Saturday 15 April 2017

AFTER a pretty lazy start to the day I start work on putting together a downloadable EP of some tracks recorded at the live album recording show that aren’t going too be on the vinyl or CD formats of the album.

There’s nothing wrong with the tracks/recordings, it just wasn’t possible to fit them all on the CD or double vinyl, so I think I ca put them to good use as a free promo download incentive for folks to join my mail list and also to trail the album. Might even be good for some radio promo too.

There’s a number of ways I can set this up and I pend a while planning out the best way to work it.

I don’t get far, tho’ as I end up spending two hours trying to work out what’s wrong with my online store after a customer emailed to say they couldn’t buy a shirt! For some reason my t-shirts aren’t checking out properly…but CDs,vinyl and other items are all OK. Weird.

After much poking about, it looks like a WooCommerce update has stopped variable products from inheriting the ‘parent’ product’s shipping class. My solution – for anyone affected by the same problem – is go into each variation and set the shipping class manually ie: choose the correct class rather than the ‘same as parent’ option.

I’m glad the customer took the time to let me know there was a problem rather than abandoning their purchase…I’m also glad I only did the update last night, so hopefully haven;t lost too many orders from folks giving up.

Our pals Barbara and Thorsten have finally been able to move into their new house nearby and have invited us along for a drink. Haven’t seen them in a while and it’s nice to catch up. Thorsten’s done an amazing job building all the insides of the house.

It’s quite late when we get home and make some dinner then watch Big Gold Dream on the iPlayer – a documentary film about the independent post-punk music scene in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Definitely worth a look, but – like most of these things – focusses on the ‘chosen few’ and funded by Creative Scotland. Some things haven’t changed.

I find it frustrating that Scotland’s funding/support networks consistently support individuals or specific acts – often the same ones on an ongoing basis – rather than building resources and creating opportunities that all musicians/songwriters can use and tap into…