By John McGlasson
Happy new year to all! I was hoping to write a more uplifting column this time, as I think sometimes in my line of work I’m forced to focus on the negative things about the industry, but after last holiday season, it seems there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.
iTunes reported that their traffic was up 450% over last year! 2005 was considered the beginning of the Digital Revolution, so to take that 450% higher is a huge deal, but oddly enough, our retail was up over last year, and continues to grow, where the 2005 holiday season brought us decent retail then dropped off completely for Jan.’06, this year has remained steady.
What now? Is there hope for retail cd sales? If you’ve read my previous columns, I’d all but danced on the grave of retail, but it seems that there’s a new middle ground, maybe retail can exist along with the digital option? Or is retail the option? We’ll see.
I don’t really have access to accurate numbers of what other labels are doing, and I think in conversation we’re all likely to paint a rosier picture than exists among our peers, none of us wants to be the subject of rumors of early demise, but I have to assume retail was up across the board, though keep in mind, I’m in the indie music biz, I don’t follow what the big labels do, though one can’t avoid the news reports that big labels’ retail was down this season, but it seems the indies did o.k..
If you read Guitar Player or 20th Century Guitar magazines, chances are you’ve seen our ads over the last 18 months, we have ¼ page 4-color, ½ page 4-color, some featuring multiple bands, some featuring a single artist. I have to assume these ads have something to do with our retail surge, but it was a long time coming, so it’s hard to credit ads with sales, there’s just no way to gauge such things. It seems that if you run enough ads, market hard enough, and smart enough, you start to get attention, but beyond that it seems that people are just going into record stores more lately.
Guitar Player mag did an interview with me a couple months ago for an upcoming feature on the label, something that I don’t think happens on a whim, there’s got to be a buzz created, so apparently we have? I really think the visitors to this site and other (of course lesser!) versions of it could answer that better than I…if you’ve heard the names vonFrickle, Andreas Kapsalis, Backyard Tire Fire, Isaiah Sharkey, Curtis Fornadley, John Blakeley, Balance II, or Sons of Science (before now!) then I’ve done my job. If you bought one or more of the cds or downloaded a track or two,the circle is complete, and we thank you!
I’d love to start talking to some new artists about the future, because if we have momentum, it’s time to start building the catalog again. I talked to a MAJOR player today, and I think I’ll be able to announce the signing very soon…this is someone we all know and respect, and would give us the boost we need to sign others like him.
I’d love to get another flood of cds from players like we got last year, it was great! Every day I was listening to new artists, we signed one artist that way, Curtis Fornadley, I got his cd and presskit in the mail early last year, I popped it in for a listen, and I was emailing him halfway through the first song! We released his album Blue Electric Cool on 07/25/06, and he’s done pretty well with it! You can catch him in LA quite often, see him, and all our artists on our site. Don’t hesitate to send me a cd and follow up with an email, I cant get back to everyone, but I do listen to, and appreciate, all submissions. There’s a submissions form in the contact section of our site, they all come straight to me. Thanks for reading!
John McGlasson is a life-long guitarist, producer, and founder of o.i.e. Records, Ltd., a musician-oriented independent record label based in central Illinois.
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