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Looper's Delight
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>Actually, there's little to no interest in the research. Promo CDs act as >de facto payola for writers/DJs/hipsters who don't get much in the way of >salary, but can count on a few hundred each month tax-free, courtesy of >the >local used CD store. In the same way that one of the attractive qualities >of money is that it's universally accepted and transferable, so do promo >CDs >act as a non-monetary form of exchange within the music world. Each CD >might as well be a $5 bill, with no income tax attached. > >** right and in the end the artists who sell any discs at all will >have that sort of thing count as recoupable costs against what they >should've made. > >stig Yeah, ain't the music industry grand! I used to work at the local college radio station, as a jazz director, and also worked at a used record store, so I've seen this phenomenon from a few different angles. At the station, we'd get flooded by promos. We played strictly mainstream and avant garde jazz during the jazz programming, but the major labels would still Fedex us the new Kenny G. and Dave Koz discs overnight. We'd be continually pestered by radio reps for the crappiest labels, the really great indie labels could never afford to hire people to do radio promo. Unfortunately, the payola part of this doesn't work so well any more. Most record stores, at least around here, have gotten saturated by crap and aren't buying anything unknown anymore, especially from major labels. The book "Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business and the Mob" is a really interesting read about this stuff, if you really want to see how sleazy it can be. I only wish I'd gotten in to radio in the '70's and early '80's when they were shipping packages of Coke in record sleeves to stations. Oh well :-) Another anecdote, while doing a web search on the Minus CD, I found it listed for sale used at a London store. I sent 3 promo copies to all of England, I wonder which it was. The funny thing was that the store listed it as "Rare Northwestern Prog/Psychedelia". Hey, I guess it was cool enough for them at least... -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Trenkel New and Improv Music http://www.newandimprov.com improv@peak.org Now Available: Minus: Dark Lit "This is music all-consuming in its beauty and power" -Jake TenPas OSU Daily Barometer -------------------------------------------------------------------------