May 11th, 2007
TuneCore is a digital aggregator with a twist. Instead of delivering music to a company that perpetually takes a percentage of your sales, for one flat price they’ll host and deliver your media to iTunes and a host of other ala-carte digital services. I recently talked to owner Jeff Price via IM.
Let’s talk about overall direction of new media and the music business. You were a “pioneer” in the biz going from SpinArt as a successful label… to eMusic. Explain the differences in the old model vs. the new model.
The old model is about generating revenue from the “exploitation” of the music. We need to “sell” music to make money, and artists gets a small % of the money (band royalty.) The food chain is artist creates music label, mass produces it onto and delivers some kind of finished product to a distribution company That company has a huge warehouse, a huge staff, insures the inventory,etc. The distribution company also has field staff that walks into stores to get shelf space, fronts money for co-ops. In return - the distributor takes a % of the money, so if you sell for $10 they take 25% and the rest goes to the label. The artist gets $1.35 - $1.75 from each sale
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Written by Bill Wilson | 5 Comments
January 17th, 2007
I would like to share with you a few promotion ideas we are putting into practice over the next month. For some of you that run labels, this may be things you have already been doing for years and may not be that big of a deal. For a few of you though, it might help you think of ways you can promote your records.
One of my biggest roadblocks would certainly be getting record stores to stock or restock our releases. It is one of the most frustrating things for me to see that our records our actually selling copies every week, but there hasn’t been a proportional number of records being re-ordered. Venting these frustrations to my main distributor, Navarre, we came up with a game plan to try to get accounts to restock, a discount. This was actually a suggestion by a friend of mine who works at a much bigger label after posting Drag the River It’s Crazy hits 1000 scans, a breakdown. The idea would be to announce a discount to retailers around significant tour dates. Since Drag the River and Tim Barry are touring the West Coast from February 8th to February 24th, we decided to roll out a discount beginning 1/29/07 and ending on 2/16/07. The discount will be 15 percent and it is our hope that this discount will motivate store buyers to restock copies of our CDs. We will again be doing a discount behind Drag the River’s upcoming tour with Rocky Votolato (March 11th to April 20th).
The other idea we are putting into practice is something I consider to be a pretty neat partnership between label, store, and distributor. One of our reps at Navarre contacted a number of their accounts to see if they would be interested in running a contest where customers can win an IPod containing the entire Suburban Home catalog. The contest will begin February 1st and end February 28th. 50 mom and pop stores are participating around the United States and those stores will be putting up a poster we made that announces the contest. They will also be giving out business cards that we had made which has the URL of the site where they can enter to win the contest. The posters and busines cards say Buy a Suburban Home release to enter to win a 30 GB IPod even though No Purchase is Necessary to enter. We made 100 posters and 5,000 business cards and sent them out to all of the stores. When the contest begins, we will make an announcement telling people to go to participating stores for a chance to win. So the promotion gets the retailers and distributor behind our releases while we attempt to send customers to their stores. With the business cards, we hope that music store clerks will give them to customers and inform them about our releases. If it gets the stores to stock our releases and pay attention, it will be well worth the price of an IPod.
The upcoming month will tell the tale and with some luck, we will get more stores to stock our titles. With Drag the River “It’s Crazy” and Tim Barry “Rivanna Junction”, we have actually scanned more copies than Navarre has shipped out and that just should not be happening.
Written by Virgil Dickerson | 4 Comments
August 21st, 2006
Those of you that keep up with IndieHQ know that from time to time, I mention Lumberjack Mordam Music Group. In early 2005, Lumberjack did the unthinkable and merged with Mordam Distribution. This was quite possibly one of the biggest things to have happened in independent music and everyone had an opinion on how the merger would go. I actually went to the label meetings in Las Vegas and sat in on a number of panels which included the plans the newly formed Lumberjack Mordam Music Group had in store. I must admit that I was impressed. A lot has happened in the year and a half since sitting in on those panels and unfortunately, there has been a fair share of bad news. A number of labels have since left. Labels like Jade Tree, Death Wish, AF Records, G.S.L., Level Plane, 31G, Ace Fu, Load, Facedown, File 13, and others left and entred into new distribution deals with distributors like Red, Red Eye, Touch and Go/ADA, and Caroline. The good news is that LMMG are forging ahead and continuing to be add up and coming indie labels. I hope the best for them and the independent ideals they represent.
I was recently contacted by Tim Hinsley, president and COO at LMMG, regarding my posts on IndieHQ. He thanked me for the press, good or bad, regarding Lumberjack. I took this as an opportunity to put together an interview with Tim and he was more than kind enough to put together well thought-out answers for my many queries. I highly recommend you read this interview whether you are an indie band, smaller label, or just a curious music fan. Tim has a lot of interesting things to say about indie distribution, the CD format, and getting picked up for distribution. Thanks Tim and LMMG!
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Written by Virgil Dickerson | 5 Comments
