On Sun, 13 Aug 1995, Alex in Fonthill wrote:
The > things you have to watch out for are the superficial things about a band, > like their appearance and packaging. These are the things controlled not by > the people who make the music, but the people who will do anything to make > the album look attractive enough for you to buy. As we have grown up being > blasted in the head by advertising, we rarely realize how vulnerable we > are. > Any band with half a brain has almost total control over their album art. And they themselves should want to go to some lengths to make the album attractive and eyecatching to help improve sales. I'd bet every band on SU played a major part in their album design, or at least had fianl say on whether they wanted use it or not. Also, to comment on your comment on the label selling the record rather than the bands music causing the sales: Don't you think that in some cases the label can get the record in stores where the band can't afford to get (i.e. Newfoundland), and then the reputation of the label may be the only reason people look at or take an initial listen to the record? It's all very idealistic to expect a band to be able to create all the hype themselves but the reason we have record labels is to help sell records. If all bands were together enought to hype their album on national scale by themselves I'd expect you'd see many more totally independent releases as the bands could make more money that way (no middle man), assuming that if they're that together they could generate the necessary funds. Since this is not the case, one must assume that a record labels reputation must have some clout in the marketplace. Perhaps it may be a bit in your face to heavily sticker an album with the labels name or logo, but would you not buy a record because you thought the label was being to in your face even though you liked the band? Sorry this discussion is running a little long but I'm enjoying the politics. Peace, HUB
