Quote:

"Barking Pumpkin Records"

Frank Zappa did it.



So did Sting. And Todd Rundgren. And Janis Ian. And many others who got tired of record company red tape.

However, does my name fit into that sentence anywhere?

This is the same concept as all the Little Mary Sunshine people who delight in telling me "Oh, you're not too old to play. Look at the Rolling Stones."

My reply? "Yes look at them. They have been a major 'somebody' for 50 years. Veteran acts hanging in is a little different than starting over again at 61."

You guys are taking my comments all wrong. Make your CDs. Sell them to everybody at every Joe's Bar gig you play. Let me know the first time you sell a substantial amount to anybody 2000 miles away from where you live.

This discussion isn't even about making your music. It's about marketing your music.

There is a guy who was the local hero here in Cleveland. I won't mention his name because we hate each other and he would sue me. Leave it to say that everybody loves him in that blind following way where he sells out shows even though he is WAY past his prime and now just writes to write. He was huge here in the 70s and early 80s though.

I was in Dallas Texas for a month in the early 90s. With weekends off and a rental car, I hit a bunch of record stores. I found one of his albums (this was when there was more vinyl than CD) and took it to the front and asked the clerk if they have ever sold one. She looked it up. They had never sold one of this guy's albums. None of them. They were VERY good albums, full of very good songs. But nobody in Texas had ever heard of the guy and who is going to buy an album by a guy you never heard of?

Here was a guy who DID have the machine behind him. He was on a fairly major label, and he DID play Dallas. Yet he had never sold an album in Dallas.

I am not saying don't sell your CDs. The topic of the thread was "To release a CD yourself or not". If you CAN get "the machine" behind you and make you available in 50 United States and 10 provinces in Canada, as well as the rest of the world, chances are you may sell more units. Maybe even get some radio play and pick up some mechanicals. A former bandmate has a song that somehow got some play in Australia. Every now and then he gets a royalty check for a few bucks. He still doesn't know how it got on the air, but BMI is BMI and he got his mechanical royalties.

So make your own copies, come up with a cute name for your "label", put funny artwork on the labels you make on your printer to stick on them, crank them out with a bulk duplication device, whatever. IF... I had the talent, the quality product, the funds to lawyer up to protect myself, I would be trying to go the label route. It's all a moot point because I don't have any of the above, but to answer the original topic, I would take the traditional route of trying to get on a major label and have their power available to me to move units.

I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.