I’ve often wondered how many people are active supporters of ITM world wide and just what the distribution is throughout the countries with significant numbers of supporters. I’d like to know for all sorts of reasons but one obvious motive is that accurate information might help secure commercial release for tapes that would have been made available long ago (as bootlegs) were this jazz or blues.
Any information would be welcome, however local or anecdotal. If others share my interest, we might build up an accurate picture over time. Any measure that gives information would be welcome too. I’m just as curious to know how many people play the music as I am to know how many people support it through CDs and concerts. I suppose the best measure would be CD sales. So, does anybody know how many copies of a very successful CD, and an average CD, respectively, would be sold?
For definiteness, and to facilitate comparison, let’s ask this question of three different categories of CD. First, pure drop and historical recordings (which might not be fully pure drop but which would be bought by much the same people.) Second, CDs in more modern styles—Planxty, son of Planxty, grandson of Planxty, that sort of thing. Something counts here if it’s loosely rooted in the tradition and not obviously trying to be fusion or pop. Early Solas counts as does Patrick Street; Moving Hearts and the Afro-Celts don’t count. Finally, how well does pop with a bit of Irish influence do—Pogues, Enya, Corrs? I just wonder how far short of the pop-celtic market the harder core markets fall.
Obviously my definitions are stipulations and just meant to be suggestive; don’t ask me to defend my drawing the boundaries where I did. Please don’t withhold information just because you think early Solas is fusion … or whatever. But I think I draw the boundaries roughly where a lot of others do and, since it’s markets I’m interested in, that makes best sense to me.
You might want to contact some of the CD publishers in Ireland and the USA directly to obtain this kind of info. Claddagh, Gael Linn, Tara, Sheanachie, Cló Iar-Chonnachta, Green Linnet, Rounder, Ossian, etc. Even NPU might be able to give you a feeling for sales volumes of their CD offerings.
If you know any Irish musicians who have tried to self-publish, you may get some revealing figures from them, as they are usually the ones who haul boxes of their own CDs to every gig they do, and know very well what their sales are like.
Wombat, I’m a bit puzzled. I think djm’s advice is germane, but I also get the impression that you’re looking for Chiffboard members to sound off on this thread, too. Is that so? I don’t know how accuate a picture you’d get from that, considering the apparent scope of your vision in this matter.
Thanks djm, good advice. But I wonder just how accurate the information from companies would be unless I told them why I was interested. About a year ago I put a bit of work into finding an Australian distributor for a very good Irish CD but had to put that work on hold. When I take that up again, I’d like a bit more knowledge than I had then. I found there was a mismatch between what shops were telling me and the interest shown by friends, many of whom have only a casual interest in ITM. I found myself running out of promotional copies because of the demand.
I’m not actually interested in distribution or production myself right now, but, in a couple of years, who knows? Any information I get here or elsewhere I’ll be sharing with musicians, here and overseas, who sell CDs at gigs anyway; I know a lot of them would like a more accurate picture than they currently have. For example, is it worth touring Australia for an Amercian act? Is it worth touring Europe?
Yes I am Nano. How did Dale put it recently? I’ll use triangulation to sort the wheat from the chaff and take the mixed metaphors that result with a grain of salt. I think my second post helps explain what I’m up to. When I get information, however inaccurate, I’ll double and tripple check.
Ya, sorry, a bit of mock-German left over from Monty Python.
Wombat, I would guess that the market for older stuff is quite small, judging by the way the albums come up for sale for a while and then disappear, sometimes to be re-released by another publisher. I would also guess that there are considerations not only in the size of a batch of CDs, but also how long it takes to sell them (storage space being counted as a business cost). Gael Linn is notorious for bringing great albums to the fore, and then letting them sell out, never to be re-released again.
Have you talked to a local CD printer? What sizes do they do their batches in - min, -max, -costs? This might also give you a feeling for what you’re getting into.
Very well, Wombat. I play ITM, and humbly consider myself a perpetual student of it. When I started out (and before that, too), I bought a lot more recordings than I do now. I’ve become less interested in my entertainment and moreso in my edification, and so when I’m directed to recordings, it’s the archival and pure drop for me. Recently I purchased a couple of 2nd-tier (per your guidelines) CDs, and realised that that sort of thing wasn’t what I wanted any more, even though the musicianship was brilliant. What I look for are recordings that point directly to the tradition and can help me along my way where I’m equal to the task.
As time goes on, I’m more about doing, and listening has become a means of learning and a way to determine how to sound best whether as part of a group or solo.
I’ve always got some tune in my head that I’m mulling over, anyway, playing variations or goals for my future hands-on attempts. Recordings get in the way of that, but that’s not to say that I’ve turned away from recordings. It’s just not a priority any more.
It’s a start, Nano. Frankly, it’s more helpful than some of the things I was being told.
I honestly think that this sort of information would be very helpful to a lot of people, especially those who might have it in mind to bring out a CD and just look to cover costs. The fact that so many big names got into trouble with Green Linnet suggests that perhaps even very successful artists, by ITM standards, don’t know very much about the business side. I’m pretty sure that a lot of what I was hearing from shops and others was innaccurate and some of it was surely meant to be. Would a distributor be likely to give me accurate figures if he suspected I was about to start up a rival company? I didn’t expect to be given accurate figures. I expected to calculate accurate figures by putting together information from a number of sources. Shops that don’t do their own importing have less reason to lie, but often don’t know much about promotion. I want to tap into any information I can get whether or not I get into this myself because I still want to help out friends and any other musicians who would like to negotiate from a better informed position for that matter.
You might try dropping an e-mail to Charlie and Mary Lou over at Ossian USA ( http://www.ossianusa.com/ ). I’m sure they could provide some interesting insights.
Part of the problem is the devil is in the details. I buy a decent number of pure drop albums, but they’re strongly focused in the musical areas I’m interested in. If you can come up with some Newfoundland or Sligo stuff (especially Sligo flute), I’m there.
If, on the other hand, you’ve got pure drop recordings from, I dunno, Clare, it’s going to have to be something really special to catch my interest.
I think most of my musician friends are like that, except for we each like different things. Brock wants those Paddy Canny albums; Jen wants French-Canadian (and Newfoundland) stuff; Steph seems to have Old Timey stuff half the time I see her with a CD. And we focus on the instruments we play.
So it’s not enough to evaluate the pure drop market – you’ve got to evaluate the market for the particular pieces of it you’re interested in.
For independent (self) releases, I’ve heard the rule of thumb is 1000 copies per person in the band. Solo artist, 1000 copies. 3-person group, 3000 copies. This still might take some time to sell through the pressing, with CDs sitting in the bedroom or wherever until then. A far cry from, say, The Dixie Chicks (250,000 first week of release). Obviously the big names and touring artists could expect more sales. Difficult to recover costs, unless recording and engineering is done with friends. Often the main purpose of a release might be to give that snapshot in time of how the artist’s playing was then.
Among my own odd little group of friends and aquaintances, there are only about 5 of us who are interested in pure drop or even “grandson of Planxty.”
Oppose that to about 60 or so folks who think that, while Trad is cool, Seven Nations is way much cooler, along with some Native American flute and perhaps some Clandestine.
Note: lest I be flamed, I am one of the pure drop guys. My small collection of trad CDs is probably the largest in the Texarkana region.
Thanks Kevin, those figures are in the region that I’d heard too. But I’m not too sure what they mean. They can’t mean ‘recover costs’ since that isn’t a function of the number of band members. So I guess it means, ‘make the effort worthwhile.’ If so, what would the break even mark be, assuming recording costs were minimal or have been recovered? I’m wondering, for example, how many copies of the Mrs Crotty CD you’d have to sell to break even, assuming RTE would license the masters to you. My personal interest isn’t in making money so much as in not losing money unexpectedly. It’s also in compiling reliable information to pass on to friends and other interested musicians. Having the information doesn’t mean you could prevent the Green Linnet fiasco, but, when the facts are in on that one, that information should go into the folio you make available to musicians so they have a better idea what kind of contract to avoid and also a bit of help should they decide to go it alone. I bet Joanie Madden and Lunasa and the others wished they’d known then what they know now.
Well, I think there are things other than number of sales that make the effort worthwhile for the artist financially as well as artistically and historically. I don’t know how many units Mary Bergin shifted. But I bet her fee for appearances has gone up, and her fee for master classes, and the demand for both, as a direct consequence of the reputation those recordings made for her. If there’s a whistler or 10 just as good who hasn’t recorded, I bet they don’t see as much of the incidental action.
I know, pretty much straight from the horses mouth actually, how hard it can be to keep up a vaguely middle-class lifestyle for members and ex-members of popular grandson-of-Planxty style bands, and having a lot of little earners seems to help a lot. If you compose, your chances of finding steady little earners increase of course, but this isn’t really open to someone who wants to make a living from ITM, even of the GOP kind, although music just a bit more poppy makes it into shopping malls and so on and there are royalties for that.
At http://www.bmg.com you might get some information about ITM CDs and how much are sold etc…
If you want to make a private recording I just Know from our church choir 3000€ for I think 300 CDs.
Like any good artistic training institution they don’t just teach performance, but also give students some notions of the business end of the business, so if they don’t already have the information that you’re looking for to hand, they might be interested in developing the knowledge base.
If your aim is to stock and sell ITM recordings, especially stuff that is older, then you will have to accept that sales would be slow but steady. You would see a return on your investment, but it could be years coming.
You noted that you don’t care if you turn a profit, but don’t want to be losing money, either. How do you determine if you’re losing money? If sitting on a stock of one thousand CDs of one album that takes five to ten years to sell is your idea of breaking even, then you have broken even, but if you think you are going burn through a crate of Mrs. Crotty in six months you are probably going to be disappointed.
:roll:
