blocSonic’s sibling coming soon!

Excursions in Music

Since launching blocSonic, I’ve been noticing connections between my graphic design freelance work and my personal projects (eg. blocSonic). Without initially realizing it, everything has turned out to have a common thread… music. I guess it’s only natural that all that I do is somehow music related or has gone that way, music has been a love of mine since I can remember. So, over the past couple years an idea has been growing… an idea to bring everything I do together under a common purpose. What form that would take has been a lingering question. So has been the question of what project would form the parent entity. blocSonic? nvzion? milkWare? Something new? Since this idea first began to form a couple years ago, it became clearer that it would need to be something new… VolumeToEleven.com. When things finally come to fruition, V211 will sign the checks… nvzion will design the albums… milkWare will write the code… blocSonic will release the music & promote the netaudio culture… and blocSonic’s new sibling, Excursions in Music, will also take part in the music taste-making but from a different angle. In a way, blocSonic and EiM will both be serving the same purpose, to promote the netaudio culture. The difference lies in how they do so. Of course as you know, blocSonic is a netlabel which releases its own original releases and also promotes netaudio releases by compiling collections of netaudio gems that helps to promote the incredibly diverse music that comprises the netaudio culture. Excursions in Music will also be promoting netaudio culture but in the context of a slightly more mainstream music blog. EiM will feature five primary sections of content:

Travel Guides - Album reviews of mainstream, indie and netaudio releases… new and old. Excursions - Suggested playlists of mainstream, indie and netaudio releases… new and old. By The Covers - Album art reviews of yeah you guessed it… mainstream, indie and netaudio releases… new and old… here the album is judged by the cover. Hitting The Streets - Release date announcements of… well you get the point. Random Notes - A soapbox that will be strongly geared toward steering the average mainstream/indie artist or listener to a better understanding of the politics and realities of contemporary music cultures.

As you can tell by the above list, this project is an attempt to try and expose average mainstream/indie listeners and artists to the netaudio culture by sneaking in content and ideas from the the netaudio culture into the context of what they’re accustomed to. Of the many blogs I’ve come across online, I’ve found many that are geared solely to the netaudio culture and of course a seemingly infinite number geared to mainstream and indie music. I’ve found that there’s very little crossover between the two worlds. The goal is for EiM to attract an audience that would probably be unattainable for a strictly netaudio focused blog and while doing so, snag a few new listeners from the more mainstream audience for the netaudio audience. Will it work? I guess it could go either way. It’s definitely an experiment. One that I hope fellow netaudio peeps will take part in.

What I’d like is for netlabels and netaudio artists to send announcements of their forthcoming releases well in advance of the release date so that I can include them in the “Hitting The Streets” section (months in advance would be great… if album art is ready, even better). The more in advance, the better chance that it can be included. My goal is to do this in a way that netaudio releases are mixed in between a fair number of mainstream/indie releases.

Once I get things rolling, I’m considering bringing writers on board who might be interested. Holla if you are. I’ll be looking for writers of all genres.

I look forward to having you all check it out. 2011 is the year things get serious.

Peace
Mike Gregoire
Founder/Curator blocSonic.com