to Björn in Sweden who informed me that only U.S. customers can use PayPlay.fm].

Here are links to each of my CD's at PayPlay.fm:

Bjorn Lynne CD's:

• Bjorn Lynne: Accelerator
• Bjorn Lynne: Colony
• Bjorn Lynne: Return to Witchwood
• Bjorn Lynne: Soothe
• Bjorn Lynne: Beneath Another Sky
• Bjorn Lynne: Wizard of the Winds
• Bjorn Lynne feat. Eco-Mcz: Statement
• Bjorn Lynne & Adam Skorupa: Undercover
  
• Bjorn Lynne: The Void
• Bjorn Lynne: The Gods Awaken
• Bjorn Lynne: Dreamstate
• Bjorn Lynne: Revive
• Bjorn Lynne: Witchwood
• Bjorn Lynne: Wolves of the Gods

Divinorum CD's:
(Divinorum is my pseudonym when working with trance/electronica/techno music)

• Divinorum vs Aural Planet: Power Liquids
• Divinorum: Talisman
• Divinorum: Isms

My Nature Sound Series (One-hour nature sound recordings, available either with or without Ambient Music composed by me):

• Amazon Evening (Nature Sounds Only - no music)
• Amazon Evening (With Ambient Music)
  
  
• Forest Ambience (Nature Sounds Only - no music)
• Forest Ambient (With Ambient Music)
  
  
• Mountain Stream (Nature Sounds Only - no music)
• Mountain Stream (With Ambient Music)
  
  
• Rain Ambience (Nature Sounds Only - no music)
• Rain Ambience (With Ambient Music)
  
  
• Campfire Night (Nature Sounds Only - no music)
• Campfire Night (With Ambient Music)
  
  
• Relaxing Seaside (Nature Sounds Only - no music)
• Relaxing Seaside (With Ambient Music)
  
  
• Tropical Ocean Surf (Nature Sounds Only - no music)
• Tropical Ocean Surf (With Ambient Music)

CD's by my friends:

• Jesper Kyd: Hitman 2 soundtrack
• Jogeir Liljedahl: The Wanderer