How Do You Sell 30,000 Copies?

[brandondrury]

I sometimes hear about bands who sell 20,000 or 30,000 cds. I have to ask the question. How do you do it?

I'm assuming that a big part of it is recording an album that is good enough that people consider it worth buying and telling their friends.

Brandon

[Jroye82]

Market to the masses. 12 - 17 yr old kids. There is your number 1 consumer of music nowa' days.

Wanna be on the radio and sell a few records?
You better sound main stream.



The music industry sux

[thesilentdrummer]

I think the big thing is that you will not be selling physical albums anymore, except to the people who attend your gigs. The way to go now, i think, is to get on iTunes (very easy now, since there is a service called Tune Core that gets you on for $9.99 an album) and then get your songs on the radio. I think thats the easiest and best way to sell music now. Sadly, the era of kids buying music at record stores is over. Why spend $15-$20 on a physical album when I can buy the one song I like for $.99???

[Jroye82]

Its the age of the single and the video..and the half nekkid girls.



no longer is the album of any importance i think.

[knelt]

Sadly, I have no Idea how to sell 30,000 copies for most people. The way it happened for us is that somehow the online gaming community as well as anime convention kind of people (basically really big nerds) started to spread word of mouth about our record all over their blogs and online convention stuff, and a distribution deal we signed with a company called Spirit River (now defunct) got our discs available on Yahoo and people started buying them. Two years later nobody was buying them anymore, and our follow up album completely bombed, so it's a difficult thing to guarantee.

Hope that helps.

[brandondrury]

the era of kids buying music at record stores is over.

I'm wouldn't say it's over. It's been a while since I saw the 2006 numbers, but if memory serves me downloads only accounted for 10% of all sales. So somebody was still buying cds in 2007. Then again, my memory may be way off.

Its the age of the single and the video..and the half nekkid girls.

I'd assume they've been saying this since 1984. I know George Martin talks about how important it was to a killer first single back in the Beatles early days. In fact, I want to say that there first recording was just a few songs. It's been too long since I read that book.

Market to the masses. 12 - 17 yr old kids. There is your number 1 consumer of music nowa' days.

I think the 12-17 demographic as historially always been the buyers of music. That was my golden age of buying cds.

So my question is how does a non-label band sell 30,000 cds to 12-17 year olds?

[brandondrury]

Interesting, so how did the online gambling and anime people pick up on the songs? I'm guessing your songs weren't called "What if Robert Deniro Ran An Online Casino?" and "Cartoon Ninja Porn"..... (I may have to write each of these, actually!)

Was your second album musicially different than your first album? How long did it take for the follow up to come out? Did people forget about you?

I'm HIGHLY intrigued by this.

Brandon

[knelt]

That's actually online GAMING, not gambling. As in, people who like to pretend that they're big muscular gladiators saving damsels in distress and finding magic potions and stuff like that.

Yes, the albums were musically different. Food of the Gods (the one that sold really well) was an extremely low budget project that was made with enormous amounts of time. The songs were arranged during the recording process, there were layers and layers of complex effects and crap, mostly to make up for the lack of quality in the individual sounds, and frankly it didn't sound like a band. It sounded, in my oppinion, like a mess. No two songs sounded even remotely similar to one another. However, the songwriting, now that I think back on it, was possibly some of my best, due to the fact that I was in a pretty happy place emotionally, and had my sense of humour running pretty well.

Solid Space (the one that went ker-splat and sold, I think, about 600 copies with North America wide distribution and a mid sized record label to back us and radio play and everything) was much better recorded. We had actually rehearsed as a band for two full years and paid careful attention to tones and gear and space and melody. We recorded with a decent sized budget, were able to actually get drum performances that were in time, and just basically did the recording correctly. Even had major label quality mastering done on the thing. The songs had a common thread in their writing and arrangement, and we were able to do the record with minimal layering, due to the careful original arrangements and high quality recording.

And now, you ask, why was THAT the one that bombed, and I'd have to say that I'm not 100% sure, but I definitely have my theories. First, I was writing immediately after my divorce, and to say that the record is a miserable and angry experience to listen to would be an understatement. I find the thing, now that I listen back on it, to be emotionally draining. Any one song on the record would have been the REALLY DARK track on anybody else's record, and it's just not a lot of fun to hear ten of them in a row.

Second (and here's the part that the home recording forums will probably hate to hear) the record was far too well produced for the tastes of our extremely individual fan base. These are the kind of people who love you partially because of your music, and partially because listening to music that could never be on top 40 radio makes them feel superior. I actually recieved death threats after the release of Solid Space from one individual who felt that it would be better for us to die than to "sell out with this FM radio bullshit." I kid you not.

Third, it was four years between full releases. We did a stopgap EP in the middle, which did fine but was clearly a recording experiment rather than a real group of songs.

The songs on the garageband site are labelled with which record they are from. Funny enough, when they were reviewed on Garageband, the songs from Solid Space universally scored higher than the Food of the Gods ones, probably because the reviewers are pretty much only listening to production, and certainly not interested in things like emotional values, though these are generally the qualities that actually make people interested in your band.

Hope this helps.

[maxpidge]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

I sometimes hear about bands who sell 20,000 or 30,000 cds. I have to ask the question. How do you do it?

I'm assuming that a big part of it is recording an album that is good enough that people consider it worth buying and telling their friends.

Brandon

wow thank you captain obvious!

if it's a great record, and a great live band, then it's easy, check out CRUD at www.myspace.com/cruddetroit we sell tons of cd's at all our old out shows, good is good...

[thesilentdrummer]

Originally Posted by maxpidge

we sell tons of cd's at all our old out shows, good is good...

How??? That's what we are trying to figure out. Did you publicize yourselves (how'd you do that)? Did you use the radio?? Did you just show up at gigs and play???

My friends' band is really good. They have solid recordings and play great shows. But they aren't getting any fans outside of the core group of 100-200 people. So how would a band with a great sound, a great show, and a great CD sell their product??