Guitars at an Exhibition ~ Volume 2
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Guitars At An Exhibition ~ Volume 2 is no longer available.
However…
…if you are interested in being a professional musician, here is a little lesson about how this album came to be that will help your music career:
One of the fastest ways to promote your music to more people is to play on a compilation album with other musicians.
The more artists can be involved – the better. And each artist should contribute 1 song to the album. (This is much better and smarter than having fewer artists contribute several songs each.)
Guitars At An Exhibition ~ Volume 2 was a great example of this strategy in action.
It was a more ambitious project than its predecessor (Guitar At An Exhibition Volume 1).
This time, we had 17 musicians instead of 10. (So, we had a bigger pool of money available to do this project on a much larger level).
All 17 musicians (myself included) split the costs of recording, manufacturing and distributing the album.
More importantly:
Each of us got exposure not just to our own fans, but also to the fans of every other musician featured on the record.
In the case of Guitars At An Exhibition ~ Volume 1, we made 10,000 copies of this record and each musician got 1000 copies.
And unlike Guitar At An Exhibition ~ Volume 1 (when we were free to sell the album if we chose), this time the rule was:
We had to give CDs away for free
The reason we chose this option was twofold:
1. It’s faster and easier to give CDs away for free than to sell them.
2. Almost all musicians on this record were at a higher level in our careers and we didn’t desperately need money.
What we all needed was:
More exposure to more fans!
So, we chose to give the albums away to speed up the process of building our fan base.
In my case, I sent a lot of records to a large online distributor of instrumental guitar music (because I wanted their customers to have an album in a style they like with my name on it).
The owner of the website I sent the CDs to loved the idea (because it was an extra bonus he could give away to his customers for no cost to him).
And many people who got a free copy of Guitars At An Exhibition ~ Volume 2 record ended up buying my Opus 1 & Opus 2 records later.
Here is what this means for you:
If you want to promote your music, but struggle with:
- investing money into releasing your own record
- finding enough people to promote your music to
… get on a compilation record with other musicians. This is easier to do now than it ever was before because of the technology available today.
Doing it will give you all the benefits of promoting your music to not just your fans, but to the fans of everyone else on the record.
And besides: you get a credential of having your music on a real record. This puts you on the music career map as a professional musician and someone the music industry should take seriously.
Whether you choose to sell the album or give it away for free as a promotional tool is up to you. The important thing is to put it together.
Plus: you get the experience of putting together a professional record that will help you when you release your own (full-length) album in the future.