[APPROVED] Promotion, Printing and Mastering of Album

Seeking funding for Promotion, Printing and Mastering of Album - Mark Waldron-Hyden

I am planning to release a 7-track album on the 3rd of December and would like to apply for the
necessary funding to cover the costs of the commercial promotion, design and printing of CDs, and the mastering of the album. I aim to hire the services of a music public relations company (LazyBones PR), who will commence promotion work on October 1st. As well as this I aim to fund the hiring of a designer (Con O’Brien) to assist in the formatting of already completed
album artwork so that it can be ready for CD printing. I also seek to fund the buying of supplies to print 30 CDs of the album and to fund the time it will take for me to master the album.

For the album, an artistic response has been created for each of the seven tracks. These seven artworks will be coupled with their corresponding tracks and then minted as audio-visual NFTs through the Muti Mintbase. Through the use of the Music PR services, NEAR and Muti will receive a considerable amount of promotion through info provided on the NFTs and this aspect of the album being included in all promotional material. This will be shared with large scale music publications in the form of online blogs (Noisey, The Quietus, etc) and through radio features on stations such as Vodafone FM (Portugal), RTE 2FM (Ireland), BBC Radio (UK), and many more. As well as this, info on how to purchase these NFTs will be included on the liner notes of the physical copies of the album.

Included as part of this proposal would be the onboarding of the graphic designer who will be
involved in formatting the artwork for CD.

Who is involved:

Mark Waldron-Hyden (mwhyden.near): Artist and Mastering Engineer
Con O’Brien (will be onboarded during the process): Visual Artist/Graphic Designer
Brian Coney: PR agency head

TIMELINE:

Promotion: 1st October - 3rd December
Designing of CD Artwork: 1st November
Mastering of Album: 1st October - 5th October
Production of CDs: 15th November - 18th November
Album Release: 3rd December

AMOUNT REQUESTED:

PR Agency Fee: $1000
Mastering: $ 500
Design and Formatting of album artwork: $ 100
Printing of 30 physical CDs: $ 50


Total amount = $1650

TIMELINE FOR PAYOUTS:

PR Agency Fee $1000: October
CDs and Design Fee $150: November
Design and Mastering $500: Upon Release of album and completion of project (December 3rd)

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@mwhyden Thanks for the proposal!

Looks good so far. We’ve revised our budget and happy to support this project but what I may suggest is that we spread this over 3 months seeing as there are various payouts over this time.

My suggestion for payouts from the muti dao is:
October - $500
November - $500
December - $650 (on completion)

Let me know if this works for you!

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@ted.iv Thanks so much for this! I’m happy to proceed with the proposed restructure of the payouts. Really appreciate this and let me know what else you all need from me moving forward :slight_smile:

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Looking good, looking very much forward to this :slight_smile:

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Nice one! Out of curiosity, will the 30 CD’s be paired with NFTs and sold that way? Would love to know about how the PR agency will be used and if you know already who you’ll be working with. This could be valuable for other creatives looking to embark on similar PR initiatives.

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Heya :slight_smile:

You can find the agency & participants in the original proposal. @mwhyden is in contact with the agency for the onboarding & details for distribution are currently being discussed :slight_smile:

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Ok great! Maybe as we go along (I’m new to what’s been going on) members can link previous proposals (like a thread) in the updates or subsequent proposals to make it easier to find information that might not be in a post :slight_smile:

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Yes, agreed. You can find the infos here, in the first post of this proposal:

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Thanks! So the CDs won’t be exactly paired with the NFTs, they’ll be sold via my record label (sunshinecultrecords.bandcamp.com). But info on how to purchase the NFTs will be in all posts relating to the album (on Bandcamp, social media, blogs etc.) as well as the liner notes of the physical CDs. The goal is to have an individual NFT artwork for each track, which also will contain the audio of each track. This will create a different avenue for people to purchase and experience the album beyond Bandcamp sales :slight_smile: The NFT artwork has been created by my artist collaborator (who will be onboarded imminently!) artistically responding to each track, so the audio and visual are closely linked. They look really cool and I can’t wait to share them with you!

Regarding the PR, LazyBonesPR is an excellent PR company based in Belfast, Ireland and they specialise in alternative/indie/left-of-centre music. They have fostered great connections with publications like Noisey and The Quietus as well as BBC Radio and KEXP. Their goal here is to obtain coverage in these media outlets as well as many others, giving my album and in turn NEAR, Muti and the rest of the digital-cryptoverse aspect of this release lots of exposure! Brian from LazyBonesPR expressed a keen interest in getting involved in the NEAR side of things down the line and I fully intend on treating this project as an intro for him and hopefully bring these worlds closer together.

Sorry for the long response, hope this clarifies things :slight_smile:

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Awesome! Yes, thanks for the detailed clarification :slight_smile:

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@mwhyden Please post your 1st payout proposal for the 500 USD/ 62N (value of N at time of receiving the funds) to our Sputnik DAO & keep us posted :slight_smile:

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Hey @mwhyden,
funding came in, please post your payout proposal for the 500 USD/47.3N. Keep in mind our DAO is now on Astro: https://app.astrodao.com/dao/muti.sputnik-dao.near :slight_smile:

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So a little bit of an update, the promo is fully paid for and I just need to send over some press shots and other things to the PR company and they have all they need! I’m currently in the process of ordering CDs and cases and going over some logistics on how best to get them all together looking nice.

As for the artworks and future NFTs, check out this killer artwork from the artist! The Colour piece is going to be the Album cover and the other illustrations are inspired by each track of the album and are going to be the NFTs, as well as coming with the physical CDs, printed out and put together in a small booklet! These are works in progress but I’m loving them so far!


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Looking awesome, thank you for the update!!

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More updates! A close to final draft of some more artwork! Also, I’m releasing a track off the album tomorrow in the run up to the whole album being released on Dec 3rd :slight_smile: Not sure yet what platform but stay tuned! First picture is the CD cover template, without text, the second is artwork for the track being released tomorrow. The 7 images you see on the right hand side are the ones that will become NFTs!


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Awesome, this looks great!
Feel free to share the release in our channels too :slight_smile:

Looking forward minting the NFTs with you & the artist once it is ready!

Release day is nearly here! So last week I put one track from the record which can be listened to here: Stream I CAN SEE 3 PEOPLE by Kineograph | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Also, here’s the finalised NFT arts and cover art:








Release day is on the 3rd of December, the album fully mastered now and CDs have been made. Can’t believe it’s nearly time to put this out to the world! Thanks so much for the help and support, this wouldn’t have been possible to do without y’all!

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This looks amazing! Thank you for the update! Let’s schedule a call so we can teach you and your designer how to mint and get them a wallet :slight_smile:

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Yes! He’s super busy at the moment and really hard to pin down but I will continue to annoy him to schedule a call :slight_smile: Also, I have nearly finished putting together the physical copies! Here’s some not so great pictures! Album is fully ready to go for Dec 3rd!
IMG_20211129_142421|375x500



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also, the album is available for pre-order here! CAPRICORN | KINEOGRAPH | Sunshine Cult Records

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