[NewMusic] From "Reinventing Record Deals"

[Matt Davignon]

The sad thing is that what I learned about putting out cd's just a
couple years ago is conflicting with market trends today.

What I learned a few years ago:
Put out real cd's instead of CDR's or online releases, because:
--Real cd's last longer
--Real cd's will get more reviews
--Record stores are often iffy about carrying cdr's.
--Since CDR's & mp3 releases don't cost as much to produce, are easier
to reproduce, artists don't have as much quality control. So if you're
not rolling in money, putting out a real cd requires you to think
about it being your artistic statement for a few years. (Or at least
it works that way for me.)

Current market says:
--If you put out cd's, you're going to be spending all this money on
printing/producing physical media, where most likely, most of your
sales will be downloads.
--70-80% of your professional cd run would probably still be in a box
at your house 10 years from now, so small runs/cdr's are wise for both
economic and space-saving reasons.

However, my impression is that digital content providers like
Allmusicguide.com, IODA, Itunes, Emusic, etc. are probably still using
the "Must have a real cd", to keep from having their digital offerings
from being buried in multitudes of low-quality songs from every crappy
garage band on earth. So my current understanding is:
--You must put out a well-produced physical cd if you want to get good
digital distribution.

Of course this is all based on what I see in my own little world, but
that's my understanding from my experience.

I'm curious about the effect this transition to digital file
distribution is going to have on the "package" that has been an
important part of recorded music: What will happen to new CD artwork
once nobody is expected to see anything more than a 1" tall jpeg of
it. Will liner notes become a thing of the past?

Matt Davignon
www.ribosomemusic.com


On Nov 27, 2007 1:44 PM, Praemedia <praemedia at yahoo.com> went:
> more interested to hear how locals, indies and
> microlabels like my own are fairing in this mess...
>
> ...been thinking a lot about where the direction of my
> own "label" is going to go from here.
>
> lance
>
>
>
>
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