Why CDs?

While many DJs are playing digital files, and while most consumers are buying the digital format, there is still no better way to focus a DJ on a label's priorities than to stick a physical CD into his or her hands and make them look at it. At the DJ Times Expo last year in Atlantic City, at a lunch for labels and programmers, I listened to a number of Radio and Satellite PDs and MDs state that they preferred a physical CD to files because they were easier to transport to music meetings and to review and keep track of.

Many of the labels that service our reporters understand that while digital promotion does have its place, our in-boxes are more and more crowded every day with MP3 files, YouSendIt or SendSpace links (which often expire if not reviewed quickly), or links to download sites with track after track available for retrieval from all over the world. So much so that there are not enough hours in the day to retrieve them all.

We do not track any of the MP3 or "Digital" pools, including the ones that claim hundreds of members and provide "400 MP3s a month for only $20.00." Do you really think that DJs that frequent those sites are going to download anything that they don't already know they want? I would caution labels to give some serious thought to making their product available to those "Download Pools." Remember, you’re selling the MP3s. When you service CDs, you have a finite number and you generally know where they are going, and it’s not to hundreds or thousands of self-described "DJs."

I assure you that there are still viable, working pools out there, including ours, servicing CDs to their members and reporting to the DJ Times Crossover Top 50 which is read by over 60,000 dance enthusiasts. And most of those readers are professional, working DJs.

MP3s are cheap. OK they're free. Great. Now everybody with a computer is a producer and a label and if you limit your promotion to E-blasts and MP3s you just leveled the playing field… for them. If they are getting 20 to 30 files a day, what are they going to pay more attention to, another E-blast or one of 10 CDs that they get this week? We are promoters. Our job is to get them to pay attention. Think about it.