JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Links To Most Of The 2006 JPF Music Awards Song Winners

The biggest problem with doing any compilation is finding a market for it. Derek Sivers told me the best selling compilation CD in CD Baby history sold 200 copies. The CD Baby compilation they did for charity purposes sold less than 50 copies and it was promoted over and over to the entire CD Baby database which is much larger than ours. If they could only sell 50.. my most optimistic estimate would be that we could sell maybe 100 on the site and perhaps 3-5 at each Roadtrip showcase (and that's being optimistic). If we do 50 Roadtrip shows in 2007 that's still only 150-250 copies. The cost of doing the compilation has to first be recouped and then how much income would be made to the group after that? Again, we're using overly optimistic numbers based on the track record we've heard from CD Baby. It's the old problem of marketing a product to other people who make the same product. (You wouldn't sell vacuum cleaners to other vacuum cleaner manufacturers with very much success). I've found over the years that musicians aren't often great music fans. They rarely embrace new music even as much as the average person outside of music. Most musicians favorites lists include artists from their past who helped them develop their own sound. They far less often include artists who are on the charts right now or artists for example that have recently won awards. That's not always the case, but in general it's a trend I have long witnessed.

On the other hand, if we could get some type of distribution, the compilations are far more attractive. The general public really does like compilations with a purpose (like award winners) and if we could find a good distributor at retail level, it could work. Or if we could get it featured on iTunes or similar sites, it might work as well. Though it would be tough for us to make any money from that project on digital downloads because most of these artists already have exclusive deals through CD Baby for digital distribution. I am not sure if we could sell those same songs on a compilation and collect money directly from it.

Brian