April - and with it comes Easter (the "moveable" feast), so a chance to eat chocolate eggs (presumably laid by chocolate chickens)??? As the nights get shorter and the days get longer and now that we have changed from "Greenwich Mean Time" to "British Summertime" here in the UK, (does that mean that we are now enjoying the British summer?) and with the start of yet another "financial year" - I have to look at the books and see how much further we have fallen into debt… However, I am very much consoled by the terrific library of music that we have produced and - with that optimistic thought - I will continue my "Quixotic" search for a way to keep on making music…

Last month I spoke about "making major changes" in the way that we produce new music. Although it is too early to make a statement as to what these changes will be - because the decision has not yet been made; I am still looking at several options in order to determine the one that might work for us. However, I would like to share part of my thinking with you so that you can see the type of rationale that I am considering.

One of the major problems that we face is in the process that we follow when producing new music, it works like this: we choose a tune (that we hope will sell), we record the music (in a fashion we hope will take the best from the original and then work well as a Square Dance), we produce the music (in a form that callers can buy) and then we offer the product for sale and "hope" that we got it right!

The problem with this process is that it is entirely "speculative"! We are trying to anticipate - or more correctly "guess" - what our customers requirements are.

A far better arrangement would be to produce the music "to order", i.e. to find the customers for a particular production, first - and then produce what they want, as part of a contractual agreement; this would effectively remove the "speculative" element. This would involve us providing a list of tunes that we intend to record, in advance of spending any money, then offering these for sale. When we have enough people that wish to buy a copy of that production, we could share the cost amongst those who are interested, "sell" the production and - once we have the money - we could then produce the tunes.

Perhaps this would be too radical a change to the way things are but it seems that a radical change is what we need, to be able to stay in business. We already know that if we rely upon the current system - where we invest first and then try to recoup our investment - we cannot sell enough copies to pay our production costs, the only alternative I can see is to ask people to pay first and then produce the music!

Do you have any ideas about this philosophy? Do you think it would work? Would you support it?

At the moment I am just "whistling in the wind" but if I find the right tune and enough people are prepared to join in the song, perhaps we will be able to get back to full production…

Now for the other news:

NEW CD RELEASES - also available on MP3 & Vinyl (in most cases) / (March 2010):
He Was On To Something, When He Made You - SIR 110 - Vocal by Stefan and Ingvar
Kentucky Turkey Buzzard - SIR 401 - Vocal by Robert Björk
Big Mamou - SIR 301 - Vocal by Bjorn Jerneborg

INDIVIDUAL RECORD HISTORIES including ALL THE ADDITIONAL LYRICS:
To find these, just click on the book symbol next to the title on the Catalogue, Future Releases or Latest Releases pages.

If you want to hear how these top-selling recordings sound, just click on the musical note symbol

Okay, as I have decided to continue looking for the "Golden Fleece" of new music production, I must start making plans to set sail; does anybody know where I can find a crew of "Argonauts" who can Square Dance? Til, next month..!

Go Squareful! - Paul Bristow (Owner and Producer Sting and Snow Records)