finetunes

During Germany’s first ever Unconvention Factory an entire album was written, recorded, produced and finished in less than 24 hours. The digital encoding, distribution and promotion part as well as in-depth workshops for all participants were handled by finetunes. See and buy the result here: http://snip.ftpromo.net/3x

On the 3rd November 2011 and as integral part of the a2n camp conference, the first ever German Unconvention Factory took place in Berlin. The idea: Flanked by respective workshops to explain each step, an entire album is planned, recorded, produced and mastered. All within less than 24 hours.

Participants are thereby not only shown all aspects of a record production, they actually get their own hands dirty doing it. From recording techniques and cover design to production and mastering to digital distribution. finetunes was right in the middle of it all, explaining and handling the digital side of the project. In detail, this involved:

• Encoding of the tracks for digital delivery
• Set up an E-Shop where people can buy the downloads
• Physical Music Services to produce a limited edition of CDs
• Delivery of the tracks into the iTunes system together with a booklet
• Streaming Edition of the release on Simfy with lottery of a special prize
• Promo Campaign to push the news about the release to journalists, DJs and bloggers
• Retailer Newsletter to inform finetunes’ retail partners about the release
• Pay Per Tweet to promote the release via Twitter and Facebook
• Booster Code to allow free downloads to all participants
• Banner Campaign to promote the release visually on a range of German websites

More than 300 people took part in the day, with 30 who had qualified to take part in the actual production. The recording of the nine songs was split into half an hour recording and half an hour workshop. There was obviously a lot to go through. A team of designers created and printed the posters and CD covers, each one unique, on a traditional printing press. Web-designers put together a site and created the graphics for the banner ad campaign, which was set live the same night.

Overall, the plan worked out and a fully fledged release was dreamt up, done and explained. A big endeavour, in particular as, for example, digital releases usually have a run-up time of about six to eight weeks before release. However, all participants and workshop hosts were happy to have taken part in such an ambitious project.

Freshmilk.tv have filmed a couple of impressions from the event, as you can see here:

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