Mark Rushton 2009

Mark Rushton 2009

Hi, I'm Mark Rushton. I create and arrange ambient, downtempo, electronica music, and occasionally some avant-garde sound and field recordings. Here are some thoughts from January 1, 2009:

I had a really good 2008 with the music.

Flow was released. Mark Rushton and Jon Harnish was released. Ornate Culmination was released. Esker was released.

I made 10 podcasts which had a combined total of over 50,000 downloads worldwide.

I released 22 free MP3s.

I sold more albums and downloads and had more digital plays in 2008 than any year since I started releasing music for sale in 2004. And every year since then, combined.

The music is now on Pandora.

It was a bad year because of the floods in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City in June. Jon Harnish lost his house and almost everything inside due to flooding along the Cedar River. Craig Erickson, who Jon and I played with this past summer and autumn, lost a music store and recording studio in the Czech Village neighborhood in Cedar Rapids.

Despite this, we kept recording. Jon and I did sessions in August and October. Craig joined us for a session in November. We have many pieces of music which will eventually come out from these sessions. An example of the music is the track Bathyscaphe, for which Jon Harnish made a video.

I kept trying new things, like AmazonMP3's CreateSpace.com, which is a good idea except that it isn't worldwide just yet. I love the idea of no upfront fees and Amazon taking a cut of the back end.

I'm still a fan of CDBaby as a gateway to the digital world. All these years and nobody else has come along with a better deal. And no, Tunecore isn't a better deal.

What does 2009 hold? More podcasts, more free MP3s, more albums, and hopefully more recording sessions.

Thanks for listening, and continuing to listen!

- Mark Rushton

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Buy My Albums:

Esker
(improv instrumental drifting ambient with some rhythms)