RTP-area local music and culture

[grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>]

Hmm. I know there are reasons to want to have the reviews in the 
magazines on the same day that the CD hits the shelves (shelves? Do 
people buy CDs anymore?), but around here lately, especially this year, 
the paradigm seems to have shifted to "release the CD, then wait around 
a few months before servicing college radio & etc."

So maybe the "answer" such as it is, is to abandon the idea that some 
privileged subset of tastemakers get advance copies so that they can 
write about the thing at their leisure. Just release the thing & then 
anybody who wants to can procure it & write about it in whatever medium 
they want.

And/or rip it & post it to filesharing networks, but then I assume that 
happened with the first one, and it still sold X copies.

I mean, is the "rockcrit" any less dead than the "record industry?"

rchrdlln AT gmail.com wrote:
> I mean, it sucks to have to watermark your CDs and act like a
> corporate record titan, but I'm guessing that the 25K-50K sales
> bracket is where it really hurts to put out physical CDs these days -
> you have to invest a lot of money to get it out there because your
> artist is popular, but if the album leaks you could just have wasted a
> ton of money on promotion and manufacturing for physical CDs that
> won't sell. It's also likely that Beirut is right in that sales
> bracket, exactly in the area of the market where filesharing tanks
> record sales - just popular enough to have the torrent get around
> everywhere, and primarily popular with college kids who want to have
> the album 2 months before release for bragging rights and will be over
> it when it actually comes out.
>
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