Today is the third anniversary of the death of Sophie Lancaster, the young goth girl that was brutally attacked and who died of her injuries later in hospital. Ever since that sad day I've done what I can to help raise funds and bring attention to the charity set up in her memory, The Sophie Lancaster Foundation.
On this day of all days I'm feeling more than a little let down by the 'dark alternative' scene that rallied behind this cause three years ago and helped me raise a huge sum of money for a memorial bench in Whitby, home of the bi-annual goth weekend. A while ago, well, May 22nd, World Goth Day to be precise, I launched am album to raise funds for the charity . It featured 15 tracks from some of the scenes biggest names, including some unreleased material and a couple of tracks that had been written for the campaign. It sold for a mere $12.00 (that's £8.00 for the Brits in the country where Sophie was kicked to death for being a goth, if you live in London that's not much more than the price of two pints).
So far it's sold a little over 150 copies worldwide. Now I know I shouldn't complain, as its all money for a good cause, but I would have liked to have seen it sell a lot more if I'm honest. In the three months since it's launch I've worked hard to spread the word and get people to buy it. Eight months of work went into it's release and a lot of artists went out of their way to help. By far the biggest audience to have been told about it was the 19,000 odd members of the World Goth Day facebook group, so you'd have thought there would have been a few sales there, but no. Lots of nice comments, but no actual cash.
And this set me thinking...
If this is what its like for bands these days then no wonder the scene is suffering, how is anyone supposed to make a living let alone recoup their losses? It's had some great reviews, and to be fair the magazines and DJs worldwide have got behind me on this project from day one, but the general CD buying public have largely ignored everyones efforts.
I had planned to start looking into doing a second volume, featuring newer bands for next year, and would have started in a month or so now I know how long it takes, but I'm not sure whether to bother. There's a lot of work involved and I'm sure there are better ways of raising money than trying to offer people a truly amazing collection of songs for next to nothing, that they all think is a great idea, but won't spend the money on.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up with fundraising, I'll still be doing what I can for the charity, but I'll be thinking of something else next time. I'll be spamming it heavily at this Octobers Whitby Gothic Weekend of course, I like to think that there may be some more sales after that, and if you're one of the people that haven't seen this album yet them head to http://www.stayindie.com/hope and check it out. Buy if it you have some spare cash, your money will be going to a great cause, or at the very least help me point it out to a few people.
Thanks
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150? I'm a little bit stunned by that.
ReplyDeleteI understand exactly how frustrated you are Martin, when I changed over the facebook to the new one we lost 14,000 people at the last count, over 2/3rds of the membership of the site. I gave them the link 30 or so times on the page and yet even after that I had some friends ask me where the page had gone to.
ReplyDeleteIn addition if you hadn't noticed I tried to get the new group to work together to create a calendar to raise funds for the foundation. It seemed to me they were expecting me to do the hard work of finding models, take the photographs, sell it and promote it as well as run the page promoting that I needed help.
I confess I haven't yet had the CD, money is tight after 18 months unemployed but I will be buying it rest assured. However I too am getting very miffed for want of a polite way of putting it at the culture, it seems the majority want everything for nothing and aren't even prepared to go out and do something to help themselves be more understood.
Keep your work up for the foundation going I think you do a great job of showing the world what us Goths should be and well I for one am honoured to know both you and Cruel Brit and am glad WGD threw us into each others paths. I hope that one day when I am more financially bouyant I can actually meet you both!
Oh I know that, you worked so hard for this, nobody can deny that, getting word out to that many people was incredible!
ReplyDeleteHopefully next year when we go do WGD again we'll get those people back again. Its not like there wasn't enough warning of the change, it just goes to show how many of them actually took any notice! You are so right about people wanting it done for them, and sadly a lot then want it done their way too, you can't win! Keep up the great work!