You know what I like? Extra stuff. It doesn’t have to be free stuff, just more of the stuff I like.
You wrote a book. I like it a lot. Give me more. What’s that? It’ll be a year? Two? Four years if your name is George? That’s fine. How about a couple short stories about that cool supporting character? Stuart Jaffe has a fantasy novel series called The Malja Chronicles. There are some supporting characters called The Bluesmen. While his series is done (for now) he has recently released the second short story exploring a bit more about this group, a small part of the over all series. That’s pretty cool.
You remember that Punisher movie? The first one that wasn’t so good? (the second was no improvement). Well, nine years later Thomas Jane who played The Punisher was still annoyed that this character never got a good film. So a few months ago he made a 10-minute short. A fan film. It’s awesome. Nobody will make any money from it. He made it because it was in him.
You know that CD I’m making…
Bonus tracks on CDs were part of the reason the ’90′s were awesome. But now in the days of digital downloads, those secret songs are no longer secret. They’re just extras. And interestingly, extra songs are not as cool as extra short films or extra short stories, are they?
According the conditions of my kickstarter project, I am obligated to put 9 songs on this album. Right now I have 13 tracks (one spoken word segment). I didn’t budget for the studio time to record the extra songs, so what do I do? I’m not planning on making another holiday album. If I stick some home demos on the disc, they’ll be noticeably different sound quality. I wish I could hide them on the CD. Remember the first time you let Nirvana’s Nevermind run on too long?
So how I do I deliver this bonus content? I have some ideas but haven’t committed myself to specifics yet. What do you think?
Humm, bonus content. Yes, this is why I liked putting together A Few Further Tales of Einarinn for Juliet McKenna. These stories are shorts that occur to the characters between the main (550pp) novels. Bonus content. Plus drawings. Also bonus content.
I loved buying CDs in the ’90s. If you let the last song on the CD continue to run, there was often a little extra something there, 15 or 20 seconds later. There was a band called The Swirlies out of Albuquerque who had this awesome.. completely lame… bonus content on the last song. They were stoned, I guess, talking about drowning ants in Mountain Dew. BUT IT WAS COOL because it was bonus, super secret material. They all did that, Mission of Burma, The Lemonheads,
Even now, waiting for the last cut scene after the credits of all the Marvel (*wince* DC? sorry, Chuck) movies is one of the reasons to go.
I think what’s important is that element of being part of the secret club. Getting bonus material in a mass-mailed email would be great, but not quite the same as finding it. I guess that’s where the double meaning for “easter egg” comes in.
As a backer of this Kickstarter and a fan of the famous Singer Songwriter Jonah Knight, I would be super pleased with a home-cut CD of bonus material. I’d even pay you for it.
A few movies of the era tacked on extra scenes or outtakes after the credits. Ken and I still watch the credits right to the end, Just in case ….
Hrm…love the bonus content on CDs back in 90s. Some good stuff there. My favorite, believe it or not, was the soundtrack to the first X-Files movie. After all the tunes (which weren’t amazing, but there was a great Foo Fighters track), there was a “secret” track of creator Chris Carter more or less running down all the show’s convoluted mythology in one three or four minute spoken word piece.
People kind of expect that now – Marvel Studios (yep, Marvel – though I bet DC does it with the Superman flick coming next year anyway.) has kind of trained us to do so (there’d probably be an outcry with torches and pitchforks if Iron Man 3 doesn’t have a stinger at the end at this point).
As for how you do such things in the digital download age…it’s hard to make the secrets a surprise without hiding mp3s in an image file with steganography or something (come to think of it, that’s kind of a cool idea!).
I’m fine with “bonus” unreleased demo tracks on the disc – I love that sort of stuff.
One of the things I’m thinking about is putting on a CD only bonus track. Problem is, if you try to sync it with iTunes, it might not get recognized…
So, if I have the CD the bonus track is on there, 20 seconds after the final track like in the Olden Days, yes? Ok, if I have the CD, I’m not likely to synch it with iTunes. I’m probably the only person in the world who doesn’t do that, tho. Anyway, wouldn’t Bonus Hidden Track #10 just be part of Track #9? such that Track #9 is 8 min long (for example)? I don’t see the problem. It’s a hidden bonus track.
What’s the “four years if your name is George” reference?
…R.R.Martin? In that case, four years is actually generous.
Yeah, that was my snide dig.
Also…free-downloadable BONUS CONTENT that you release NEXT holiday season, as a way of re-promoting the album next year…
I find the steganography idea unreasonably amusing. How would people find out about that?
I hear that the new Sir Mix-A-Lot CD has a song hidden in the code. You have to hack the actual CD to get it.
They Might Be Giants experimented with a song you could only hear by fastforwarding and The Flaming Lips made an album that was released on multiple discs where you had to hit play on multiple players at the same time to get it to line up.
These fall in the “too clever by half” pile, I think.
I’m for the multiple CD player idea. I have two CD players right now, one of them is in the car stereo. Let me know how many more I’ll need to pick up from the goodwill.
Well to reverse the problem, is it possible now to burn photos and other image onto a music CD? Video footage of your guests and etc might be interesting.