Need advice on distro. for album in can

[Conner]

I figured this would be the best place to come and get advice from people I'm sure have been in this boat before.

How would one bypass record labels to get good/great retail distribution. My thoughts include but not limiting: Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Sam Goody, etc.?
Anyone know of any contacts for dist. companies?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[ctmartin]

What does it take? Mainly lots of $$$$ and a solid team.

Most distros won't do "one-off's", i.e. one album deals. They want a longer-term relationship with (potentially) several releases in the pipeline and/or catalog, with verifiable $$$ in the bank to support the releases...

...that is, the BETTER distros.

I'd have to say the best distro would still be through the majors. For one, you will get paid, because THEY will get paid! Also, they have better access to shelf space (listening stations, endcaps, etc.). But you're best off trying to find a piggyback deal, i.e. go through someone who already has a distro relationship with a major. And in these cases you might be able to do a "one-off" deal.

There are so many issues to deal with, it's impossible to discuss it all here. In the end, be aware that you will get out of it what you put into it. You will have to convince the distributor to pay attention to your release. That takes, among many other things:

1.) a persistent, experienced team with political ties to the right people at the distributor;

2.) creating a buzz through an extensive marketing plan that is *national* in scope, and successes along the way (charting on radio, great reviews, touring, etc.) -- so this also means having a strong promotions team, publicity team, etc. (these can be outsourced) and plenty of money to spend on radio promotions, advertising to induce reviews, etc. You'll also want to budget plenty of $$$ for retail promotions (listening stations, endcaps, "new artist" discount programs, etc.) -- retailers LOVE that stuff and will be more likely to pick-up your release and less likely to return it so quickly if it doesn't sell like hotcakes.

3.) a great sales team of your own ("phone man"), and sales people on board with preexisting relationships with key retail buyers (this can be outsourced too). Be aware of the fact that YOUR label will be doing the majority of the legwork when it comes to sales -- you absolutely *cannot* rely on the distributor to do much more than order fulfillment until you really get huge. In other words, the distributor's sales people will be pushing the "known" entities before the newcomers. But it will be absolutely essential to go through them anyway because major retailers deal with only so many distributor accounts.

4.) Plenty of backup $$$ to survive the "reserve period" (that's the period of time they hold onto a portion of your money to cover any possible returns). This might be something like: 35% of your money held, and distributed back to you in installments like 1/3 in 6 months, 1/3 in 12 months, and the remaining 1/3 in 18 months from the sale.

Best of luck. PM me if you wish to discuss the project.

-ctmartin

[roughly]

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