I think that I am

I think that I am going to periodically post useful information to musicians who are looking to get signed. We get tons of unsolicited submissions every week, and some folks are putting an unbelievable amount of time and energy on the wrong things. I am inspired to do this by yet another lovingly produced demo that came in (we get tons of these). This guy (no names) seems like a nice guy, he has some good taste in graphic art, good chops as a musician, but has made some terrible mistakes that will result in nothing more than a pile of CDs that he will end up giving away to friends and family. First, he has created a good demo of his guitar playing, but, because his other instrumentalists are not up to his level, it is a pretty much unmarketable record. Even if the quality of the other musicians were up there, there is no UPC code on it, so most stores won't even touch it for consignment. So his market is now limited to folks who show up at his shows. And, since he has spent so much time, energy and money on getting the CD out, the chances are great that he has not done the much more important task of developing a local following, so his shows are probably not as full as they should be. All of the materials in his lavish packet are geared towards selling him as a recording artist. Unfortunately, as any label marketing person will tell you, the biggest tool in the box for selling records is a performer with a full itenerary and a good hometown following.

Also, this guy's music is fairly close to what we do, but does not really fit in our catalog. It tells me that the guy probably got our name from a list, and does not know our catalog. So, the raw cost of the packet is about $10 (considering that he is stuck with either small runs or huge amounts of undistributed product, this is probably low), the postage another $3, so he essentially burned $13 on our copy. If he sent this out to 50 labels, he's out $650 (if he was able to get a small run, looking at the piece, he probably used a process that required a minimum of 1,000 for any remotely reasonable price, so with the folder (printed), the photos (high quality), the press release, the one sheet, the 4-color not-quite-p.o.p.-not-quite-one-sheet, he probably was out a lot more for this). If he spent that $650 (most likely $4,000, considering the quantities of EVERYTHING he needed) making his next show better, he would be a lot closer to a record deal than he is now. And we have not even begun to get into whether a record deal is a good idea for everyone!

So, there are some lessons in that, but it is not even close to all I have to say on it, so I will start some postings on this topic next week.