Be Careful What you Wish For

My Dad had two expressions he quoted frequently "Be careful what you wish for" and "Be nice to people on the way up as you might meet them on the way down". A couple of recent events have taught me that there are some in the music industry should take note.

Recently a popular and well established folk act were tweeting that their new album was available via Amazon and i tunes at a cheap price (for information a price that I am unable to get it at wholesale from their distributor!). When I cheekily tweeted that they ought to support the independents and could they re-tweet that it was available via my site I immediately received a phone call from their manager. He explained this wasn't possible as my sales were not recorded for chart purposes and they were desperate to get into top 20. The result was they achieved a chart position and I didn't sell a single copy. The ultimate result is that will I stock their future releases - highly unlikely.

Secondly, I was marketing a forthcoming release and as usual it was available on the site with audio samples of a couple of tracks to whet people's appetite (for avoidance of doubt only to listen to and not possible to download). This is an artist who is now being hailed as possible 'breakthrough artist of 2013' who in fact we been stocking and heavily promoting their work for 10 years. Following someone tweeting that they listened to these tracks on my site and were looking forward to the album I received an e-mail from their 'worldwide management'. This e-mail instructed me to remove the audio samples and consider whether I could continue having clips for their previous albums (despite some of them having been avoidable for nearly ten years). This is ironic as a track from the album was played on a Radio 2 programme and it is still available their via i-player. Result - considering whether I wish to continue stocking this artist - despite being a personal fan and strong advocate of their material to customers.

The issue being when only Amazon, I-tunes and Spotify remain where will the power lie and respect and love of the music. I perfectly understand the need to current fuel sales via large outlets 'but be careful what you wish for'.

But hopefully those are only isolated incidents - because in contrast an artist who we'd previously stocked their EP releases has just released their debut album - provided full digital access to tracks - indeed it was available online to listen to entire album pre-release. Their management provided the album to me at a special price allowing me to get close to the larger online retailers. Result I'm taking a strong interest in seeing them do well, will certainly stock their future releases and although not released until Monday 28th is already doing well.

I'm not going to name the guilty but I should name the angels Robert Vincent and his new album Life In Easy Steps is excellent and you should get it now!.