[musictlk] for kevin reeves

[Aaron Lane]

Hey Kevin,
Since you appear to know something about this, I thought I'd share my plan 
of action, and get your thoughts. We are currently recording our CD. I'm 
shopping around to get a good price for a logo and cover art. When recording 
is complete, I was planning to use Reverb nation for digital distribution, 
with them I can reach 40 plus outlets including the big ones for 59 dollars 
a year subscription. I have a CD maker lined up, it's VSG in saint louis, 
and I'm going to get a web site to sell hard copies of my CD. I'm going to 
contact any online stations I can find to get my music out there. How does 
this sound so far. Also here are some specific questions.

How do I approach regular radio stations? do I call them first or just mail 
them a CD?

what's the best way to get my CDs into the few music stores around?

Thanks,
Aaron Pops Lane
http://www.reverbnation.com/ozarkrevival
http://www.facebook.com/pops.lane
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin Reeves" <lists at kevinreeves.net>
To: "Tyler" <programmer651 at comcast.net>; "NFBnet Music Talk Mailing List" 
<musictlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 5:32 AM
Subject: Re: [musictlk] planning to start a record label


>I hate to be a wet blanket on some of this, but allow me to speak candidly 
>as a consumer and a musician who sells records.
> It is not the record label who ships CD's and processes payments. That is 
> the distributer's job. With services like CD Baby and Tune core, musicians 
> already have a distributer at there fingertips. There is no advantage to 
> shipping CD's yourself and processing credit cards. Yes, it may seem as 
> though you keep all the profits, but online payment gateways are very 
> expensive per month. Also, you would be unable to get your musicians into 
> iTunes, Amazon, etc because of lack of track record. None of us can get 
> our music there without the help of the above mentioned services. Also, 
> you lose out on the discoverability of your musicians being listed with 
> all of the digital delivery options that the above mentioned services 
> provide. If no one can find you, no one will buy and 100 percent of 0 is 
> still 0.
> Also,  a publisher does not sell CD's either. Publishers deal with the 
> ownership of someone's catalog. They're the ones who get music cut by 
> other artists, secure sync rights for television, etc.
> If you really want to set up a label and function as such, then you're 
> object is to fund the making of records. In a sense, you loan money to an 
> artist for them to make their album, which includes recording, mixing, 
> mastering, artwork and layout, pressing if you so choose, and submitting 
> to retailers. Then, you take a cut from those sales to pay yourself back. 
> That's called recoupable income. Lastly, with the advent of streaming 
> services like Spotify, RDO, Mog, Rhapsody, etc, the game is changing yet 
> again. People are moving to a subscription model for their musical 
> entertainment, which means that artists make about 4 cents per stream of a 
> song. In short, my advice, don't reinvent the wheel. It's way harder than 
> it's worth and the return on investment isn't worth the effort. Again, I'm 
> not trying to be a wet blanket, but I'm telling you like it is. I deal 
> with this stuff on a daily basis as a musician, producer, writer, etc. 
> Good luck.
>
> Kevin
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