Artists these days make their money via concerts, not record sales. See Sir Paul and his $126 million this year. Used to be the other way around, it seems. Heavy promotion is limited to a handful of the very young, photogenic, mostly female warblers, most of whom don't write their own songs. Anyway artists can't count on their labels -- assuming they have one -- to do diddly these days by way of promotion, which considering the money they shell out for production, you think they would, to at least recoup the investment.
James Taylor has taken the pro-active route via gently humorous TV commercials for his new CD "October Road", and with at least one special with the Dixie Chicks which was in heavy rotation last month on, I think A&E (can't remember - sorry.) Gets his face and some of his music out there. Somehow I don't see a Lightfoot Unplugged in the near future. Maybe BravoTV's David Wild will do a "Musicians" segment with him someday - I've suggested it to them via email.
|