Last year we had a lot of fun touring with our Totally Plucked set, taking a lot of guitars and other guitary instruments - mandolin, bouzouki, baritone guitar - with us to gigs. At the time our plan was to record a Totally Plucked album to celebrate these and many other instruments that we play, and showcase the tunes we were playing on the tour. Over the last six months we’ve been working on this, to the point where we’re 90% finished and are starting to think about how we release the album. Which gives us a bit of a dilemma.
All of our albums to date have been released physically in CD format. CDs have worked well for us in the past - they sound good and look nice, we can include lots of info in the artwork, they’re small and tough enough to post without worrying and they’re popular with audiences at gigs, including us when we go to see other artists.
The downside of CDs is that we need to order a large quantity from the manufacturer to make them financially viable. Oh, and we don’t have any gigs to sell them at, at least for the foreseeable future.
So we’d like to pick your brain and enquire about your listening habits. Do you still buy CDs? Or do you do all your listening via streaming services? We’re not asking you to commit to ordering the new album (though you can if you want!) but it would be really useful to us to get an idea how folks listen to music, and whether we should think about going down the CD route or just release Totally Plucked digitally. As Hamlet might have put it, ‘to CD or not to CD, that is the question.”
If you have time to drop us an email or comment below with your thoughts we’d be very grateful.