Dance Music... Designed To Fail?

Volume 4 (seeing red yet?)

It usually goes like this… First call; identify target (the buyer) and identify the type of music the store sells. Second call; leave message for buyer. Third call; actually speak with buyer who is still a little groggy from a late night. Fourth call; buyer agrees to receive free in store promo (you pay shipping). Fifth call; buyer remembers getting package but hasn’t opened it yet. Sixth call; buyer has listened and liked the track but wants to run it by the owner. Seventh call; fax over One Sheet for easy ordering. Eight call; buyer not awake yet. Ninth call; Buyer hasn’t seen One Sheet asks for retransmission. Tenth call; refax One Sheet. Eleventh Call; buyer is in Ibiza for summer vacation. Get the process? Try doing this for the 1500+ dance music shops all outside your calling area.

DJs
I publish this section with great anticipation of your emails. I can't wait to be called all sorts of things, but DJs are a large part of this industry since Dance music is club based. So here's a stab without pissing off the masses:

There’s simple nothing wrong with “playing records” for eight hours and pulling home $40,000+ a night? Ok that doesn't describe most of you, but it sure sounds like a plan to me! Why am I wasting my time on honing my production and song writing skills when all is takes is a couple of turntables and a chemically induced crowd who all paid $50 for the privilege. What? This isn’t you? Then why do think that every record label makes Sony level money and every artist gets paid like Madonna after all isn’t that reason that it’s ok to “share” MP3s? Simply put DJs are a wonderful resource of exposure, but all are not treated equally. What is the value of a DJ playing your record to a crowd of 2000 partygoers? Do you really think they’re going to race out the next day to buy your record? How will they even know the name of it? And if you flood the record pools with records, aren’t these the people you’re trying to sell to in the first place? Most DJ’s I know rarely purchase music since the promotional copies are so readily available. There has to be a balance here somewhere, we’ve just yet to find it.

DJs have single handedly taken over Winter Music Conference. The name should be changed to Winter DJ Conference. Don't get me wrong I LOVE DJS!, I just have the sense enough to know that when a DJ drops a needle on a record, they are usually playing someone else's music.

People Who Don't Return Phone Calls Suck!
This covers the rest of the bottom dwellers. Nothing pisses me off more than people who contact me first and are full of enthusiasm, then never return another one of my phone calls. To quote someone from a recent issue of DMA "No one is above returning a phone call" - the funny thing is that the person who wrote that actually never returned my phone calls. How sick is that? Communication is required for idea sharing and dream building. Why is it that people in this business are so poor at it?

In Conclusion
So is it all dark and bleak from here? Perhaps the recession will weed out some of these obstacles. Unfortunately bottom dwellers have a unique survivalist skill and most of them will continue to swindle the artists and dreamers for years to come. So what are we to do about this? The first step is the identification of the problem. Unfortunately many of these issues were being tossed around at my first Billboard DMS in Atlanta two years ago, so I can say there is no quick solution on the horizon. Information is power and at the very least if you're armed with this knowledge, perhaps I've spared you some shipping costs!