Thursday, September 18, 2008

Here We Go Again

For 15 years my business partner, Tony Sachs and I tried unsuccessfully to run a legitimate music retail outlet. Thanks to the perfect shitstorm of greed (record labels) and stupidity (us), we closed up shop in December of 2005, very unhappy and very poor. You've heard this all before.

Here we are three years later, doing what we can with limited resources, to keep our passion for, and love of music alive. Tony freelances and is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post. I do the same, but I also started Burning Wood as an outlet for me to continue to share my opinions--some welcome, some not--on the music that keeps me going everyday.

So after a little over two weeks of posting, I was a bit shocked to receive an e-mail from the people who host the files I upload, saying that one of the tracks I posted for listening was flagged as "service abuse." A little investigating and I found out that the offensive track was the Beth Rowley song. I am honored that someone is reading, especially if it is someone from Rowley's camp, or maybe Miss Rowley herself. I am honored, even if I needed to remove the song.

I guess I have no defense, really. I don't own the rights, so therefore I can't do what I want with the track. But I will say this, I bought the CD as import over a month ago from Amazon.UK. Spent about 23 bucks for it. I wrote a great review of the CD. It WAS my "Pick Of The Week." I believe that thanks to that review and the song sample, I sold an additional 3 copies to my readers, bought from legitimate sellers.

I am not the bad guy. Considering CDs are selling about as much as wicker toilet paper and battery powered socks, is it really necessary to go after ME? A simple, "Thanks for the great review and support, Mr. Burning Wood, but would you mind taking the song down?" would have worked nicely.

Well, if you're still reading, "people who complained," the review and the song is gone. I don't like the album as much as I did before 12:20 PM today.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sal, I would say if you kept your doors open for 15 years, then you were successful. Running a small business is not easy, and most go out of business long before that. And even successful business people have failures.

steve simels said...

Sal -- gave you a little plug over at the homepage today.

Sal Nunziato said...

Chris,
Thanks for that. I guess it is unfair to say we were unsuccessful. How about "insuccessful?" The end was so lousy, it all just seems pointless. I'm reminded of the old Bill Dana/Jose Jimenez bit--

"When I came to this country, I did not have a dime. Now...I have a dime."


And..Steve..My man...thanks, as always.

Anonymous said...

Well, you also turned thousands upon thousands of people on to new music (including me), and you are still doing it via this blog. That may not translate into monetary success, but it sure is a pretty neat contribution.