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Re: What does it mean to you, to "release a record"?




Hi everybody,
 
it´s interesting to read all the different approaches towards a "record-release" these days. In my opinion this variety shows the biggest benefit of being independent from the music industry as it was in the old days: today everybody can do what he/she likes and either way is possible. Like Rick wrote, it´s the artist and his/her work that is most important. Once the artist has created a piece of art, there are multiple choices how to promote and sell this art the way he/she likes.
 
With my meditation ambient looping project Zen Hanami for example, I go in 2 directions: As the music was mainly conceived for yoga lessons or meditation courses (with each track being 15:00 minutes), I learned, that most Yoga centers do like a physical CD, so I produce a small amount of physical CDs (btw thanks Krispen, for the 'Kunaki' link - that´s very interesting).
But then some people wrote to me that they would prefer shorter tracks for just listening. So, I remixed some tracks and made a "normal" album with 10 shorter tracks and put that to digital distribution only by CD Baby (and thus to i-tunes, Amazon, etc.), which works fine as a "modern", non-physical release.
 
And, like Per said, it´s a good thing to have a release available for an unlimited time period (unlike the catalogues of the music industry). When I had releases with the music industry, I had most of the sales in the first 2-4 month and after that a constant drop till the album was deleted from their catalogue. Now, with digital releases my audience is slowly building up and I do have more downloads of my tracks the longer they are available at the download platforms.
 
What I still miss on the web are sites (or better one "reference"-site like Wikipedia) that do reviews of only downloadable music. I have contacted many platforms that do reviews, but they all wrote back, that they do reviews only for physical CDs - I think that´s a bit obsolete nowadays.
 
Ingo Ito
 
 
 
Zen Hanami
website: www.zenhanami.com
myspace: www.myspace.com/zenhanami
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 6:39 AM
Subject: What does it mean to you, to "release a record"?

In the digital age, what is your standard procedure, as an independent artist, to “release an album”? Where do you send it for review? What kind of promo kit do you put together? Do you bother having it physically duplicated? Etc?

It’s been over ten years since I released a record for myself, and a lot has changed. I feel a bit like a dinosaur. And 2009 looks like I'm going to have several discs to put out!

-George