I was hoping the third installment of the Work Release Program, Restraint, would be available this past Tuesday. It's not.

Back in June, CD Baby redesigned its site, improving the interface significantly and added a content upload section. It was too successful for its own good. I uploaded the files for Restraint back in July, and I set a future release date for Aug. 18. When the release date rolled around, nothing happened.

I sent an e-mail to CD Baby, and they haven't answered. Then I visited the site's Twitter feed and saw a whole lot of unhappy customers. Yesterday, I discovered CD Baby disabled the content upload section, citing an inability to turn around content as the reason.

I'm giving CD Baby some slack, and I'll try to reach them again later. I wonder how much testing went into this relaunch, because it seems to have been riddled with hiccups from the outset.

I also did the same thing with Amie Street -- I uploaded the files a long time ago, intending to release the album at a future date. When Aug. 18 came around, I attempted to release the album, only to encounter site errors. An e-mail to customer support pushed the album through, but now I've discovered more than half of the files on the album are missing.

I don't know what happened -- I put those files up a long time ago. Amie Street was pretty reliable for the Imprint and 「風の歌を聴け」 releases, but there's a whole lot of clusterfuck going on over there as well.

Bandcamp, thankfully, has not managed to screw me. I uploaded the album a while back, and now I've made it available.

I made a decision a few weeks back to delay the next few releases in the Work Release Program, since money is really tight at the moment. The fact this release has gone so poorly makes me think the decision is serendipitous.

I'll be traveling to Japan in November, and I'll consider starting up the Work Release Program again next year. Perhaps by then, CD Baby will get back on its feet. Right now, it's a total mess.

I didn't think I'd get the next installment of the Work Release Program ready so soon after 「風の歌を聞け」, but I did! Restraint is the second full-length album, and the first track gets posted on Monday, May 25. The album has 13 tracks, so the whole thing should be up by August.

You can preview two of the tracks from the album on Myspace, Facebook and iLike.

While I wait for Imprint to reach the major online retailers such as iTunes and Amazon, I've made it and enigmatics available on Bandcamp and Amie Street.

Listeners can download a free version of both releases encoded at 128kbps from Bandcamp. Of course, I do extort your e-mail address from you when you download. The site also offers the album in higher quality encodings, including FLAC and MP4, for a price -- $4.95 for enigmatics and a minimum donation of $10 for Imprint (in the unlikely event you want to pay more.)

Amie Street is also offering both releases free, but if either of them gain in popularity, the site will start charging for them. The more popular they get, the higher the price.

For the time being, I'll still make Imprint available for download from the official site, but when the next album in the Work Release Program starts getting posted, I'll redirect those free downloads to Bandcamp.

And one final bit of Web 2.0 news -- check out Eponymous 4 on thesixtyone, a social network music game site. In other words, gambling with no money on the popularity of a certain song.

With the last track of Imprint ready to post, the next installment of the Work Release Program is ready to begin. 「風の歌を聞け」 is a five-track EP containing some pretty experimental pop music. The first track, "A Simple Song", will be posted on April 20, and subsequent tracks follow every Monday thereafter.

After all the tracks have been posted, the EP will be available through online retailers. In anticipation of the release, two tracks, "Downtown Downpour" and "Rescuer", are available for streaming here as well as on Facebook, Last.fm and iLike.

The first two volumes of the Work Release Program, Imprint and 「風の歌を聞け」, will be available from online retailers in the next few weeks.

Imprint is currently under review by CD Baby, which will deliver the album to online retailers in the next week or two. It could hit iTunes and the Amazon MP3 stores by the end of April.

Tracks from 「風の歌を聞け」 will start being posted to the Eponymous 4 official site starting April 20. After all the tracks have been posted, it too will be sent to CD Baby for digital distribution.

While you could certainly go to iTunes and other online retailers to buy these two releases, they will also be available in their entirety for free on the official Eponymous 4 web site and over at Bandcamp, where you can also purchase downloads in higher quality formats. Of course, should you decide to go for the free files, please consider leaving a donation if you like what you hear.

It seems odd to offer something for sale and for free at the same time. If I happen to listen to an album for free and end up liking it, I'd show my support by buying a copy. I'm probably not alone in this regard.At the same time, I don't really consider these recordings definitive. They're still pretty much demos. I wouldn't mind earning some cash from them, but I don't feel totally justified in charging for them either.

So, you, the listener, gets the best of both worlds. Assuming you like this kind of stuff ...

The first track from Imprint is now up at the Eponymous 4 web site. You can listen to it and/or download it, if you so wish. The next track will be posted next Monday.

The Work Release Program begins in earnest on Monday, Jan. 26, with the posting of "Promises", the first track from Imprint. For now, a history of the album is available.

Over the last few months -- you could even say years -- I've been dribbling out various recordings in a haphazard manner. I've posted cover songs to Facebook and drafts of demos on Metafilter Music. enigmatics marked the first official release from Eponymous 4. Well, I think I'm very, very close to making the first full-length Eponymous 4 album available.

This past winter, I hunkered down and focused on Imprint, the first set of songs I completed back in 2005, when I started to build my home studio. Back then, I considered the album "finished", even though I hadn't recorded vocals. Three years and many distractions later, I finally have a set of performances that don't totally make me wretch (but they still make me cringe.) I've also gotten a bit more practice -- and invested more cash into -- polishing these recordings. And they're finally in a shape that I feel comfortable unleashing upon the world.

That's not to say they're the definitive versions of these songs.

In reality, these recordings are still demos. Production-wise, they still need much more clean-up than I can afford, and performance-wise ... well, let's just say I'm not the best interpreter for my own material. Ideally, I would be recording these songs with a band, but I'm not at that point yet.

Instead, I'm initiating the Work Release Program, in which these "demo albums" are released exclusively on this site. I'll post one track each week till all the tracks of the album have been made available. Imprint will be the first release in this program, with an EP, 「風の歌を聴け」, following.

I've just finished the first round of mixing for Imprint, so I'll need a few days to live with it and make any additional tweaks. I hope to start posting tracks by the end of January or at the start of February.

I may even make these releases commercially available online, through CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon and other services. At this point, I'm not considering a physical CD release, but I'm not ruling one out either.

In the spirit of holiday consumerism, I've knocked down the price of enigmatics CDs to $6.00, which is a paltry savings of $2.00. The sale is available only through the Eponymous 4 official site, since Amazon and the various digital services set their own prices. This discounted price is available all the way through Christmas Eve.

I decided on this sale thing pretty spur of the moment, so it may be a bit late to get mail orders turned around in a timely manner this far into the season. I figure it's worth a shot anyway.

If you live in Austin, you can arrange to buy a copy from me in person.

This EP is pretty chilled out, so it might make for some good cold weather listening. It's great for more "mature" listeners who aren't much into the rock and/or roll.