This past year was my rookie season in the “record sales” department. The Cat’s Pajamas Old School Jazz Band released an album over the summer, and the Fulginiti Family Band released a holiday single for charity. Both were fun and satisfying projects to complete, but as most rookies do, I think I “left some plays on the field”, particularly with the Fulginiti Family Band project. The problem is that I don’t really know what mistakes I made. That’s where I’m hoping to get some help from you. 

The Cat’s Pajamas album is selling steadily at shows and online, but our Family Band single, Jingle Bells, did not do nearly as well as we had hoped. Our plan was to sell the single online for donations and to give that money to Music For Everyone of Lancaster. We did that, but only raised $200. 

We’re looking to release another single for another community group later this year, and we need your opinion on how we can increase sales and get people interested in buying the track, which means more donations to the charity we select.

Here are a few things we’ve heard so far, in no certain order: 

1.  Offer pre-orders 
2.  Downloading to phones and computers is inconvenient unless you use iTunes, which doesn’t have a “pay-what-you-want” option 
3.  Sell download cards or something physical 
4.  Release an EP instead of a single 
5.  Advertise more/better 
6.  Give proceeds to a more appealing charity 

Please comment with thoughts on how we can make our next release more appealing, successful, and beneficial for a local charity. We appreciate polite honesty. 

Thanks for your support and feedback. And as they say in football- we’ll take a look at the tape, make some adjustments, and get this thing turned around. 

Happy New Year!