The Best of Wasting Time

You know, maybe I'm not supposed to have what I thought would be my next CD released.

Here's a bit of history and it might make sense at the end of this why I'm getting a little bit frustrated with setting up this new CD.  In 2007, I put out "Will Work For Money - the Best of the 4-track Years".  That's the pic with the burgundy background.  So, that was 7 years ago.  Now, for continuity reasons, I'm calling the new Best of "Will Work For More Money - the Best of the 24-track Years" because all the songs were done on a 24-track recorder.  Pretty original, eh?  More tracks, more money.  Fun.  That's the pic with the blue background.

 

Pretty straight-forward.  Or so I thought.

After spending more time than I originally wanted to on making the new Best Of CD, it seems I'm having troubles getting this thing released.

The first road block was my test pressings from IndiePool.  They send two test copies, one with a glossy finish and one with a matte finish which is pretty cool except when I put the first one on, I noticed some distortions and drop outs.  At first I thought the master I sent in was defective.  I put the other CD on and there were distortions and drop-outs too - but in different spots.  In short, I still don't have a physical CD yet.

In the meantime, I thought I'd upload the wavs to CD Baby and upload the cover so I don't lose my UPC code since they give you a month to send in the physical CDs or you lose it.

Apparently, my cover isn't suitable.  Keep in mind, that's the blue background one.

Here's the first e-mail I got:

Hey Gregg,

I'm sitting here looking at Will Work for More Money and noticed something that may delay it getting sent to our digital partners like iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc.

-Upselling - Your artwork has extra information about you as an artist, or about another product, which is called "upselling" and is not allowed. Artwork cannot be used as a promotional tool & must be dedicated to the album/single it represents. Examples of this are listing your twitter page, website, or phrases like "Buy our new album" or "New album coming soon!", etc. For more information, please click HERE

Please log into your CD Baby members account HERE to make changes. If you have any questions, please feel free to email cdbaby@cdbaby.com.

Sincerely,The Digital Inspector

If it's because I put the ".com" on the cover, and that's really reaching, and a pretty gay reason since I already have a cover with a ".com" on it.  So I replied:

Hi,

I looked through the bullet points of what wouldn't be acceptable.  Is it because it looks a lot like a previous CD (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/koval7 ) or is it just because there's a ".com" on the cover?  I don't mind making the change; just wondering.

Thanks,Gregg

 

In the meantime, I replaced the cover with this pic:

 

So I made up a label to go over top of the what I thought was the offending ".com".  The label has the CD title.  That's the title, "Will Work For More Money - The Best of the 24-track Years".  A label with the CD title.

Yesterday, I got a reply (I didn't get until this morning):

Hi Gregg,

Thanks for checking in!

So our digital partners do not allow references to other submissions/albums to be on cover art -- they consider this "upselling." That said, we need you to remove the text "the best of the 24-track years" from your cover art. This seems like a reference to another submission/album. That said, I have pulled down your submission "Will Work for More Money" from cdbaby.com and reset the uploader so you can replace the artwork.

I didn't write back saying "thanks for the inconvenience" or "why yes, it does refer to another CD, like my first Best of" but that didn't answer my two questions: Is it because it looks like a cover I already did or is it because of the faded .com and it looks like an URL?

I get pretty livid at stupidity.  Just throwing that out there.  I haven't replied back because one should never reply to an e-mail in anger but who wouldn't be pissed?  I'm angry that, 1, I had to censor my cover in the first place, and 2, I'm extremely pissed that now I can't have the CD title on the cover?  

Maybe I'll have a plain background, just my name, and I'll give it a title of "Take A Guess At What This CD is Called?"

This entry will be updated soon because I'm sure there'll be more annoying things to come out of this.