once more with feeling

Love is not straightfoward. There are no formulas, there’s no calculus.
Love is complicated, it’s irrational, it’s uncontrollable. You can’t choose who to fall in love with and who not. It happens, most of the time then when you expect it the least. It’s not within our power whether the other person loves us back or not. You can’t control hearts.
When it comes to love, we are helpless creatures. Often, we try so hard to hold on to something that might have long gone, we try to get something back that might never come back, we try to force something that cannot be forced. Love makes us vulnerable, sad, depressive, angry, obsessed. And there’s no switch to turn love off, there’s no prophylaxis for a broken heart.
We try again and we fail again, we learn from our mistakes just to make the same ones again. We suffer and then stand up again, we go on and start the game from the beginning. Because we hope, we believe, we trust. Incalculability, rationality, probability – who cares. There is someone for everyone out there, and we know it. Not the worst pain ever experienced will stop us from searching that person, and no formula in the world will ever be able to prove that wrong.

“Mathematics” by Bronze Medallists is out today for free if you join the Next Biggest Thing mailing list. The bittersweet lyrics are accompanied by multi-layered synth-pop melodies and supported by this very lovely and fitting video.

Mathematics from Bronze Medallists on Vimeo.

I wish love was mathematics
straightforward, input, process, output.

I thought love was all you needed
when in fact it’s all you have.

At one of the panels at Popfest last week, some guy asked Skero (an Austrian rapper) what he thinks about giving music away for free. He said he was just about to release his first record, and he was wondering whether to make it available as free download for example – so that people get to know him and his music without the barrier of having to pay for it.
I think that’s a tough question. The problems are: make people listen to your music is hard enough. When they have to pay for it, it’s even harder. But then again – how are you supposed to make money if you give your stuff away for free? Do you just hope that they’ll buy your second record then? But, will they?

There are some tools that make those decisions easier. I’m a big fan of bandcamp, where you can allow people to stream your record and even download it – you can either set a fix price or opt for “pay as much as you want”, while maybe giving away one track for free.
Also, there’s tweet for a track and similar stuff. Now, I came across the free music club Next Biggest Thing, which gives away a free track from a different band to their mailing list each month. Their May release is “Try?” by Francobollo, a Swedish lo-fi/grunge/electro-pop band. You can get their track as exchange for your email address and if you’re a musician, you could also try to get in contact with the eARmusic people – and maybe your track is gonna be up there soon!