Just busted out a new track, “Span.”

I’m pretty proud of the production – probably my slickest set of synths and mix/mastering yet. Also, I’m glad I can still pump out some epic, melodic trance since I haven’t flexed them tarnce muscles in a couple years.

I’m involved with an Xbox Live Indie Game and this should end up in the game and on the official soundtrack. I’m doing the music, and am heavily involved in the design of the game. I might end up doing some UI design as well! No details to report on what the game is or what it is called yet, but stay tuned to my websites www.sgxmusic.com and protagonistrecords.net AND my twitter.com/sgxmusic if you want the deets as they are made available!

Sup. I ignored Ourstage for about 6 months and am now going to start competing again. The ends of the month were becoming an unwelcome source of stress and a time-sink for me doing all the voting, spamming friends to vote, and feeling obligated to vote in my friends’ categories. I won several times during my previous time here, so I didn’t feel it necessary to try to repeat-win with the same songs.

Now I’ve had a break and I’ve started submitting again. Hopefully very soon I will have new tracks that will rock your face (or gently stroke it if you are listening in the ambient section).

Also, thanks to jayschneider for including me in the next Prodigy playlist in his blog post. http://blog.ourstage.com/2009/03/06/the-next-electronic-prodigy/

Hey everybody! I recently launched www.protagonistrecords.net, the website for my new record label. I’ve been using that name to release my own music for a bit, but now I’m releasing other folks’ music as well, and I’ve got the cool new front-end at www.protagonistrecords.net where listeners can follow news and get new releases from the artists on the label.

The first release is from Audix who you have probably seen doing well in electronic and techno genres here on ourstage. His new “One Day Millennium” is great. It is available as a digital download or as a disc. Check it out and lots of free tracks at www.protagonistrecords.net!!!

A bunch of people got free albums. I hope they enjoy them. Remember, there’s a lot of free single mp3’s at www.sgxmusic.com all the time. I’m pretty sure I will not be offering free albums again anytime soon, so if you missed it this time, don’t hold out on buying something because you think I might offer it all free again. Thanks!

I’ve been discussing some things with some folks in certain places and am rethinking my strategy concerning my offers to make albums available for free download if I win.

Honestly, the idea came when I was setting up my entries for the April competition…I was thinking to myself, “man, if I get that $5k, that’s probably more than I’ll sell in a year! I’d love to give something back to fans that come here and spend time voting for me.” Along the line, the idea got twisted a bit into “if I win, you get stuff”.

I’m still not sure how unethical I think this is. On one hand, I’ve maybe got an advantage over artists who don’t have more music to share. However, I’m sure plenty of artists could do the same thing if they really wanted to. My music is good enough that it makes people either want to pay the $6 I charge for it or spend some of their time on a website voting to support an artist they are a fan of. It’s still music I am using to get a competitive edge in a music competition – it’s not like I’m paying money to rig an election. But, I guess it still is a bit of a bribe – its bringing outside elements in to influence a competition that is supposed to take place inside of a judging-vacuum (though there are plenty of other leaks).

A few other artists I’ve seen have offered music for votes as I’ve seen, and it made my few doubts at the time go away for a bit.

So, I won in April – I’m not sure how much of it had to do with the free music. I went ahead and allowed free music downloads for a week, and about $5,000 worth (at the rates I sell my music at in my webstore) was downloaded. My site got broken because of the traffic for a bit. That was cool. I’m very happy more people got to hear my stuff even if they are cheapskates :)

I withdrew the songs I had set for the May competition because I didn’t feel the need to be greedy, but I was ready to rock it in June and I returned with the same deal.

So now I’ve been having and reading some interesting debates on this subject, both with good points on each side. I haven’t really decided for sure what I think about it, but put together the fact that I’m not positive what I’m doing is ethically alright with me, and that I’ve already won the grand prize once, I think I’ve decided not to do this type of deal again. I don’t want to be a cheater (even if what I am doing is ok with the site staff), or to come off as an asshole, and I don’t want to be greedy. Music is not about the money for me, though I do like to do my best to make money from this hobby when I can.

Now, I did promise people that I’d be giving away music if I won some. I’ve got a lot of their votes, and I can’t deny them the music I promised I would provide.

So, right now, I am making all of my downloadable albums available until July 4th.

Here they are: Outmoded – this is basically a collection of my really old tracks from 4 years ago and before www.sgxmusic.com/outmodedmp3.zip

Synesthetic – I dunno…decent electronic music from 2004. www.sgxmusic.com/Synesthetic 1.1 Digital Download.zip

Chroma – Good electronic music 2006 – contains the full version of Haven www.sgxmusic.com/Chroma MP3.zip

Hero of the Grey Area – my newest album from 2008. I’m quite proud of it, and I hope you like it. It’s a bit more experimental and abstract. Less dancy. www.sgxmusic.com/hotga – mp3.rar

i.transmit.this EP – some friends of mine remixed this 4 part song I wrote (which is also on Hero of the Grey Area. www.sgxmusic.com/itt_mp3.rar

These are all high quality mp3 copies. I offer copies in lossless FLAC too. If you want those, please go to my webstore at www.protagonistrecords.net/buy/ and go through the purchase process…I have set all prices on download items to 0.

Also, remember my two remix albums are always free downloads. YOu can get them at www.sgxmusic.com/btsb.htm and www.sgxmusic.com/sgxrmx2.htm

So, since you’ve got my free music now, I hope you’’ll still have the will to vote me up in the finals tonight. Thanks! Enjoy the music.