It's already been 5 years and 5 months since the last blog post in December of 2012. Much has happened and yet not much has happened in nearly equal measure since that time. This is partially because 2013 became the end of and/OAR as I previously knew it. Despite experiencing 9 years of relative success as a label and mail order shop, then releasing a great album featuring the most well known artist the label had ever worked with, none of it really mattered. A string of devastating developments and issues occurred that year which nearly wiped the label out, and as a result no releases were produced because there wasn't a budget for it. After using that time to figure out what to do, I decided to launch a Kicktarter fundraising campaign in 2014 which was quite successful, and has since become the main source of funding for label releases every few years. The second campaign, while just barely successful and highly stressful, completely burned me out and I almost shut the label down afterward. However, a third campaign is now planned for this year after a long hiatus following the CD release of SHUSHUPE by Ralph Koper And Norma Panduro in 2016. In 2016, there was also the parting of ways with the printing company I worked with for the CD insert packaging since 2011 due to unprofessional practices on their part, which they were not willing to change; nor were they willing to correct their mistake. Trying to find another local printing company has since proven to be an ongoing challenge.
So, in 2017, I finally decided to give Bandcamp a try after intentionally staying away for a good number of reasons, and for a good number of years. However, I didn't fully jump into Bandcamp like other labels have (by completely replacing CDs with download-only releases). I only decided to make available for download certain long out-of-print CDR releases and some of the formerly available download-only releases. So far, there has also been one newly available release: "Quaalude" by Dino Bramanti and Andrea Borghi.
Obviously, another factor which caused blog posts to cease since 2012, have been the increased use of websites like Facebook and Twitter, and with increasing degrees of dissatisfaction... I have also since started pages on Tumblr and of course still send out an e-mail newsletter every once in awhile. However, I'm going to try to return to using this blog more often because while people might not follow it, I find it much more agreeable to use than any of the aforementioned websites.
So yes, there have been successes over the past few years, but there has also been a feeling that the internet and/or impractical format trends are continuing to drive the music business over a cliff... I'm just trying to keep going the way I believe is best for me. I'm a longtime audio collector, and I prefer publishing physical CD releases for other collectors. Whether or not I continue with the same kind of sound work I've focused on from the beginning remains to be seen since I've been feeling an increasing lack of satisfaction with most of it over the past 8 or 9 years. It might be time to (finally) move fOARward...
And so, without further ado, here is the link for "and/camp": https://and-oar.bandcamp.com/
- DL
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