Woohoo! I made a buck with music!

[deeaa]

Quite literally so.

Our CD release has been listened to 22 times on iTunes (or maybe 11 songs twice) and 11 of those sold. Well, that's pretty good - 50% of people who actually listened to it, also bought it!

Now I have made a grand total of 1,04 dollars with the album! Now I need...erm...lemme count...about 8000 more downloads/sales and I've covered the actual CD release costs :-) and some 80.000 more and I'll have pretty much earned enough to cover the costs of my guitars and amps :dance :applause :rockya

[deeaa]

Gotta clarify, this was the Crankenhaus release...been up a year. One sale! Well a bunch more in CD format at least...but still, it's quite useless to sell any music these days unless you get it to TV or something I guess. Or really have superb talents.

You can also check out the album in Myspace, albeit the sound quality sucks there. http://www.myspace.com/442816686

[Eric]

Wow, that's both good and quite discouraging, huh? Or maybe it just tells me what I already knew. Either way, congratulations on a mini-victory.

[deeaa]

Well, yeah...I never did expect much, as it was never promoted really at all - only shown on our webpage and the band already finished by the time the demo was out. But, it's nice at least somebody did buy it, and 50% of all listeners, LOL :-) I always did think it was one of the best if not the best release I've done. Proper grunge.

However, it is also pretty clear that

A:) these days, it's not really feasible to even cover your costs selling music online as MP3's, the revenue is just so small per unit that you'd need to sell tens of thousands to make a small difference, which would have been quite a feat back in the day for any small band...and to make a living you'd need hundred of thousands of sales.

B:) despite it's 'easy' to market and promote your stuff in the digital age, it's similarly easy for every other band as well, and there's more of those around than ever before...and a LOT of great stuff for free both legally and illegally

C:) despite it seems anyone and their dog can release albums on iTunes etc. and create webpages etc. it seems to me the role of the record companies and radios etc. are even more important than before. And are there any radio stations out there that really play independent music any more? I fear it's all mandated by playlists and what record companies want them to play.

D:) I have a gnawing feeling - well this gets downright to being a conspiracy theory - that record companies are actually having some sort of a conspiracy going on with even magazines etc. regarding what they write about (meaning demos and such). This stems from this: in the past two years or so I have sent out four _excellent_ and I do mean _excellent_ demos to magazines and papers and whatnot. By excellent I mean, completely pro level recordings and definitely not cr*p by any standards even if you didn't like the genre. AND THEY have not written a word about them on demo/indie columns or review pages. NOT A WORD. And there's like a HUNDRED demos and releases reviewed every week, ranging from utter s*it to pretty good stuff.

Since I know our/my stuff has been top notch compared to most of the stuff reviewed on these sites, I can only start to wonder if they have some sort of guidelines from record companies to NOT review and write about stuff that is too close in quality to what record companies can put out? Could there be such a conspiracy? We did a few ratty demo songs with a buddy a while back and sent those under aliases and THOSE got reviewed pretty good. So WHY the HECK won't they review our MUCH better material at all?

Maybe it's just a conspiracy theory but it's starting to feel really weird.

[deeaa]

Oh! I also realized there is an Amazon link too:
http://www.amazon.com/Bet-You-Burn-Someday/dp/B0032JY6CY/ref=sr_shvl_album_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1266079385&sr=301-1

[sunvalleylaw]

Congrats on getting it out there anyway!

[Eric]

Hmm, interesting points in A-C, particularly point C. I agree that there's very little that is truly independent anymore. I don't know about the broadcast rules in Finland, but back in maybe the mid-90s over here, they got rid of a law saying that a given company could only own (I think) 2 radio stations in a given market.

That rule meant that giants like Clear Channel could only have maybe a classic rock and pop station in one metro area, which left more room for independent stations. After that law was repealed, almost all indie stations died almost immediately.

On point D, it seems like a reach, but I wonder if there's any truth to your idea. My instinct would be that maybe your demos just weren't reaching the people they needed to, but you'd know more about that than I would. I mean, if the recordings were just going to someone's desk who wasn't involved in that sort of thing, perhaps that would be enough to kill it.

That having been said, it does seem conspicuous that there wasn't a peep in any of the publications.

[Eric]

BTW, I've been thinking about a discussion we had earlier about distribution and how to get people to listen to your music. What I determined is that, while I generally like the music you make and I have the link to where it's stored and I can listen to it for free, I still don't listen to it regularly.

The reason? I think it's just a matter of convenience. There are two ways I tend to listen to music: either download it all and listen to it at home or listen directly online.

What it would take for me to listen to your music on a regular basis is one of two things:
1) You have a zip file or something comparable for each album that I can download to my computer and listen to as I please.
2) You have it all compiled by album into some sort of online player that I can use to listen to the songs and albums in their entirety. Something simple like box.net would work, though it would be nice if it would automatically advance to the next song.

I personally think option 2 would be better, because then as long as I have the link, I could listen to it anywhere.

I'm not doing this to tell you what to do, but more because you've previously wondered how better to distribute your music. I figure if there are roadblocks for me, even if they're a matter of minor inconveniences, it might apply to other people too.

[deeaa]

I hear you Eric...I have most of my bands available at mikseri.net which does the online thing pretty well - you can just listen to all songs at once. But the Crank album isn't there - at least not yet, I dunno if I can legally put it up there anyways, having given iTunes etc. the right to distribute. Maybe in the future I'll put it up there too.

However, if you like, I can tell you a 'secret download' location for the album MP3's in a zip package...anyone interested just PM me and I'll arrange it OK.

[deeaa]

Concering the C point...they have appointed people (regular reviewers) listed on their webpages, many of them quite well known and have done it for years. They have also reviewed many of my demos/etc. in the past.

I don't know why they suddenly don't seem to want to review any bands I send any more...it certainly isn't because they've gotten worse...in the past I have gotten 'demo awards' and 'special mentions' and 'future winner' selections for demos of my bands etc...but now that I have even better stuff, and not just some 4-song cassette demos but 10-14 song CD's to send them...nothing.

It's probably just that there's so much stuff around they need to limit what they review.

Also, it could be that they'll rather review clear 'demos' and when they get my CD's with packaging and printed covers and all, they just assume it's a record label promo or something, not really a demo, and these guys already seem to have it going well so they skip it?