Virgil Dickerson
Virgil Dickerson has been running Suburban Home Records, a small, independent record label based in Denver, Colorado for the past 12 years. It started as a fanzine in September of 1995 and has become a label, a distributor, a vinyl imprint and store, a custom t-shirt company and this blog about the music industry. He remains optimistic about the future of music sales although it is tougher now than it has ever been trying to sell a product people actively get for free. Suburban Home's bands include Drag the River, Tim Barry, Love Me Destroyer, On Guard, Ghost Buffalo, Josh Small, Stereotyperider, Two Cow Garage and Adventures of Jet.
Email | Suburban Home Records
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Sean Klassen
Sean Klassen has found his lot in life through playing guitar in struggling indie bands for over ten years now, currently playing in tongue-in-cheek heavy metal band Dartanian. Through playing music he discovered the art of graphic design and now spends much of his time designing various records, cds, posters and websites for a wide variety of clients ranging from local bands to international brands such as Universal Pictures and Audi. Sean currently pays his bills working as an Art Director at Factory Design Labs in Denver. He also enjoys wearing argyle socks and playing hockey. Feel free to direct any technical or website related comments or problems his way.
Email | Design Portfolio
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Bill Wilson
Bill Wilson founded the NY based indie, Blackout! Records while a college student at Fordham University in 1989. In it's 18 year history, the label (and sub-imprints) has released music from a diverse roster of bands, including Crime In Stereo, Deadguy, Ensign, Guided By Voices, H2O, Killing Time, Kill Your Idols, and Sheer Terror. He also has held positions as a Product Manager at RED; Distribution Marketing Manager at Caroline Distribution; and General Manager of Earache Records. Since 2001 he has worked in digital media and social networking, and is currently employed by a big ol' multinational media company in their mobile entertainment division.
Email | Blackout! Records
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On May 1st, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Chris Vandeviver said:
The whole campaign is truly brilliant, and this is definitely inspiration for me whenever I get started on some of my projects.
On May 1st, 2007 at 2:21 pm
hed028 said:
I agree. an amazing marketing campaign. That said, “With Teeth” sold 271K first week when it was released in May of 2005.
The new one sold 186K first week. About 69% of the previous release.
I’d say that’s about on-par with the overall sales decline business wide from 2005.
The real test will be what this one ends up selling. I’m not knocking the campaign. In fact, my guess is it probably cost less to execute this campaign than whatever they did back in 2005. Just wondering if it made a real difference in bottom line sales?
On May 1st, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Sean Klassen said:
Thanks for the numbers. I was curious to see how the sales are affected.
On May 1st, 2007 at 5:25 pm
peroty said:
I think the poor sales of Year Zero have a lot to do with his main fanbase growing older and not being as rabid about picking up albums immediately.
When you think about PHM coming out in ‘89 and TDS in ‘94, that’s over a decade ago his seminal work.
I think the numbers will grow, especially if the second album and (possible?) film tie things in well.
I also believe this is realy the first music event of its kind being brought to us live and in real life. The marketing melds with reality and it’s a fun ride for sure.
But being first does not always mean best. He’s raising a lot of bars and setting a load of new standards. I’m curious to see where this trail blazed by Trent leads us.
There’s my rambling two cents.
On May 2nd, 2007 at 9:28 am
Karl said:
I think that NIN has always had a loyal fanbase who were excited to get the new record.
That said, a 31% drop is what it is; an indictment of the current state of music sales, and perhaps more importantly, more evidence that marketing+press+hype no longer equals record sales.
In the current climate there is pretty much no way a 186,000 first week will even make it to gold sales levels. Maybe 200K is the new gold…
On May 8th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
a quiet revolution said:
NIN gets Viral…
The recently released NIN’s album Year Zero had an impressive 18 month viral campaign leading up to its release. I had been following this with much interest and had planned to get around to writing something but this is better: 37 Signals has a …