little boxes, little boxes, like boxes made of plastic stuff, little boxes, little boxes and they all look just the same....
Of course, as I look at the back I find out that my bar-code label has disappeared off the art. I went back and checked the proof that I got back from CD Forge and sure enough, its not there. I looked right past it….Still, it is a bit exciting to have these drop in my lap here at work.
Very strange feeling to see all this mass of colorful, shrink wrapped bits of my labor staring up at me. A couple of people here at my office bought the first two, and that is a bit of a weird feeling too, charging someone for my music. Of course, I never felt that way when my friends would come and check out my band, its not like I had the ability to put everyone on the guest list, after all. Hey, if I actually start making money on this, or even break even, I'll get over it.
Now its off to CD Baby, which is right near where I live, and drop a few CDs.
Now I am home, boxes of CDs under my arm, after going to the CDBaby warehouse. Like I said, its not far from where I live, only up in the industrial area.
----later----
It’s a damn big warehouse, I was a bit stunned by the size of it, crammed to the gills with CDs – must have been tens of thousands easily.
I walk in, there is loud rock and roll blaring from a boom box, and some people loading CDs into boxes. Nothing fancy here, some posters on the walls, a bunch of computers and some people typing away. I go up to the guy in front, explain that I have some new CDs, and he types in my band name and there I am. As he gets my info straight, I ask him about how many CDs come in to CDBaby a day – I had no idea at all, I thought maybe a dozen or so. Guess again – its more like 300 a day. Every day. More on average on Monday, since there is no shipping on the weekend. Boy, do I feel special now! He also told me they ship about 2000 CDs a day. Just think of that: that’s roughly 480,000 a year, which sounds like a lot unless you compared it to the vast commercial arena of big labels and independent labels. After all, you have to sell a million bucks worth of records for a gold record, and a million units to get platinum. Whoa! Still – think what the music business is missing by not paying attention to anything but the bottom line. Their loss I guess.
Still, he tells me that the two people that listen to the CDs actually do listen to each and every track on each CD – not necessarily all of each track, but to each track. They sit there in the headphones, all day 2 days each week, and listen to new music. The intake clerk says, I’d go crazy if I had to do that. Me too, that would just suck, especially if you are like me and have really exacting standards.
So how do CDs get the recommended status? He tells me that it just depends on how the CD hits one of their two reviewers. Maybe if they like a CD enough they listen to the whole thing, I don’t know, he doesn’t know. Once again, it all just depends on what someone else likes. Kinda sucks, but I don’t know how else you would do it. One thing that is a problem with me is that I don’t know of anyone else my music sounds like. The clerk tells me he can give the reviewers a heads up, so that maybe if I sound like someone else they will let me know. Of course, I have worked so long and so hard not to sound like anyone else…………well, that a loser game too. I must remind someone of something, I am not so vain to think that I have come up with the only original pieces of music in the last century. How much easier if I just wrote, say, metal or, oh wait, there must be 50 different kinds of metal. So much for that idea.
It will be a few days now until my page is up on CDBaby. Just a waiting game. At that point then, I guess I will take over the world……or maybe not. I am waiting for that one good thing: the first CD I sell to someone I don’t know.
I was going to lay down what I spent on all this but lets make it simple: if I sell 105 of these babys, I break even. Everything after that is just gravy, ha! Doesn’t seem like much to ask, does it? Unless you factor in that CDBaby gets what, 72,000 new CDs each year?
Still – no matter what, I have done what I started out to do about two years ago. I am gonna hang onto that, hopefully longer than I have to hang on to all these CDs I have down here in the studio with me. To those of you who have actually read all these 17 little essays, my hats off to you, and my profound thanks. I hope we all learned a bit in the process, and that maybe I gave you a few laughs along the way.
And what now? What else, time to start on the next CD with Jeff, and maybe that live show. Stay tuned…..