Exclusive download: "Bonfire of the Vanities"

Hi, I'm Mathew Bosher and this is the Domes newsletter. You signed up at our website or store to get thoughts and stories about our journey. If there's been some mistake, you can unsubscribe easily. Otherwise, read on!

This moment gives me pause.

Right now, I'm leaning into my job and the painful process of reducing the workforce of a business suffering enormously through the impact of COVID-19 on travel and tourism. Meanwhile, bands cancel or postpone tours and focus on selling merchandise to mitigate the negative impact to revenue stream.

I've been unable to focus on preparing for the release of our next single, "Bonfire of the Vanities."

My marketing process to date has been to submit a track for Spotify editorial playlist consideration four weeks or more in advance as recommended, prepare promotional collateral (press releases, blogs, digital artefacts) and pitch to press and college radio. I don't find this too tedious. Each cycle creates learning opportunities that help us to tune our approach for next time to hopefully garner better results (more engagement, greater listenership and so on).

Art is no less important to me in our evolving context but my energy and attention have necessarily been elsewhere. In the weeks between our last blog post and New Zealand going into lockdown, we were excited about trying some new initiatives to support our music and meet fans' needs. These included an on-demand merch store, a vinyl crowdfunding campaign and a short documentary about our recording adventure in London. My hope was that we could launch all of these along with the new track at the same time in April to drive awareness and support for a physical release later this year.

That can still happen later—provided the supply chain is operational. We'll pick up the conversation again in the coming weeks, appreciating that everyone is focused on keeping themselves and their people safe. For now, I've got another idea from one of our subscriber's observations:

Things like Patreon I see having some success among certain types of creators, where money's tied less to releases, and more to the feeling of value a fan gets from engagement, interaction, and side benefits. Things like engaging us with draft blog posts feels in line with that sort of value add, but isn't visible or incentivised to people who may purchase via Bandcamp.

Looking back at the last six-months of "marketing activity," the newsletter doesn't feel like a chore. Of course, I'm still learning but its wholly more enjoyable than our other channels—though I enjoy conversations with people wherever they takes place. I described this in my personal newsletter:

As I feel myself spending less time on social media platforms, I'm curious about the art of the newsletter. I'm inspired by writers like Craig Mod and have been experimenting with Domes' newsletter as a mechanism for different dialogues with our audience. We blog but the newsletter intends to offer different content. The experiment is whether a measure of connectivity and exclusivity creates a "value-add" experience for people following our journey. It's very early days but the feedback has been positive enough to continue.

So, in the spirit of this, we'd like to share our unreleased single with you now. Download in lossless (WAV) or mp3.

Please let us know what you think.

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If you enjoy this newsletter or would like to share our new music, please encourage likeminded friends to join the mailing list. Just forward this email or share . They'll receive "Bonfire of the Vanities" on signing up.

Stay safe,

Mathew