Interesting post. Just to put this in perspective, here in Chicago I've never ever seen an Amp Fiddler record. In contrast, at Gramaphone they get multiple copies of all the Ghostly stuff and it does seem to be selling pretty well... However I wasn't really aware that Matthew Dear was being so hyped, I really just checked out the records because they were in the store, had no idea he got written up in Rolling Stone or is supposed to be some next big thing.
I haven't really heard mention of Amp Fiddler outside the 313 list. I did turn a couple of my hiphop-head friends on to Amp Fiddler however. The thing is, in the US, the "Urban/R&B" style is really very corporate and Amp Fiddler probably would have a harder time going over here the way he might be able to in the UK. The market for more indy urban sounds is rather small, like a minority of people that might dig on underground hiphop. Amp Fiddler would need to get played by Clear Channel and the like to have a chance in the US urban market. Ghostly International, on the other hand, probably will go over with people that are used to looking a little more out of the mainstream for their records, which means techno fans but maybe also a bit of indie-rock type crossover. That is how it appears to may but maybe somebody has a different take on it??? ~Dave ---------- Original Message ------------- Subject: (313) Marketing Ghostly and Amp Fiddler Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 20:01:27 -0000 From: "Phonopsia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[email protected]> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas D. Cox, Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 5:28 PM Subject: RE: AW: (313) Derrick May quote and the Death of Techno > all i know is that amp fiddler's music is not in any way > groundbreaking but we cant keep a single 12" with his name on it > in stock. people who are into hiphop and r+b have been buying his > records as well as all the techno and house heads who have known > about him for a little while now. It's really interesting to compare that to how the Amp Fiddler album is being pushed in the UK. Not sure if I've mentioned, but 'Waltz of a Ghetto Fly' got 4 of 5 stars in the Metro, which is a sort of middle-of-the-road free paper primarilly for the tube in London. It's generally regarded as sh*t. Anyway... they've also had large ads for the album in it and at Stockwell station there's a full-size (five foot tall or so) ad for the album which I pass every day on the way to and from work. The only thing I've seen remotely as adventurous as this is an ad for The Rapture's album (which happened to occupy exactly the same spot). Meanwhile, you see Ghostly spending (what seems to me to be) quite a bit of money on promotion stateside (and here but to a comparitively lesser degree), and it's paid off in terms of journalistic attention, DJ interest and presumably sales judging by the growth of the label. It'll be interesting to see whether or not Amp Fiddler blows up here. He's certainly had some really high profile support so far. Obviously it's hard to compare the two that closely, since the Amp Fiddler stuff will be accessible to a much wider audience, but I'm still interested to see what happens. Tristan ======= http://www.phonopsia.co.uk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
