About Palebear

Palebear is now a pseudo-review / personal blog.

This used to be a pure music review site. It got to be too much. To save the site (and my sanity), it’s now part personal blog and part review site. The reviews will be sporadic… keep that in mind if when submitting material for review.

Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy the site and maybe book/blog mark it if you find it interesting.

A few quick notes about MP3 legality: Palebear only links to MP3s from official artist / label sites. I do not condone copyright infringements and am sensitive about server bandwith. Most people are thrilled to be linked here because it’s free publicity. However, if these are your MP3s or one of your artists’ MP3s and you’d like us not to link them directly, please contact me and they’ll be immediately removed.

Here are some frequently asked questions about Palebear:

• Do you accept CDs or MP3s for review?

As of 2/1/06, I accept BOTH physical CDs in the mail as well as MP3 links for review consideration. Hooray!

PLEASE NOTE THE NEW ADDRESS BELOW! - changed as of 11/15/07. If you get submissions returned, please let me know about it. So I can go give the post office a hard time.

The address to send things material to is:

Palebear
ATTN: B. Yoshida
PO Box 397
Alhambra, CA 91802

I accept just about any physical format of recording including CDs, CD-Rs, 7″/12″ records, cassette tapes. No 8-track though… And please read “Rule 0″ in the next question. This applies for physical review submissions as well! Also, please don’t email to ask if I got the package and when I’m going to listen to it. Yes, I did get it and no, I don’t know when.

• How do I submit my MP3s or other songs for review electronically?

Glad you asked about that, since the majority of questions I get by email are for submissions. The rules for submitting electronically are pretty simple:

Rule 0: I CANNOT GUARANTEE A REVIEW. PERIOD.
Rule 1: DON’T send in actual MP3s or any other song files. DON’T!
Rule 2: Send the URLs to where I can hear the MP3(s).
Rule 3: Also send BRIEF info (1 paragraph) about the band.
Rule 4: Use the contact form to send them.

I periodically change the email address, so using the contact form is your best bet.

NEW! SPECIAL HINT: Your chances of being reviewed or mentioned increase exponentially by, oh, say 10 TIMES if you don’t just give us your godamn Myspace page. Nothing against Myspace, it’s just that it’s not possible to link to anything directly because of their bastard Flash player.

I’m also not very fond of Music EPKs. No need to send one of those.

• What kind of music is acceptable to submit? How many songs should I send?

I’d like to say anything, but would like to stem the huge amount of deathmeatmetal and jazz being sent to me. I like folky things, melody and/or indie poprock. But that’s not to say I don’t also dig shoegaze, experimental, punk, new wave, goth, emo, classical, etc. As long as it doesn’t sound like American Idol or the junk they play on top 40 radio…

You want to send in the URLs for just 2 or 3 of your best tracks.

• How long will it take to get my band’s stuff reviewed? How will I know if you’ve reviewed it?

Anywhere from 1 day to 1 year. Basically, I’ll get to it when I get to it. You cannot possibly imagine what the inbox looks like… and for an idea on how many CDs come in, take a look at the pic to the right: that’s less than 6 months of submitted CDs (not to mention the 100 or so thrown away that didn’t play or etc,etc,etc.). Anyhow, make a submission and then just go out and enjoy the sunshine!

The best way to find out if you’ve been reviewed is to visit Palebear on a daily basis.. How’s that for increasing traffic, hehe! The worst way to try and find out if you’ve been reviewed is to keep sending email. I hate you triple-time if you do that.

• I’m interested in advertising on Palebear. Who do I contact?

There is a whole page written just for you. Please visit our advertising section for more information.

• What are those CDs at the top of the screen next to the “Listening To” graphic?

We used to have a page called Palebear Favorites that was a listing of all the CDs currently being played at PBHQ - it consisted of both new and older indie music. It got too unwieldy so we’ve turned it into a psuedo-random Itunes generator and put it at the top of every page. This consists of 7 randomly chosen CDs that we’re currently listening to along with links to either Itunes or Amazon (or other pages, if those don’t exist) where you can listen to samples. Again, these CDs will tend to be newer but WILL include older music as well.

P.S. I say “pseudo-random” generator because due to page caching issues you’ll tend to see the same selections until I blow away the cache every so often…

• What are “Blurbin’ Fridays” “Palebear Blurbs”?

This is a mini-feature that has links to songs for different indie bands, some well known and others completely unknown. These are meant to be suggestions for some new music that might be worth checking out. I need to do this occasionally because there was simply not enough time to write full reviews on so many good CDs.

• How come there aren’t any “ratings” at the bottom of the reviews?

Although ratings can be helpful sometimes for “quick-glance” readers, I feel they can sometimes unfairly influence someone to not read the review at all. Which is not good, because sometimes a review can be semi-positive but still get only a few “stars”.

• Why do you sometimes link to Itunes in your reviews?

To help indie bands sell tracks. The Itunes Music Store is also a highly convenient way to link directly to 30 second sample clips and provide a means to purchase the track if desired. It is especially a good interface since most of the target audience already has Itunes on their computers.

Clicking on a link will take you directly to the “Music Store” section of your Itunes player where you can listen to 30 second samples of all tracks. You may get a popup window that says “An external application must be launched to handle itms:links” along with a URL. This is completely normal and is just your browser’s way of communicating with the Itunes application. There is a box in the popup that you can check so that your browser will know to just follow any future Itunes links without asking you every time via this popup.

In case you don’t have it, you can download Itunes here. You will need it to access any of the Itunes links in the reviews.

• Can I link to Palebear from my site?

Sure, here are a few banners you can use:

• Who are you?

My name is Bryan. I play in a few indie bands and run the off and on again Shmat Records. I build websites for a living. It really, really, really sucks balls sometimes. But it’s rather nice to work in pajamas. I’m married and live in sunny Southern California - hence, the polar bear reference makes no sense at all. My wife designs most of the graphics for the sites I build, and she’s the one who designed the Palebear logo. I like cats and have one. His name is Shmat, but his real name is Hayden.

• What does Palebear mean and where did it come from?

The name Palebear is from a particular Magic The Gathering card called “Pale Bears”. If you are interested, it is a 2/2 green creature card with island-walking ability that costs 1 green mana and 2 colorless mana from the Ice Age expansion set. As you can see, this has exactly zero to do with indie music reviews… But hey, what does the word “Amazon” have to do with books?