Jun 26
9:36 AM
Imaad Wasif and Two-Part Beast
Photo by Mark Walat for LiveDaily Sessions
If you’re one of the ten people who read my blog regularly (you know who you are) then you already know the Imaad Wasif and Two-Part Beast’s Strange Hexes is one of my favorite records so far this year.
Music fans will remember Imaad from his work in both Lowercase and Alaska!, or from his solo record released on Kill Rock Stars. After going band-less with a label last time, Imaad pulled the band Two-Part Beast on board and went it alone on the business side this time around, self-funding, producing, and releasing himself.
Knowing how much a geek I am for Imaad’s music, you can imagine my excitement when he decided to release the demos and b-sides from the record on his Website using Topspin’s platform. Play the acoustic demo of “Halcyon” followed by the b-side “Coil” and you’ll have summed up what Imaad is all about, beautiful melodies, great songwriting, but an urge to get heavy.
The album is available for $9 and comes complete with photos of the hand-crafted via typewriter and pen lyric sheets for each song. That means for the same price as Amazon and a dollar cheaper than iTunes you get higher quality MP3 files (320kbps) plus the lyric images *and* more money goes into Imaad’s pocket. Killer. But personally I recommend the $20 option which gets you get the album, all the b-sides, “more stuff coming soon”, and passes on a little more dough to a super talented dude while he’s touring the country in a van paying way too much for gas. 
Enjoy,
ian
June 26th, 2008 at 11:02 AM
Good deal. You know, it might just be me, but as I started to go through the purchase, it wasn’t completely clear what I was paying for in terms of the checkout process. I listened to a track, clicked the download button for that song, and was asked for my credit card info before I knew how much I was being charged or what I was buying. I was a little confused with some of the bundles too. It wasn’t immediatly obvious what is included in some of the Josh Rouse bundles, for example. The messaging focuses on a magazine subscription, but in terms of the music, it just says “download all songs” without listing what songs are included.
Maybe the list of included items are on the screen after I enter my credit card, but I bailed before that point. I wouldn’t ever enter my credit card till I see some sort of bill summary screen that shows exactly what I’m buying and total cost. Thought that might be useful feedback for the Topspin crew. Having worked in ecommerce for several years, I can say from experience that nailing the checkout flow can significantly boost sales conversion. Otherwise, the buy widget is pretty slick. Keep up the great work.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:44 PM
Joe Lazarus,
I took one for the team and I went for the $19.98 option. For the record, it does send a bill to your email after the transaction is complete. I must agree though that it would be nice to get a detailed billing summary before completing the transaction.
This is a nice music package. I believe that I did get everything that was mentioned.
Now for my feedback:
It would be nice if the mp3 files used a standardized naming convention more like: - - - .mp3 instead of: -.mp3
Cheers~
Tracy
June 26th, 2008 at 1:50 PM
Hmmm, that didn’t work. Perhaps this will work.
…more like ” - - - .mp3″ instead of ” - .mp3″
June 26th, 2008 at 1:51 PM
Final try.
“Artist - Album - Track - Title.mp3″ instead of “Artist-Title.mp3″
June 26th, 2008 at 4:48 PM
Joe–thanks for the great feedback. We’re working on a new version of the purchase flow that will offer a number of usability improvements, including a new summary screen that presents the items and costs before any billing info is entered.
Tracy– interesting point. We’ll take a look at our naming conventions too.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:09 PM
so i couldn’t resist taking the checkout process for a (top)spin on such a great artist. a few observations (perhaps a bit nit-picky since i spend most of my days as a new media consultant, so do with it what you will):
- is there a way for someone who purchased just the album/bundle to come back at a future date and upgrade their purchase to a membership AND use the original album/bundle purchase as credit towards the membership cost? that might be cool for new folks who wanted to upgrade to a membership status at a later date — perhaps after getting into the album or seeing the artist live and wanted to go whole-hog.
- cc # field length: seems to allow more than 16 chars in the field…also, not sure if it accepts dashes and strips it behind the scenes (didn’t check that case)?
- when validating the form, if there’s an error and you go back to the original screen, the “save credit card” checkbox re-checks itself even if you previously unchecked it
- when a user initiates the checkout process, the window expands right above the area “Get the entire bundle (xxx) Share This [download]” so you have the download button right below the [confirm] button of the checkout process which might be confusing. i think if the “Get the entire…” line went away when the checkout initiates, the UI would be cleaner. (see screenshot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/allenl/2615197132/)
all pretty minor stuff, really. keep up the good work!
June 27th, 2008 at 4:08 PM
Another thing that I noticed. You have to download each of the releases (acoustic, electric, demos) one at a time, and each unique file shares the same name. Not a deal breaker, but it would be nice to save each package without having to rename, uses different directories, etc…
July 7th, 2008 at 6:35 PM
This record is genius. Imaad is one of the best artists around today. Thank you very much for bringing his music to more people.