News
Hello! We are donkerbot. We are an anonymous independent music writer/producer from North West England. Here you will find our latest news. If you wish to share any of our news updates, simply right-click the [Permalink] link at the top right of the article, and select "Copy Link Address" (or whatever your browser calls it). Then paste the link you've just copied into wherever you want to share it.
Visit our News Archive for all current and previous news items.
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04 January 2023 - Plans for 2023
[Permalink]We've been asked a lot recently what our plans are for this year. So we thought it'd be a good idea to tell you all about it in one easy-to-reference post.
With the Christmas 2022 season coming to a close, and a new year just starting, it's that time of the year to reflect on the past year, take stock of the current situation, and look ahead at what's to come. Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, we've not been able to fully enjoy this Christmas period, and the planned marketing for our single Christmas To Remember couldn't quite go ahead. We managed to produce the music videos for both songs, with special thanks to Lauren Thompson, who has become the voice and the face of our Christmas 2022. If you haven't seen the videos, do check our news post from Christmas Day, which has links to the videos.
We were also grateful to St Helens Star, local newspaper for St Helens Borough, for their coverage of the single's release and videos. This coverage is because Lauren, the vocalist, is local to St Helens, and the videos were filmed in St Helens town centre. We'll be updating our Media page soon, to include the articles.
2022 was also the year our album By The Book was released. With over 3,800 streams since its release on 26 July, it is our most streamed release as measured over the entire year. We are very happy with that result, it's encouraging to see people enjoying our music.
Looking to the future, what will 2023 hold for us? As mentioned before, we are currently going through a difficult personal period which has affected all of our activities. This includes writing new music, so we're sad to say there's currently no release to look forward to. This experience is giving us inspiration, so in time we will certainly have more music, but we're unable to give any estimates about when we'll be able to release our next singles and album.
That said, there are plans for the future. As Eurovision Song Contest is coming to Liverpool this year, we were hoping to get involved one way or another with the festivities. How this involvement is going to look, we don't know at the moment, but we're looking for any opportunities. We are also making plans for a new album release, although this may not be released until 2024. We're interested in working with more local talents, as our experience with Lauren as singer on our Christmas single was very positive. We would like to expand on this. It gives us more control over the final product, it gives the local talent more exposure, and it gives the local newspaper positive stories about their town. This is all part of the greater donkerbot plan, to give to the music communities. This sort of project requires a lot of planning, and planning takes time, which is why it's not expected to happen this year.
Our current situation will change, at some point in the near future. Once we get there, we can continue bringing our visions into the world. We'll be working on Liverpool City Region local work at first, and we hope to expand in the years to come. So stay tuned, because you could become part of the donkerbot story too!
25 December 2022 - Christmas music video
[Permalink]Happy Christmas! The time is finally here, we have officially released our two Christmas videos for our latest single release. Sadly, it's all been delayed due to personal circumstances, but we've worked hard to be able to release these videos as our Christmas present this year to you. Enjoy our videos below, and feel free to share them with your friends.
Special thanks to Lauren Thompson, who sang and performed these songs for the videos.
Christmas To Remember features footage of the official Christmas Lights Switch On event in St Helens.
11 November 2022 - Christmas To Remember - Single release
[Permalink]Our Christmas single for 2022 has been officially released on the major streaming services. Here you will find a list of the main ones, but if you use a different streaming service, there is a chance you will find our music there as well.
Spotify
YouTube Music
Apple Music
SoundCloud
Deezer
Be sure to check out our Links page, for a more comprehensive list of services where you can find our music.
06 November 2022 - Pre-save our new Christmas single now!
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Our new single, Christmas To Remember, will be officially released on 11 November 2022, but you can already pre-save it now on Spotify and Apple Music. This way, you'll ensure you hear the single as soon as it's out. To pre-save, simply go to the single's pre-save page, and select your favourite streaming service there.
As you may be aware, we release a Christmas single every year. This year, we decided to work with a vocalist local to the Liverpool City Region. Lauren Thompson provided the vocals to both songs on the single. We were excited to be working with her in the Elusive Country Club recording studio in St Helens.
03 August 2022 - Where to find our music
[Permalink]We have compiled this handy list of streaming sservices where our music can be found. If you like our sound, be sure to follow us, so you won't miss future releases. Since our last update, we have now also uploaded our latest album By The Book to SoundCloud, so check that out as well.
Also check out our previous news post about the album, it contains links to Amazon, where you can buy the album as mp3 files, and it has the album embedded from both Spotify and YouTube, if you prefer not to leave this site.
Bookmark this page, and check back regularly, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook to be notified of any news regarding future releases.
27 July 2022 - New album released
[Permalink]On the 26th of July, 2022, our latest album, By The Book was officially released worldwide. You can now listen to it on your favourite streaming platform. We've provided a few handy links here for you.
If you're a Spotify Premium user, you can stream the album directly using the widget below, otherwise simply click on this link to open the album in your browser. Or if you're listening on a mobile device, you can find the album by scanning this barcode in the Spotify app.
If you prefer to music on Deezer, this is the link for you. Somehow we can't access it ourselves, but maybe that's because we're not logged in (or even have a Deezer account). If you use Deezer, do let us know if it works for you.
To listen to the album on Apple Music, simply click on this link.
And finally, the album is also available on YouTube Music, we have embedded the automatically generated playlist here for you:
Of course, you can also buy the album on Amazon in the UK, Japan, France, and Germany, to name a few (for some reason, the US one won't load). We should also be on Tidal, but we can't access that ourselves, so we can't give you the link.
So there's plenty of options. If you like it, and you want to share the album with your friends (please do!), rather than having to list all the options yourself, you can just direct them to this page with all the options.
05 July 2022 - Release date announced
[Permalink]Good news, everyone! We are proud to officially announce the release date of our new album, By The Book. On 26 July 2022, you will be able to find it on any of the major streaming services. So whether you use Spotify, or Deezer, or Tidal, or Apple Music, or you just listen to it on the official YouTube channel; it'll be there. We will of course offer you all the links here on our website, so be sure to check back in on the 26th for those.
We've been busy working on some things to add to the release, but we don't know how well this is going to work, so that's one thing we can't give more detail on at the moment. Hopefully it will all be cool and awesome, and then you'll hear all about it. We've had to use otherwise established resources beyond what they were designed for, so there is the possibility it will not work as intended, but the expectation is that it'll all be fine.
Which leaves us with one more thing, the photo, as promised of our single covers, all printed in 7x7" format, that of a traditional vinyl single. We just have to frame them and then these, together with the printed 12" album covers, will get a nice place on our studio walls. We're sorry we don't have a banana for scale on these (we ate all the bananas we had), but we're sure you'll still enjoy this picture nonetheless.
That's it for now, we will be back soon with more news surrounding this album release.
28 June 2022 - New album announced
[Permalink]It has been a while since our last update, but that does not mean we have been sitting still. On the contrary, we have been very busy finishing our next twelve brand new songs, and organising them in a nice package we like to call "the new album."
But first things first. We have ordered 12x12" copies of our albums' artworks. Makes them look like proper LP covers this way. These will be framed and placed on our studio walls. We have also ordered 7x7" copies of all our single artworks, for completeness sake. We're happy to show you how these look in real life, so for today, we'll start off by showing you the albums. First of all, our first album, In stereo (banana for scale):
It looks absolutely stunning. And yes, the anaglyph stereo 3D effect works, we've tested it.
So now, on to the reveal of the new album. Note that all this information is pending review, so keep in mind that things can change. The title of this album will be By The Book and looks like this:
The track listing is officially divided into two parts of six songs each (let's call it Side A and Side B), although this makes no difference to how the album will be presented on the major streaming platforms (they don't do sides apparently, you can't physically turn the digital record over...).
| Side A | Side B | ||||
| 1 | By The Book (Featuring Yan Sidelski) | 4:18 | 7 | What They Say (Featuring Fede Elías) | 4:05 |
| 2 | Estella | 3:36 | 8 | I Lost My Love | 1:49 |
| 3 | Free Again | 3:16 | 9 | Wake Up Sheeple (Space Is Fake) (Featuring Daedalus Young) | 3:29 |
| 4 | Bilateral Flaws | 3:17 | 10 | Speedwell Cavern | 3:32 |
| 5 | Bitter | 2:47 | 11 | Summer Days | 1:43 |
| 6 | To Celia | 3:40 | 12 | In Time | 4:29 |
We understand that this doesn't mean very much to you at the moment. You haven't heard any of these songs, nor do you have any clue what they could sound like and what they mean. Except maybe for the songs Bitter and Summer Days. These two songs were written for the SunVox 2022.02 Compo, and have therefore already been released in some form.
In case you have missed that, you can listen to all submitted tracks by following this link to the YouTube video and look for our songs in the video description.
The release date is not yet fully known, most likely towards the end of July, early August. We will be announcing that as soon as we know for sure. So stay tuned for that, and check back soon to see our 7x7" single covers.
16 March 2022 - What do we do with Chester Zoo?
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The year was 2020. In response to the pandemic, the UK government announced the first lockdown in March. This lockdown obviously affected many businesses, Chester Zoo being one of them.
In June 2020, it became clear that Chester Zoo was foreseeing serious financial difficulties if the zoo was to remain closed. Despite non-essential shops being allowed to reopen on 15 June[1], outdoor attractions such as Chester Zoo, even with social distancing measures already in place, still could not reopen. However, the care for the animals could not stop. Zookeepers still needed to maintain the park, and animals still needed to be fed. And without the main income from visitors, the zoo was looking at losing £1.6 million per month[2].
On 5 June 2020, our first album, In Stereo, was officially released. Included on it was our song Zoo in Chester. Even though we can neither confirm nor deny that Chester Zoo was the inspiration for this song, we felt a connection to the park. Chester Zoo is, after all, one of our favourite attractions in Chester. If the government restrictions would've caused the zoo to close permanently, it's safe to say we would've been very sad indeed.
So we decided to do our part in order to help the zoo. We pledged to donate all proceeds from our first album to the Save Chester Zoo fundraiser, from the album's release until the end of the pandemic[3]. We tried to get the word out by tweeting our intentions, as well as sending press releases to local newspapers. Despite this, it seems our efforts had a very limited effect, and we can now report that in the near two years our album has been available, we still haven't earned enough to even withdraw from our distributor.
As reporting of streams and purchases are lagging behind by several months, we can only report on earnings from June 2020 until December 2021. As we want to be transparent as to what we earn in royalties from our music, we will be releasing a more detailed report in the future. It is not our goal to make music commercially. Although we do want to make money in order to pay our bills, we would simply want to be able to make a normal living, and help the community where possible with any excess earnings. Our promise to donate all earnings from our first album to Chester Zoo is completely in line with this philosophy. We made the promise, so we will deliver on that.
Now the UK government has announced rules regarding travelling to come to an end this week, and free testing to end this month, we can say that the pandemic has come to an end. We don't want to claim this to be the absolute truth, but how we look at the situation, it seems this is what the government is trying to communicate with these requirements ending. For this reason we have taken a look at the finances. As mentioned earlier, we only have data up to December 2021, and while our streams have picked up a bit in the last month, we can make decisions on the information we have now, and adjust as necessary in the future.
In the 19 months our album has been available for streaming, it has generated just under $3 in royalties. According to Google, at this moment, that equates to about £2.30. We realise Chester Zoo is not saved with a £2 donation. The zoo's Support Us page does give the option to donate both £3 and £5[4]. However, we felt that that is too low for our donation, so we decided to increase our donation to £10. With Gift Aid, this donation is increased to £12.50.
We would like to thank everyone who made it possible for us to make this donation today. If you wish to make a donation yourself, you can do so on Chester Zoo's Support Us page.
[1]Timeline of UK government coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions; Institute for Government
[2]Chester Zoo at risk after order to remain closed 'indefinitely'; Chester Zoo
[3]'The end of the pandemic' may not be announced as such.
[4]Support Us; Chester Zoo
23 January 2022 - Spotify Playlist
[Permalink]When you're an artist with music on Spotify, you will want people to find your work. Everybody will tell that the best way to achieve that is to be included on a playlist. That's easier said than done, and especially for a beginning artist, near impossible. While we've had minor success getting some of our songs on playlists, the vast majority of curators so far has denied us the privilege.
First of all, did the placements we have had give us any new listeners? Yes, but barely. We managed to reach eight followers by the end of 2021 (and that had dropped back to seven in January 2022 already), we were hardly getting any daily listeners at all.
However, we have now been included on a playlist that actually does give us daily listeners. This is a major milestone in our career, and for us to see the statistics taking off like that is great to see. You will find all the artists on the playlist are actually not very well-known. But that's what makes it an awesome playlist if you want to discover new music. There's a variety of styles, so there's something for everybody.
But don't take our word for it, listen to it for yourself. Be sure to check out every track on it, like we said, there's a variety of styles, so even if one song isn't for you, others surely will be.
Older news
Older news will become available on our News Archive page.