A friend of mine and I made an audio album about 30 years ago of original “novelty” songs. They were so “novel” that we had no intention of selling the album thru normal distribution channels, but sold them by mail from print ads. Airplay was out of the question due to content, but the quality of the recording was good.
Basically, they were songs that we performed at weddings, bar mitzvahs and other social gatherings. When the time got late and the liquor flowed, the songs got raunchier. Since the band was playing lots of weddings, but wasn’t getting recording contracts, we thought we’d make a million thru a specialty market. Smut never goes out of style, right?
Didn’t work too well. In spite of favorable reviews, the print ads ate so much of our budget that we gave up and chalked it up to experience.
I lost contact with my friend for several decades, but we recently got together again, noticed that the LPs we had sold were now being listed on eBay for$150- $300 each, and began to think, Hmmmm…
So the question now before us is, should we market this album again thru more modern channels (before, we sold LPs, cassettes and 8-tracks)? And if so, how? [ul][li]Make CDs and offer for sale thru Amazon or a private web site[]Post songs on iTunes as MP3s[]Other?[/ul][/li]
I understand garage bands have had success in Internet self-marketing, but I confess I have no experience doing that, and I doubt if the income would be great enough to hire someone, so it’s pretty much up to me.
The alternative would be to forgo any profit, and just make MP3 and post them on my web site for free download. If iTunes posting would bring in minimal profit, maybe this is the simplest solution, but I don’t want to blow a good thing, either.
And I imagine the high eBay prices are more for the rarity than the content. I am under no illusion that if we reissued this as a CD that it would fetch $300!
Any opinions? Has anyone here marketed songs thru iTunes and had success?