My victory is complete.

Holy crap, y'all!

Look what I have wrought!

I wrote this song over four years ago, and thought that it would be trivial to just arrange some MIDI tracks, play along with them, adjust the levels, and mix it together. Whoops! It turns out that sound mixing is an art that requires lots of learning and lots of work (a tiny fraction of which was described here).

But finally, I can cross "Work on song" off of my "to do" list!

Not that the list is getting any shorter. After all, what's a song without a music video? It's okay, though: Whipping one up should be trivial.

PayPal micropayments

This is for people who sell stuff and receive payment on PayPal. Anyone else can feel free to skip it.

I just signed up for a Bandcamp account, to sell music. Bandcamp mentions that PayPal offers "micropay pricing" that saves you quite a bit in fees if you makes small sales (such as $1 tracks and $7 albums). (Normally, the PayPal fee is 2.9% + 30 cents, which is 33 cents out of a $1 sale. Ouch! The micropay rate is 5% + 5 cents, which is 10 cents from a $1 sale. Better!)

Bandcamp advises that one contact PayPal Micropricing Support at 888-433-6829 in order to sign up for micropay pricing. I don't like phone calls if there's an on-line, no-human-interaction alternative. There is a way to do this on PayPal's site, but the route to that well-hidden page is quite labyrinthine and took me several tries, even with the (well-hidden) directions. So, for y'all, here's a direct link:

PayPal micropay pricing agreement.

You probably need to be logged in to your PayPal business account to use that page. (Upgrading a regular account to a business account is free and pretty easy, except for finding where to click to select your "payment solution".)

The agreement says that PayPal will charge the regular fee rate if that turns out to be cheaper (which it is for sales above $12). Bandcamp's page says that you still get charged at the micropayments rate, even for large sales, and suggests using a second PayPal account (using the standard rate) for larger sales.

While we're on the subject, a plethora of stories like this one make me reluctant to depend on PayPal at all. Unfortunately, Bandcamp (which is otherwise awesome) requires it. (You can at least work around the common problem of PayPal freezing an account the moment the owner tries to make a large withdrawal, by instead using those funds only for on-line purchases.)