Part Two: Dave Debiak Interview (New London Fire/Sleep Station)

Appearing on PatrolMag.com soon:
On New Marketing and the Traditional Music Business Model


NM- You marketed this album pretty differently with the free EP being released far in advance, it doesn’t seem like you are afraid to give away music, can you talk about that, and how that’s worked with your label?

DD- Well it was their idea. I agreed with it, we weren’t going to get anyone to buy it so we might as well give it away.

NM- Good response?

DD- Tremendous response, I’ve got a lot of material so I can put out an EP and give it to people for free and then hopefully they’ll listen to things and buy them in the future
if things come up and if the opportunity comes up. I mean we gave so many of the Von Cosel’s away and then we would play a show and these people who loved the EP and then they would buy a t-shirt or pay to get into the venue. Eventually if its good and people like it, they’ll spend money on it, in some way shape or form. Record sales are not the way they used to be. I’ve never gotten paid for one record in my life.

NM- Never gotten paid?

DD- Not a dime, and I’ve done like 4-5 albums. I’ve never made a profit from one.

NM- The free EP is how you got me.

DD- I figured how else are you going to get people. You’re competing with so many different people and marketing angles that everyone’s trying to take to sell things, you figure, why not try this way? It doesn’t hurt to listen to something when it’s free.

….
DD-I’m strongly considering never putting anything to retail again. I want to just sell things online and have physical copies made but only available online. Retail is a dying breed
and its not going to be around much longer. People don’t buy records like they used to and most places you can’t find a good record store to go to, I mean you’ve got Best Buy. To get
your stuff into those stores you have to move units rather steadily and its just a huge pain in the ass to do retail....I’ve taken it on myself to record everything for free so I won’t be getting behind big recoups. Money I make back before I start making a profit. So now if I
sell 2,000 records and it cost me nothing to put the record to make a profit. If I sold 50,000 of the things, and if it cost me a couple hundred thousand to put it out, I don’t make anything.

DD- I don’t think it’s imperative for a band to have a record label, I think that if a band can have its stuff distributed anywhere you can go online. They can record it themselves,
promote it themselves, there’s not much more a lot of bands need. They could do a lot for themselves without going on a record label. I know that a lot of bands are holding on for
that hope that their going to get signed but I say “screw that, they don’t even need to bother trying.