EMAIL ABOUT PITCHFORK

some email correspondence i got about the pitchfork thing.

Hey,

Just read the article/interview on Pitchfork and was a bit disappointed to see that filesharing got blamed for the decrease in sales. I'm quite sympathetic to your frustration but I don't think it's directed at entirely the right issue.

The example of The Goslings / Warmth split not attracting the same amount of sales, for instance: for whatever reason, in 2009 the album didn't attract nearly the amount of hype and solid reviews that Grandeur of Hair did. Blogs and review sites lavished praise over it, while hardly any sites talked much about the split.

For instance, on RateYourMusic, a database of people keeping track of their MP3 or CD collections, you'll see that Grandeur of Hair has 329 ratings and Heaven of Animals has 16.

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the_goslings/grandeur_of_hair/

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the_goslings_and_warmth/heaven_of_animals/

If filesharing were to blame, don't you think there'd be the same level of interest generated, yet fewer sales? From what I've noticed, filesharing seems to be part of the marketing hype cycle of generating interest, especially in niche markets. Perhaps the fickle hype processes might be more to blame?

http://rateyourmusic.com/label/archive_recordings/

Michel

My reply

Hey didn’t know the article was up.. I just cruised it and I think its pretty well written.. I will say we did talk about a lot of things that have taken place in the market place and I would say there are a whole host of different factors on the table currently that can be linked to the more or less wide scale drop off in sales (this is the case with nearly every label I’ve talked to) He’s focused on the downloading file sharing for his piece, which I think might make up the lions share of the issue?? But certainly things like the fans fickle taste, current worldwide economic situation in the last two years, the over glut of product out there to consume, and maybe the people that used to buy my releases have just grown less interested in what I’m doing???

So I agree with your valid observation as noted below, but one thing I can tell you is the landscape is very different for me then it was two years ago, the ultimate reason is most like some type of combination of all of the above..

All good though life long music lover here and will stay that way.