The Schema: In The Shops

DIY music used to consist of a C30 cassette of tunes which you'd recorded on a 4-track in your shed. You scrawled on it with some biro, or a felt tip if you were posh, shoved it in a jiffy bag and sent it to John Peel. But now, it's different, isn't it. Yes, it is.

The Schema challenge is to record, distribute and promote a single from my bedroom in a 30-day timeframe. The resulting yacht-rock spectacular is called Those Rules You Made, and is released under the name The Schema on 20th August, via iTunes and a load of other online stores. My name is Rhodri, and this is the story...

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July 2007
August 2007

In The Shops

Getting your tunes onto vinyl or CD used to be expensive, but provided you had the cash in the bank it was easily done. More difficult was actually getting it into the shops. Distributors were, and are, a hard headed bunch of fuckers, and with good reason - they know full well that your record was likely to sell barely anything, as no-one beyond your own cultural and physical cul-de-sac had ever bloody heard of you. This led to the common phenomenon of bands with hundreds upon hundreds of their own CDs under their beds, propping up the TV, filling every conceivable space with a grim reminder of the unmarketability of your music.

Today, we have the mp3. It occupies no physical space whatsoever. We don't have to guess how many we're going to sell before we start. Every download just magics another copy out of the digital ether. If we have big hopes, but fail miserably, we won't trip over a teetering pile of mp3s every time we go to the bathroom. This is a relief. But how do we get it into the online stores?

iTunes is obviously the key. It's where the majority of online music is bought. Of course, Apple don't want to talk to a zillion different artists who all want to upload their warblings. So if you're unsigned (and god, have any of us ever been remotely signed, even for a second) you have to deal with a 3rd party.

If you search on Google for "getting on iTunes" or similar, you usually end up at a site called CDBaby. Investigate online forums talking about CDBaby, and you quickly realise that CDBaby are swamped beyond belief, and will take 3 months to get back to you after you've sent them, er 5 CDs - CDs? come on, it's 2007! - and might never get back to you at all. Sounds a bit like a CD distributor circa 2002. And they're in America. We'd like a home-grown solution.

And we found one. EmuBands is a company based in Glasgow. They'll get your music on iTunes, Napster, TuneTribe, MSN, Yahoo, MTV Download Centre, CD Wow, etc, with the minimum of fuss, it seems. For a 2-track single, as we've just made, we just pay £24.95, email them the WAV files of the tunes along with a JPG image, sit back and wait. We've asked nicely, and they reckon 4 weeks before we get in the stores. Provisional release date of Monday, August 20th. And we get to keep 100% of receipts. Now this, we like. Total spend: £62.29.

posted by The Schema at Wednesday, July 25, 2007

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	DIY music used to consist of a C30 cassette of tunes which you'd recorded on a 4-track in your shed. You scrawled on it with some biro, or a felt tip if you were posh, shoved it in a jiffy bag and sent it to John Peel. But now, it's different, isn't it. Yes, it is. The Schema challenge is to record, distribute and promote a single from my bedroom in a 30-day timeframe. The resulting yacht-rock spectacular is called Those Rules You Made, and is released under the name The Schema on 20th August, via iTunes and a load of other online stores. My name is Rhodri, and this is the story...
	Buy The Single! from iTunes from us Our Links the VIDEO! rhodri.biz email MySpace Garageband PureVolume TagWorld Bebo Facebook App Assisted By drinkmilk Emu Bands likemind Lot 49 Films Marysia K HitSongScience DreamHost Mailing List Type email! Previous Posts What About The Music? Art Route MyGarageSpaceBand Domain Master Archives July 2007 August 2007	In The Shops Getting your tunes onto vinyl or CD used to be expensive, but provided you had the cash in the bank it was easily done. More difficult was actually getting it into the shops. Distributors were, and are, a hard headed bunch of fuckers, and with good reason - they know full well that your record was likely to sell barely anything, as no-one beyond your own cultural and physical cul-de-sac had ever bloody heard of you. This led to the common phenomenon of bands with hundreds upon hundreds of their own CDs under their beds, propping up the TV, filling every conceivable space with a grim reminder of the unmarketability of your music. Today, we have the mp3. It occupies no physical space whatsoever. We don't have to guess how many we're going to sell before we start. Every download just magics another copy out of the digital ether. If we have big hopes, but fail miserably, we won't trip over a teetering pile of mp3s every time we go to the bathroom. This is a relief. But how do we get it into the online stores? iTunes is obviously the key. It's where the majority of online music is bought. Of course, Apple don't want to talk to a zillion different artists who all want to upload their warblings. So if you're unsigned (and god, have any of us ever been remotely signed, even for a second) you have to deal with a 3rd party. If you search on Google for "getting on iTunes" or similar, you usually end up at a site called CDBaby. Investigate online forums talking about CDBaby, and you quickly realise that CDBaby are swamped beyond belief, and will take 3 months to get back to you after you've sent them, er 5 CDs - CDs? come on, it's 2007! - and might never get back to you at all. Sounds a bit like a CD distributor circa 2002. And they're in America. We'd like a home-grown solution. And we found one. EmuBands is a company based in Glasgow. They'll get your music on iTunes, Napster, TuneTribe, MSN, Yahoo, MTV Download Centre, CD Wow, etc, with the minimum of fuss, it seems. For a 2-track single, as we've just made, we just pay £24.95, email them the WAV files of the tunes along with a JPG image, sit back and wait. We've asked nicely, and they reckon 4 weeks before we get in the stores. Provisional release date of Monday, August 20th. And we get to keep 100% of receipts. Now this, we like. Total spend: £62.29. posted by The Schema at Wednesday, July 25, 2007 +=+=+