On Releasing an Independent Album

As most of you know, I've been taking an extended hiatus from making machinima videos to focus my energies on my upcoming metal album "A More Perfect Union." If you had asked me three years ago how long this process would take, I might have answered one year. But, because of my ever dwindling free time combined with my sheer lack of knowledge regarding what goes into releasing an album, it turns out that I was very wrong about my timetable. I have added several  ambitious elements to this album release, some of which  have not yet been completed (even though the album, itself, is done). You may recall my announcement a few posts back that I am creating a persona to represent my music (also called oneclipleft). It is a persona that I hope will be considered a different entity than the oneclipleft that creates silly machinima videos for fun. I am also attempting to create a full-fledged music video to cater to this persona. These things take time, energy, and money. Basically, I will not rest until I have my album release right where I want it. I continue to drum up hype for this thing, which is a beast of a task in itself. I continue to finish the visual representation of this other oneclipleft idea. I continue to tweak the art, consider blogs to contact, update this website, and many other things all at once. Here's where I stand right now: "A More Perfect Union" is musically complete. The songs you can listen to on youtube are nearly-complete demos, but as of now there is nothing I would change about the audio on this  record. The cover artwork for the album is complete (you've probably seen it around). Other artwork such as disc-label and other sides of the album cover (back and inside) are not complete yet. This is one reason why I have not officially released the record. I am working on this when I can. I have collected the visual materials I will use for my persona (a modern plague doctor), but I still have some alterations that need to be made. I am modifying the plague doctor's mask to help it fit better, and I am having literal alterations done to some clothing I recently purchased. It will be weird as hell when this is complete. In order to complete my strange visual appearance, I will be repainting my guitar soon. I plan to do this myself in order to save costs on a custom paint job. Once all visual elements are put together, I will be taking some PR photos and attempting to shoot a music video. These things are all new to me, as I've never been very big into theatrics or video-taping myself. We will see how this goes. This website is functionally complete, although I make small changes and post to the news section now and then. I will be adding more media to the music section, probably via Soundcloud or a similar service, so people who choose not to purchase the album can still listen to it here (or through youtube). When the album is finally released, you will be able to support me by purchasing it through iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, and many other music stores (it will be available for sale on this website as well, through CDBaby). I will do my best to keep the purchase price low, but I do hope to at least make back the money I've spent putting this whole thing together so far. For those of you who don't want to pay anything for the album, then you can always listen to the rough demos on youtube. Again, I will also make the tracks available to listen to here at a later date. I'm not doing this to make money. My only hope is that people listen to this record and enjoy it. Maybe it will even make some people think a bit. And, yes, as I've been promising, I will get back to finishing RTA 3 at some point. I haven't forgotten about those of you who follow me for my machinima and for that series in particular. I just had to do all this other stuff first. It was burning my brain up. Peace. -OCL