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Recently we have finished the new album for Réplica. The process was long, it took almost 2 years to do it. The thing with record making these days (at least for a group of people with lots of dreams and no support whatsoever) is that you’ve got to have at least one “real” job and put music as a hobby. So if you have a band you have 2 possible ways of letting people hear your material:

1. Distribute it yourself (which requires a lot of money to make the record)
2. Distribute it with a record label (small or big)

I’m not even gonna start with number 2.

To make your way on distributing it yourself you’ve got to have the media support on any level in order to have some sort of recognition for your work. I’m not talking here about fame or great deals of money, just selling a couple thousands of records to make it worth it. Since we are dealing with a third world country, people don’t always have the resources nor the knowledge to access the internet, buy magazines or have paid television in their homes, so this leaves you with a very small window of opportunities to get known. One of them (and the most important I think for music) is the radio. But this is not a secret of course, and the record labels know this, so what can you do when you have basically one important channel of distribution (and with a very poor offer I must say)? You, as a big label, go and buy the stations. Pay the programmers. You make sure your catalog gets heard (and with quite a large rotation).

So where does this leave independent bands? Mexico City suffers from a lack of options on the radio. There are nearly 62 different radio stations. A large percent of those are focused on news and politics. Then you have the popular ones which are targeted to people with small incomes and then you have a very very small percentage of rock and pop stations. One example of this is Reactor. This frequency is supposed to be the one that talks to students. Young people. People who like rock and pop. This frequency is owned by the government. As we say in Mexico, “it is the only option we have to hear this kind of music” (although this is not true, there are another few examples). But since Reactor was created to host some of the most “popular” djs at the time, it quickly gained its popularity and its opportunities. And by opportunities I mean great deals with OCESA (number one mafia around the entertainment business) and great deals with the record labels paying money to its known dj Rulo to play their music. This practically wipes out any other content provider (and I also include internet in this). I mean, what good can a record label get from promoting their material on any other media when you’ve already bought an entire radio station which by the way teenagers happen to hear since there is no other one?

So, of course, as an independent band that its not intended to sell 100, 000 records in one month, you have to look out for friends in the industry or literally throw your music on the internet hoping that someone will pick it up and hope for the best.

This is where prosumers get in the picture. We are used to get lots of information every day, so it is very hard to get someone’s attention and this got me thinking for a while that the best way to get your product out (whatever it is), is to point at small niches. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get all the attention. You can get a lot of small groups of people around the world. If this people like your product, they’ll do the rest for you posting about it on blogs, making reviews and building that which you couldn’t get from the different mobs in the industry. This is why I call them prosumers (although the term is intended for other purposes, I think the term applies well).

I should say though we’re a lucky band. We’ve got a lot of friends in the industry, and that has helped us a lot to play frequently and from time to time be part of a music festival. But this doesn’t change the fact that we are trying to survive in an industry that closes itself to popularity. It doesn’t matter any more if the music is ok, it is all about how many records can you sell, and you can’t sell records if you don’t get played, so it is a very complex circle that has only one exit: leaking the album for free on the web and hope for the best (its not like we were expecting money for the selling anyways).

So, pointing the obvious, this is a very complex subject with a lot of exceptions I must say, it is not always like this, but it is also a very tangible truth for the rest. This mafias will eventually have to stop and hear people. I thin the most important thing to do is always look for more. If you are tired of the radio, go and look for more on magazines or the internet. if you are tired of the two network television monsters giving crappy shows, go and look for more. If you don’t like it, don’t consume it! There is always another option available.

I’ve always thought of mexicans as siths, they deal only in absolutes.

P. D. I’ll let you know when the album gets leaked