You could reasonably argue that there have been better times to get into music retail. All the same, I’ve taken a very small step towards that this week on behalf of some New Zealand friends of mine who have recorded my favourite album of the past five years: The Overflow by Humphreys and Keen.

I was looking for a way to sell vinyl from my site. My friend (and fellow H&K fan) Owen had arranged a gorgeous limited edition vinyl pressing, cut at Abbey Rd studios in London, and I enthusiastically offered to do the online retail.

The sale of digital downloads was no problem whatsoever, because of Bandcamp. And yes, I’m an evangelist for Bandcamp – but with very good reason. It’s brilliant (and I’m on their board of advisors, if you need the disclaimer).

But having set up a physical online retail store in a completely different realm, I know that it’s not something to be taken lightly. It can be a mammoth task. But I have just one album to sell – and I wanted to do it from my personal website. I’m not building HMV or Tower Records here.

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I have a new page here on New Music Strategies, which outlines some of the ways I can help musicians, and independent music businesses. Naturally, I’ve called it my Help page.

I was trying to think of a suitable picture to put at the top of that page, and I had a song stuck in my head. So I went to YouTube, found the video clip and embedded that straight in there.

But then I started to worry. Here I was using a song that was still under copyright on a page that is, for all intents and purposes, entirely commercial. In a way, I’m using the song a bit like a jingle. That can’t be right, can it?

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Interviewed by Studenttelevision.tv. Photo by Lykle de Vries.

I give a lot of speeches, presentations and talks at music industry events and in educational institutions. I’ll generally talk about whatever I’m asked to talk about, or whatever I happen to think is specific and relevant to the group of people I’m talking to.

Quite often, I’ll rewrite my speech on the day, as I get a clearer idea of who my audience is and what their specific concerns are. But every now and then, I get passionate enough about something to prepare a presentation in search of an audience.

I’ve pitched this to Popkomm, and I’ll pretty much say this to whoever’s listening. This is important, and it’s urgent.

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Andy from Indielab tells me that the Manchester Un-Consultancy is all systems go.

An un-consultancy is a bit like a normal consultancy, but more grass-rootsy. A while back, I wrote a blog post that explains the origins of un-consultancies and the idea behind them.

Essentially, you get lots of good and targeted advice that’ll help you get to the next stage of your music business career – but as consultancy can sometimes be on the expensive side for independent artists and small businesses, this is a way to share that cost, but still get that one-on-one, face-to-face help.

If you’re going to be anywhere near the city on May 30th, it’d be really great to see you.

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