A Glimpse Inside What Makes Victory Records Successful
Ever wonder how the indy labels sometimes get it right when the majors so seldom seem to?
Indy’s don’t buy success. They can’t even afford to try. Instead they stay closer to the street…to the fans. And they’re not afraid to be a bit unonventional. One great example is Victory Records. A simple but telling glimpse inside Victory’s promotional thinking was provided by this recent internal memo re-printed by Bob Lefsetz.
From: Mark Bubb Mark@victoryrecords.com
To: PROMO STAFF <PROMOSTAFF@victoryrecords.com>
Sent: Mon Aug 22 23:45:49 2005 Subject: Baltimore show Report 8/22
I’m lucky I still have all my fingers the way the BTBAM samplers were being taken from me tonight.
The venue sucked for what we do. It is directly down town with no parking, no stopping, no picking up, everywhere. I unfortunatly had to park a few blocks down the street. But what was funny about that is, Sony, who’s tour it is, and only dows the end of show work, ended up being moved and put farther away than my van. From that point it was an old fashioned contest of sidewalk skills.
The arena closed all exits except forthe main two and filed everyone out. I was ther, Sony was there, and the randow bums selling fake shirts were thre and being real pushy. They stepped in front of me, so in turn stood right in the doorway. Everyone looked right past them when they heard I had free Victory samplers. They relocated because they couldn’t compete. And now that I was right next to Sony, people were asking them for cd’s and they would hold out there stickers, and kids would just turn, and walk to me, or just leave. Like you said Tony, why are they even wasteing their time.
I went through a ton in an extremely short time. Being we are on the east coast, lamb of god, DH, unearth, as I lay dying shirts were pooring out the door and right up to me.I got out 850 BTBAM samplers out at the show, and made Sony look like crap.
It was a good night.I’m in Baltimore all tommorow and NYC tommorow night.
Bubb
