I just read yet another article about how the whole business model of recording and selling CDs is dead. This particular article called it “futile” to attempt to sell CDs.

I’ve read dozens of these articles. A new one comes out just about every week, and each time I read one — and I subscribe to a lot of music business blogs — I grow more and more confused and irritated.

I recognize the fact that music piracy has certainly bit into CD sales. And iTunes and the Amazon.com mp3 Store and the internet in general have certainly modified the business model.  The new business model is less forgiving of an 18-dollar CD, but conversely provides you will an effective COGS (cost of goods sold) of zero for online sales (not counting recording and production).

Even with the ubiquity of legal and illegal online music distribution, the majority of music sales for independent artists happen at live music events — at least in my experience. This follows with a simple theory of music sales mentioned in Andrew Dubber’s excellent ebook, “20 Things You Must Know About Music Online” (available at his blog, newmusicstrategies.com). Hear, like, buy.

Put simply, for someone to purchase your music, they must first hear it. Then, if they like it, they’ll buy it. This fundamental truth of music sales hasn’t changed, and I don’t think it ever will.

When my bands perform live shows, a percentage of the people will like what they hear and buy a CD, maybe more. If the sales don’t come, the LAST thing I’d blame is the interne

I see three possible reasons the music not selling:

1. Not a large enough crowd. If you typically sell to 5% of your crowd, playing to a crowd of 20 will yield you fewer sales than playing to a crowd of 200. If they’re not there to hear it, they ain’t gonna buy it.
2. Not enough new ears in the crowd. If you constantly play solely to your core fan base, you will eventually reach a saturation point, where the fans that would buy your discs already own it. Try playing on a bill with other acts: new ears = potential sales.
3. They’re hearing, but not liking. This is a bitter pill to swallow. Maybe the band didn’t put on a good show. Maybe it’s the wrong crowd for your music. Maybe the crowd doesn’t like the music. Maybe they like it, but not enough to buy it, so maybe they WILL pirate it. But if the crowd likes your music, and you’ve given them a good show and left them wanting more, you’re going to sell records. Period.

When sales for my bands wane, I look at these three things before I even consider blaming piracy or the internet. I’m going through this process with one of my bands right now. Our sales during the Faire season were okay. The cost of the run of 1000 CDs is paid-for and then some. Not bad for a niche band that’s only 18 months old.

But as we approach writing songs for our second disc, I’m starting to think about the people who come to our shows. What kind of music would they want to hear? What kind of songs would they want to own? What sorts of songs will not only grab their attention, but grab the attention of passersby?

Our first disc was mostly made up of music we wanted to perform and record. Our second disc will integrate the wants of the band with what we believe are the wants of our audience. Hopefully we’ll read the audience correctly. If so, we’ll see a bump in sales.

My point in all of this? Trying to sell your music is certainly not futile. Try to sell people music they haven’t heard or don’t like is absolutely futile. If your goal is to sell records you have to give people what they want, or at the very least find enough people who like what you’re offering.

The internet is the greatest tool ever devised for independent musicians. You have instant worldwide distribution, and the most ubiquitous promotional system ever invented. Blaming the internet for crappy record sales is like blaming a hammer for bending nails. It’s not the tool’s fault.

(I have several projects going right now, so I’m going to blog about them here, detailing the process, etc)

The Boggards have started recording their 7th CD. To date, we’ve laid down about 10 scratch tracks, and we’ll finish the rest tomorrow.

Doing things a little differently with this disc.

Firstly, we haven’t tracked one actual part yet and we already have a firmish deadline — we’ll see if we hit it.

Secondly, I’ve recorded  scratch bouzouki andbodhran tracks simultaneously, while still using a click track.  My reasoning is this: everyone in the band is used to playing against Tappy & Casey on bodhran and zouk. Having them play against a click track always causes problems.  Part of that is becasue a click track doesn’t compromise in the collaboration that is music. The other reason is unfamiliarity — whether it’s a simple beep, or a kick/snare midi part, the click always sounds foreign.  It’s not part of our sound.

The Song List

We’re including five completely re-recorded songs from Bawdy Parts and Barley Legal. We determined which songs by asking our friends and fans to rank the songs they would like to see re-recorded once the first two discs go out of print. I also polled everyone in the band on the same.

I took the top ten old songs, along with all of our new material, totaling 20 songs. Then I asked each band member to pick 5 songs to cut.

Once everything was collated, we had our 15 tracks.

Certainly not the most “artistic” way to choose the tracks for an album, but it ensures that the listeners will get what they want, and the band will remain interested in what they’re performing.

We have songs on previous discs that much of the band didn’t care about recording. I won’t say which songs, and I won’t entertain guesses, but I can hear the difference.

Timeline

Yes, we have a “soft” deadline for the disc. There’s plenty of time for tracking and post production to meet the deadline. If you know us, you can probably guess what that deadline is.

If it looks like we’ll hit the deadline, we’ll announce the release date. Otherwise, we won’t.

I’ve been wanting to “discontinue” our first two CDs, Bawdy Parts and Barley Legal, for a few years now. My reasons are many, but primarily, that band doesn’t exist any more. The sound was different, the talent pool was different, the type of music performed has changed and evolved.

Some have made the argument that those discs are a snapshot of what the band used to be, and that’s undeniably true. Although our discography is a chronicle of the band’s history,  most of those who may potentially buy our CDs don’t see them that way.

Take this very likely scenario: say a member of our audience decides not to purchase our CD while enjoying our show at Rogues’ Reefe. As he gets home, he regrets his decision and decides to look us up on line and buy a disc from CDBaby.

Now, he doesn’t know the titles to any of the songs. He probably only remember a few snippets of lyrics or melody. Let’s say he buys Bawdy Parts. Firstly, he’s not going to hear any of the songs he heard at the show. Secondly, the band he’s hearing hasn’t sounded like that in a decade.

Is he going to be happy with his purchase? Maybe, maybe not. It’s certainly not what he’s expecting.

The plan at this point is to re-record a handful of songs with every new CD, and we’ll probably also have them available when we start selling our complete collection on USB drive.

But the final case of The First Two Albums and the small handuls of original run Bawdy Parts and Barley Legal will end up in storage until we come out with our 20th anniversary huge, giant boxed set.

A week ago, the whole band went down to the Coffee Gallery to meet Bob Stane, the owner, check out the venue and the sound system and drop off some CDs for Bob and his employees. Bob wasn’t there, but we talked to the girl working the counter, left some CDs and asked how many reservations we had. Her reservation sheet had 56 entries on it — not bad for a venue that seats 49.

As a side note, I should say that I’m obsessed with draw, house size, reservation numbers, what ever you want to call it, because independent music lives and dies by those numbers. The ability to play a venue depends directly on your ability to fill it. This goes for every venue I’ve ever played, Bogarts, Toe Jam, Galaxy, Coach House, El Rey, and, yes, the Renaissance Faire.

On the day of the gig, a little over half of the people who called for reservations made it to the gig. The packed house we were all expecting didn’t materialize. I kept waiting, with a pit in my stomach, for Bob, the owner, to come up and ask me where everyone was. I’ve hand more than one unpleasant conversation with venue management about crappy draws, and I really don’t want any more.

But at the end of the night, Bob was very pleased. Turns out our percentage of no-shows was pretty typical lately. People aren’t spending as much money, and they tend to stay home and do something free, rather than go out and spend money they’re not sure they can afford to spend.

Can’t blame ‘em at all. A certain percentage of people just won’t make a show, regardless of how much they intend to — even if they purchase ticket ahead of time, cars break down, days get double booked, emergencies happen, people lose track of the day. It happens and you learn to expect it.

But all was well. Bob was happy with our draw, he liked our music and he wants us back for another show after Faire. He was the coolest, most no-pressure venue owner I’ve ever dealt with. Guys like that are rare.

Additionally, we were approached by a gentleman who hosts a soon-to-be nationally syndicated folk radio show, and he wants to set up a date for us to come in and perform live on the air. How awesome is that!

Grammy nominated children’s songster Zak Morgan performed last week at the Levitt Pavilion in Pasadena.

At an earlier performance I attended, he asked if we (the Poxy Boggards and Merry Wives) would sing back up for him on “Nicolo Picarello,” a song the Boggards recorded background vocals for about a year ago.

We were only able to muster about six or seven vocalists. When we got up there (about 1/2 way through the set) he asked us to stay and wing backing vocals for the rest of the set.

It was a very fun time. Zak is a great and generous performer. If our schedules work out again, we’ll be back out there backing up the kid again.

If you have little ones, I recommend you check out Zak’s web page and see when he’s playing near you.

It was especially exciting for me because I got to watch Johnny “Spazz” Hatton on upright bass. Spazz plays with the Brian Setzer orchestra. Having picked up the upright about a year ago, I’ve been itching to watch upright players. His playing style is unconventional and awesome to watch.

Pain Celtic Squall rehearsed last night. For those that don’t know, this is my “other band.” It’s a quartet comprising Heather (my wife), Phil (from the Boggards) and Claire (from the Wives).

Once faire was over, we started using our regular rehearsal time to record, and we’ve made a good deal of progress toward a finished CD. We’ve recorded just about everything we were well-rehearsed on, and it’d been so long since we rehearsed, we decided it was time to take a break from recording and start playing together again.

Pain. Great pain.

I’m playing upright bass in Squall, which is a physically taxing instrument to play — not as bad as playing piano in a marching band, mind you, but difficult nonetheless. I’ts a large instrument. Everything’s far away from everything else. And it takes a lot of force to generate a note.

When I first started playing it, it was pretty continuous pain. My plucking fingers were raw and constantly on the verge of blistering. My fingerboard hand was always cramping from from trying to push down the very heavy guage strings (not to mention the callouses, which weren’t even in the same place as my bouzouki callouses).

That was when I started, and I sort of feared a resurgance of this kind of pain when we started rehearsing last night. Yes, there was a little bit of the cramping and the friction pain, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

Arthritis. Arthritis in my elbows. Both of them. It was quite painful, actually.

Age has certainly brought advantages that I hadn’t forseen:

But I  don’t dig the aches and pains.

Got a new laptop for Father’s Day.

HP Pavilion dv6700. Dual core Turion 64. nvidia graphics. 16×9 screen. 3gb memory and a 250gb drive.

Came installed with Windows Vista Home Premium edition. Preinstalled with Service Pack 1.

I have almost no experience with pre-SP1 versions of Vista, so take this with a grain of salt. I like Vista. Caveats:

- it’s running on a computer designed for the OS, and it’s a pretty fast computer.

- I like the Windows OS, and have been using it since 3.1.

I’m using it with the goofy, graphics-intensive interface, and it looks nice and is fairly snappy. I’m sure the performance would improve greatly if I turned that off, but as of yet, I don’t see the need.

Although they’ve moved some stuff around, it was still very easy to find it all. Uninstalling all the OE software and the Norton security suite (something I do with every computer) was fairly simple, but time-consuming. It took almost 4 minutes to uninstall the Norton stuff, and I’m still not sure I got all of it.

I’ve installed Firefox 3.0 release candidate (my apoligies to Tiffny for maligning her noble employer’s name), Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org (which now runs VERY fast), Allegro 2002 (which STILL say it crashes when it closes, but works nonetheless), and PaintShop Pro.

All the software seems to be working fine. The real test will be when Digidesign approves ProTools LE for Vista, and I try audio editing on this machine. If that works, I’ll be elated. Not sure if the small Firewire port will work with my audio interface … if not, I’ll be slightly less elated.

U2’s manager, Paul McGuiness, has been fairly outspoken, and a little cracked, about music file sharing on the internet.

Ars Technica detailed his latest rant at Music Matters 2008.

In it, he proposes that ISPs share their revenue with the music industry. Why? Because the ISPs reap all their great service subscription revenues from people wanting to illegally share music files. That’s why people are on the internet, he says.

Guess ol’ Paul’s never heard of porn.

Tags: internet, music business