Free Agent Status
 

SmileAtYou posted this over in the Rumours forum. It has some interesting quotes and a cool photo of Mr. B. It sounds like he is a free agent.

QUOTE: "I'm keeping an open mind. People need to hear the music and we'll see what they think and what the best situation for it will be."

Who the hell are "people"? Does he mean "US"?

http://www.stevie-nicks.info/index.p...484&Itemid=242

I take that to mean that "record company execs need to hear it and then we'll decide upon a deal." If only he would consult us about it, but then I suppose there'd be a million ideas and he'd never get it released because he'd spend so long listening to them.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Why ask those guys, when we're the ones who are gonna be buying it and spreading the word? OK, that was a childish statement.

I suppose Mr. B. needs a distributor and can't do that via his website. (I wonder how many hits the website gets?) as opposed to the traffic a Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target gets.

If the album hits the stores, it has bigger visibility. People casually walking by might see it and pick it up.

Interesting though. When I went to Denver to buy the Bass DVD, the first Best Buy store that I went to, got one lousy unit in its shipment.

The second Best Buy store got a whopping 6 units in the first shipment. And then, they couldn't find them. They had to go to the back room and unpack the shipment...this being three days after its release.

He should just by-pass the label situation all together and head straight to Walmart, like a bunch of others have already done. They (Walmart) are the distributor. If he's already recorded the album himself and paid for it to be mastered and all that technical stuff, then really all you need is a distributor. In the past, I believe you needed a label to provide all the technical stuff and the cash up front to do so, but since he's well established with his own cash, he doesn't need the label. He would actually earn more per cd sold then if he were to sign with a label to.

Bryan Adams signed with Walmart for his latest album release in the US, that I think comes out either later this month or next. The cd is out already all over the world on Universal, but in the US where he has no record deal, he struck up with Walmart for the release. I think it's the way of the future for the well established, to just by-pass the label.

Here's hoping that the record comes out this fall, because it seems to be ready for release, or at least ready for mastering. The best way to go for established artists with their albums at the time, appears to be the one that Christine went:
form your own small company that licenses out the rights for the release for a limited amount of time to a label. Those labels could be everybody, but preferrably larger independent labels like Rykodisc, Vanguard, Concord, New West, 429, Koch or even major labels and their affiliates, like maybe Nonesuch, Lost Highway, Sony Legacy or something like that.
Unfortunately, Sanctuary Records, the label on which Christine's album came out, reportedly suffered from bad accounting, and is now out of business. Luckily, she only licensed the tapes, so a reissue may be possible if she desires so.
And here's for a bit of motivation: Go Lindsey!