Mark Rushton's 2007 Recap

Here's a personal recap of my activities in 2007:

• Engineered 12 monthly editions of the Bound Off Short Story podcast and provided the music. Read 4 stories.
  
  
• Produced 6 music podcasts, resulting in over 25,000 downloads in 2007. Older podcasts from 2005 and 2006 resulted in another 40,000+ downloads this year.
  
  
• Released the album Regeneration X, a compilation of beat-oriented electronica and a few ambient tracks. Available on CD, iTunes, and all other major pay download services.
  
  
• Sold CDs and digital download tracks in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan. Another exponentially "up" year.
  
  
• Produced and mastered the Flow album, due for release on CD and digital download in January 2008.
  
  
• Produced a video for the track "Pajarito" from the Flow album.
  
  
• Completed and mastered the Mark Rushton and Jon Harnish album, which is due for digital download release and wider CD availability in January 2008.
  
  
• Released various field recordings as free MP3s.
  
  
• Created a new domain for my framed prints: beautifulambientart.com.
  
  
• Moved from the East Highlands Studio in Cedar Rapids to The Bunker in Iowa City.

I usually don't talk about my music that much anymore, but I will say that I am surprised to see the growth of my music on places like Napster, eMusic, and Rhapsody. These services, which charge a flat monthly fee to "rent" a large catalog of music, have really been good to me lately. Although the royalty rate for such selections is far less than a purchase on iTunes, I'd pleased to see a large number of people listening at a very inexpensive rate rather than just a few people purchasing, which is how things were when I started selling digital downloads in 2004.

As for 2008, the early part of the year will be busy getting the Flow and the Mark Rushton and Jon Harnish albums out. I am also about halfway through creating a new album of material which is very mellow/ambient but has touches of electronica and a considerable number of field recordings blended in. Jon and I keep planning to get together to make more live music, but things keep coming up like the rotten winter weather we've had every weekend in December 2007.

One thing that I planned to do in the latter part of 2007, but which got shelved was a collage of field recordings from my back yard featuring katydids, crickets, neighborhood ambient sounds, and so forth. These were recorded every couple of weeks from the summer until autumn, but halfway through I switched from binaural mic/minidisc to my new Zoom H2 recorder, a little gadget that I really enjoy using. Some of the minidisc recordings didn't turn out as well as I'd liked, so instead I will try to bring the project back in 2008 with the Zoom H2.

On the art front, I have had one of my paintings done as a giclee print. I thought it looked nice, but had some concerns about the quality of the construction and the gallery wrap. I'm going to try out some other businesses to see if things improve. I'd love to offer my framed prints as giclee prints some day. For now I continue to be impressed with the current manufacturer of my framed prints, CafePress.