[Dixielandjazz] Re: Sorry, Tom. More realities of jazz recording

[Don Mopsick]

I found the recent exchange between Mike Vax and Tom Wiggins to be
rather interesting. Here are two guys, both with vast experience in the
business, with two totally different points of view. 
 
Tom: some questions for you. Do you feel that you would be able to
duplicate your successes in today's music business environment? If not,
what are the most important differences between then and now that would
prevent that from happening? Is the record company business model so
radically different now?
 
Mike: you correctly point out the reality of the difference in operating
conditions between the miniscule trad jazz world and what Tom has been
involved with, but wouldn't it be nice to generate those kinds of
numbers in today's farkakhte music scene? (translation for goyim: "kakn"
is a Yiddish verb meaning "to defecate," and "farkakhte" is an adjective
derived therefrom meaning "all shitted up.")
 
Like Jim K., Jim Cullum has told me that he doesn't think of selling our
CDs as generating a big revenue stream, but rather more as a promotional
tool. Since he has his own jazz club with a yearly through-traffic of
about 100,000 people, most of the sales are generated on-location. He
also does a fair amount of business on-site at concerts. But he is
definitely not of the mind set of some of the bands that go to Sac, for
example, with the goal of making $50K + from merchandise sales, not that
there's anything wrong with that. I think with him it's a matter of
having just so many hours in a day to expend energy doing things he
thinks matter more big-picture-wise. 
 
We are going to try CD Baby with our new release, but the evidence I've
been able to gather so far is that online selling in general for the
most part hasn't lived up to the promise in terms of numbers. 
 
mopo
 
Don Mopsick, Riverwalk Webmaster