Tonight Matthew, I'm releasing an album

Yeah so I decided I really wanted to release an album. So first, I recorded my hit single "Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be a professional musician."

Then I jumped straight onto myspace, bebo and facebook posting bulletins letting all my fans know they can exclusively preview my new hit on the net.

Then I raced over to cdbaby.net. and signed up my new album for distro, featuring 10 super dance mega mixes alongside the original anthem.

I just needed to hook up a barcode so I can start shipping my new album to my distributor. So I paid my US$55 to CDbaby and sent them 5 of my cd's so that people around the world could order my cd from the internet and all good music stores across the ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />united states.

UNFORTUNATELY my NZ distributor felt that despite my professional approach with my registered barcode, my standards of presentation were lacking when I had clearly taken great effort to print my name on the cd. The material was supposed to sound like I had recorded it on a computer mic. Further to that, he remained aloof when I informed him marketing projections for the release of the album showed sales peaking as high as 2 units per month.

Distributors sheesh. The decline in physical sales is destroying the music industry – who do they think theyre kidding. I just went down to Real Groovy and explained that I had quite a following because I'm quite a neat friend to have on myspace and I was in Sione's Wedding briefly and I believed I could probably sell as many as 2 units in each major centre. I also drew their attention to my very professional barcode.

When he asked me the name of the label my record was coming out on, I said "Elephant" because it's the first thing that came into my mind.

They were happy to take 10 copies on a sale-or-return basis.

Later I came back in a wig and bought a copy.

When I got home I rang them for an inventory check and they informed me they had sold one copy.

Then I jumped onto my myspace and bebo and facebook and sent out a bulletin telling everyone that real groovy was now stocking my new album, so was available in each of the main centres!

My Grandma messaged back to say she couldn't get to real groovy because of her gammy hip and I said "That's okay grandma! Im selling copies for $10 on trademe!"

And that's how I set up Elephant Distribution. My friend Ian is really good on the spoons and he yells really crazily at the same time. Once I get my computer mic fixed, I'm going to be putting his album out on Elephant. With a barcode and everything.

I also gave my cd to Amplifier so they could sell my songs as digital downloads that way grandma can download it onto her ipod or buy the CD with her credit card, once ive paid off the bouncy castle. Digital downloads on Amplifier are awesome because those cd's cost me 50c, but when you sell a download it costs nothing.

But I did kind of want a cool banner with a cut and paste code so I could embed a way cool click thru link from my myspace. But I think I still managed to sell one song. I think that was grandma and she told me that it didn't sound like Howard Morrison at all.

And I still wasn't a professional musician! I needed gigs. So I went down to the Wine Cellar and told them how I've got a neat little song that I sing and that Ian is good on the spoons, I had a CD out with a proper barcode available through outlets across the united states and I would like to do a free show to promote the album.

I left them with my presskit which included a copy of my cd, a picture Ian had drawn of me and my bio describing me as "friendly towards females." They said they'd call if anything came up. I felt awesome to be gigging. I was working the circuit.

I also sent my CD to NZ musician to be reviewed because it was available through retail and not just a "demo". Then I was able to use quotes from the review on my myspace such as "if you like retarded yelping recorded through a computer microphone than this is for you". Which I really felt evoked apowerful sense of what my music is about.

But all my fans overseas on myspace like Kiko, Abdul, and Fritz wanted to buy my new single off itunes! So I went back to Cdbaby and signed up for free digital distribution on 30 of the worlds biggest digital retailers which gave me access to 100 million music buyers worldwide so I thought that was fun as I only have 3 friends in real life.

But then CDbaby hooked it up so I could have a storefront sell my mp3's from anywhere!!! My website, email, even on my myspace and in bulletins and comments and stuff! I Called grandma straight away to tell her she could now download my tunes straight from myspace. She asked me if the songs were any different and I told her it didn't matter because this was myspace and I was getting US69c out of US99c everytime she downloaded a song.

That's when I surprised by telling her Id actually used her credit card to download the song 1271 times and, given that I'd actually managed to sell in excess of 1270 downloads that day, I was going to commit some of my earnings towards paying off the bouncy castle.

I love my Grandma.

www.kurb.co.nz
www.myspace.com/kurbpromo