One friend recently said to me that a CD is like a business card.  I agree but damn those are expensive business cards!

I have noticed over the last 7  years a definite change in the way people respond to the prospect of buying a CD.  Way back in 2002, a band could expect to sell at least 10-20 CDs if they had a decent act and good songs to perform.  I have watched that amount dwindle to much less at most shows and the familiar refrain “I’ll just get it off of Limewire.”  The fact that music is free now is a tough thing to accept but as a modern musician, I have to come to grips with that fact.

Another producer friend of mine pointed out a story to me that he had read recently.  EMI music is the 3rd largest label in the world.  They have 14,000 acts on their roster.  Guess how many made money last year?  200 out of 14,000.  That ought to tell you something about the music biz.  Better do it for the love, not the money.

Now the conundrum.  If band X spends $10,000 on their 5 song EP, how do they recoup the money?

Take some guesses.  If you said CDs you would be wrong, nobody really buys them anymore.  If you said downloads, you would also be wrong.  After Itunes takes their cut and then the distributor takes their cut, you are left with almost nothing.  I have seen downloads where we literally got paid $0.01 per song.  That is not the answer I’m afraid.

Playing live you say?  Sure if  you have a market you have managed to build up over a year or more but you can only go to that well so many times as an independent band.  Eventually, once you start to tour you will bleed money if you don’t do it right.

What do you think gives a band the best chance of getting their money back out of the CD they spent it on?  T-shirts.  That’s right, t-shirts are the single fastest/best way to get money back for a band.

Being in an independent band once meant rebelling against authority, trying to be artistic and not changing your ideals for anyone or anything.

What are you if you are in a rock band now?  T-shirt salesmen, simply for the fact that  you cannot download a t-shirt.  Pretty strange really, considering that just 7 years ago we (Fear Zero) were able to sell enough CDs and make enough money from royalties etc. without t-shirts that I was able to cover most of the cost of making the first CD ($20,000 or so).

We did a tour in 2007 sans t-shirts.  Big mistake!  We probably could have chipped a big chunk of debt off the credit with a decent couple of t-shirts.

Well, that is the way it is now and I have accepted it.  If you are a musician, you need to as well.  Sure, keep writing, performing, all that but remember, without a good t-shirt for sale you’re dead in the water.

A while back, Eric sent out an e-mail regarding our street team.

Well, we got some enormous help from the many fine folks on our street team but one guy topped the rest and his name is….wait for it….wait for it… JAMES VANDEWEERD from Victoria BC.

Congrats James, come and say hello and get some free schwag at the end of our shows in Victoria.

Stay safe everyone!

 -Ed from Fear Zero

In 1998 I had begun writing a lot of songs and had no outlet for the songs, other than playing them for friends that would go, “Wow, I had no idea you could write good songs!”

I had no idea whether they were good or not, you know how friends are.

At the very least, it gave me the idea that maybe I had a bit of talent at it, even though it still took a lot of hard work for me to get to that point.

I had auditioned a lot of singers by 2000 (20 in all I think), had tried out for a bunch of bands, nothing really clicked so I finally decided, “Hey, why don’t I sing and record these songs,” not knowing the world of trouble I was getting myself into. I had a little home studio and went about messing around with demos for the next year, year and a half.

Eventually I realized it is a lot harder to do everything yourself so I hired a guy to record me at his studio. Nothing came of it, other than the knowledge that if you are going to produce a CD, you really, really, REALLY, need to think about things you take for granted such as tempo, singing range, and recording techniques. Oh, and that anything that is in the rock vein sucks without real live drums. Remember that kids, drum machines SUCK!

Anyway, another year passed and I finally had this okay sounding demo, enough to get gigs and I auditioned a band and we played some shows and the reaction was pretty good but I realized I needed something to sell at the shows since the little EP was not worthy to my ears.

Enter a friend of mine, Shane J. a man of few words but much knowledge. Shane had just bought the brand new Pro Tools lite system and was looking for a project to practice on. This was in 2002 and little did he know it would take up most of both of our lives for the next year/year and a half while we battled through technical problems, arrangement problems, rewrites of the songs, everything that could go wrong went wrong but eventually we got it right.

Anyway, I am sure your eyes are tired so I will relay more about making the first Fear Zero CD next week.

Cheers!