New Janek Gwizdala - One Way Out

[Altitude]

Janek Gwizdala has decided to eschew streaming for his new project, which released last week. The album is called "One Way Out." It could have been called "One Way to Listen" - the only way to get it is to pay him directly for the digital download on his website. He has a few packages available, ranging from the digital download of the music only to a deluxe package that includes a video and some other material, I don't remember exactly what.

I am a big fan of Gwizdala's playing and his compositions. He did his last record with Patitucci as producer and it killed. I don't agree with his railing against the industry here though - candidly I think he's pissing into the wind a little with this distribution approach; I predict he'll see marginally more revenue in the immediate term but nobody will ever hear the album other than maybe a couple thousand people like me who already dig him.

But for this thread I wanted to focus on the music and hear from anyone else who downloaded it. I'm on my first listen. Jury is out - has a lot of ambient stuff and a lot of robot sounds (which, to his credit, he acknowledges in one of the song titles). Reminds me a little of a couple of Gary Willis' recent efforts - not exactly the sort of combo jazz stuff I've heard from either of them in the past. Janek maybe has toyed with ambient a little more than Willis.

So far I doubt Janek's new album will find its way into my frequent rotation the way his others have - made worse by the fact that I don't download local files onto my phone anymore and will have to figure out a way to stream this.

Anybody else hear it yet?

 

[jerry]

I'll have to check it out. Janek and Tony Grey release some of my favorite solo albums in recent memory.

 

[Altitude]

The fact that this is a bass forum and a post about a new album by Janek Gwizdala has gotten a single comment in a week suggests that I may be right about the risks of his exclusionary distribution approach.

 

[GMSweet]

I bought in at a tier that gave me Janek's whole back catalog and the new album. I've loosely followed Janek on his YouTube channel, but never accumulated any releases. I am not a streaming kind of guy being that I don't listen to a lot of secular music. However, for artists that I follow like Norm Stockton, Adam Nitti, Andrew Gouche, and some others. I like to purchase the albums in direct support. Did I need the whole catalog? No. But I applauded the effort to take a different approach to earning a living making music. Janek's breakdown on the finances of making the album was very interesting to me.

As for the new album, I wouldn't have bought it alone. It's well put together and a very intriguing landscape of sounds, but I miss the melodic elements. What I found most interesting though, was the potential for movie sync opportunities. My first listen was on my commute and over the first few tracks I could visualize a semi SciFi cop movie in my mind. I may be alone in that thought though. Perhaps not the main motive, but a possible outlet for revenue. Anyway, I'm enjoying the back catalog at the moment.

-Matthew

 

[FunkHead]

Hasn't this already been done?
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

 

[expatmuso]

One Way Out, the album is now available on Apple music. Listened to a few tracks today and dig the weird ambient vibe.

 

[ClusterFlux]

Janek Gwizdala has decided to eschew streaming for his new project, which released last week. The album is called "One Way Out." It could have been called "One Way to Listen" - the only way to get it is to pay him directly for the digital download on his website. He has a few packages available, ranging from the digital download of the music only to a deluxe package that includes a video and some other material, I don't remember exactly what.

I am a big fan of Gwizdala's playing and his compositions. He did his last record with Patitucci as producer and it killed. I don't agree with his railing against the industry here though - candidly I think he's pissing into the wind a little with this distribution approach; I predict he'll see marginally more revenue in the immediate term but nobody will ever hear the album other than maybe a couple thousand people like me who already dig him.

But for this thread I wanted to focus on the music and hear from anyone else who downloaded it. I'm on my first listen. Jury is out - has a lot of ambient stuff and a lot of robot sounds (which, to his credit, he acknowledges in one of the song titles). Reminds me a little of a couple of Gary Willis' recent efforts - not exactly the sort of combo jazz stuff I've heard from either of them in the past. Janek maybe has toyed with ambient a little more than Willis.

So far I doubt Janek's new album will find its way into my frequent rotation the way his others have - made worse by the fact that I don't download local files onto my phone anymore and will have to figure out a way to stream this.

Anybody else hear it yet?

I haven't. I might, I've enjoyed some of his solo work in the past.

As to refusing to stream, well... My guess is he gets almost no revenues from streaming. Sadly, that source of income for all but the top tier artists has vanished. I'd also guess that the pandemic put a huge dent in his income from live shows.

Financially, he might do better selling fewer albums, and collecting far more income per album, than streaming.

I also doubt the reaction to his latest album here would be significantly bigger if he streamed it. I thought we all knew that "playing for exposure instead of money" is a sucker's game...

 

[India_Sierra]

Financially, he might do better selling fewer albums, and collecting far more income per album, than streaming.

This surely must be it. The revenues for streaming for anything other than a 'major' artist are pretty pitiful. If Janek can produce an album for a couple of thousand dollars (probably doing a lot of work himself, I expect) then selling that and making reasonable profit in the short term is real money. Putting it out to stream over the same time period plus however many years after would probably never get close to the dough a short term sale could replicate. Jeff Berlin did the very same with his Jack Bruce record, that is to say that he sold it direct with his business partner at the time. Not available for streaming and he encouraged listeners to take a chance and purchase some music. That was perhaps a brave move in those circumstances as that record has what you might call a niche appeal even for Jeff Berlin fans (of which I am one).

Radiohead famously tried a 'pay what you think it's worth' model with one of their albums a few years ago. I doubt they made much cash off it, it was derided as a total failure shortly afterwards.