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There are many texts
on "How To Make It In Music." These texts describe the process
of coming up with recorded music and getting it submitted to large
record companies who will make the artist a superstar. The
books describe the record companies as organized machines that have
industry professionals who know what they are doing.
Unfortunately it is mostly a myth. Large record companies are
selling less records than they used to and are no longer the
"leaders" in the music industry. There have been very few, if
any, recent superstar artists "made" by the big record companies.
I talk about it in an interview on the
Detroit Cable TV show, Entertainment and More. that airs Thursday,
November 18, 2004 and will be available for viewing in this issue
beginning Sunday 11/21/04. This interview (about 18 minutes)
will become the first of several weekly video feature articles
posting in this issue. The issue will
be getting a new video article up and posted each week. The subject
of this issue is "Practical Training In Real World Production" and
describes the real world training that the Recording Institute of
Detroit is providing in the test marking of a production.
On a related
subject, I have the better part of a dozen
students in each of my "Basic Production School" classes that I run online
at
www.recordingwebsite.com (RW). Most of the students I see
weekly at the RID campus because they are attending the Web
Marketing course with RID Advanced Instructor, Frank G.. A couple of
students I never really see but I talk with a lot on RW forums. The
course is offered 6 times yearly and is 6 weeks long. The next
Semester begins December 19 - and we hold an orientation session on
December 12th.
Back to the test
marketing training: I go on in in the interview to
explain how I am interning these production program students. I
could just get up and talk to the students, telling them what I
think they should do to handle their release - how to put
it out and test-market it. It would be much better if I showed them, by
having them do it. So we have a class project that
students are actively working on each week and each class we have
announcements each week with the participating interns.
On Wednesday, November 24,2004 Mr Gelardi joins me in morning
seminar on "Test Marketing in retail outlets - Christmas 2004."
In December, Mr. Gelardi will give an interview for the weekly
Entertainment & More cable show.
The intern
supervision of the test marketing assignment is Tom Gelardi, President of Developing Artist
Productions (DAP). Tom has a marketing & distribution service for
independent production companies in the area. Also joining me is DAP
Vice President Frank "Cornbread" Jamal. Frank is also the CEO of
Cornbread Productions, an established Motorcity music and video
production company.
To create
product for the test marketing, I produced a
6-tune "Superdisc™" single release on RID graduate,
Dave Newland. Included "bonus" cuts are two tunes from his
2003 release "Newland For Sale." Four new tunes were recorded
for the release with a studio recording band called The Motorcity Warrentucky Rock Band. Dave and his band perform the tune,
"Loveless" on the Entertainment & More show that airs
Thanksgiving Day. Both Dave and members of the Motorcity Rock
Band are interviewed on the show.
Preview copies
of the Superisc™ singe release entitled Coming Back From
911 that was put into two large independent Motorcity record stores on election day,
2004. The goal of this class test-marketing project to sell the "magic" number of 3000 units. A display,
eight sales copies, a listening center copy and posters went into
each store. It is consigned to the store for a 32 week period
(that can be extended to 48 weeks if needed). This whole
marketing campaign is expected to reach 50 retail outlets in the
Motorcity with RID interns operating as "store representatives" The
students are supervised by the Developing Artist Productions
executives.
The Issue
We're posting this REQ issue in
it's new format with a couple of articles (including this
introduction) each week for the rest of the calendar year of 2004.
Besides the ordinary text articles, there will be video articles of
5 - 15 minutes. The first Video article, is the Bob Dennis
interview on the Warrentucky Motorcity Rock Band marketing project.
The interview that airs on the Entertainment & More TV show. We plan a
total of 4 video articles.
I've posted the "Scheduled Table
of Contents for the issue and my hope is that you will visit the
issue each week, just like you may visit the "REQ Tip Of The Week,
as thousands of our readers do. New articles get posted each
Wednesday and Sunday.
So, I hope you enjoy it, here it
goes...
Bob
GO TO CONTENTS PAGE FOR THIS ISSUE
GO TO SEPTEMBER 2000 "PREPARING FOR THE HARVEST" ISSUE
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