I totally understand Dirk's experience since I am in the record shop
business. However my situation is even worse than his because I rarely get
any diverse promos bc I am out here in Hong Kong. I am not considered a big
client to my distributors- they would give stock to major orders. It's all a
guessing game for me when I order. I have to do a lot more research and
homework in magazines yet in many cases distributors get faster stock than
music magazines. And in some cases, the magazines review some titles that I
want but I can't get. It's worth it since I am only a very small shop...so
budget is a main concern.
The average Mr. Smith affects more on the music industry than the people
here on this mailing list. I think for us it's more to get exposure to music
we are tracking to buy. I use to do it from Napster. I would never have
heard tracks for example 50 cent's Thug Love with Eminem and Destiny's Child
or rare Coldcut tracks that I thought I had the whole discography of. Let's
just say my music knowledge has expanded many times over when either I
search for music on the net (Napster), or when people email me tracks they
recommend.
However without Napster, my music search has now ended up at online record
shops. It's a little late when it comes to"wow great track, let me order it
for the shop and oh, its all out of stock" scenario. I don't think I can
ever find a way to be ahead of the game since the music industry is way too
complex and growing too fast. UNLESS, people are willing to send me more
promos. I am lucky to be on a few promo mailing list like Compost.
It seems there is no control to illegal distribution of music, especially
with today's technology and availability to do it. I guess the best that we
can all do is play out more songs that are good and word of mouth of good
music. We can never stop people who distribute music via mp3 or stop people
who have this frame of mind to collect their music via Mp3 formats. I know
too many people who are doing that. It's for those who prefer to spend that
"money" on something else and music is not their first priority.
Calvin.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Dec 01 2001 - 03:14:03 CET