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

["L.Angulo" <labaloops@yahoo.com>]

If we are talking about music quality as opossed to recording quality i 
think there has always been junk out there and major labels were no 
exception(and still arent).
i remember getting my records at record stores when it wasnt possible to 
listen before buying,so many times i was dissapointed of having spent 
money for an album that maybe had only one or 2 tracks that were actually 
good and the rest it was just crap.So the searching for me and junk 
filtering is still happening nowdays,but i think the possibility of 
listening before buying,downloading only tracks you like etc.among the 
abundance of music out there online has also made junk filtering easier in 
a way.With so many options to choose from people have also become more 
demanding.I personally always cared more about the quality of music than 
the recording quality (although old lo-fi compressed further into mp3 
format is just no good)

www.myspace.com/luisangulocom


--- On Thu, 1/22/09, David Gans <david@trufun.com> wrote:

> From: David Gans <david@trufun.com>
> Subject: Re: What does it mean to you, to "release a record"?
> To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
> Date: Thursday, January 22, 2009, 2:09 PM
> At 2:16 PM -0800 1/21/09, Matt Davignon wrote:
> >I'm sure a lot of people in online music
> communities use CD baby.
> >
> >My big beef with sites like cd baby is that they make
> it *too* easy to
> >release cd's. There's nothing to stop people
> who take an amateurish
> >approach to releasing music from flooding the market
> with
> >not-very-good cd's that are released on a whim. As
> a result, more
> >serious artists who put an intense amount of care into
> their releases
> >get buried under a mountain of junk if they use cd
> baby.
> 
> True, but I think the leveling of the playing field and the
> 
> broadening of access to the marketing channel are a net
> plus.  Rather 
> than fight our way into a record deal that is pretty much
> designed to 
> prevent artists from prospering, we can control our own
> destinies on 
> the creative end and spend our energies fighting for
> attention in the 
> vast marketplace.
> 
> As CDBaby founder Derek Sivers said in an interview, where
> we used to 
> be little tiny needles in the immense haystack of the music
> industry, 
> now we are little tiny haystacks in one or more of several
> hundred 
> much smaller haystacks.
> 
> 
> >If I was a cd reviewer or a radio station, I probably
> would ignore
> >most cd baby releases, not because good musicians
> aren't involved with
> >CD baby, but because the choice of finding the good
> musicians is much
> >smaller.
> 
> "CDBaby release" is a misnomer, isn't it?  I
> put my CD up there, but 
> I "released" it myself and I am spending money on
> promotion and 
> publicity to get it heard, reviewed, and played on the
> radio.  The 
> fact that it's sold on CDBaby shouldn't be a
> disqualifier on its 
> face.  Any responsible journalist is well aware that the
> major music 
> channels are full of drek and the good stuff is gonna take
> some 
> digging.
> 
> 
> 
> >However, in order to get the good kind of notoriety, I
> think it's
> >smarter to release a smaller number of albums, and make
> sure each one
> >is of higher quality.
> 
> Absolutely!
> 
> 
> 
> >I've been an advocate of artists creating their cd
> releases as
> >professional albums. That means editing the music down
> to the absolute
> >best 40 to 50 minutes (not 70 or 80 minutes), paying
> close attention
> >to how songs flow into each other, getting it
> professionally mastered,
> >having the artwork/package designed by someone
> who's good at that
> >stuff, and lastly, and lastly, professionally
> duplicated (not cd-rs)
> >including a UPC code. A lot of this stuff costs money,
> but it requires
> >musicians to make their records something really
> special.
> 
> Yes!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> David Gans - david@trufun.com or david@gdhour.com
> Truth and Fun, Inc., 484 Lake Park Ave. #102, Oakland CA
> 94610-2730
> Blog:  http://cloudsurfing.gdhour.com
> Web site: http://www.dgans.com
> Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgans
> Music: http://www.cdbaby.com/all/dgans