Oh, there we are again... I'd better get this straight before anyone seriously believes it...
If you believe that this is music that we have made to earn money, or that we are mass-producing tracks, then you are obviously not familiar with the spirit of Lagoona and our fight for free music... Of course, I don't expect that anyone here would know about it, so when I say this, I hope that you will take my word on it:
We do not make music for the money. We are not mass-producing music. We have been releasing all our songs as MP3s since May 1997, free for anyone to download with no cost whatsoever.
Lagoona was the first defined "Internet MP3 artist" in the Dance genre back in early 1997, and since we have been producing music for almost seven years now, we are also one of the very oldest still existing web-bands from the early days of HQ online music. The 6,000,000+ Lagoona MP3:s that have been downloaded during the past six years (of which 2 million are from mp3.com during 2000-2003 alone) should be a pretty good proof that we don't care about sneaking money out of anyones pockets.
Is it non-creative? Definitely not... You can never judge that from just the song genre, especially since you do not know anything about how we work.
Nonindividual? Well, that may be right, if you don't like the music style. There are plenty of songs that sound the same. However, we have never made any song like this one, so for us it was nice to try out the "commercial sound" just for once.
Lagoona has never really sticked to any special genre. We have made dance, trance, techno, happyhardcore, house, club, eurodance, hiphop, ethno and lovesongs, and that's not even all. You are all very welcome to listen through the tracks on
http://www.beatmaka.com (search for Lagoona) or even
http://www.mp3.com/lagoona (our 1998-2002 songs).
So, why are we doing this? Well, simply because we love to make music. It is our biggest interest, and we have promised eachother that we will keep on doing it as long as it is fun. It still is, after almost seven years, and one big reason is all the people who appreciate the music we make.
We may not be making 100% perfect tracks, we are no music gods... But we do our best, and when we feel that we really want it to be extra good, we ask for help. Like now. The vocals in this "massproduced" song, by the way, is a remake of a poem that I wrote during one of the biggest emotional storms in my life. When I lost my mother, I wrote a song called "Always in my heart" (vocal dance, very emotional to me and very "massproduced" to many others). This time I described the feeling of falling in love with THE girl, which is now my girlfriend since three years ago. I have never told anyone about this, actually, but the theme of inviting the loved one into the dream has followed me since the night I wrote the original poem. Now it is a song, and it feels amazing to hear it. Massproduced or not, it means a lot to me as the person I am.
This song is heavily requested from our listeners. They want to hear a commercial style vocal trance track, and since we haven't worked very much with vocals (none of us can sing, and there are not too many singers around here), we accepted the challenge. Now, we have upgraded to two Pulsar 2 cards, to get better sound quality, but our knowledge in mixing and mastering is not on any professional level. That's why I'm asking for feedback. I will use every comment you have given, and every comment from sites like our fanzone (the worlds first non-commercial fan community paid from an artists own pocket, with the only purpose of giving the true fans exclusive material, all for free), and I will use the feedback to make the song better.
I have no problems with getting criticism, as long as it constructive (meaning that it can help us to improve, with the result of the music getting better). But just because the song in this case happens to sound a bit "commercial", that doesn't mean that I want to end up in any special category of producers (for example "the-ones-who-only-care-about-the-money"-category.
What I really care about, is to make this song as good as possible for the release (yes, we will release it as an MP3, free for everyone to download) since I really want our listeners (or, the people that most commercial artists refer to as "fans") to be able to enjoy the track.
Many other producers would place a song like this one on an album or a compilation to get some fast money. We are not doing that... Of course we will grab the chance and release it if some label would like it, but most labels are not interested in tracks that are already available on the web as MP3s. We have actually done that a few times, but the music has still been available for free on our website...
So, every time someone calls us non-creative, I feel sad. People who think that our music is mass-produced, are wrong, and if that would become a common opinion, then it would hurt me. I want Lagoona to be remembered as a band that spent years on making nice music, that everyone could get for free...
We have ordinary jobs, so we make our living anyway. The income we get from the music is very small, and it comes from CD sales (on mp3.com, where the album songs are still available for free, since the CD's are for listeners who really want to support us!), licencing (video companies, game programmers and alike) and live performances at major events. Never from a single listener who just want to hear the music...
Now, this was probably the longest post I have ever written, but if you have read this far, then it was worth all the time I've just spent on it. Don't judge Lagoona, and don't judge the song, please! But feel free to help me improve it, in order to give our listeners a better listening experience, during the four minutes of their life that they will spend on hearing this song the first time...
Cuz THAT is what I care about. Thanks!
(ca 2.45).
