The most recent LA Weekly has a pretty in-depth piece on the current state of and future prospects for the promo CD, the pre-release taste of an album sent out to either a select few or way too many music writers by publicity departments that are hungry for some recognition of their contracted artists’ work. Weekly scribe Randall Roberts goes way in-depth on the topic, talking to publicists about why more “important” outlets get CDs and second-string types are left to deal with MP3 pre-releases (or, worse, streams), looking at the diminished market value for used CDs, and chatting with some writers who won’t go on the record (!) about the side income they make from selling back albums that won’t fit in their apartments. He also takes some time out to discuss his own ethics of promo-selling:

Don’t tell anyone, but I sell my CDs after I’m finished with them. I say this with the full knowledge that I may lose my spot on the train, might be hit with a lawsuit (though I don’t recall if I’ve ever sold a Universal promo), or may be perceived as not being “down” with the “scene.” I sell promo CDs in one of two ways: at a Hollywood record store, and to a buyer who has adamantly requested I not write this story for fear of upsetting the balance. For the most part, I sell for trade in order to feed my unquenchable lust for music. If I trade at said Hollywood record store (though I think certain buyers low-ball me), I ask for a credit slip, and then spend whatever credit I get, usually a couple hundred dollars, on vinyl, odd imports and reissues, stuff that doesn’t come free to me. Strolling the aisles with credit slip in hand feels like I’ve won a department-store shopping spree.

I appreciate the argument that I’m hurting a band or a label’s bottom line by making money off something they sent me for free, though ultimately I disagree and think that selling and trading promos is better for bands than shredding them. At least my way, a potential fan might find a new favorite band at a discount rate.

I often consider the ethics of my decision, and have drawn some lines around my selling. Normally I use any money I receive to buy more music, and in this way I feel that I’m funding an arts grant writ small. Each dollar gained from swapping out mediocre music goes into a pool that I disperse to worthy musical geniuses. (These days, South American and African reissues, and black metal.) Also, I have a few hard-and-fast rules. First, I never sell a promo sent to me by an L.A. band. I don’t sell promos sent to me by small, interesting L.A.-based labels. There is also a list of artists and record labels with which I’m so philosophically attuned, that it would feel like a betrayal to sell one of their CDs. And I never sell a CD before its official release date, because I think leaking music on to the Web is lame, and does way more damage than selling a measly promo.

Everything else is fair game.

Roberts doesn’t get into the ecological impact of all this mail, but he does delve pretty deeply into everything else surrounding the current state of music-biz promotion, which, like everything else, is in a state of constant flux at present. The whole article’s worth a read, but my favorite quote was from Eric Weisbard, and it focused on the way that promo CD’s currency has not only become diminished on a monetary level, but on a cultural-capital level as well:

Eric Weisbard, a former editor at both Spin and the Village Voice, doesn’t think so. “The authority of the music critic, in days gone by, was just that they had this access to the records, which allowed for the kind of judgment no normal human being could possess. So much of one’s expertise was simply rooted in having access to an ever-growing record library.”

Music critics could speak with authority because they’d been given a golden ticket: a spot on all the mailing lists. Critics knew that these 10 CDs were the best of the year because they’d received the majority of them, and appreciated those the most.

But not anymore, Weisbard says. With the rise of iTunes, download and streaming services like Rhapsody and eMusic, and the expanding illegal BitTorrent sites, a critic is no longer sitting atop a hallowed throne. “If anything, the person who relies on what comes in the mail has access to less stuff now than the person who chooses to use the other channels. That’s a huge difference. The idea that your mail is an inferior product to the Web has really changed the stakes.

“When you can have access to databases that wouldn’t fit in your house even if you did receive them in the mail, whatever the new notion of what creating the perfect library is going to be, I doubt it’s going to be based on receiving promos and keeping the good ones.”

Confessions Of A Promo Junkie [LA Weekly]