A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

In this earlier post I discussed the motivations behind Dante and I ending Alpha Draconis Records. However, there are still some supplementary questions that need to be addressed.

• What does this mean for Unsung Heroes Records? UHR has always been a separate label, and it will remain so. UHR will continue to exist.

  However, the biggest part of ADR that affected UHR was the store, as the ADR store was where to go to get UHR albums. No need to worry, though - Before ADR, even before BWV, I did direct sales on UHR items myself, and there’s no reason I can’t continue to do so. Since the inventory will be limited to my own releases, all of the time issues related to running the ADR webstore won’t apply here.

  Furthermore, I’m looking at other release avenues. Back when I started I was still hand-making CDRs, which distros understandably don’t want to deal with, by and large. Now that the quality of our pro-pressed CDRs rivals that of CDs I think it might be easier to get at least a few distros involved in stocking us. Also, I’m toying with ways to go with web-only releases, via filesharing outlets. I don’t anticipate ever going totally this way, but the old Rampage websingle was one of the more fun releases to get out there, and I think there’s room for exploration on that front…

• What happened to your old stock from the webstore? We are in the process of selling this to another store. We’ll let you know who when the sale is complete.

• What about your old ADR releases? I want to get them. All of the remaining copies of our own releases were split between the bands and the store we are selling our remaining distro stock to. If you want to buy them for personal use or if you are a label/distro looking to stock ADR releases, either contact the band(s) or the afore-yet-to-be-mentioned store buying our remaining stuff.

• What about your newsletter? You actually read that? :)

  Seriously, I may continue the content portions of the newsletter in my own blog or through the UHR website. The newsletter mailing list was tied to the ADR domain name/hosting, so it will eventually go away, and I have no mailing list management capabilities other than that. If you really want to see the UHR newsletter continue, please let me know, and if you can please suggest some way I can manage the mailing list, either by a PC-based client or some web-based service.

• There’s something I want to know that you haven’t addressed here? If you have any other questions about the end of ADR and its implications that I have not addressed here, please email me to ask and I’ll answer, and if necessary put it here as well.

(Again, not much to add. We were very organized about ending things, so with paying off our remaining debts and selling the stock to Evan at Deathgasm Records we went out easily, and with a tidy little sum each - a nice thank-you to ourselves for doing so well for so long. I owed myself a break, or so I felt at the time - but by now I guess the argument could be made that I took a little more liberty there than I should have. :) )