A Shout Out to the UK; Release Date Announcement; More on the Way

Just a couple of quick items to announce. First, the "official" digital retail release of "The Gilded Age" has now been set for 9/8/2009. That's when you can expect to start seeing it offered in all the major digital download stores, like iTunes and eMusic.

In what some might consider a blatant disregard for our own commercial interests (and what others are just as likely to interpret as a cynical self-promotional gimmick), we're now planning to extend the availability of the free download version of "The Gilded Age" through the end of this month.

Why? Because one of our readers/listeners was recently generous enough to create properly tagged versions of the MP3 files for us (I'll admit it--I was the lazy one who only posted untagged files), and we think it'd be a shame to let the effort go to waste. Now the new tagged MP3s are available when you download the full album through this blog.

So we offer a grateful shout out to Phil in the UK who created the new and improved, meticulously tagged MP3 files for us, and we invite you to keep helping yourself to our hearty all-you-can-eat musical buffet until the end of June.

Tell your friends about the free downloads and your enemies about the digital release.

Finally, I hope to find time to start posting a series of articles on the technical and non-technical aspects of producing and releasing a DIY album like "The Gilded Age" soon, with a particular focus on how the entire production process can be carried out from end-to-end with only a few relatively inexpensive tools. It's also been suggested I discuss some of the tools and techniques available to independent artists hoping to use the internet to promote their music, so that topic should eventually get some coverage here as well.

All this and more to come soon.