A funny thing just happened. I just did a Google on my band and found out that our album’s available on filesharing. And a funny sort of “punch-in-the-belly” feeling started spreading in me.
The thing is, the album’s not out until August 22nd! Some ‘rock journalist’ took an advanced copy of the album and shared it and is just eats me alive - Give us a damned chance! These days if Your first album doesn’t make a profit You don’t get to make a second one, so for us it’s so vital to make a decent turnaround just to stay alive in the business…
Record companies can’t afford loss leaders anymore, and You need to be making them money from day one unfortunately. I know that for us as a band, the more people that hear our music the better, so from that perspective filesharing is great, since more people show an interest in the band, spread the word and show up at gigs, and that kind of support is invaluable - but none of that, absolutely none of it is worth it if You get terminated by the label for losing money…
And the worst thing is, right now there isn’t even an option to buy it legally since it isn’t out for another month - which means we run the risk of saturating the market before we’ve even set off.
I’m in no denial about the times we live in, I was expecting the CD to show up online eventually, I just didn’t think it would happen this early on - obviously it was someone that received a promo CD, meaning a magazine, radio station or what not, and these are not people out of the business, it’s a guy or girl that should know exactly how broke the music business is these days…
I know it’s inane not to believe Your stuff will end up online, but give us a damned chance.
